Shall we dance arounds it all again, all those tall buildings with post-modernest baroque bits of whatever, shall we try and keep up with all the demands and why haven’t you reviewed this yet? Where were we? Catching up, hey, too many albums not enough time, and (some of) these things do demand proper time and anyway, there was an art show to curate and battle with last week, putting on art exhibitions takes lots of draining time as well, quite your moaning, I know this one came out last Friday and should have been covered on these pages already, we’re running just to stand still here, these are thankless times and
Hyper Gal – Our Hyper (Skin Graft) – Hyper Gal are not the kind of band (or duo, how many people does it take to be a band anyway?), Hyper Gal are the kind of full-on proper band that demand you do far more than just vaguely listen to and throw together a quick review of, they rightly demand far far more than that….
This in the Japanese duo’s third album, it probably is their best yet but then they have all been brilliantly challenging and flying at you in that relentless way of theirs. This is not pop music! Whatever the PR around them might say, this not pop music, we are constantly told of the “Osaka Noise-Pop duo”, whatever the good people at the rather fine label that is Skin Graft might want us to tell you, this is not pop music or pop art or fizzy pop or anything poppy and pop is far from eating itself here! This is an onslaught, this is an ongoing now three-album-long relentless onslaught, all of their albums are their best ones and you can’t just mindlessly bang out a Hyper Gal review. Most importantly, this is not musical violence just for the sake of it, this is not the conformity of a heavy metal onslaught, this is a far higher rung up the art ladder, if this is violence then this is sonic violence as thought, as challenge, as something more than just two girls being extremely hyper. This is the proper art of noise and something you really have to get into the zone with, to be at one with, to emerse yourself in.
Not just noise, the devil is in their detail, in their positive confrontation, in their variety, the relentless variety of their repetition as well as in their different colours, in their Japanese bullet trains flowing through your head again and again, this is about the mercy that come with the silence at the end before you take a deep breath and go in for another ride. This is not background music, this is not a pleasure which in turn makes it an extreme pleasure, extreme noise pleasure. Is it almost the sound of performance, should I turn it up a bit more? Probably! I have got it on very loudly already, the pigeons have all left.
Are you sure there’s only two of them, they sound like whole herd of something coming at you and they are rather brilliant live, especially if they have you trapped in a small room with no easy exit – Hyper Gal more than back all this up live with their demanding performances. No, it isn’t just about noise, it isn’t just confrontation, there are more dimensions that just the obvious ones, you do suspect that one day they might eventually write a ballad?
Consisting of Koharu Ishida (vocals) and Kurumi Kadoya (drums), Hyper Gal do indeed craft a sound all their own, they are characterised by avant-garde rhythms and maybe attitudes, they are making art, art made by their looping landscapes, their thoughts and yes their hypnotic vocals; the hypnotic movement of it all, that and the reassurance of it all maybe? Yes, it is crafted, no, not crafted, shaped, sculpted, they paint their sound, sculpt it, their relentless sound, it is perpetual, it does peck, after a while it all becomes rather soothing and maybe something to sleep to? Maybe not, No sleep ’till…
Well there you go, a rushed review that told you nothing other than to go listen to them and don’t push me when I’m close to the edge, yep, that was a very rushed review, hopefully you get the idea and there’s a more paint to throw and enough of this, go hit the play button and write your own damn review…
Links: Bandcamp / www.skingraftrecords.com
Previously
Nick Carlisle – The Mad Decades (The Colour inverted) – More of his stuff, there’s never too much Nick Carlisle stuff (he does sing of stuff, it isn’t really just stuff, it really is much more than just stuff). Another Nick Carlisle album just landed here, it isn’t due out to late May, there is a single but this is very much an album and the lead single in isolation does it no justice and and oh the dream of staying ahead of the curve with all this, there are hundreds of albums and people demanding a review and why haven’t you covered this yet and I sent you an album last week and you’ve ignore it and I want you time, I want your time, I’m a musician or I run a record label and I deserve your time.
Actually this album landed quite some time ago but it really isn’t out until May and right now all you can hear on line is the single and yesterday I heard the joy in every song and oh, let me unpack it properly. I like Nick Carlyle, and that opening song once again really works so well and if Elvis Costello had a touch of prog rock around his edges – that just came into my head whilst listening to that opening track and this album for the millionth time. If Hyper Gal aren’t pop then Mick Carlisle very positively is and I am rather partial to an (early) Elvis song, so that comparison to Mr Costello was meant as (a big) compliment. This is pop music that sometimes feels positively English in a gloriously 1970s kind of way and then sometimes positively English 1980s kind of way – properly crafted pop songs full of life, full of details, something more than just a repeat of the line and here comes the refrain again, something that credits a pop music fan with a bit of intelligence than most pop music does.
