The Noise Of Art

Different Noises 104

Pop, Dub, Metal, Prog and things in between. Mostly new material and current obsessions. Variety is the watchword. Noise is an underlying component. This is an antidote to safe programming.

AUDIO

PLAYLIST

1. Origami Horses - King Crimson - King Crimson

2. Jah Wobble - Existential Dub - Dub Volume 1

3. Don Husky - Show Love - Show Love

4. Bright Sunshine - Failure To Execute - Executive Power Supreme

5. Digital Negative - Trapped - Intersect

6. Philosophobia - King of Fools - The Constant Void

7. In The Company Of Serpents - Ghosts On The Periphery - A Crack In Everything

8. Morgan Szymanski and Tommy Perman - Canción del Adiós - Songs for the Mist Forest

9. Acapulco Lips - Happy Were The Dayz - Now

10. Niloo - Valentines In Kamakura - Sour Cherry

11. 2 Lost Souls - The Big Chief - Span

12. The Lancashire Hustlers - Like A Ghost - Here But Not Here

13. The Go-Betweens - The Dark Side Of Town - G Stands For Go-Betweens: The Go-Betweens Anthology - Volume 3

14. Dave Graney 'n' The Coral Snakes - The Pre-Revolutionary Scene - The Soft ‘n’ Sexy Sound

15. David McClymont - Spit - Under the World: Harry Howard with David McClymont

16. TFS - Fairyland Codex - Fairyland Codex

17. Kind of Green - James Brown - Kind of Green

18. Danny Short - Leave You Behind (Remix) - Dancing Girl

19. Moff Skellington - The Socks You Keep Alive - The Corduroy Bridge

20. Ari Joshua - Pork Fat feat. Delvon Lamarr & Grant Schroff & Skerik : Synesthesia - Pork Fat

21. Black Sky Giant - Desert son ~ Cult of the Wurm - WEEDIAN : Trip To Argentina

22. Celeste Corsano - Stuck - Stuck

23. Tombstones In Their Eyes - I Am Cold - I Am Cold

24. Duncan Lloyd - One Step Closer To The Damn - Unwound

25. ØXN - Cruel Mother (Drokk Remix)

26. King Crimson - Improv: Starless and Bible Black - The Night Watch

NOTES

Origami Horses

In what is becoming a bit of a regular occurrence for this show we kick off with a release from the wonderful Metal Postcard label. Sean says - “It's about a decade ago since they last released on the label. There's been some water under the bridge since. They hit us like a grown up Northside with this wonderful new tune.”

The Origami Horses Are A Two Piece Or They Could Be A Trio….Nobody's Quite Sure! They Come From Canterbury UK

It’s well worth your while checking out their previous releases on Metal Postcard the first of which is:

Jah Wobble

Legendary bass player and vocalist Jah Wobble presents his new album ‘Dub Volume 1', a solo effort that sees him write, play and arrange everything. Drawing inspiration from his East London upbringing, the album includes a deep dive into the historical influences that shaped his community, from the waves of Irish immigration to the perilous lives of his watermen ancestors on the River Thames.

"I was the only Eastender in Public Image Ltd. I'm from East London. There was the Irish famine in the mid-1800s and then you had another wave, which was when my mum's family came over. Turn of the century," says Jah Wobble.

"So you got a real mix of people. But the culture was like London's Brooklyn, or something primarily Jewish and Irish. Or maybe like the Lower East Side a bit or whatever. My old man's family were watermen, skilled men on the river. It's a very dangerous river that Thames."

‘Dub Volume 1' is Wobble's first solo release via Dimple Discs, having earlier participated in other label releases with Telefís (Cathal Coughlan and Jacknife Lee), The Ukrainians, along with Siouxsie & The Banshees / Specimen legend Jon Klein, and the Irish heritage project Bring Your Own Hammer.

Mastered by Anthony Chapman (Collapsed Lung) and cut for maximum clarity and volume, this record boasts astounding top layer sonics, This solo deep dive into dub is guided by sonic pioneers like Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and King Tubby. This rich, immersive listen is full of low-end weight and intricately layered textures.

