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BREATHE/RUST: A Sound of Things to Come

/ N. P. Ryan

Another night at the Chelsea Inn found me once again watching a band in awe of how accomplished.

BREATHE/RUST, a four piece from Bristol combining members of The Break Out, The Earth & Me, Nietzsche Trigger Finger and Crazy Arm, are tagged as hardcore on the flyer; the epithet is more than deserved, though I don’t envy whoever has to decide given the array of genres to be found across the four track self-titled debut EP. Continue reading →

Etran de L’Aïr: The Desert Blues Brothers

/ N. P. Ryan

To mark the commencement of a 2023 US Summer tour, Etran de L’Aïr—which translates to the Stars of the Aïr—have released two live tracks recorded in Seattle earlier in the year; available for digital download, they’re also NYP (name your price, which includes free if you need it to be).

Seattle is a long way—seven-thousand miles thereabouts—from Etran de L’Aïr’s hometown of Agadez, Niger; a city located in the Sahara desert and the country’s fifth largest.

Etran de L’Aïr’s sound is generally described as desert blues. It’s a genre description in much part originating from the epithet desert rock already being taken in the West by a bunch of stoners who liked recording while out of their trees while out in the deserts of the States—some groovy tunes coming from their endeavours, it should be said—while the sound coming from Africa has a vibe and undercurrent distinctive to musicians in the region. Continue reading →

Death Pill: the ferocious all-female face of Ukrainian Defiance

/ N. P. Ryan

353619397_716357817172717_7070565787862434601_nMonday the 12th saw a first visit to the Louisiana, Bristol. Knowing nothing of the headliner, it was another case of a flyer grabbing attention in the timeline and hitting interested on the event from there.

Then came a surprise a couple of days beforehand when finding an article on the BBC website singing the praises of Death Pill’s cause; this I didn’t know about.

Death Pill’s story is phenomenal; so much so, it’s humbling writing now to think I got to witness part of it. Continue reading →

Weight of the World

/ N. P. Ryan

Star_Lore_Of_All_Ages_(1911),_0125,_AtlasA question of context, perhaps perspective; maybe a journey through the unwinding impact writing can have: the calm sea at which the stream of consciousness ends having started on a harsh, craggy mountain side . . . Or maybe it’s nothing so dramatic as that and instead just a pondering on whether things were in fact better or worse in the old days.

Header image: Star Lore Of All Ages (1911); licensing. Continue reading →

The Incarnation of God Who DID Visit Weston-super-Mare

/ N. P. Ryan

While it’s safe to say Jesus Christ didn’t visit Weston-super-Mare, what about anyone else thought an incarnation of God by followers of a religion?

How about that incarnation of God also being someone once given weapons and ammunition by the Nazis with which to fight a war?

Or to up the ante more so, the person not only being black, but in the same year—2020—as the much covered throwing of Edward Colston’s statue into Bristol Harbour, one of this individual got smashed to bits in a London park with hardly a mention in the press?

Continue reading →