Episodes
A few weeks ago we had an interview with Billy Gould and in that one we mentioned this awesome band called Sleepbomb whose latest record is out via Billy’s Koolarrow Records in collaboration with our Belgian besties in Consouling Sounds. The record is really amazing and you should all listen to The Cabinet of Dr. Galigari and therefore we are really happy to have this interview with their bassist and synth player Tim who explained their approach to songwriting and their love for movies and...
Published 12/10/23
When people from different, well-known bands form a new project, we often call them supergroups. Most of the time, these bands have only little to say, because it can be quite hard to arrive at similar ideas. With False Fed this is surely not a topic, because these four guys know what they are doing, how to do it and - most important - what they want to say. The Covid-born project consists of four people who, at least when we talked back in October, had never all been in the same room!...
Published 12/03/23
Sally Gates should not be a new name to all you VoS-ficionados, because we already spoke with her last year about the last album of her project Titan to Tachyons (we also reviewed Vonals). Sally moved to New York City a few years ago from her home New Zealand, and man, she has been a highly productive and respected part of the New York City Avantgarde scene working with many highly skilled well-regarded musicians around John Zorn and his Tzadik Records label. Now she’s releasing another...
Published 11/12/23
Scream is one of these iconic bands that we all heard about when we were young, apart from our walking encyclopedia Knut, who probably witnessed many of the DC Hardcore bands back in his 20s and 30s, but for the regular people among us the early DC years and the bands that came from that area and which were on Dischord or later on Jade Tree are legendary. Minor Threat, State of Alert, Scream - the latter even released the first full-length ever on Dischord. Now they’re back! With a new...
Published 11/05/23
Pyrkagion is one of these bands which at the moment are still a bit of an underground band, which is surprising as its members have some pretty famous “main bands” - think of Hissing and Bell Witch! But the most important reason why they are not gonna remain such an underground thing for long is their music: Black Metal in a kind of traditional sense without trying to emulate Trve Scandinavian Black Metal. And this music (you can check out our review here) is so much that we sought the...
Published 10/29/23
Some of our interviews are audio only for a good reason and today’s is such an occasion. 夢遊病者 (or “Sleepwalker”) are one of these enigmatic bands that see their members as mere vessels for songs and structures that are already there but only need to be turned into sound. The musicians behind it thus become somewhat obsolete and therefore irrelevant. Nevertheless we are happy to talk with one of them - and this not in a written form as we did roughly two years ago but as a podcast...
Published 10/15/23
Very often we hear those silly jokes about the bass player who has an idea for a song and is then thrown out by his bandmates. But in a band like The Hirsch Effekt that surely is not the case as all three band members have their hand in the songwriting process and that makes for this awesome concoction that one hears on their records. Just recently they released their latest one called Urian. Reason enough to sit down for a talk!
Ilja J. Lappin is The Hirsch Effekt’s bassist and a profoundly...
Published 10/08/23
SubRosa is dead. Whether we like it or not. Yet their legacy continues as two really good projects have risen from their ashes - one is The Otolith, which we featured heavily on VoS last year and now we have The Keening, which is the new project by Rebecca Vernon. Her new record is coming up next week Friday and therefore we sat down with her and chatted about the new record called Little Bird, about Stevie Nicks and about much more. Enjoy!
Rebecca Vernon has a very personal relationship to...
Published 10/01/23
Grails have just released a new record and it is more than awesome, as you can already see by our review. The band has always been hard to grasp, but one thing never seems to change and that’s the high quality of their output. We spoke with Emil Amos, one of the two band leaders, about Anches en Maat (check out our review here) and much more especially about the love for movie sounds. Enjoy!
Can one understand modern music without the classics and the stuff that came before you? Isn’t that...
Published 09/24/23
Denovali Records has always been a label for lovers of sound - and that has never restricted itself to one genre alone. That’s why one could find Drone Metal alongside experimental music alongside an act like Hidden Orchestra, which is going to release a new album next Friday, September 22. And as our head honcho is a huge fan he was very happy to sit down with HO’s mastermind Joe Acheson for a long, detailed interview.
Hidden Orchestra has always been about combining sounds from the natural...
Published 09/17/23
Black Metal itself is a highly paradox genre right? It’s always been connected to both - furor and melancholy. Musically, Atmospheric Black Metal represents that probably best, and one upcoming Atmospheric Black Metal band from the Northeastern USA (aka New England) that does that brilliantly is Eave. As we were proud to host a video premiere for them some weeks back, we are even happier that we got a chance to talk to Brian and hear some of his thoughts.
Brian is a pretty reflective guy and...
Published 09/10/23
Transit. Transition. Transformation. All words that share more than just the starting syllable. All also indicate a progression from one “spot” to another. Rylan Gleave has gone through such a progression which we already spoke about in our review of his debut album In Chemical Transit which took us by surprise because it plays on and with audio from three very different periods of time in Rylan’s life. Furthermore it is a literally mesmerizing record as it combines Avantgarde soundscapes...
Published 09/03/23
Having common friends are sometimes a really great thing when they introduce you to great artists who do not get enough attention which is about to change right now. The common friend who introduced me to Loather is Ralph from Ultha who also invited the guys from Vienna to his Unholy Passion fest in 2022. Now the guys have a new record out via Vendetta Records called Eis and I must say it is a really good Atmospheric Black Metal record with loads of spherical moments and still a lot of...
