Vikinga Brennivin
Brennivin is an Icelandic liquor vulcanized from the humble potato and flavored with cumin, although you’d be hard pressed to taste much beyond the astringent burn that it leaves in your mouth. Bottled in matte black glass and stamped with ominously simple labels, brennivin appears less like something to imbibe and more like poison; and in that creeping slow death kind of way, it is. For the Icelandic electro-absurdist outfit Stilluppsteypa, brennivin has soaked into every fiber of their being; …
Agents At Midnight
2006 release ** "Agents at Midnight, eh? Sounds like the kind of film noir title Barry Adamson might like. But the music doesn't: it's a collection of raw, powerful improvisations for saxophone (Chang) and electronics (and harmonica) (Howard), a fine example of how the fences that used to separate Noise and Improv have been bulldozed into the dirt by the younguns across the pond (and a few of them here in Europe too). Chang's playing – alto sax, is it? not always easy to tell for sure – is rough…