Pulse: New Music You Need #10

Cepheide

If you like your metal as black as your heart and as atmospheric as those night time walks you take under the moonlight through vast forests, then Cepheide are the right kind of metal for you. The Parisian four-piece formed back in 2013 and have been slowly, but surely, shaping their sound in the shadows (it really is the best place to be making atmospheric black metal).

Their mysterious ways came to light last year with the release of their debut four-track De Silence et de Suie, and the band have been playing and promoting it ever since. Taking their cues from artists like Wolves in the Throne Room, Ash Borer, and Ars Diavoli, and also being a side project of Scaphandre, Cepheide are an exciting prospect for atmospherics black metal that maintains all its rawness.

18+

It’s all questions with 18+ and most of those questions turn up answers that are in fact just more questions. Intrigue is the name of the game, and intrigued I am. It’s not just the air of the duo that’s all tantalise and tease – the duo being Justin and Samia – but the music they make too. Combining their own production duties, samples, found sound collages, and any audio they can appropriate to their own ends.

Lyrically, musically, and visually the pair work their way around themes of sexuality, gender, identiy, and morality, and they didn’t shy from getting graphic. The closest to that would be brazen innuendo. It’s safe to say band, art project, whatever, 18+ is appropriately named and it ‘exists somewhere between museum, nightclubs, and the internet.’  Not any museums you’ll be taking the little ones too.

Dead Shed Jokers

Dead Shed Jokers are dead set rockers, and that is the worst play on a band’s name that I have committed to type so far. I can only apologise to everyone involved in reading that. However, Jokers by name this South Wales group are not joking when it comes to their music – though their music videos are riddled with low budget and bizarre pisstakery.

When it comes to their music the band are full frontal rock nudity, if that naked rock had stumbled before you dishevelled and filthy from a binge that just went on too long. It’s all scuzz, fuzz, riffs, solos, vocal wails, general mania, and relentless rhythms. If Queens of the Stone Age formed in a dingy practise room in the valleys playing garage rock covers and started to develop cabin fever.

Monophona

What happens when a renowned DJ/drum’n’bass producer and a touring singer-songwriter/folk musician meet, and decide they want to challenge themselves and each other to create something new and exciting, all without any prior knowledge of the other’s individual music history and influences? Monophona happens.

In case you’d enjoy something a bit clearer than me simply stating the band name at you, the music that Claudine and Chook create (Jorsch too when they take things live) is at a haunting loss in the realms of down-tempo, trip hop and electronica, creating a real sense of foreboding and tension, but equally blissfully peaceful and serene. The mixture of the cold, electronic production techniques and the intimate and comforting folk elements and vocals make for a perfect match.