HARVESTMAN - Triptych (Parts 1-3)

Two Audiotree Live session EPs and now this. So is every second review going to be some kind of Roadburn preview from now on?

Steve von Till will be Artist in Residence this year, and one of his shows will consist of material from his Harvestman project. There's enough to chose from, since he brought us a whole "Triptych" of albums:

HARVESTMAN
Triptych Part One (Bone White Opaque + Black Galaxy vinyl) (2024)

Triptych Part Two (Ruby Red + Transparent Galaxy vinyl) (2024)

Triptych Part Three (Cloudy Clear & Black Galaxy vinyl) (2024)

Pink Moon, Buck Moon, Hunter Moon... I thought Earth just had the one regular satellite, but what do I know? Released on three specific full moons on April 23rd, July 21st and October 17th this trinity of releases should rather be understood as one connected work. I personally even waited until they were all available to experience them together. And seriously: With that strong emphasis on how much this is a trilogy in title and artwork - who would want to be content with just sticking to one or two parts?

The albums are even all structured in a similar way with three songs on the first and four on the second side, and the fourth track always being an alternative Dub version of the opener. For those and more reasons I'm writing this as one overarching review instead of three.

The music certainly is a constant in its anachronist nature between mystical Electronic Ambient, Folk, Tribal, Drone, Psychedelic Rock, oriental influences, other 4AD sounds I might have forgotten and even Industrial.

Steve von Till always is the major contributor playing guitar, bass, synths, stock tank and percussions plus all kinds of Electronic manipulation.
Then there are three main guest musicians appearing on selected tracks throughout the whole series: Sleep's Al Cisneros provides bass (on all the aforementioned openers and Dub mixes), Dave French adds various percussive elements and John Goff plays bagpipes / Northumbrian smallpipes, always on the last track of each album.

Apart from that there are three different narrators, each speaking over one track from each record, and a couple of further instrumentalists. Especially Part Three goes big with more synths, organs, flutes and bouzouki.
And of course the Dub mix of "Clouds Are relatives" on Part Three is accounted for by none other than specialist Kevin The Bug Martin!

Over a playing time of overall around two hours "Triptych" takes you through worlds and spheres of many shades and colours. They all have in common that they feel meditative, are produced spectacularly and almost burst with otherworldly atmosphere. Just don't expect Von Till's outstanding sonorously deep voice, which is present on most of his solo albums under his name, to appear! Because apart from the occasional spoken words (all not from him either) this is a strictly instrumental affair - and absolutely perfect this way.

The presentation of the trilogy - with the distinct graphic artwork, a round cut-out being part of the cover and the beautiful different vinyl colours - is worthy of its truly magical content.

Yes, in and out this release is threefold special. And now I really hope that Harvestman won't fall prey to harsh clashes with other phenomenal stuff on Good Friday in Tilburg... The experienced Roadburner knows: Never get too enthusiastic about a specific show before you know the complete timetable! 

STEVE VON TILL und INNERWOUD live im Indra Musikclub (21. August 2023)

Ich hatte ja bereits vorher legendäres von seinen Shows gehört. Doch nach der Performance namens "A Remote Wilderness" im Rahmen des zwangsweise vorm Bildschirm stattfindenden Roadburn Redux Festivals 2021 war klar, dass Steve von Till live zu sehen unbedingt auf meine Bucket List gehörte. Leider sah es auf dieser Tour nicht danach aus - ehe ziemlich spät die letzten Lücken im Tourkalender gefüllt und der Indra Musikclub als Station bekanntgegeben wurde.

INNERWOUD

Passend zum introspektiv langsamen Programm des Abends war der Raum bestuhlt, man fühlte sich beinahe als erwartete man ein Kammerorchester. Und so kam es zunächst im Grunde auch, als der Kontrabassist von Steves vierköpfiger Band, Pieter-Jan Van Assche aka Innerwoud, zunächst alleine auf die Bühne kam und sich zupfend, streichend und perkussiv schlagend durch ein kurzes Set aus drei Kompositionen loopte. Dröhnend neoklassischer Ambient, gespielt nach Art von Jo Quail oder Helen Money, und musikalisch eine stimmige Hinleitung zum Hauptact.

Der einzige Schönheitsfehler des Abends war eigentlich nur, dass die Sets nicht unmittelbar oder wenigstens mit sehr kurzer Pause ineinander übergingen. Das wäre machbar gewesen und hätte sich hier doch so sehr angeboten.

STEVE VON TILL

Zwei Soloalben des Neurosis-Frontmanns kannte ich bisher: "No Wilderness Deep Enough" von 2020 und "A Life Unto Itself" von 2015, eine Auswahl für die ich mir doch mal kräftig auf die Schulter klopfen muss, war es doch die perfekte Vorbereitung auf diesen achtzigminütigen Auftritt, in dem nur zwei Songs und zwei Lesepassagen aus seinem Gedichtband "Harvestman" nicht von diesen beiden Werken stammte.

Und auch wenn hier alles langsam und vieles ruhig vonstatten ging, war die Songauswahl so geschaffen, dass niemals Gefahr von Langeweile aufkam. Dafür war einfach jedes einzelne Stück zu stark und eigenständig, ein Umstand, der auch durch Variationen in der Instrumentierung begünstigst wurde. Von Till selbst wechselte zwischen jeweils mit cleverem Effekteinsatz weiter akzentuierter akustischer und elektrischer Gitarre und rahmte den Auftritt mit Songs am Klavier ein. Begleitet wurde er dabei wie bereits erwähnt von einem sehr wandlungsfähigen Kontrabass, sowie einem Keyboarder/Knöpfchendreher und einem weiteren Multiinstrumentalisten an Tasten, Elektronik, Gitarre und Schlagzeug.

Aber natürlich natürlich selbstverständlich im Zentrum des mal sparsam, mal gewaltig tönenden Zeitlupenfolks zog diese unfassbare Stimme alle Aufmerksamkeit auf sich. Dieses tiefe, mal beinahe erzählende, mal kehlig röhrende Reibeisenorgan, bei dessen Nachahmung sich selbst die meisten in der Stimmlage heimischen Sänger nur lächerlich machen könnten, ist ein rares Phänomen. Wie der gute Olli vor Ort ganz richtig sagte, könnte der Mann damit im Grunde Megastar sein. Mit der "richtigen" Musik versteht sich. Zum Glück macht er diese nicht.

Persönliche Highlights in einem von vorne bis hinten starken Set waren vor allem das dramatische Finale von "Indifferent Eyes" (Gänsehaut!), die krautig wabernde "Night of the Moon" und  das spannende Arrangement des twangigen Übersongs "A Language of Blood".

Fazit: Ein entrückendes und erdendes, emotional epochales und dabei immer ehrliches, einfach ganz großartiges Konzert!

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!