Don Husky

A product of the notoriously rough neighbourhood of Tivoli Gardens in Kingston, Jamaica, Don Husky has risen from violence and poverty to spread a message of positivity. “Nuh sad story” is not only his motto, but his musical message. Hailed as one of the "sickest brand new artists" on the dancehall reggae scene, Don Husky has shared the microphone with genre veterans like Ninjaman and Bounty Killer; he is emerging as a force in today’s musical landscape by bridging the gap between Dancehall and Roots Reggae for a sound that appeals at home in Jamaica as well as Internationally.

Bright Sunshine

From Tempe, Arizona their first cooperative business liaison with long-running noise rock mongers Reptilian Records. In 2019, guitarist J Brown (ex-Resinator, Reverend Doom, Schlitzkrieg) and drummer Eric Guthrie (ex-Skink, Pinky Tuscadero’s White Knuckle Ass Fuck, Fluidrive) invited bassist and vocalist Chris Burns (Mosara, ex-Hex Volt) to join in the development of a high-reliability, low-cost, heavy-duty noise punk riff technology . In 2022, these veteran executive leaders of underground rock released Southwest Executive Leadership Team, stacked with discordant, crunching riffs and wailings of corporate woe. The trio has since been gigging across the Phoenix metro area, inspiring the punk, hardcore, and metal scenes to turbocharge their success. Executive Power Supreme was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Jalipaz Audio Confusion in October of 2024.

Digital Negative

This is the work of Richard Johnson (Drugs Of Faith, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Enemy Soil) and Daniel Euphrat (Person918x, Timmy Sells His Soul, Bodied). The band’s eponymous debut EP was created remotely during the 2020 COVID lockdowns when the project was spawned, which quickly inspired the creation of the band’s simply named second recording, EP 2, released early in 2023. With the members working in-person on the second release, the material naturally became more aggressive and cohesive; rhythmic sound collages constructed of guitars, electronic drums, samples, and vocals. They also made their live debut during the second EP phase as well, performing several shows across the Northern Virginia/Washington DC area.

As with both prior EPs, Intersect delivers five new songs, which see the band digging further into their electronic and industrial influences while continuing to focus on socio-political and dystopian themes. The vocals and field samples for Intersect were performed and recorded by Johnson with the guitars, electronics, and samples were performed/recorded by Euphrat who mixed the record, after which it was mastered by Angel Marcloid at Angel Hair Studio. Fans of Godflesh, Skinny Puppy, Pitch Shifter, Front Line Assembly, Revolting Cocks, Pigface, Throbbing Gristle, and Einstürzende Neubauten will appreciate this recording.

Euphrat states, “I think my philosophy for samples was pretty similar to the other EPs: samples that in some way feel artificial/futuristic (especially in an alienating/dystopian way). I slowly acquire them over time and store them in a folder until I reach a critical mass. I think there is a bit more of a metal influence on this EP, but some of the songs also have more of an electro-industrial sound than previous EPs.”

Johnson adds, “I purposefully arranged most of the lyrics in a different way for this EP, trying to go for more agitation. Most of them have a hint of, if not a narrative, a unifying thought behind them, as opposed to simply trying to communicate alienation and anxiety on the last two EPs. The lyrics this time around vaguely reflect a little more of the current state of the first world.”

Philosophobia

The intense second album from this European progressive metal quintet. Uniting past and current members of Kamelot, Paul Di’Anno, Wastefall, and more, the band was formed in 2020, with its members spread across Germany, The Netherlands, and Greece. 2022 saw the release of their eponymous debut album, which left a huge impact in the international prog metal scene. Numerous journalists gave the album 10/10-rated reviews, as well as Album Of The Month in the French Magazine Rock Hard, multiple Album Of The Year rankings, and more. The Constant Void takes the band’s musical vision to the next level. With most of the line-up returning from the first album – guitarist Andreas Ballnus, drummer Alexander Landenburg, vocalist Domenik Papaemmanouil, and keyboardist Tobias Wergerber – the new album sees original bassist Kristoffer Gildenlöw replaced with virtuoso bass player Sebastian Heuckmann, who has been playing live with the band since 2024. With nine tracks clocking in at almost sixty-five minutes, The Constant Void is a white-knuckled ride between progressive metal and emotional and melancholic tunes, combining the strength of the debut album with a more modern and heavier twist.

