burning on... music from the ROADBURN haul and beyond (feat. JO QUAIL, NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM, TEMPLE FANG, TERZIJ DE HORDE, ULVER and various artists covering LUSTMORD)

No, this is not my Roadburn merch haul! It's just some of it released recent enough to fall under my review directive that I'm talking about everything purchased in the same year it came out. I've also bought stuff from Five The Hierophant, Wyatt E., White Hills, Claudio Simonetti's Goblin... but to include all that would be too excessive. Oh, and there's also a tape I am going to review later in the according series...

Two of these records however could have been bought at Roadburn, if I hadn't already pre-ordered them before anyway.

ULVER - So Falls The World - Live At Roadburn 2017 (transparent blue 10" vinyl) (2022)

Let's start with the official special release for this Roadburn: Unfortunately not a full album, but still a great item is this ten inch record by Ulver with three tracks from their mind-blowing 2017 performance, where they played "The Assassination Of Julius Caesar" in full.

The nine-minute rendition of "So Falls The World", including a great atmospheric piano intro alone makes this worthwhile. Pure bliss! The B side features "Transverberation" and "1969". Both also great, albeit it really makes you wish there was more.

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM AND ITS SUPERNOVA ARKESTRA - Set Chaos To The Heart Of The Moon - Live At Roadburn 2021 (CD+DVD) (2022)

After Gggolddd's "This Shame Should Not Be Mine" now my other favorite performance from last year's Roadburn Redux has been released on CD (vinyl version to follow later). Not a studio version, but the pure live performance of Neptunian Maximalism's "Set Chaos To The Heart Of The Moon", because what else would you want? As usual with this band you can now experience the spiritual jazz drone doom psychedelic larger than life extravaganza with a beautiful artwork and catchy song titles like "ZÂR : Empowering The Phurba : Éon Phanérozoïque" or "Ol SONUF VAORESAJI ! La Sixième Extinction de Masse : Le Génocide Anthropocène".
On top of that the digipak includes a DVD with the complete show as seen on the stream last year, but probably with even better sound. What Guillaume Cazalet and his big band - in homage to Sun Ra dubbed Supernova Arkestra on this release - are touching, always seems to turn into majestic magic of cosmic magnitude. I still love this performance, maybe now even more than thirteen months ago.

TEMPLE FANG - Fang Temple (2LP) (2022)

The good news for more grounded rock musicians who don't want to go as big as Neptunian Maximalism: Four members are already more than enough to create enormously epic and timeless masterpieces. Bad news: Not everyone is Temple Fang.
It feels almost lame to call this year's surprise replacement band of the warm-up show just classic rock, even if you add psychedelic to it. On the other hand it just it what it is: The Dutch quartet doesn't sound like a band which has been playing together for a couple of years, but like a legend from the 1970s.

And to think that the songs on this double album almost were lost due to the change of the drummer before recording it in the studio, is just insane! Luckily they had already played and recorded the material during three seated pandemic shows. So after "Live At Merleyn" here's another Temple Fang live record! Considering how absolutely amazing these one-longtrack-per-side killers are, I wouldn't even mind at all if they just kept doing those. Everything about this - the compositions, the musicianship, the feeling, the vocal harmonies... it's all perfect as it is. Nothing a "proper" studio recording needs to improve. I doubt that there's even any group out there doing this flavour of epic space hard rock better than Temple Fang right now.

LUSTMORD - The Others [Lustmord Deconstructed] (2CD) (2022)

Even though ambient / dark industrial pioneer Lustmord had to cancel his Roadburn appearance, I stuck to my plan to get this tribute double album from the Pelagic Records stand. It features a wide array of artists from the label and beyond, giving us their interpretations of tracks from his 2008 album "Other", his only work to date to feature guitars. There are so many great contributions that it's hard to single only a few out. Bohren & Der Club of Gore, Mono, Jo Quail, Godflesh, Zola Jesus, Årabrot, Ulver... they all did a fantastic job of turning the electronic drones into something that is their own. Considering the genre and the length of the album, this flies by astonishingly fast.
But you know what? I've said all of this before, because I ALREADY WROTE AN EXTENSIVE REVIEW FOR "THE OTHERS" A WHILE AGO ON VEILOFSOUND.COM.

