Several Examples of Nihilism

Different Noises 102

The “establishment” music industry is a façade. I take a nihilistic view of it and I put it out of my mind. The music I get and enjoy is light years away from what it pumped down your ear by the mainstream. Herein many good examples of why it is important to seek out things that you have not been told to listen to. I am not telling you to listen to these I am just pointing out that you might find them more emotionally or intellectually fulfilling than what Spotify etc tells you is current. Mostly new things, some current favourites and a handful of classics to conclude business

Orcutt Shelley Miller :: Photo by Rachel Lipsitz

AUDIO

PLAYLIST

1. Orcutt Shelley Miller - A Star Is Born - A Star Is Born

2. When The Deadbolt Breaks - The Scythe Will Come - In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire

3. Tortoise - Oganesson (Saul Williams Remix) - Oganesson Remixes

4. Sophie Tassignon - A Slender Thread - A Slender Thread

5. Manop Nakomchai - The Unknown 1 - นวล อัลบั้ม (Naul)

6. Dubmatix - Lion Of Judah - Lion Of Judah

7. Dave Graney 'n' The Coral Snakes - Apollo 69 - The Soft ‘N’ Sexy Sound

8. TFS - Irukandji Syndrome - Fairyland Codex

9. David McClymont and Harry Howard - Gone (My Love Has Gone) - Under The World

10. The Go-Betweens - Locked Out Of Love - G Stands For Go-Betweens: The Go-Betweens Anthology - Volume 3

11. Robert Forster - Foolish I Know - Strawberries

12. The Lancashire Hustlers - Perhaps - Here But Not Here

13. Dwellers - Marigold (Heart of Stone) - Corrupt Translation Machine

14. 2 Lost Souls - A Lot Of Love - Span

15. Thee Holy Brothers - Sunshine In My Veins - High In My Balloon

16. Sarah McQuaid - Where The Wind Decides To Blow - Walking Into White : Live In Rapid City

17. Kind of Green - Big Boys - Kind of Green

18. Moff Skellington - The Code For Sugar B - Quandello Feast

19. Cabaret Voltaire - Do The Mussolini (Head Kick) - The Living Legends

20. Friendly Rich - The Pseudomasochist - Friendly Rich Sings The Nihilist Spasm Band

21. Dotsun Moon - Winter Streets - Tiger

22. Van Der Graaf Generator - Orthentian Street - The Aerosol Grey Machine

23. Frank Zappa - Inca Roads - The Best Band You Never Saw In Your Life

24. Loop-aznavour - Anne Boleyn/Look What You Made Me Do - Live At The Crescent

NOTES

Amongst some new things more featured albums from Robert Forster, The Lancashire Hustlers, Sarah McQuaid, Moff Skellington and Dwellers. See previous shows for details.

Orcutt Shelley Miller

Something new to kick off with. An avant-rock trio comprised by three highly celebrated figures of experimental music: Bill Orcutt (Harry Pussy), Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) and Ethan Miller (Howlin Rain, Comets On Fire)—with the opening track from their self-titled debut album, due September 5 via Silver Current Records. ​

Following in the footsteps of the high-firing free jazz and European outer-rock bands of the ‘60s and ‘70s and the Pacific Rim’s subterranean reimagining of “rock” form in the 90s, Orcutt Shelley Miller utilize explosive group chemistry, focused intention and chance to pursue the creation of song in its rawest, purest form.

When The Deadbolt Breaks

With a doom style both psychedelic and unsettling – in a word, Lovecraftian – When The Deadbolt Breaks is singer and guitarist Aaron Lewis’ nightmarish vision, the current line-up being fleshed out with experimental vocalist Amber Leigh and bassist Steve Wieda. Since 2005, the band has resisted classification, having been called heavy, daunting, overwhelming, and unnerving. Long, sprawling songs encompassing both the hideous and the beautiful, the chaotic and the structured, the dissonant and the harmonious. The band weaves tapestries of sound and emotion – dirty, decomposing motifs interspersed with moments of psychotic frenzy, marked by sudden, unexpected shifts in mood, perspective, and tempo. Some of these interruptions evolve into extended and repeated sections, others are nihilistic sonic cul-de-sacs that dissolve into wet ashes.

Celebrating the band’s twentieth anniversary in 2025, they deliver their tenth album, In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire. The record is as ambitious as it is violent and captures the essence of the band in its current form.