In The Company Of Serpents

These Denver based sludge/doom metal alchemists traffic in sonic catharsis. Their music inhabits the strange fringes between sludge metal and sprawling spaghetti western scores, constantly striving for visceral power and raw intensity, contrasted with eerie, spare instrumental passages. While previous works focused largely on occult and esoteric themes, A Crack In Everything, the band’s fifth long player, delves deeply into themes of personal struggle, depression, and grappling with addiction. Threads of esotericism still weave their way throughout the record, however A Crack In Everything stands apart as a deeply personal effort.

Comments guitarist/vocalist Grant Netzorg, "A Crack In Everything takes its title from my favorite Leonard Cohen song, ‘Anthem,’ from his masterpiece, The Future. The chorus includes the line, ‘There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.’ This suits the overall themes of the album perfectly. I wrote it during and after a losing battle with alcohol, and a lot of this deals with the despair and darkness I discovered in that time. I felt defeated, physically and mentally, and was drifting into ever-deepening depression.

“Despite this, I tried to remain creatively active as I was going through it. While most of the material from those lowest moments was insufferable garbage, we were able to glean some pearls of anguish from it and transmute them into songs we liked. This album often deals with horrors of crippling addiction, but there are glimpses of the way out through personal transformation. I recognized that killing myself slowly but surely made me a poor excuse for a father and husband and resolved to claw my way out of those shadows. There is a crack in everything –that’s how the light gets in.

“Thematically, light as a sort of metaphysical prima materia has been an ongoing theme throughout our last several releases: Lux, Ain-Soph Aur (‘limitless Light’ in Hebrew), and Merging In Light. While we don't have light in the title itself, it is there by implication. Here the light functions as a force of salvation, peering with some difficulty, but inevitably, into the darkness. In this sense it reminds me of a Hebrew phrase a Kabbalist teacher of mine shared with me: ‘Dlayt atar panui meenay,’ which translates roughly to ‘there is no place empty of (the divine).’ This light pierces even the darkest depths.

Morgan Szymanski and Tommy Perman

The final single from the ‘Songs for the Mist Forest’ album, the previous singles were featured on Different Noises 97 .

Acapulco Lips

Seattle’s Acapulco Lips return with Now, a full-length burst of fuzz, flair, and sun-scorched swagger, released July 14 digitally and July 18 on vinyl via Killroom Records. Their signature cocktail of psych, surf, and garage rock gets a sparkling refresh on this latest release, with thicker grooves, sharper hooks, and even more attitude. For over a decade, the band has been a staple of the Pacific Northwest underground, blending '60s girl group charm with blown-out guitar licks and reverb-drenched abandon. Now doesn’t mellow with age. It snarls with intent, while reaching into deeper emotional terrain than ever before.

The album crackles with restless energy and reckless cool. Maria-Elena Herrell’s vocals remain the radiant center-piece, equal parts haunting and honeyed, while her basslines hold down the chaos with a melodic strut. Guitarist Christopher Garland lets loose in all directions, adding a tanpura drone here, a wild tremolo run there. Jordan T Adams joins on drums and percussion, bringing punch and personality, while Stefan Rubicz’s keys offer occasional glimmers of retro shimmer.

But beneath all the shimmer and fuzz lies a quiet meditation on time — how we lose it, spend it, waste it, and sometimes try to outrun it. “I’d say pretty much every single song on Now goes back to the theme of time,” says Herrell. “There’s an urgency that comes with understanding you can’t get it back, and you don’t know how much you’ll get.” That urgency pulses through tracks like “Everyday,” a frustrated observation of history repeating itself, and “Slowly Disappearing,” a slow-burning elegy for fading places and people. Written in part after seeing photos of the now-abandoned hospital where she was born, the song captures a feeling of slow erosion — of personal and collective memory — with a gentleness that suggests deeper loss. “It can feel like you are disappearing along with them,” she says.

Niloo

Niloo Farahzadeh is no stranger to complexity—of sound, identity, or emotion. The Iranian-Canadian musician, singer-songwriter, and visual artist based in Lekwungen Territory (Victoria, BC) uses her project Niloo to explore the layered textures of diaspora, memory, and longing. With a sound that drifts between shoegaze, dreampop, folk, and 70s Iranian pop, Niloo builds immersive, cinematic songs that feel both nostalgic and novel, rooted in feeling yet unbound by borders.

