Nine Feet Underground

'Approaching/On Arrival' is the first track from the Hedvig Mollestad Trio's latest album 'Black Stabat Mater'. This track highlights the range of Hedvig Mollestad Thomassen's guitar playing culminating in a closing section of angry overdriven noise. Superb. I just need to revisit their previous album 2013's 'All Them Witches' - can't wait!

Thee Oh Sees latest album 'A Weird Exits' is pretty cool and there is no finer way to kick-start a working day than with 'Plastic Plant' a psych workout with a humming bassline... ...more to follow

I have a confused relationship with the music of Warpaint.  Art its best their music has an unfocused quality with a submerged bass sound, heavily rhythmic married to unusual vocal harmonies. I love this dreamlike style, but it's one which, for me at least, they haven't quite managed to fully realise on album. I was originally drawn to them by the song 'Undertow' from their debut album 'The Fool' which encapsulates that underplayed woozy style. The follow-up album simply titled 'Warpaint' further emphasised that dream-like quality to their writing and playing. In spite of this the second album didn't quite deliver what it promised for me, though I do find the superimposed images of the cover especially good :-) 'Warpaint' also resulted in the release of a video coupling two of its tracks, namely 'Disco//Very' and 'Keep It Healthy', which includes some rather hypnotic dancing by Jenny Lee Lindberg! ...

...of a Romance Novelist is not an album title guaranteed to appeal to me -conjuring up images of Barbara Cartland and Mills and Boon.  Don't panic though, it's an avowedly literary album but - certainly as far as many of the reviewers have commented - from a more feminist stance than you might associate with the above. The literary theme is maintained throughout the album and its cover: the booklet is laid out in the form of a book; every track has an epigraph quoting from a novelist, poet or artist; the lyrics come with a reading list (two pages including Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes, Barbara Cartland (FFS!), Carl Jung and Susan Sontag to name but a few); and the back cover has the song titles in the form of a stack of paperbacks with recognisable publishing house styles. A very coherent theme. The artist name also bothered me - The Anchoress - what does it mean? Does it mean anything?  Given all of the above, it clearly must and a little research shows th...

I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist it - it's even the title of compilation by quintessential Canterbury band Caravan - but my musings on the album titled The Wilde Flowers could only have one title. It probably hasn't escaped your notice that Mr NineFeetUnderground is quite a fan of the Canterbury sound / scene (is it a 'sound' or is it a 'scene'?) - both past and present, so it should also come as no surprise that the release (or strictly should that be "modified re-release"?) of an album by the band who are the progenitors of almost every original Canterbury band should arouse some interest. [Aside: Even if it has escaped your notice I'm still writing about the album anyway. So there.] I'm not going to witter on about whether or not the Canterbury sound is a lazy music journo invention or indeed whether every band that spawned, directly or indirectly, from the metaphoric loins of The Wilde Flowers actually conforms to s...

New Order have always had a way with the melancholic dance song, somehow managing to mix euphoric dance tunes with melancholic lyrics as shown on their most recent album 'Music Complete'.  Even without the glorious rumbling basslines of Peter Hook the album does mark a return to form that is far better than might be expected.  A high spot of the album is the track 'Tutti Frutti' which epitomises the dancefloor tristesse.  The lyrics hint at coming to terms with getting older - "I feel like I'm a setting sun" - and perhaps mid-life crisis, whilst at the same time being a hymn to a partner though even that hymn is tainted by some level of dependency - "I'm under your command". The video seems to take theme of getting older to a another level, capturing a sadness that goes well beyond the lyrics and really rams home a message of someone coming to terms with their self-image compared to how they are seen by others.   Perhaps all ...

There’s nothing like being topical and, as this post demonstrates, NineFeetUnderground can’t be accused of being too topical.  To be fair this was largely written at the time however “real life” prevented its completion. As the post is mainly a personal perspective I have decided to post as it was originally conceived – with the appropriate amount of grunting, sweating and recriminations… In the space of just under two weeks music lost two of its greatest figures, first on the 28 th December a few days after his 70 th birthday Lemmy died then on the 10 th January, two days after his 69 th birthday and the release of what proved to be his final album, David Bowie died.  A lot of media coverage followed both of these sad events – both making the main TV and radio news – so I just thought I’d write a few words about how they both touched my life though I met neither of them (well, I "almost" met one of them - read on). Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister to me was first ...