Stefan Christensen
Cheap Things

AK CHAMEL THE GIVER OF ILLNESSThe TotemistAkuphone France

NOTTE BRIGANTE is back in the longplayer spheres, unearthing for mother earth nine tracks by French producer, musician and PMR label runner ASSID, that spellbind under the entitlement “Connaissance des Lois Cosmiques“.An utterly surprising, dark-ish fever dance of many styles, synth-ages, tribal zones, and cosmic flashes! Ingredients, that ASSID sucked up from his many musical adventures. As Trackmark he is active since 1998 and self-released four longplayers that glitch abstract through the electronic galaxies. He is also part of the Strasbourg, France based band The John Merricks, living the psychedelic dream in unity with lo-fi swing, dub, electronic, Acid rock and all that noise. When he feels like going fully electric, he joins his buddy Doudouboy and invents as Electric Muezzin abstract dub, that thrills all delays and echoes of creation.With “Connaissance des Lois Cosmiques “, the man from the Drôme department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France distributes an amalgamation of all his different artistic avenues. You get dubbed. You get cosmic. You get waved into a darkness, that is illuminated by psychedelic drifts, but at the end it’s just a trip!

Following the success of last year’s ‘Somebody’s Knocking’ LP, Mark Lanegan has announced the news of his new solo album, ‘Straight Songs Of Sorrow’. The album, which is closely aligned to his forthcoming memoir features guest appearances from Greg Dulli, Warren Ellis, John Paul Jones, Ed Harcourt and more. When considering any great work of art, it’s natural to wonder what might have inspired it: ‘the story behind the song’. Mark Lanegan’s new album, ‘Straight Songs Of Sorrow’, flips that equation. Here are 15 songs inspired by a story: his life story, as documented by his own hand in his new memoir, ‘Sing Backwards And Weep’. The book is a brutal, nerve-shredding read, thanks to Lanegan’s unsparing candour in recounting a journey from troubled youth in eastern Washington, through his drugstained existence amid the ’90s Seattle rock scene, to an unlikely salvation at the dawn of the 21st century. There’s death and tragedy, yet also humour and hope, thanks to the tenacity which impels its host, even at his lowest moments. ‘Straight Songs Of Sorrow’ combines musical trace elements from early Mark Lanegan albums with the synthesized constructs of later work. The album feels both definitive and unique, a culmination of its creator’s arc yetalso indicative of the energy that drives him onto future horizons. No wonder Lanegan is proud.

Whereas the band’s debut album ‘Popular Music’ was broadly political, the new album takes a more personal approach with beguilingly honest and brave lyrics that are bold in both sound and feeling, whilst also retaining the core DNA of their previous material.Going on to speak about the album Mez says “A Picture of Good Health is not a collage of work but rather a snapshot of time; our time and the time of those around us. It’s political, but in a personal way. It’s a body of work that explores and examines the bands inner-selves through a precise period; a period that has brought pain, loneliness, blood, guts, single parenthood, depression and the need for survival and love. It is the sense and need for belonging that is the resounding endnote!”

Bokeh Versons lasso a dusky set of surf guitar-meets-bossa nova-in-dub styles from Martin Werner’s Répéter - think John Wayne lost in a Brazilian desert with Mike Cooper and Sun Araw‘Bad Twang’ follows on from 2017’s ‘In Fine Style’ LP with a more conceptual lean, employing his self-taught surf guitar tekkers with a DIY conflation of compatible styles whose sum outweighs their components. His conception of cowboy exotica or rancher dub practically imagines the soundtrack to a Tarantino or Jodorowsky flick set in some parched, purgatorial landscape where various genres criss-cross the desert in heat hazy licks and languorous grooves, shimmering like elusive fata morganas.