Sour Cherry, is a rich example of that alchemy: an EP that draws on the deeply personal and the culturally symbolic to build something uniquely hers. The title track, “Sour Cherry Jam,” started as a simple writing exercise—“What if I write a melody that calls back to all the music I’ve heard growing up?” she wondered. “What if I write something that could practically be a Googoosh song?” Though she doesn’t read or write Persian fluently, Niloo channels its musical spirit by writing in English with the emotional weight of Persian poetry—songs filled with yearning, melancholy, and a deep sense of place. “‘Sour Cherry Jam’ is about an alienated love, pining for a bygone era with a former lover,” she says, “but it’s also a metaphor for being disconnected from a lifetime and a place you can’t return to.” The title itself is an ode to a cherished Iranian food that, for Niloo, carries a strong sense of home: “Sour cherry jam is the likeliest thing I could hope to find at a specialty grocery store in Canada. It instantly tastes nostalgic to me.”

With Sour Cherry, Niloo crafts more than just songs—she creates sonic portals. Each track pulses with the ache of inherited memories and the glow of imagined futures, held together by her singular voice and vision. This is music that stirs the heart and stretches across generations, inviting listeners to feel what it means to belong to many places at once.

The next part of the show features current featured releases from 2 Lost Souls, The Lancashire Hustlers, The Go-Betweens, Dave Graney 'n' The Coral Snakes, David McClymont and Harry Howard, TFS, Kind of Green, Danny Short, and my continuing exploration of the back catalogue of Moff Skellington

Ari Joshua

Pork Fat is a slice of soul-soaked nostalgia brought back to life by three longtime collaborators. Out now on Music Factory Records, this greasy, groove-heavy jam reunites guitarist Ari Joshua with saxophonist Skerik, organist Delvon Lamarr and drummer Grant Schroff — an all star comb of which each member has held down countless club gigs and venues across the globe.

Years before their recorded collaborations, Ari and Delvon would throw down weekly organ trio sets, filling rooms with thick, swampy funk and tight boogaloo rhythms. Pork Fat was a staple of those sets—a tune that always hit hard and left audiences sweaty and smiling. For this recording, the group revisits the track with renewed fire and deeper chemistry, locking in effortlessly like only seasoned players can.

From the first note, Pork Fat sizzles. Delvon’s organ growls with vintage tone and earthy power, while Ari’s guitar cuts with just the right amount of sting and slink. Schroff’s drumming lays down a syncopated backbone that makes it impossible not to move. Captured live in one session, the performance feels both raw and refined—authentic to the vibe of the club but elevated by crisp production.

Black Sky Giant

From the latest compilation by WEEDIAN which this time features 51 tracks from a wide variety of bands from Argentina. The featured band are described as Stoner/Desert/Psych Rock from Rosario

Celeste Corsano

Presenting the third in a trilogy of singles this year (the previous two were featured on Different Noises 98), alternative pop artist Celeste Corsano presents 'Stuck', a tender exploration of being caught in the inescapable grip of an emotional impasse. Here she masterfully conveys the struggle of a mind wrestling with an unyielding heart, creating an intimate space where raw emotion takes center-stage.

In a world clamouring for bombast, Corsano delivers a powerful intimacy in this raw, unfiltered dive into the tender corners of the human heart, delivered with a disarming simplicity that belies its profound emotional depth. Revealing a vulnerability that is both deeply personal and strikingly relatable, her sparse, almost childlike vocals amplify its impact.

"'Stuck' is a "little" song with a big meaning. The lyrics come from a tender place that needed simplicity and not a big vocal sound. Actually, any time I tried to sing it any differently, the vocals still came out simplistic and childlike," says Celeste Corsano.

"There aren't many lyrics but there is the play on the lyric "something in the way". The first verse meaning "something in the way that I'm feeling", and the second verse to mean "something is in my way...something in my heart". Both refer to a heart situation that I can't let go of. I'm stuck, for better or worse in a vulnerable heart space. "I should know better.." says the mind....how do you tell a heart that?? There's some more going on in these brief lyrics and I hope it speaks to you too."

Tombstones In Their Eyes

Los Angeles psychedelic rock outfit Tombstones In Their Eyes with their new single 'I Am Cold', born from a period of intense personal freefall. It's a raw, unflinching look at vulnerability and the chilling acknowledgment of emotional detachment, transforming inner turmoil into a powerful, resonant anthem.

