Cargo Direct Best Of 2015

 

Born in Berlin in early 2014 and nurtured over the following summer, I Declare Nothing'is the spine-tingling collaboration between Tess Parks and Anton Newcombe (Brian Jonestown Massacre), due for release on Anton's A Recordings label on 29th June.

The duo, who co-wrote and co-played on the album, they are touring across Europe this year. 

Tess Parks - A native of Toronto, Tess Parks moved to London, England at the age of seventeen where she briefly studied photography before deciding to focus on music. Tess made an impression on industry legend Alan McGee, founder of Creation Records, albeit the timing of their meeting could hardly have been less ideal; McGee was no longer involved in music and Tess was due to move back to Toronto. After moving back to her hometown in 2012, Tess formed a band on the advice of McGee and less than a year after their meeting, he returned to music with his new label, 359 Music.

Tess became one of his first signings and released her debut record Blood Hot'in November 2013 to excellent reviews. One reviewer described her as 'Patti Smith on Quaaludes'. Others have mentioned her "gauzy psychedelic sound' and "smouldering voice'. Alan McGee himself said: 'She's only 24 and is already an amazing songwriter... she just doesn't quite know she is yet - ¦ her most beautiful quality is her lack of ego. Tess is an amazing lady'.

Anton Newcombe - Anton Newcombe is the leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, who returned last May with their 14th full-length album Revelation'to critical acclaim. It is the first album that was fully recorded and produced at Anton Newcombe's recording studio in Berlin and was released on his record label A Recordings. It was supported by a successful European tour.

Named in tribute to the legendary Rolling Stones guitarist and his influence in introducing Eastern culture and music into the world of Western rock & roll, Brian Jonestown Massacre formed in San Francisco, California in 1990.

Two dozen band members later and numerous 'ups and downs' (some have been famously sensationalized in the media), the one thing that has always remained consistent for this psychedelic collective, is front man Mr. Anton Alfred Newcombe.

LP Tracklisting
Side A:
1. Wehmut
2. Cocaine Cat
3. Peace Defrost
4. German Tangerine
5. Gone

Side B:
6. October 2nd
7. Mama
8. Voyage de L'âme
9. Melorist
10. Friendlies

CD:
1. Wehmut
2. Cocaine Cat
3. Peace Defrost
4. German Tangerine
5. Gone
6. October 2nd
7. Mama
8. Voyage de L'âme
9. Meliorist
10. Friendlies

Limited Cream Vinyl / Black Vinyl / CD.

Northern Ireland's Girls Names return this autumn with their third full-length album, Arms Around a Vision, due for an October 2nd release via long-term home, Tough Love Records.

'We look to Europe for inspiration. For romance. For the idea of a better life,' says the band's frontman, Cathal Cully, when discussing the album. 'For me, living in Belfast just makes you focus on your own art.'

True, Girls Names formed in Belfast, but they've long considered themselves a European band. The distinction is important - their vision of Europe is one of weird, labyrinthian histories, blackest-ever-black coffee, and long drives to dismal places. Romantic notions for those of a certain disposition, but behind the thousand-yard stares they've always been a soft-hearted lot. As the title of Arms Around a Vision would suggest, they're all set to let love in.

The band initially came together as a relatively lean two-piece back in the summer of 2010, but over the course of a handful of EPs and three very different albums, they've grown in number and ambition. Their last album, The New Life, was an unexpected underground hit in early 2013, taking the band around the world and garnering much critical praise, culminating in nominations for both the Northern Irish and Irish Music Prizes. Emboldened by the reception to that record, in March they returned with an 11-minute single that was played in full on Radio 1 and, typically, does not feature on their new album. Girls Names like to do things a little differently.

On Arms Around a Vision, they're more widescreen than ever but also more direct and aggressive. The bass, drums and guitars are still there, but so are saxophones, organs, detuned broken guitars and pianos, and even sheets of metal assaulted with hammers. Conceptually, Arms Around a Vision acts as a love letter to European elegance - Italian futurism, Russian constructivism, Germany's Zero Group and both Neubaten and Bowie's Berlin.

Love and pain, romance and fucking. It's all in there somewhere. Grand claims, perhaps, but in an ever bleak world, why not skygaze? The album opens with Reticence', a song in two parts that's half metallic knockout, half midnight swagger. It sounds unlike anything they've ever done before, and is a perfect primer for an album that treads a course between Eno-era Roxy sleaze, Birthday Party dissonance and M.E.S'three R's: repetition, repetition, repetition.

As confident as it sounds, hardship has equally played a role in shaping Arms Around a Vision. 'I'm not starving or anything, but I've practically been living hand to mouth since I was 22,' confirms Cully. 'Most guitar music now is just a playground for the rich middle classes and it's really boring and elitist. We're elitist in our own way, in that we're on our own and you can't fuck with us when we've nothing to lose'. The near-6 minute A Hunger Artist'tackles that subject full on, addressing that age old adage of suffering for one's art.

While the songs aren't narrative-driven as such - the band still generally favour abstraction and ambiguity - there is a consistent underlying message: 'We've got nothing. We've never had anything. And we don't expect to. The only person I ever wanted to impress was myself. I've never got anywhere close to succeeding in doing that until this album. I'm proud of it. I think I can start saying I'm a musician now.'