TERZIJ DE HORDE - In One Of These, I Am Your Enemy (smoke coloured vinyl LP) (2022)

"This album explores how entire worlds are created and destroyed - how the powerful shape, dominate, and discard collective realities. Humanity becomes a foam, a frothing chaos constantly collapsing in on itself." Accompanied by a large booklet with liner notes, lyrics, literature recommendations and paintings by vocalist Joost Vervoort and above all the apocalyptic, ecologically aware cover photography, Terzij De Horde are handlig quite an ambitious concept here, especially given that their record only lasts half an hour.

But it works. At the blasting tempo with which the Dutch band is powering through most passages of these only three tracks, this time is indeed enough to get their point across. The album fully confirms what their live performance promised. "In One Of These, I Am Your Enemy" is a true global conflagration of unforgiving black metal. Relentless, yet never monotonous. Creative, with grand but not kitschy leads just when you need them, this album leaves nothing to be desired for me. Except of course more of it. But that's how it always should be, right?

JO QUAIL - The Cartographer (swamp green vinyl 2LP) (2022)

If you've read my Roadburn Saturday review (please do, it was an enormous day!), it won't be a surprise that the last album here isn't the least by any means. Ultimately only time can tell, but in terms of importance and influence cellist Jo Quail's neoclassical suite "The Cartographer" is destined to be the standout album of this bunch. The way a classical trained musician with plenty of experience in rock, metal and experimental music has put together a piece here, which incorporates all these aspects without falling into any of the traps of the orchestral / modern music fusion is not only remarkable, but to my knowledge doesn't have many paragons. As I've said before the closest comparisons I can hear can be found in the world of soundtracks.
"The Cartographer" is performed by electric cello and violin, eight trombones, piano, two sets of orchestral percussions and two singers. But don't you need guitars, bass and drums to combine this with metal? No, Jo's approach to achieve the heaviness and darkness is a little more sophisticated. There's not one instrument playing the metal part, but still it is there as an inherent part - among many others -, woven deep into the DNA of this remarkable work.

This 45rpm double album - coming in a beautiful gatefold sleeve - demands attention, but rewards it with a unique, dynamic journey that surely exceeds even the expectations of Jo Quail's greatest fans. The triumphant finale alone, just magnificent and bursting with emotion beyond belief, is worth it.
Within the canon of commissioned Roadburn works this is at least as groundbreaking as Triptykon's "Requiem" or the Waste Of Space Orchestra. And the only imaginable reason why this would not put a visible stamp in the history book of modern music - not even pinning it down on genres - could just be lack of resources and/or the lack of sheer talent. Jo Quail has the latter in spades. And after creating a composition like this she doesn't need to prove anything to anyone ever. Exceptional! 

GGGOLDDD - This Shame Should Not Be Mine

Of all the music I have already reviewed this year, the new album of Gggolddd (formerly known as Gold and renamed for purely pragmatically reasons of being easier to find and identified) is surely one of the most anticipated.

It began its life as commissioned piece for last year's online edition of Roadburn and became not only my favorite stream of that extraordinary weekend, but in fact the most played show of them all.

That surely came as a surprise to everyone involved, since a whole performance dedicated to an intimate personal account of sexual violence is quite a heavy prospect and doesn't exactly appear as the greatest possible crowd magnet. On the other hand the relevance of the subject of course is indisputable; and it's relieving to see that honest art of burning matters can resonate with such a large audience. Even if due to a pandemic the audience isn't physically present.

Without Covid-19 and the sudden break from work, touring and regular social life however, singer Milena Eva wouldn't have been forced to face the reality of her repressed trauma in the first place.
"This Shame Should Not Be Mine" above all other meanings you could find in it for yourself, was a powerful expression of the will to overcome trauma.

And now it has been turned into Gggolddd's latest and most significant studio album.
  

GGGOLDDD - This Shame Should Not Be Mine (2CD Deluxe Edition) (2022)

Musically Gold have often been dubbed post everything. Post post rock, post post punk, even post post black metal at times, their hypnotic rock music is catchy and familiar, but also dark, often distanced and hard to grasp with your usual preconceptions.

