London label Blackest Ever Black, who are having a great 2012 so far that’s seeing them expand their remit to reissues as well as soot-caked industrial electronic singles, are set to host their second big gig in the capital on October 13th. It brings back William Bennett’s Cut Hands project, whom the label’s Kiran Sande has been a great supporter of and who is behind the label’s upcoming tenth release: a 12" entitled Black Mamba. More exitingly still, it will also see the UK debut show of Dominick Fernow’s (Prurient/Cold Cave) Vatican Shadow project, whose brittle techno-leaning noise and Middle Eastern warfare imagery have made for some of this year’s most thrilling music so far. The venue and more performers are set to be announced soon, and the label suggest politely that we ‘save the date’. Indeed we shall. More information here, and tickets for the event will be available here.
In other Blackest Ever Black news, the label have a host of exciting new slabs of vinyl set for release soon. The first is a reissue of Flaming Tunes, the great 1985 album by This Heat’s Gareth Williams and Mary Currie, which is set to appear some time in July – information is available here, pre-orders are sold out but the full release will be hitting shops soon.
Cut Hands’ Black Mamba will then be released in late July, a pair of tracks entitled ‘Black Mamba’ and ‘Krokodilo Theme’ to herald the arrival of Bennett’s upcoming second Cut Hands album in the autumn. In the label’s words: "Africa’s deadliest, most beautiful snake breeds with insane, vaudou-obsessive polyrhythms to give birth to the monstrous, consuming, convulsive ‘Black Mamba’." We’re looking forward to that one.
The label are also launching a 7" series entitled Confessions, consisting of "dinked jukebox 45s, cut loud by Matt Colton at Air, London, and housed in individually hand-numbered sleeves." The first in the series features tracks by Pete Swanson (formerly of the excellent Yellow Swans) and Moin, whose music the label describe as "overdriven guitar, well-worn metaphysical anguish and…an eerily familiar poise to it all?"
And finally, the second edition of the label’s ‘Before My Eyes’ nights at Stoke Newington’s Waiting Room will take place on Thursday 16th August, and once again will feature Kiran Sande, Raime and Demdike Stare playing tunes plucked from the farthest reaches of their record collections. The first event earlier this year was pleasingly wide-ranging in terms of the music that was aired, so expect a similar variety for this one.
Right, that’s enough of a stern news update for one day. More information and a generally pleasing audio/visual aesthetic can be found at the Blackest Ever Black website.
