Matt Evans

Tectonics Glasgow - City Halls/Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, Sat 11 & Sun 12 May 2013

Showcase of adventurous performances, featuring Alvin Lucier, Ilan Volkov and Stuart Braithwaite

Launched by Ilan Volkov, principal guest conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Tectonics is an ambitious festival that aims to explore the hinterland between experimental and orchestral music. Originating last year in Iceland, in 2013 it has…

Vom - Altered States

The doomy, nigh-instrumental Glaswegians merge ritualistic intensity with more exploratory ambitions

There’s something threatening and otherworldly about this doomy, nigh-instrumental Glasgow trio. A combination of the relative scarcity of their live appearances, an obtuse and abstract artwork, some evocative and foreboding choices of album and song…

Howie Reeve - Friendly Demons

12 intricate and expressive solo compositions from former Tattie Toes member

Anyone who saw Glasgow’s Tattie Toes play live will surely be familiar with genial shorts-wearing bassist and bell-ringer Howie Reeve. To an already extremely inventive band comprising wildly disparate stylistic elements, he brought a (post) punky…

Bong / Pyramidion - Untitled

Beautifully executed split from the yin and yang of contemporary psychedelic rock

(At War With False Noise) Set controls for the heart of the Tyrant Sun, courtesy of Newcastle’s high lords of psychedelic sludge Bong and Glasgow/Edinburgh’s spry, mesmerising space-rock ensemble Pyramidion. Distinctly different in approach and…

Dethscalator - Racial Golf Course, No Bitches

The depraved, baffling and stinkingly good debut album from the Hackney noise rockers

If an album title is a statement of intent, then we’re on upsettingly shaky ground here. Is Racial Golf Course, No Bitches a meat-headed attempt at offensiveness? A satirical statement on the intrinsic bigotry of the golfing classes? Just some…

Minimal: Steve Reich in Glasgow - Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Sat 8 Mar 2013

Programme includes Radio Rewrite and older pieces mixes beauty with technical

This celebration of a modern icon doesn’t start well, with an IT failure causing a sizeable delay, during which the crowd perform a spontaneous, good-natured crowd version of Reich’s ‘Clapping Music’. Once things get going, the first…

Marnie Stern - The Chronicles of Marnia

Inspirational album an exercise in restraint from maximalist guitarist

(Kill Rock Stars) Marnie Stern’s 2007 debut In Advance of the Broken Arm was the best thing to happen to indie rock in yonks. In a milieu that all too often venerated dour beardedness and/or half-arsed underachievement, here was someone well-versed…

Black Pus - All My Relations

Enjoyably visceral solo project from Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale

(Thrill Jockey) A big chunk of the appeal of Rhode Island’s two-man wrecking crew Lightning Bolt lies in the grotesquely overdriven and pitched Hades-ward tone of bassist Brian Gibson. You’d be forgiven, then, for being concerned that the solo project…

Scott Walker - Bish Bosch

An extraordinary new experimental release from the former 1960s teen idol

From 60s teen idol to purveyor of uncompromising nightmares, no other artist has had as singular a career trajectory as Scott Walker. His first album in six years is extraordinary: vast in scope but solipsistic, a universe all its own. At its core is…

Five reasons to check out Matthew Herbert’s ‘One Pig’

The sound experiment documents the birth, life and death of a pig

1 Not many gigs document the birth, life and death of a pig ‘The whole show is about remembering this life that existed and then passed. All of us are playing pig samples. Our drummer’s playing a drum made from the skin of the pig. We’ve also got a chef…

Neurosis - Honor Found in Decay

Ten albums in, Neurosis continue to evolve. Kicking off with the uncharacteristically forthright riff ‘We All Rage in Gold’, Honor Found in Decay occupies a space between their more contemplative, work and the confrontational style of 2007’s Given to…