On "This Shame Should Not Be Mine" Gggolddd changes gears and introduces a lot of bass-heavy, yet very clean and often minimal electronic elements. More than ever the music follows the story and emotions of the vocal performance, so at times, in her most fragile moments, Milena sings in an almost completely abandoned void of isolation. Apart from a minimum of lowest notes or as in "On You" only an alienated alteration of her own voice accompanies her. She is alone.
But when either her anger or her confidence grow, she can rise in a blast of exploding guitar layers or cathartic rhythm, best represented in the finale "Beat By Beat", when she declares that it's time for some healing now and she needs to move her body, before the last storm of the album is set loose.

The electronic part of this song isn't the only instance on "This Shame", where the band is obviously paying tribute to Björk, which was even more undeniable during the live performance, which featured an effective interview sample of the Icelandic icon in "Invisible".

Gold live at Roadburn Redux

It's not a detail I'm necessarily missing on the studio album, but rather one of several differences, which gives both versions their own distinct power and justification.
Thankfully we have all the time in the world to explore and compare or just enjoy them both, since both the LP and the CD are available in deluxe editions with "Live At Roadburn Redux" as a bonus disc.

Among several small changes in arrangements and a different overall sound - controlled studio environment vs. the vastness of the empty live location -, the unmissable biggest difference is that the studio album is one track longer. The title track simply hadn't been finished in time for the show.

Another band I find myself reminded of a lot - be it during the trip hop beats, but also during a lot of the rock music parts and due to the emotiveness and quality of Milena Eva's vocal performance is Archive - or to be more specific Archive, when Maria Q, and even much more so  Holly Martin take the helm on the microphone. So if you're a fan of said collective and especially albums like "With Us Until You're Dead", this might really be something you should check out, even if you're not too accustomed with some of the metal influences in the sound of Gggolddd.

All in all I don't think that it matters much anyway, from which specific background of musical preferences you're coming. "This Shame Should Not Be Mine" is an important meaningful statement, a transcendent, beautifully vulnerable and strong piece of art. And also just a perfectly written and executed rock / electronic music album.

There are more thoughts I could elaborate on. I could compare Gggolddd's approach to thematically related artists like Lingua Ignota, Amanda Palmer or Emma Ruth Rundle and how they resonate in different way, but I don't think that comparison would serve any of these amazing artists.
I could gush over the symbolism of the cover photography, but if it doesn't speak for itself anyway, you're probably blind.

And finally I also just have to leave some room in my head to write about "This Shame" once more soon, because not even one week from now, Gggolddd will perform it live at Roadburn again. This time in another new version with extra string players - and hopefully with myself as one small fragment of a huge bodily attendant audience.

DEAD NEANDERTHALS - IXXO

Is it the fact that it's just one and a half weeks from now, until it finally happens again? Or does looking at the stuff queuing in my to-review-lists also help? Fact is: Roadburn anticipation intensifies.

In that spirit let's welcome another great live album from last year's remote Roadburn Redux, the - hopefully once in a lifetime - streaming edition of the festival:

DEAD NEANDERTHALS - IXXO (milky clear vinyl LP) (2022)

There's not much I could write about this show which I haven't aready mentioned before. As always with everything Dead Neanderthals the music doesn't give you many palpable events to elaborate on. It starts and after thirty-five minutes it ends, and the most noticable incident is that right in the middle - conveniently placed where you need to turn the record on the B side - the robotik drum beat takes a two-minute break, before René Aquarius gets switched on again.

Together with Otto Kokke, who we hear on droning synthesizers, he provides an extremely steady, hypnotically automatik backbone on which their two guests for this performance, Aafke Romeijn and Jonge Woudloper provide even more, mainly improvised keyboards.

As parts of my vocabulary have already given away - this is no drone noise or jazzcore, but pure, brain-washingly repetitive krautrock. It wouldn't be implausible at all if this performance was not from these guys, but from bands like Kandodo or Radar Men From The Moon (who Dead Neanderthals' almost alter ego Twin Sister are coincidentally collaborating with for the grand Roadburn finale this year).

It's one of those sonically layered things which after a while makes you question whether everything you're hearing is actually there or just made up by your own head to complement the rest. In other words: kinda trippadelic.