'I Am Cold' is released by Kitten Robot Records, along with the B-Side 'Take It Down', which was recorded during the 'Asylum Harbour' sessions. Spawned from a dark night of the soul, is a visceral outpouring of longing and a stark confrontation with a perceived numbness. A testament to creativity salvaged from the depths, this song is a gripping sonic journey forged in a crucible of personal hardship.

'I Am Cold' is the final offering from the band's latest 'Asylum Harbour' album

Duncan Lloyd

English songwriter-guitarist Duncan Lloyd presents his new 12-track 'Unwound' album, his sixth solo endeavour, introducing the focus track 'One Step Closer To The Dam'. Previously with Warp Records, this is his first album of new material via Reveal Records following the label's reissues of Lloyd’s early solo albums, including the colossal 31-track selected works collection 'Green Grows Devotion' (2022) and 'Fun City' (a trilogy of EPs recorded in 2024).

Written during a difficult personal period, this record developed as a form of coping and catharsis, fortifying his sound with depth and ambition relative to previous releases. Lloyd earlier shared the singles 'Laugh So Loud' and 'Rituals', blending a modern sound with a deeply personal message about habits and healing, voiced through a circular, radio-like musical journey.

A critically acclaimed solo artist, Lloyd is the primary musician behind internationally renowned art-rockers Maximo Park and also half of Nano Kino (with Sarah Suri). He is a Mercury Music Prize nominee, has won an NME award, had A-listed singles at BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6 Music (including lyric of the year), and has seen success with worldwide platinum and gold selling records. His songs have featured on eight hit albums with Maximo Park, consistently charting in the Top 10 U.K.

With cover artwork derived from Lloyd’s own paintings, this record weaves a unique musical maze of free and varied personal expression, deep and transient, spare, intense and urgent with a balance of grit, beauty and melody. Things got moving when Lloyd set to work with Julie McLarnon (The Vaselines, Lankum, King Creosote, Brigid Mae Power) at Analogue Catalogue Studios in Ireland. Gaining impetus from his trip across the Irish sea, Lloyd returned to Newcastle to complete the rest of the album, each song carefully crafted with more anarchical arrangements than previous outings.

ØXN/DROKK

Acclaimed composers and producers Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, known collectively as DROKK, make a long-awaited return with a striking remix of "Cruel Mother" by ØXN—originally released on ØXN's 2023 album CYRM. This marks DROKK’s first release since their self-titled debut album in 2012.

The package is complemented by Ben Frost’s haunting, elegiac rework.

Barrow and Salisbury, whose work as DROKK began in 2011, have since focused on a range of scoring projects across film and television. Now, they revisit their DROKK identity with a new purpose: using music to support War Child UK.

“We love ØXN—not just their music, but who they are as people, and what they stand for politically,” says Barrow. “We’ve been huge fans of "Cruel Mother" since its release, and I reached out to see if we could remix it in support of War Child, a brilliant charity I’ve been involved with for many years.”

The remixes will be released alongside the ØXN original on limited edition vinyl, with 100% of profits donated directly to War Child, which supports children affected by conflict around the globe. .

“I just hope we’ve done the song justice,” Barrow adds. “Like many people right now, we’re feeling helpless and heartbroken by the suffering of children in war zones. While we can’t fix broken infrastructure or end conflicts ourselves, we can use our music to raise money and awareness. This is our way of contributing."

King Crimson

We started with a song called King Crimson so logically we finish with something from King Crimson. The Night Watch is a live album (2-CD set) recorded in Amsterdam in November 1973 but not released until 1997. This album contains an important performance in Crimson's career, being the source of the improvisations "Trio" and "Starless and Bible Black", the Fripp instrumental "Fracture" and the intro to the song "The Night Watch", all of which were included, with some editing, on the 1974 album Starless and Bible Black. Pre-recorded excerpts of Fripp and Eno’s No Pussyfooting also appear at the end of "21st Century Schizoid Man" similarly to what was included at the beginning of USA. The concert was performed on 23 November 1973 at the Concertgebouw. Most of the set was also broadcast live by the BBC and taped by listeners; bootlegs of the broadcast circulated among fans. This was one of the first releases of archival recordings by Discipline Global Mobile, the record label founded by Robert Fripp and David Singleton. As I write news is emerging that the Crims are back in the studio recording a new album.