Tears in Time, Peter Hammill (Cherry Red)
Sun Shooter, V-sor, X (Dox Music)
X-Ray Serenade, Fischer-Z (Cherry Red)
Fliegen lernen, Gugaruz, Moi, Ungebunden, Faust (Bureau B)
The Bastardizer’s Beautiful Record, Simon Strong & Sönke Rickertsen
Peter Hammill’s new album, Tears in Time, shouldn’t work, as it has been compiled from tracks recorded between 1991 and 2026, but it does. These are quiet, detailed and reflective songs, well removed from the thunderbolts and lightning of Van der Graaf Generator, which Hammill used to front, or the electronic or ambient experimentation of some of his solo work. First and foremost these are personal confessions and meditations, with Hammill musing about time passing and the world moving on. It’s melancholic, heartfelt and one of his best albums.
The new V-Sor, X album, Sun Shooter, is also a good ‘un. It sees the original 1980s trio line-up reassembled for the band’s fifth album and refinding the energy they first had back in the day. Like Hammill, there’s a melancholic air – of lost love and personal disappointment and challenges – to some of the songs, although the album later moves towards a more apocalyptic overview. In ‘There Goes God’, God despairs of ‘Prophets fighting prophets’ and ‘Preaching pain and fear’, whilst the title track declares that ‘Super powers are always heard’ and that that is ‘the real nightmare’. Filled as ever with post-punk energy, beefy synthesizers, bright guitars and fluid bass, overlaid with doomy vocals, it’s a catchy and enjoyable outing.
2026 is Fischer-Z’s 50th anniversary, and John Watts – who has kept the band’s name alive since the 1970s, often playing solo under the moniker – has put together a touring group, and in addition to the recent box set reissue (previously reviewed here) has recorded a new album. X-Ray Serenade shows that Watts has lost none of his acid wit or sarcasm, nor his keen eye for the peculiarities of life. He sings across loping rhythms to create vivid musical pictures of characters such as the ‘Queen of Irony’ and the ‘Suburban Cowboy’, whilst ‘River’ traces a kind of endless, inspired and unstoppable musical lineage. The album also includes some reimagined tracks from earlier albums, which are just as dark and angst-filled as they always were, perhaps more so on the back of Watts’ nicely matured singing voice.
Meanwhile, it seems Faust as a group may not be a functional unit anymore. Instead, each current member of the band has ‘curated’ an album, with the four being released at the same time. What the albums share is a desire for experiment, innovation and exploration, and sometimes collaboration. In the sonic mix are field recordings (including popcorn cooking), rhythmic complexity, industrial noise, treated loops and found sounds, fragmented songs, electronic soundscapes alongside more traditional instruments. Open to music being created from an extensive palette of sound, filtered through and influenced by personal and group histories, more traditional music genres and what the press release calls ‘chain reactions of ideas’, this massive gathering of new music shows Faust to be as innovative and relevant as ever.
The man with long white hair at London Interzone, the William Burrroughs event a few weekends ago, turned out to be a one-man musical industry. He was giving out copies of The Bastardizer’s Beautiful Record for review, but Googling Simon Strong (for that was his name) reveals that not only does Strong issue albums under his own name, with various other musicians, but is also the front man for the group (since 2001) and more recently, Ekranoplans (since 2017).
Born in Sheffield, Strong took off for Australia in 1996 and lives in Melbourne, where there is clearly a confluence of psychedelia, punk and folk in the air. The Bastardizer’s Beautiful Record isn’t my fave of what I heard, and offers duo recordings of tracks from The Pink Stainless Tail’s The Sky’s a Soft Target album as well as some more self-referential new tunes inspired by tracks on “The Bastardizer Polishes a Turd” by “Chus Martinez” album, which finds Strong vocalising one of his experimental novels. Beautiful Record is more acoustic folk, with resonant vocals over Sönke Rickertsen’s multi instrumentation. (Although Strong also adds ‘Aztec Death Whistle’ to some tracks!)
Even better to my ears is the four piece band, Ekranoplans. If you imagine Johnny Rotten fronting Chrome, with some heavy blues-rock thrown in for good measure, you may have some idea of the sonic distortion, vocal gymnastics and aural terrorism this band can inflict. Unconditional Loop is my favourite, but Sanity Testing – a more ramshackle sounding set of tracks – is also well worth a listen. As are The Pink Stainless Tail’s recordings, which veer more towards a skittering mash-up of splintered, jangly post-punk and psychedelia. If Hawkwind jammed with (early) REM and let Gong’s Daevid Allen front them, you might end up with This is me in the park with no clothes on… I like the flowers or The Infinite Wisdom of The Pink Stainless Tail.
These comparisons do Strong and the bands no favours, however. They make their own individual music and clearly enjoy doing so. I’d love to see them all live, but for now digital music will have to do.
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Rupert Loydell
The V-Sor, X bandcamp is here; Simon Strong’s here; The Pink Stainless Tail’s here; and Ekranoplans’ here.
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