The cute and clever (back) cover artwork - depicting the four musicians becoming one entity by controlling a giant Keiju Jaeger of a Krautbot together - is just absolutely brilliant.
Add some transparent vinyl with the right label on it and you have the perfect physical item to accompany this great piece of music.

OF BLOOD AND MERCURY - The Other Side Of Death

Wenn nicht gerade Roadburn ist, was ja leider nur eine knappe Woche im April einnimmt, dann ist irgendwo immer "Live At Roadburn". Nach dem sensationell gut gemachten Streamingfestival Roadburn Redux dieses Jahr gehört dies zum Glück zu den Dingen, die auch in diesen Zeiten Bestand haben.

Verknappt auf hundert handsignierte CDs ist nun das erste Livealbum eines Redux-Streams aus dem 013 in Tilburg erschienen.

OF BLOOD AND MERCURY - The Other Side Of Death - Live In Tilburg (CD) (2021)

In meinem bewusst nicht so umfassend wie sonst geschriebenen Festivalreview habe ich diese Performance zwar nur in einem Halbsatz erwähnt, doch das bedeutet nicht, dass sie mich nicht gefesselt hätte. Tatsächlich hatte mich dieses commissioned piece, also extra für das Festival komponierte Werk verzaubert wie kaum eine andere Show.

Normalerweise wohl ein Quartett, standen Of Blood And Mercury für "The Other Side Of Death" als Duo auf bzw. vor der Bühne und überzeugten mit einem von über Synthies schwebenden Gitarren und oft elektronisch noch weiter entrücktem Engelsgesang bestimmten Ambient Pop. Experimentell und doch bis zum Hitverdacht eingängig erinnerte das dreiviertelstündige Programm vor allem an neuere Werke von Ulver.

Mein Fazit bleibt, dass die Show der Belgier vor allem wunderschön geraten ist. Und dank des perfekten Sounds und fehlenden Publikums, könnte dies natürlich auch beinahe als Studioalbum durchgehen.
Gerade deswegen lässt die Band die CD wahrscheinlich nicht einfach ausfaden, sondern lässt uns am Ende noch einige Momente mit ihnen in dieser merkwürdigen Stille sitzen, um sehr effektiv zu dokumentieren, in welcher Gesamtsituation dieses Werk entstanden ist.

Von der limitierten CD sind zum Zeitpunkt dieses Textes noch eine Handvoll erhältlich, danach gibt es das Album nur noch digital zum bewusst unrealistischen Mondpreis von 777,00 Euro, d.h. eigentlich möchten Of Blood And Mercury es in dieser Form gar nicht anbieten; doch ganz ohne Download lässt sich auf Bandcamp eben nichts veröffentlichen.

Ganz verzichten müssen normalverdienende Zuspätkommer auf den Genuss allerdings nicht. Auf YouTube kann man die exzellent gefilmte Performance nämlich nach wie vor komplett genießen: 

ROADBURN REDUX - review

Roadburn Festival as we know and love it can't happen right now, obviously.

So this year it's Roadburn Redux - a free to watch mix of exclusive performances (mostly pre-recorded live shows from all over the world) and actual live streams from the 013 venue in Tilburg.

Add to that video premieres, interviews, documentaries... and you're quickly at the point where you decide to keep it real and - just like at Regularburn - don't even try to see everything.

The good thing is that you don't have to watch everything exactly when it happens. Until at some point on Tuesday night everything can be revisited. Good for me, since on Thursday night, when Roadburn Redux began, I was working on "druturum VIII-I" of "Druturum VIII" (further title to be revealed later) with my own band DruturuM. A great piece of psychedelectronic dronekraut low-fi weirdness is forming there, if I may say so myself...

And on Friday the party already started when I still had several hours of work to do. So was a lot to catch up to right from the start for me.

After Tuesday it's up to the artists and labels if, when and where all this greatness might reappear. Much of this would be worth a physical release.