There’s lots of things to hear here, lots of things, maybe obscure things, Robert Calvert‘s brilliant Hype period, bits of details that feel like the wonderfully fishy days of Marillion or maybe even bits of Orchestral Manoeuvrers, bits that feel like Cockney Rebel or XTC and all very lazy of me and it isn’t who I am I should just let it go, but hey, just signposts just hints of things to paint the picture of the place where he (and we) can grow tall again.
Not an inch of filler here, every song is good, the kind of songs made by heroes of old who helped you find the gold, to find a golden age dead and gone? Every tune, every hook, every little detour and waiting for the next moment to materialise, and hooks, oh the hooks and the masks he tries to hide behind and am I detecting a concept here? Was that a jester? Are we all growing old? I probably should read the press release but then there is no let up from it all and this is a really really (really) gorgeous album, these are deliciously crafted songs. Special and nothing happens until something moves and Nick Carlisle has a bit of a history, The Mad Decades is his fourth solo album and this is history slightly repeating itself in a rather good way, the last album was equally as good as this one is – “originally from rural Northern Ireland and now residing in Brighton, England, Nick’s music blends vintage analogue electronics and acoustic instruments with more contemporary digital sounds and samples to paint a world that’s instantly recognisable but simultaneously unfamiliar and often unsettling….”
The Mad Decades comes out on 29th May 2026 on The Colour Inverted Records, and that bit there does sound like a bit of a Misplaced Childhood and once again you really need to hear the whole album and not just, as good as it is, not just the first single, and there goes more of that analogue details and the timeless vintage-ness of it all and, oh yes, another fine album from Nick Carlisle (that single version of Hilversum does the song or the album no justice, it is just not who it is, you need to hear the whole thing, all the dark clouds that form and the calm before the storm). Don’t let Nick Carlisle and his details and his hooks and his pop pass you by, he is rather good…
Bandcamp / www.nickcarlislemusic.co.uk
The press release for The Mad Decades (we like that the piano’s one time owner is mentioned and the attention to detail concerning the instruments)
“The new album The Mad Decades comes 18 months after the critically acclaimed release Sailors On The Roiling Sea. It carries on where the last album left off in many respects, although there is perhaps a broader range of themes explored this time around, centring around a theme of madness in its various forms. The madness of populism, the madness of cognitive offloading to AI, the madness of unrequited love, all are touched upon over the eight songs. The title itself comes from the 1939 short story Trends by Isaac Asimov, a story which predicts a future when progress was too fast for the majority of people who then reverted to superstition and anti-intellectualism.
Recorded at Church Road Recording Company in East Sussex throughout 2025 & finished early 2026, Nick produced the album and handles all the lead vocals, as well as adding his signature keyboards along with occasional guitar and percussion. As with the last album Sailors…, he made a point of recording as many real instruments as possible as opposed to their software counterparts, including Hammond C3, Mellotron, harpsichord and piano (ex-Keith Emerson’s no less!). The very EMS VCS3 synthesizer which features on The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again makes an appearance on Three Studies Of a Half Human, following a fruitful recording visit to The Townshend Studio in London where it now resides…”
Previously…
Grumm Trencher – The Bat and the Hellebore – On with the cherry picking and the better things that land here, there are so many albums and things that we choose to not cover and we do rather like the picking on this one….
Now if I have it right, this album has some kind of concept or story behind it, something to do with a bat, an instrumental album, it feels like a crafted solo studio project and I must admit the tale of the bat or whatever the story is holds very little interest, it might for you, something to do with art and lore. The music however, the music holds rather a lot of interest. You can read about the bat, the art and the lore on the Bandcamp page, or you can just let the music paint pictures all by itself, it does do that rather well. What we have here is a dark heady mix of organic sounding folk, chunky synth sounds, strings, banjos? fiddles? Electronic versions of said instruments? Some of it sounds almost Francis Monkman in a Long Good Friday kind of way, most of it is far less sinister. The opening piece, A Little Brown Bat is a delightful home-cooked slice of breezy string driven folk, it sets the tone well. Some of it has a Lemon Jelly feel, that Staunton Lick thing; this is (mostly) a gentle collection of pieces, an easy on the ear album, almost beguiling. Some of it maybe sounds like some kind of forest ritual you might glimpse through the trees, something you just have to quietly watch and hope no one notices you hiding there. A Reunion is a piece that travels particularly well, a piece that moves the whole album (and I guess the story) on rather well in a spiritual kind of way, an almost Pagan way maybe? There’s talk of pumpkin synth, electronic music even dungeon synth whatever that is? ‘Dungeon synth’ kind of makes me think of some kind of rather dark heavy fetish flavoured electronic goth thing, this is certainly not that, this is breezy out in the woods music (from Canada), this is really rather good as well… – Bandcamp
Previously… more albums, recent albums….
ORGAN THING: That new Sunn O))) album is ready to go, it is that Rothko state of mind…
THE ORGAN 