BBC 6 Music are running their Blog Awards this Sunday and the Quietus is again in charge of the Tomorrow’s Cult Star Today category.
We’ve picked out a shortlist of artists who are currently operating beneath the radar but will soon be commanding a loyal following attending their sell-out gigs and trading their much sought-after early material – and we need you to pick out the best of the bunch.
The Blog Awards show airs this Sunday, February 24, from 6-8pm – tune in here – and in advance of that have a look over the list below and pick out your favourite, then vote for them over at our Facebook page before this Friday, February 22, at 1pm:
Hey Colossus
"We can’t remember the 16-legged, Löwenbräu-marinated, cataclysmic sonic bastards Hey Colossus not being part of the UK’s throbbing noise rock scene but as enjoyable as their chaotic live shows have always been, their studio output has really stepped up a few notches recently. Following on from the ambient noise-kraut of RRR, they have recruited Tim from Part Chimp on drums and John from Notorious Hi-Fi Killers on fifth guitar and noise boxes and produced their most cohesive and enjoyable album to date: Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo. Standing somewhere between the Butthole Surfers, Amon Düül II and Loop, they are the esoterrorist sound your record collection is crying out for."
John Doran
Frisk Frugt
We say: "The cheap and the expensive clash, as do the virtuoso and the untrained, the synthetic and the authentic, the digital and the analogue with all noise collapsing into an oscillating synthesiser drone worthy of Hawkwind, which in turn gives way to the echoing sepulchral chords of a church pipe organ. And then hopefully, excitingly, blissfully, temporarily you’re taken outside of your usual frames of reference into a notional international zone. This is a deprogramming technique that allows you to hear the unusual blends of instruments and styles and recording techniques in a way that doesn’t detract from Frisk Frugt (aka Danish experimental pop artist Anders Lauge Meldgaard) and his amazing compositional sense."
John Doran
Hexvessel
We say: "Whilst still coloured in the same sort of acoustic, slightly Celtic, ‘forest’ folk of their debut, now main man Mat ‘Kvohst’ McNerney – who came up through the British black metal scene but now lives in Finland – along with his Finnish cohorts, has produced something diversely stunning, something that manages to contain the raw, brittle feel of a Nick Cave and Warren Ellis score (‘Sacred Marriage’); a choking waft of doom riffs (‘His Portal Tomb’); Norse-like sea shanties (‘Are You Coniferous’); and almost Earth-like Americana (‘Unseen Sun’)."
Toby Cook
Karenn
We say: "An alliance between Blawan and Pariah, Karenn is essentially a live project, based around a large bank of analogue hardware. The tracks that come out of their jam sessions are – to put it mildly – a right old racket. Monstrously distorted kicks that cascade over the tracks like so much unstable mud, strange percussive stabs sourced from lord know where, and a completely off-kilter approach to arrangement. However, this is no mere exercise in reckless brutality – fearsome funk, although deeply submerged, is ever present. The dynamics are clever, and the six tracks on this EP are fearsomely propulsive – even the ostensibly ‘lo-fi’ production is deceptive. The sheer physicality of the beats fill up space with a cavernous echo, rather like the sound of a peak time DJ set conducted in an empty room, sound crashing all around, devoid of bodies to act as buffer. A track-by-track description seems superfluous in this case. The vibe is uniform: crushing cantankerous grooves imbued with a beguiling sense of distance, and everything drenched in layers of warm distortion."
Harry Sword
Powell
We say: "The body of the music on this new EP for the Death of Rave label – and it does have a distinctly fleshy feel – uses carefully sculpted, fizzing distortion of the type you’d as easily associate with modern day textural explorers like Mika Vainio or Alva Noto as with earlier practitioners like Suicide or Ike Yard. At times it might ring as clear as the exquisitely carved static of Emptyset or the Raster-Noton set, were it not for the scrambling effect of the music’s archaic rhythmic skeleton: hollow percussion that sounds sourced from obscure post-punk and early industrial recordings, clipped dialogue, wiry scrawls of guitar. At times the drums are so muffled as to feel less like tangible presences and more like muddy pressure imprints carved into the surrounding matter, hinting at the shape of the former occupants that originally made them. This uneasy relationship – the old not only colliding with the new, but corrupting it – suggests a life experienced in multiple eras at once, or perhaps never experienced at all."