I have written a couple of short reviews about streams in the course of the previous year, but following the fleeting nature of this happening I will keep this one rather brief and just focus on (not even all of) my highlights.
This is the stuff I re-watched, these are the shows I'd tell you about if you were foolish enough to engage in a real life conversation about Roadburn 2021 with me:

GOLD - This Shame Should Not Be Mine

Gold were already established as phenomenal genre-bending live band and being experienced in the live streaming game for me, but this show took them to a whole new level.
Premiering a commissioned personal piece about sexual violence, sounding more electronic and björk-inspired (even using an interview snippet of her as a sample) than ever, this show surely was no easy dish and had an unmatched sincere intensity. The first time I really felt that special, brave adventurous Roadburn spirit fully grabbing me at Roadburn Redux. One for the festival's history books!

I kind of hope that Gold don't even bother to turn this into a studio album, but instead just release it as it is. It's just so damn powerful and on point. Even the underlying discomfort and akwardness which shines through at the end of almost every livestream show without a direct audience, works in its favour. 

NADJA - Seemannsgarn

Drone. Metal. Mastership. Think Godflesh slowed down to infinity! One must have an amazing fantasy to imagine this fourty-minute chunk of cathartic noise possibly being any more perfect. Unconditional love!  

BADA

Bada is the band, which mostly consists of members of Anna von Hausswolff's live band, including Anna herself, but here not in the center of attention, but in the role of an equal member among others on the keys. As their debut record was a fantastic exploration of droning doomy ambient noisy psychedelic rock, so was this live recording, captioned in one of my favorite settings of all pre-recorded performances. Masterfully spellbinding atmospheres!
That one amp in the middle looks like a washing machine though.

JO QUAIL

Short and sweet. Initially the modern post rock and metal's favorite cello player was supposed to play her big commissioned piece "The Cartographer" as the only part of the canceled Roadburn 2021, but due to travel restrictions that wasn't possible. Still nice of her to bring us some dark looped, never before played string goodness in a solo performance instead. 

TRIALOGOS - Stroh Zu Gold

Singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Conny Ochs, cellist/composer Sickerman and experimental musician Kiki Bohemia are Trialogos. And their mixture of experimental noises, minimalist krautrock, folk and post rock vibes, that one part which reminds me of the "Knight Rider" theme and some surprisingly heavy monster riffs was without a doubt one of Saturday's highlights. Album pre-ordered!

HAUNTED PLASMA

Sometimes the hype is real. Electronic artists (or bands with strong electronic elements) have become a vital part for Roadburn, and one of my favorite acts embracing the 0s and 1s this year might be Haunted Plasma, a dark and danceable meeting of Finnish minds, including members of Oranssi Pazuzu and guest singer Mat McNerney of Hexvessel in his most gothic register. Addictive!

KNOLL

One of the shortest shows, performed by probably the youngest guys in this Roadburn edition came from the grindcore collective Knoll. So refreshingly close to the early Napalm Death roots of the genre, but still with a distinct sound including some electronic elements. Fuck yeah, this was just pure raw fun!

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM - Set Chaos To The Heart Of The Moon

Every Roadburn edition has this one show which you enter with ridiculously high expectations, to a point that other visitors might not take you seriously anymore. But you are in the know, and after the show everyone agrees with you that Magma, Anna von Hausswolff etc. totally won the festival.

This year that show was the larger than life spiritual jazz / drone / doom / psychedelic rock fusion extravaganza  of Neptunian Maximalism. Already when the eight members of this live incarnation of the group started the performance just standing in a row and chanting a capella you felt that this was going to be special. And indeed there's no other band out there invoking this blend of elevating cosmic chaos out there. Not even NNMM themselves in a way, because this show sounded deliberately different than their giant three-part debut "Éons", but equally as ancient, mighty and all-embracing.
No doubt, Neptunian Maximalism have done their name justice. If you're a fan of The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, Sun Ra Arkestra, Swans, Sunn O))), Kikagaku Moyo or just watching the communication between two drummers giving everything, this is for you.

More is more - and more than this is as good as impossible.

PLAGUE ORGAN - Orphan

When we start to talk about drummers of Roadburn Redux, there is no way around René Aquarius and his blasting-it-relentlessly-for-fourty-fucking-minutes performance with Plague Organ. Accompanied by an equally persistent almost-only-one-note bass and his Dead Neanderthals mate Otto Kokke, he delivered one of the surely most talked about instrumental performances of this weekend.
While the meditative aspects of "Orphan" may haven taken a little longer to set in than on the album, the live version made up for it with the typical Neanderthals trolling quality, which was taken to a whole new level with this display of stamina.