Published 08/27/23
Khanate and their new record were one of the biggest surprises in 2023, simply dropping their fifth full-length without any official hints, promotion or anything on May 19. Everyone’s feed was dominated by the news and everyone automatically went ahead to listen to it. The record has now had time to settle in and people were able to dive into To Be Cruel and as we are sure that there are still things that need clarification and explanation! Hence we were happy to get together with drummer Tim...
Published 08/19/23
Mizmor has released his fourth full-length called Prosaic and has taken a new approach trying to not let a new record become an obsession, not trying to go for a full-fledged overarching theme. Nevertheless, this record is simply great, magnificent, superb, whichever positive adjective you wanna give it. In order to find out more about the process, the record and its place within his oeuvre, we talked with ALN. We’re very happy to give you this interview and we hope it makes your listening...
Published 08/13/23
Stephen Brodsky should be a household name in our realms because he’s been in famous bands for close to 30 years - Cave-In, Converge (YES! for a very short time), Droneflower, Old Man Gloom and Mutoid Man to drop a few. His voice and his guitar playing has flavored many of our most beloved records. The last band, Mutoid Man, has released a new record called Mutants a few weeks ago. You can check out our review here, but for us here at VoS that’s not enough, so we talked to Stephen about the...
Published 08/06/23
Inevitably Dark might be seen as a return to Black Metal made by Xasthur for some old school fans. However, one might be asking the questions whether Xasthur ever really was “only” Black Metal or if the project has not really been about much more than only BM? When talking to Scott one gets the impression that this record is - for the time being - a momentarily return only because he has already been off to completely different shores.
The new multitude of melodies dispatched by Xasthur...
Published 07/30/23
No Wilderness Deep Enough was surely a different record for Steve von Till - as he also points out in this interview. Wait - interview with Von Till? Yes! We were very fortunate to talk to the man himself, a mere 14 hours before he left for Europe where he will be touring for several weeks starting on Thursday, July 27, in Krakow.
When listening to the record one surely noticed right away how different this record was from earlier SvT records such as As The Crow Flies or A Grave is a Grim...
Published 07/23/23
There are bands who you can't be angry with even though they might overthrow any plans you might have made - Bell Witch is one of them and when thinking back on Roadburn Friday and the massively packed main stage at the 013 - it is clear that many people simply love these guys for what they do as that is massive and miraculous, powerful and poetic. Whenever Jesse and Dylan release a new record, the scene is listening and justifiedly so, thus we needed to get an interview with the guys!...
Published 07/22/23
Boris - a name like thunder. Uniform - lightning strikes. Boris & Uniform together = a quite explosive mixture, right? Listening to their collaboration Bright New Disease is not necessarily lightning in a bottle or a molotov cocktail but rather a high-profile combining of forces which results in a record that never lets you down and exceeds expectations. One can hear the Japanese masters and also the elements by our beloved New Yorkers potioners. Having a chance to get to talk with...
Published 07/16/23
Whenever people talk about the early 90s and music, it will not take a long time before the label Sub Pop has to be dropped it seems because it back then was the label to be on as a band and the label to follow as a fan. They had Nirvana and loads of other bands that were changing what was alternative music back then. Sub Pop also had a band from New York under record that was called Codeine which kind of stood out from the rest as their sound was less aggressive, but not laid back. It was...
Published 07/09/23
Love’s Holiday is the latest record by Oxbow, one of the seminal bands of the last 40 years. Admittedly, they’re quite a bands’ band in the sense that many musicians seem to tumble over each other praising the San Francisco outfit for their no-compromises approach to music and oftentimes simultaneously genre-defying and genre-defining records, think of King of the Jews or The Thin Black Duke! Having been given the chance to talk with the band about the upcoming album was not to be denied,...
Published 07/02/23
Wearer Of Numerous Forms is maybe the longest record in our little scene this year with more than 130 minutes in just three songs. Eremit have shown their songwriting skills and how far the songs can take them. Wait - who is directed who now? The band writing the songs or the songs directing the band? Simple answer - the story.
For several weeks, we have been spreading the word about the mesmerizing Blackened Noise Sludge scene and flood of releases that this summer is witnessing all over...
Published 06/25/23
A few weeks from now, the new record by Jaye Jayle will hit the (digital) shelves and we were quite taken with it, because it fits like a glove to what we like. No, this is not Avantgarde Death Black Gothic Post-Drum’n’Bass, this is music without real borders, but for everyone who loves music for the soul. This is music in the vein of Edwards, Cohen, Johnson. Music that speaks directly to your core and that has the potential of becoming a cult classic - so you join before the hype sets in....
Published 06/18/23
Bar McKinnon is one of those guys who are first off well-versed in so many things music that it seems as if they can talk about anything and everything all at once anywhere and everywhere. However, secondly, he might be the most energetic and enthusiastic guys you might meet out there - one can feel the Zoom connection beaming and gleaming when he starts to give a detailed answer. Why do we talk to him? Well, Umlaut, Teleorkestra and Bungle!
Bar McKinnon is a multi-instrumentalist with a...
Published 06/11/23