Fuzz Club The Vacant Lots‘ intriguing mix of lo-fi ’80s synth sounds and doomed US street beats makes for a scuzzy but satisfying trawl through the downtown lights of New York’s underground. Having just read a book based around the NYC blackout of ’77, there was something quite fitting about listening to this short, sharp burst as if this was the sort of stuff kids would have been […]
Album review
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Constellation We were fortunate enough to have seen Esmerine a number of times many years ago and their chamber music / post-rock hybrid has a vitality of its own that translates well to the recorded format. I must confess to losing touch with them over the last little while, but here we are, five years on from 2017’s Mechanics Of Dominion with their third record in the trilogy […]
Rooster There was always something so cool and approachable about The Heads. As Bristol boys, you often saw them at shows there and quite regularly were served by Hugo Morgan over the counter of Replay (RIP even after all these years) and there was always something in the music that also held that approachability. The murderous rhythms and pummelling guitars might have been trying to fry your brain, […]
Tier.debut Any group with a name like I Work In Communications has to be worth some of your time and with the title of Kiss My Emoji Ring, you kind of know that this album isn’t going to be anything too heavy. In fact, the album contains a veritable cornucopia of lovely if irreverent electronic-based experiments that veer all over the map, allowing the three players plenty of […]
Impossible Objects Of Desire Brighton-based Fujiya & Miyagi have been plying their unique take on electronic music for the best part of twenty years. Slight Variations is about their tenth album and the fourth on their own label, and it is an intriguing mix of ’80s electronica crossed with funk, while taking on the kind of body music with which Mute were familiar years ago, but always with […]
Thrill Jockey The recent collaboration I Get Along Without You Very Well between Ellen Arkbro and Johan Graden is something of a misnomer, as this selection of slow and dreamy minimalist masterpieces brings the strongest elements out of two vibrant and eclectic performers. The secret to the success of this album is the use of woodwind alongside Johan’s keyboard work and Ellen’s voice. Any group that chooses to […]
Thrill Jockey It has been lovely watching Glenn Jones‘s career and its slow evolution via his experimental work with Cul de Sac to his current solo direction which hints at the likes of John Fahey and Robbie Basho. Somehow Glenn injects a more modern sensibility, a willingness to introduce factors to the sound that make it his own and make the listener feel as though he is leading them […]
Greyfade Typically a good way to start these things is to have a rough idea of genre, but this is … not forthcoming. Possibly drone, possibly sound-art, possibly conceptual composition … the blurb has it that Greg Davis‘s New Primes “uses prime number sets to explore an integrated harmonic, rhythmic, and formal space in just intonation”. Right you are then. What that means in practice is that this […]
Hubro For his first solo album in nine years, Erlend Apneseth has chosen to go back to basics, taking his love of the Hardanger fiddle, Norway’s 350-year-old national instrument, and produce a rather personal journey, scouting the wilds of his native land and depicting its solitude and wild beauty in a series of intuitive and evocative selections.
UMC / Polydor Greatest hits albums don’t count. Everyone knows that. If someone tells you their favourite album is anyone’s Greatest hits, they’re not a serious person. They’re a “whatever’s on the radio” person. They’re a “this is good at dinner parties” person. EVERYONE knows that. Except when . The Ramones. The Shangri-Las. Queen. When a band’s hits really hit. There aren’t many of them, but ABBA Gold […]
Sub Pop Over the last thirty years and ten or so albums, Built To Spill has been a revolving cast of characters, alumni of the independent music scene, and bold and adventurous musicians. Through it all though has been singer / guitarist and principle songwriter Doug Martsch, who has commanded the ship as benevolent leader or welcoming collaborator. He has woven his narrative, ever-unfurling guitar style and yearning, […]
Odin The latest release from the fourteen-piece OJKOS is an absolute joy, with its agility and pace really belying the group’s number. It is beautifully summery with a tropical beat to opener “Safari Sundowner” that allows flute, glock and horns to shift and turn at will. It seems a far cry from Scandinavia, its sunny uplands shimmering with the arcs of Henriette Eilertsen‘s flute. Even Eivind Helgerød‘s cute […]
Century Media Electric Callboy are in many ways the very acme of a contemporary metal band; or maybe to put it another way, they have become that very acme. Their first decade was not perhaps as distinctive as their current incarnation, which may have something to do with the arrival of their new vocalist Nico Sallach in 2020. We shy away from describing him as a frontman, for […]
Intravenal Sound Operations Gargoyles are odd little things; like a lot of Christian ephemera they’re reminders of the impure relationship between the faithful and the spirit realm. In Catholicism, the church is a woman to whom the priest is married, hence their continued spurious and damaging homophobia within that institution. The major distinction between a gargoyle and a grotesque, legendarily, is that a gargoyle acts as guttering, a […]
Discus It is incredible how many albums sax player Paul Dunmall has been involved with over the years with his own name groups running from quartet to octet. Here we have the second outing for his quintet, but essentially it is the sextet without trumpeter Percy Pursglove, so the comfort with which the players interact is there , with perhaps just a little extra space for them to […]
Label Kim Myhr is such an avid collaborator, releasing an album a year since the dawn of time, that when something comes out under his own name, it is definitely time to sit up and take notice. Recruiting some fellow travellers and long-time recording artists like Hans Hulbækmo and Ingar Zach amongst others, this latest album takes the premise of 2017’s You/Me and seems to expand it, pushing some […]
Polydor There is certainly something special about secretly listening to this album sitting on a dirty Paris street lined with overexcited kids eagerly waiting for those venue doors to open, to flood into a tiny downstairs room to hear these songs played live, some for the very first time. Yungblud is a twenty-five-year-old singer from Doncaster in England, who came up into the alternative pop-punk scenes over the […]
10 to 1 It is always heartening to see a new release from Mark Kluzek‘s Doomed Bird Of Providence, because you know that something of historical significance will have piqued his interest and then has prompted him to gather around friends and collaborators to turn it into some sweeping musical extravaganza. This time around, The Doomed Bird consists of eleven musicians plus the fantastic artwork of Judi Dransfield […]