DEAD NEANDERTHALS - IXXO 

And the drum robot strikes again! But this time in another tempo. The Dead Neanderthals show on Sunday took their concept of pushing minimalistic ideas to maximal effect into a quite surprsing direct. While you would typically expect some kind of extreme jazz or drone noise from them, the performance of "IXXO" was actually quite... let's say listenable.
Extended to a quartet with three synth players they grooved through a hypnotically repetive krautrock piece, which you would have rather expected from Minami Deutsch or Radar Men From The Moon. Just a bit more minimalistic of course. I was actually a little disappointed that it already ended after thirty-five minutes, haha. If you can blast for fourty minutes, you can do this for a full hour, right?

STEVE VON TILL - A Remote Wilderness

Let's close this bunch of impressions with maybe the most emotionally striking performance after Gold! Why hasn't Steve von Till's solo work been more on my radar before?
What a charismatic presence. What a real voice. And what a profound work of art. If I had to choose, then this show would be among my top 3 alongside Gold and Neptunian Maximalism. I'm speechless.

DE WOLFF 

Or no, let's close this with the actually last band on the bill! The Dutch working animals DeWolff are what you could call streaming veterans by now. I've just seen them do a very entertaining special streaming show in a vintage TV show setting with many guest a while ago. And after that they played a string of nine shows a row, on each performing another one of their studio releases in full.
That probably made them the ideal candidates to jump in almost in the last minute without the chance to rehearse extendly, because Radar Men From The Moon sadly had to cancel their appearance. DeWolff confidently promised "the freakiest, dirtiest, heaviest and swampiest set we'll ever play".

Of course we're not talking The Body or Conan dirty, yet rather Dirty Purple, so yeah, it definitely was a fun vintage rock dirty blues jam party finale. Good times, fuck yeah!

MIZMOR - Wit's End

So far I've only written about live streams and pre-recorded live performances.
Of course there were also tons of audio and video premieres. Kayo Dot, Darkher, Telea Jacta meets Electric Moon or my personal favorite among all those: This epic ultra doomy commissioned track by Mizmor, which comes with a fittingly dark animated video. Looking forward for the forthcoming EP with this on it very much!

Oh wait. I forgot that that was also an amazing video premiere from Big|Brave. Well, I'm getting their new album anyway and it's not a competition, alright?

Ok folks, that's all I was able and willing to write about for now.

That doesn't mean there wasn't more quality and greatness in the line-up. Of course some artist weren't my cup of tea or failed to completely reach their full potential like the Wolvennest offspring The Nest, which despite Ryanne van Dorst being on guest vocals, just had too many aimless and dragging parts.
Similarily Solar Temple, who achieved an amazing richness of sound for two people, just could have told their whole story in half an hour instead sixty minutes.

Both shows weren't really bad at all though. Further shoutouts go to all that those flavours of black metal, be it the crushing might of Regarde Les Hommes Tomber, the class of Wesenwille, the western variant of Wayfarer or the harsh raw purity of Doodswens. There were also great ambient-influenced shows from Die Wilde Jagd,  Autarkh III, the unbelievably beautiful Of Blood And Mercury or Dirk Serries. There was the joyful experimentalism of Spill Gold and the melancholic punch to my gut seeing Hexvessel, who were the second last band I've actually seen in the flesh over a year ago. There was the dirty rock of Maggot Heart. There were Might, Tesa, Kairon; IRSE!, Doctors Of Space, Territoire and more.

And there are some a lot like The Ocean or Aaron Turner, who I still have to catch up on by the time I'm publishing this review.


What a line-up for a freaking streaming event! And what an amazing and elaborate production on all fronts! Roadburn has never done something like this before and is already setting new standards.

I didn't use all social media gimmicks which were offered, but I sure as hell successfully tried that "donate" button, because this weekend of excessive live music consumption exceeded all expectations by far and has been the best thing since forever really.


Thank you Walter, Becky, the whole Roadburn Redux team and all the artists who made this possible!

And also cheers to all fellow Reduxians, each one in their own special bubble, but united in being apart, who against all odds made this feel like a communal experience!