Top Bar
Musique Machine Logo Home ButtonReviews ButtonArticles ButtonBand Specials ButtonAbout Us Button
SearchGo Down
Search for  
With search mode in section(s)
And sort the results by
show articles written by  
 Review archive:  # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

The Psychogeographical Commission - Widdershins [Acrobiotic Records - 2011]

The inner circle of the Glasgow Subway system doesn’t immediately suggest a venue for ritual. Its modern carriages merely ensure busy people reach their desired destination efficiently, unaware of their precise location until a big, clear sign rushes in to view. It’s a collectively ignored experience, an interim between A and B, where most seem encouraged to block out the environment by book or rag, phone or ad, as they’re herded beneath the city surface.

And yet, as the mysterious Psychogeographical Commission point out, the anticlockwise travelling of the subway’s inner circle can be viewed as a constant banishing ritual first performed in the late nineteenth century when an accident that stalled its opening provided a blood sacrifice distributed circuitously ever since.

With ‘Widdershins’ the duo of S.: and Hokano once again seek to address this disconnect they perceive between urban dwellers and their local mythologies. However, while their previous releases have more generally encouraged listeners to re-evaluate city situations through treated layers of ambient guitar and electronics to soundtrack exploratory strolls along lost rivers and secret historical tramways, ‘Widdershins’ is a straight recording of the noise of travelling on Glasgow’s underground.

Or is it? Through concentrating on the sounds of this 24 minute journey with its beeping electronic doors bookending the rhythmic rush of wheels as the engine accelerates and decelerates, one starts to perceive a change in mood, or a subtle presence, as the detail of the once familiar noises starts to reveal new qualities. Have The Commission deftly tweaked the tube sounds to invoke a sense of dread and otherness or have they merely separated the sound from its source and presented it in such a way that we finally take notice of what was there all along?

Either way it makes for a compelling listening, especially when using similar transport, bathing a journey in its altered light. Indeed, the duo apparently played the recording back into its source on a subsequent late night round trip and, in doing so, inspired aggression in those passengers who erroneously responded to its beeping doors as the recording fell out of sync with the train and, perhaps, the protection afforded by Glasgow’s secret banishing ritual.

Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5Rating: 4 out of 5

Russell Cuzner
Latest Reviews

The Psychogeographical Commission...
The inner circle of the Glasgow Subway system doesn’t immediately suggest a venue for ritual. Its modern carriages merely ensure busy people reach their de...
170425   Neptunian Maximalism - Le Sac...
170425   Thirst - Thirst( UHD/ Blu Ray)
170425   Booger - Booger (Blu Ray)
160425   SADOPRAXIA - Pyroclastic Sleep
160425   Natasha Barrett - Toxic Colour
150425   Polyester Ghost /Absurd Reali...
150425   Hana Haruna - Kawaii From The...
150425   Ennaytch - Vacuum Cleaner Mus...
140425   Girl With A Suitcase - Girl W...
130425   Sven Phalanx - Navigation
Latest Articles

Dead, Dead Swans interview - Midw...
Dead, Dead Swans (aka Milwaukee, Wisconsin's John E Swan) play a blend of raw and world-weary American folk music, with some real tuneful edges. I first beca...
150425   Dead, Dead Swans interview - ...
110325   Sebastian Tomb - Walls of unb...
040225   Alien Sex Fiend - Possessed B...
231224   Best Of 2024 - Music, Sound &...
191224   Splintered - Somewhere Betwee...
031224   Shane Ryan-Reid - Coerced and...
221024   Whore’s Breath - life’s h...
011024   David Kerekes Interview - Int...
030924   Tim Ritter Interview - Shot O...
100724   Radiance Films Interview - Le...
Go Up
(c) Musique Machine 2001 -2025. Twenty four years of true independence!! Mail Us at questions=at=musiquemachine=dot=comBottom