“Inspired by man’s infinite capacity for cruelty, the set evokes the numbing of human compassion, the sorrow of dead leaves, and the eternal rage of scorned gods. The band’s music is a feeling, an involuntary and instinctive recoiling from horror. It is the sound of emotions corrupted and driven to their extremes. It is the silent cry of the dead astronaut in space. It asks one simple question: When your soul dies, what will it leave behind?”

The full line-up for the album is

• Steve Wieda – bass, backing vocals

• Amber Leigh – vocals

• Aaron Lewis – vocals, guitar

• Rob Birkbeck – drums

• Joaquin Gouin – additional vocals on “The Deep Well”

Tortoise

The Oganesson Remixes EP follows the March 2025 release of the original digital single (featured on Different Noises 90), which was the first new music released by Tortoise since 2016. This further EP includes the original version of “Oganesson” alongside five new remixes of the track created by collaborators and friends of the band, including poet and activist Saul Williams, prolific mastering engineer Heba Kadry, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, indie music icons Broken Social Scene, and International Anthem labelmate Makaya McCraven. The Oganesson Remixes EP comes ahead of a new album which will be released in autumn/fall via International Anthem and Nonesuch Records.

Sophie Tassignon

A haunting Bach aria that launches into the cosmos. A traditional folk song reimagined through waves of mesmeric guitars. An Arabic poem wrapped in contemporary electronic textures. On her second solo album A Slender Thread, Sophie Tassignon weaves together voices and stories that transgress our borders and resonate in multiple linguistic and musical cultures.

“Listening to A Slender Thread liberates the imagination while celebrating our shared humanity across cultures, languages, and time. Following her acclaimed solo debut Mysteries Unfold (RareNoise Records, 2020), the Belgian-born, Berlin-based vocalist has crafted an even more ambitious work that showcases her extraordinary range both as a singer and sonic architect. A Slender Thread is an album that invites listeners to experience the world as an interconnected whole, where different traditions and expressions are not barriers to be overcome but threads to be woven into something greater than the sum of its parts”.

• Sophie Tassignon: all voices, electroacoustic textures, piano, drum programming

• Kevin Patton: guitar, distorted guitar, drum & bass programming

Manop Nakomchai

Thai underground, experimental, psych guitar explorer Nakornchai has blessed us again with another otherworldly, psychedelic excursion into the cosmos. นวล อัลบั้ม / Naul is his third release with the ever reliable Ramble Records and it’s filled with a wonderful selection of atmospheric psychedelic, acid folk compositions accompanied by the ethereal sounds of cello, flute, trumpet, and percussion. The album has all the makings of becoming a psych folk masterpiece - fans of Ché-SHIZU, LSD March, Majutsu no Niwa, Suishou no Fune, Shūko No Omit / Yonju Miyaoka will delight in this release. Released on limited edition CD and digital DL July 4.

Dubmatix

Another offering from the Canadian bass head

Dave Graney 'n' The Coral Snakes

Antipodean tour of the classic album coming soon - details below. This track was co-written with guitarist Rod Hayward and is replete with phallic imagery…..

TFS

Another track from the excellent new album

David McClymont and Harry Howard

Another featured album

The Go-Betweens

Continuing the lengthy journey through the third GB’s box set - a selection from a collection of 14 previously unreleased tracks recorded by Robert Forster and Grant McLennan during a brief 1991 reunion in Brisbane. These demos were believed to be for a potential Capitol Records album and include early versions of songs that later appeared on Fireboy and Calling from a Country Phone.

2 Lost Souls

The fourth in the eight EP series from Moss and Rosenfeld

Thee Holy Brothers

"Sunshine In My Veins" is the new single by Los Angeles-based duo Thee Holy Brothers consisting of Marvin Etzioni (Lone Justice) and Willie Aron (The Third Mind featuring Dave Alvin.) The second single from Thee Holy Brothers' critically-acclaimed new album "High In My Balloon" and has a very "Sunshine Pop" or "Power Pop" sound despite being about Marvin's chemotherapy treatments (he's since recovered and is healthy.) "Sunshine In My Veins" was mastered by Sean Magee (The Beatles' remastered catalog, "The Rolling Stones In Mono" box set) at Abbey Road Studios in London.