Rory Gibb
Mykki Blanco
We say: "The focus on last year’s Cosmic Angel: The Illuminati Prince/ss was more on straight-ahead MCing than previous material, but with beats provided by a cabal of leftfield producers, willing to match her mercurial verses with potent experimentation. As well as the sparse minimalist beats favoured by the underground NY scene, there’s a pair of cuts from ascendant New Yorker Brenmar – ‘Wavvy’ and the tropicalia-infused ‘Kingpinning’ – set alongside the future-shock of the Gatekeeper-produced ‘Squanto’. There’s also the dancehall banger ‘Wavvy’, the stuttering clatter of ‘Fuckin The DJ’ and, best of all, the mixtape’s juke-tinted centrepiece, ‘Riot’. Brooklyn producer Gobby maps out a ghostly vocal sample over which strings slide, before Blanco’s voice appears, her voice pitched artificially low – "got a hottie full of molly / Now we fuckin’ this club up" – and the bass kicks out like depth charges."
Laurie Tuffrey
Black Pus
Inimitable drummer of US psychedelic noise rock titans Lightning Bolt, Brian Chippendale’s new album under the Black Pus moniker is as storming and abrasive as you’d expect from Chippendale, though surprisingly catchy with it. On album track ‘1000 Years’, there’s a definite tune buried in there, even if you have to wade through deadly riptides of waist-deep sludge to get to it.
Rory Gibb
Fat White Family
Fat White Family, are sick. I don’t mean this like, they’re well sick la, like some scouse teenager would have said eight years ago. I mean, they’re seriously not well. I’ve never seen a more unhealthy looking band in my life and I saw Poison Idea back in the day. Yellow skin, yellow eyes, even yellower teeth… the ones that aren’t missing that is; rotten dangling tallywhackers like the last five chickens in Tesco; greasy piss mop hair; outfits designed out of bin liners from outside Mencap. They’re the sort of band you’d wish would move into the house next door to Bobby Gillespie to hold five day mephedrone jams. They sound like early Liars, smacky Butthole Surfers, slow and steamy Birthday Party, The Happy Flowers, Bongwater and The Cramps. No good will come of it, mark my words but above and beyond all of this it should be said that they’re also slightly brilliant.
John Doran
Gnod
We say: "Gnod are, quite possibly, the best band in the universe. This bold proclamation can be based on the fact that no other band could soundtrack a supernova as convincingly as the Salford-based collective. And, that witnessing a Gnod show is a transcendental barrage of volcanic psychedelia; the gig equivalent to having your amygdala replaced with a palantir and letting Sauron’s will smash your future and your past together with hellish zeal. Gnod will make you dance like St Vitus. They are that fucking good. For the uninitiated, the recently re-released Chaudelande album is a crunching mix of Krautrock beats and scything guitars funnelled through 17-minute voodoo-jams. It’s music to kick-start a revelotion – a mindwarp through the zodiac.
John Freeman
Imaginary Forces
As is suggested by name, Anthoney J Hart’s music as Imaginary Forces deals in things that never quite seem to be there. Sounds bunch and destabilise around each other as their foundations sway; sudden bright glares of noise bring to mind ancient cine cameras rattling light onto bare walls. But rather than drift toward curdled ambience, Imaginary Forces music maintains a rock-solid dancefloor impetus. The tracks that make up his diverse output always have at their core a throb that resonates back to the jungle and ‘ardcore of the early 90s, the scene wherein Hart first had his head turned toward the dark stuff. Taking in the fractured pulses of more noise based acts such as Yellow Swans, and even evoking the more hushed, foreboding atmospheres of Coil or Popol Vuh. But at its own warped level, Imaginary Forces music is a dancefloor experience. The dancers harried and flailing, like some previously-thought-lost rave footage from Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo springing scratchily to life.
Mat Colegate