Tracklisting:
1. Reticence
2. An Artificial Spring
3. Desire Oscillations
4. (Obsession)
5. Chrome Rose
6. A Hunger Artist
7. Málaga
8. Dysmorphia
9. (Convalescence)
10. Exploit Me
11. Take Out the Hand
12. I Was You

Deluxe LP package. 180g transparent white and cosmic purple haze vinyl, gatefold sleeve, printed lyric inner and free download. Strictly limited to 500 copies.

Terminal'follows hot on the heels of Limb's self-titled debut of 2014, but takes an enormous leap forward. Perhaps it's the result of playing across the UK on tour with labelmates Black Moth, and the introduction of new drummer Tom Mowforth (ex Uncle Acid) but Limb are now more explosive than ever before. Where the debut showcased their thick, loping, and stripped-down sound, 'Terminal' cranks up the sonics, mashes the grooves, and ups the filth quotient to truly corrosive levels.

In their quest to take things to the next planet, Limb hooked up with legendary extreme metal producer Russ Russell (Napalm Death, Dimmu Borgir, Evile, etc.). A bold move, but together they've created a monolithic statement of intent. 'Terminal' is a down-tuned and dirty barrage of monumental riffs, in fact it sounds like worlds exploding.

Keeping all the mammoth groove that is Limb's trademark, Terminal'ups the tempos and infuses it all with a thick, stoner vibe.

The guitars are all roiling fuzz. The bass is low, warm and weighty. The drums pound, and vocalist Rob Hoey's roar resounds through it all, guttural but articulate. This album is guaranteed to blow your ears, speakers, and minds.

Recognising Limb's love of both stoner dirge and glam stomp, Russ Russell has described the band's sound as GoatSlade', and we can see why. Buried in the dirt is a cosmic boogie, which pays more than a nod to the decade of stacked platform boots without ever feeling retro.

Right from the opening double whammy of 'Three Snake Leaves' and 'Ghost Dance', you're propelled into a maelstrom that never lets up. The riffs come layered, thick, and fast, from the fuzzy throb of Dawn Raiders'to the off-kilter groove of Spoils of a Portrait King', marking the halfway point with its monstrous, doomy outro. The second half of the album contains Limb's take on a traditional murder ballad, Down by the Banks', as well as the chaotic hardcore of Mortuary Teeth'. The whole thing ends with Cocytus', the soundtrack to a voyage across the eponymous river of dead souls that encircles Hell, complete with a hypnotic riff ending.

It's an album which can easily hold it's own against Yob's, Conan's The Swords'  of this world at the same time as ploughing its own singular furrow.

Thematically the album addresses the prospect of absolute destruction and the possibility of life thereafter, which is echoed in the album's artwork, a startling retro-futuristic collage by Cur3es (responsible for the art of FuManchu's Gigantoid'). It conveys the album's mood perfectly: the familiar juxtaposed with the unknown, a world where nothing is quite as it should be.

Watch the skies. Terminal is set to land on September 11^th.

Tracklisting:
1. Three Snake Leaves
2. Ghost Dance
3. Micromegas
4. Dawn Raiders
5. Spoils Of A Portrait King
6. Down By The Banks
7. Sleepwalkers
8. Mortuary Teeth
9. Cocytus

Available on limited light Blue Double Vinyl and CD.

'Her darkest, heaviest and most personal album yet . . . a haunting, doomy exercise in loud-quiet dynamics.' Rolling Stone

Sleep paralysis plagues singer/songwriter Chelsea Wolfe, and that strange intersection of the conscious and the unconscious has inadvertently manifested itself within her work.

Across the span of her first four albums, there is an underlying tension, a distorted and nebulous territory where dark shadows hover along the edges of the sublime and the graceful.

But until now, Wolfe's trials and tribulations with the boundaries between dreams and reality have only been a subconscious influence on her work. With her fifth album, Abyss, she deliberately confronts those boundaries and crafts a score to that realm she describes as the 'hazy afterlife - ¦ an inverted thunderstorm - ¦ the dark backward - ¦ the abyss of time.'

Chelsea Wolfe's material has always felt intensely private, from the almost voyeuristic bedroom-production aesthetic of her debut album The Grime and the Glow to the stark themes and atmospheres of 2013's Pain Is Beauty. 'Abyss is meant to have the feeling of when you're dreaming, and you briefly wake up, but then fall back asleep into the same dream, diving quickly into your own subconscious,' says Wolfe.

To conjure this in-between world, Wolfe continued her ongoing collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and co-writer Ben Chisholm and drummer Dylan Fujioka, with Ezra Buchla brought on board to play viola and Mike Sullivan (Russian Circles) enlisted to contribute guitar. The ensemble traveled to Dallas, TX to record with producer John Congleton (Swans, St. Vincent).

In the back of her mind burned the words of designer Yohji Yamamoto: "Perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.' The resulting eleven songs reflect that philosophy as they smoulder with human frailty, intimacy, quiet passion, anxiety, and deep longing. 'Sleep and dream issues have followed me my whole life,' remarks Wolfe as she revisits notes from the writing and recording sessions. In a way, these issues have become a part of Chelsea Wolfe's identity, for whom the notion of sleep as an escape has been subverted.

Abyss captures this dichotomy, this battle between the soothing and the upsetting, and demonstrates why Chelsea Wolfe has become one of the most intriguing songwriters of the decade.

Tracklisting:
1. Carrion Flowers
2. Iron Moon
3. Dragged Out
4. Maw
5. Grey Days
6. After the Fall
7. Crazy Love
8. Simple Death
9. Survive
10. Color of Blood
11. The Abyss