Kind of Green

Ian Moss again this time with John “The Junta” Montague with six new tracks of dance music plus sprechstimme. There are couple of bonus tracks (variants) if you buy it.

Cabaret Voltaire

From a 1990 compilation album released on Mute Records, that gathers some of the band’s most iconic early singles and EP tracks from their Rough Trade years (1978–1981). It’s a vital document of their formative period, capturing their raw, industrial, and experimental sound before they moved into more dance-oriented territory in the mid-’80s. With Mallinder and Watson touring it seemed appropriate to dig it out.

Friendly Rich

Friendly Rich, Canada’s legendary songsmith of dark and deranged folk songs, returns with a new and unexpected release: Friendly Rich Sings The Nihilist Spasm Band, out July 1st, Canada Day. A longtime friend and supporter of the pioneering noise group, Friendly Rich gathered a cast of top-tier improvisers in New Orleans to pay tribute to one of the country’s most innovative and iconoclastic bands. “I traveled to New Orleans with my good pal, guitarist Nichol S. Robertson, to team up with heavyweights Klaas Hubner, Michael Ward-Bergeman, Simon Lott, Drew Seigler, and Alex Puzzle,” says Rich. “Why travel to the USA to honour Canadian noise makers? Because this band of Canadian and American musicians are some of the finest noise musicians around, and we got to spend two days making something very special.” The resulting sessions were raw, joyful, and chaotic, in keeping with the spirit of the Nihilist Spasm Band, a collective that has challenged musical norms since forming in London, Ontario in 1965.

Friendly Rich’s connection to the NSB goes back decades, having booked them at his Brampton Indie Arts Festival in the early 2000s. “They’ve always been super supportive of my work, and when this idea came to me to honour them with a recording, they were fully supportive, which means the world,” he explains. With Klaas Hubner behind the mix and production, the project found not just momentum, but heart. “It’s champions such as Klaas and all my pals on this record who keep me creative and smiling!”

“I thought it was a cool idea to drop a record without much notice on Canada Day, to celebrate our distinct way of making art here,” says Rich. “I pull a lot of inspiration from those guys in my own artistic practice, and I feel really thankful to have had the opportunity to bring Nichol S. Robertson to New Orleans with me to connect with these great musicians and make something truly wild. I hope you enjoy this new offering.”

Dotsun Moon

Upstate New York-based artist presents his third album 'Tiger', which is both spiritually and sonically influenced by M83 and New Order. This music is inspired by the music that motivated this artist to write music in the first place. The album also subtly weaves in the atmospheric influences of Harold Budd, John Foxx, and Robin Guthrie.Based in Buffalo, Dotsun Moon is the creative wellspring from which Richard Flierl's musical visions flow, transforming his artistic inspirations into tangible form. Seeing several incarnations since releasing their debut album 4 A.M. in 2011, the trajectory remains steadfast on a path of dreamy rock offerings over the years, with multi-instrumentalist Flierl also gradually assuming vocal duties.

Van Der Graaf Generator

From the bands debut studio album first released in 1969. The album was planned as a solo release for Peter Hammill but contractual wranglings led to it being released under the bands name. The song explores themes of escape, existential reflection, and the bittersweet nature of travel and separation. Part I opens with a yearning for solitude and the sea, while Part II shifts into a more frenetic, almost surreal journey through modern life—motorways, fleeting moments, and the desire for connection amid chaos. Themes that Hammill would come back in many other songs.

Frank Zappa

A construct of two live recordings of the song from Stadthalle, on May 8, 1988 and Carl-Diem-Halle, April 22, 1988. The song was originally released in 1975 on the One Size Fits All album. . nca Roads is based on Erich von Däniken’s book “Chariots of the Gods?”, published in 1968 in which he proposes the theory that the Nazca Lines, in Peru, were used as a landing strip for aliens. A complex song with at least 12 different time signatures used - it remains one of my favourite Zappa tunes.

Loop-aznavour

Two tracks from an excellent set by Loop-Aznavour at the late lamented Crescent Pub in Salford (still boarded up sadly). Recorded in 2014 around the time German Shepherd Records was starting to emerge with releases an a number of signature gig nights. This has never been officially released. Perhaps it should be. Loop opened his set with his tribute to the second wife of King Henry VIII. The second track eventually made it into the Adventures of Salvador album “Welcome To Our Village”.