Upset The Rhythm Upset The Rhythm are touching base with a lot of happening female artists at the moment, none more so than London four-piece Es, whose synth-heavy dystopian take on post-punk would have sat very happily on 4AD in 1983, or even Merciful Release, such is the primal vibrancy of the bass guitar.
Album review
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Opa Loka Philippe Petit‘s double-CD album Do Humans Dream Of Electronic Ships is all over the place, exhaling a sci-fi softness the type Louis and Bebe Barron sculpted back in the ’50s. A gouging cello bursting in somersaulting capillaries, chased by an errant black’n’decker rub that casts some scary shadows. A patchwork bounce of . The nostalgic blur of copulating shapes owling on the tap of empty skipping […]
KrysaliSound As well as running KrysaliSound for the last ten years, Francis Gri has been recording soundscape art, producing thought-provoking and atmospheric pieces that, while they tend to head in an ambient direction, have far more depth. Here, due to personal experience, he has tried to capture through a suite of four soundscapes the loss of memory and how one interacts with the world around them when this […]
Joyful Noise This is Magic Sword’s third album. and their fourth record if you include an EP released a short while ago. Each record comes with a comic book telling an overarching story that the band have put to music, so in a way its the mother of all concept albums that even out-does progressive rock bands like Yes
Mute (Europe) / Fat Possum (North and South America) / Bloodlines (Australia) Rowland S Howard is one of the heroes of the post-punk musical landscape, and possibly the most innovative and unique guitarists to ever venture forth from Australia. As a member of The Birthday Party, his razor-scarred, angular guitar swathes traced the routes for Nick Cave‘s messianic vocals. After they split, he passed through the dust-ridden gothic […]
Rocket Neologisms are where electronic music finds its music. Autechre’s IDM (the worst of labels) wouldn’t prosper in a world of real words. “Cipater” couldn’t be “Bike Ride”; “Dael” or “Gnit” couldn’t take their asynchronous routes with anything like their blank machine majesty if they were tarred with bad brushes like “Clown Grin” or “Telephone Box”.
three:four French saxophonist Clément Edouard has enlisted some friends to produce this most extraordinary and atmospheric suite of pieces for three:four. With him on electronics, Linda Olah and Isabel Sorling on vocals, and Julian Chamla on cymbals and harp bass, you kind of know that Dix Ailes is going to be something special.
Ipecac What a mouth watering prospect: two parts Cop Shoot Cop, one of whom was in Swans; one part Swans and one part Unsane. You just know that Human Impact is going to be one of those slinky New York vengeance bands that prowl the darkened streets, an eye out for trouble and a savage way of dealing with any they come across.
Jazzland After 2019’s Dark Star Safari, Eivind Aarset and Jan Bang once again find themselves back in the studio and still pushing the boundaries of recognised musical form. Although it doesn’t quite have the subliminal quality of that album, Snow Catches On Her Eyelashes is heading in a different direction, still exploring space and texture, but paring the sounds down to electronics, samples and guitar — although you […]
Tapete In a world that seems to have gone completely crazy, it feels like the perfect time to welcome back Bobby Conn after too long away. Tapete clearly felt that the world wasn’t the same without him and on his debut album for them, and first since 2012’s Macaroni, he has wrapped himself up with his regular collaborators and boy, do those guys really bring the funk when […]
Bureau B Loving the way that Felix Kubin and Hubert Zemler instinctively dovetail here as CEL, manage to claw out something so addictive, full of dissonant directions.
Peeler Collectress have been experimenting with their twenty-first century chamber music for the bet part of twenty years. Since the release of 2014’s Mondegreen, the group no longer find themselves within the Brighton orbit, and that distance plus life’s other opportunities, has found them slightly changing the way they work. Snatching opportunities where they came, they would reconvene to thrash out the bones of the pieces here on […]
Play Loud! Play Loud! proudly presents Tapetopia, a series of vinyl releases documenting East Germany’s underground tape culture of the ’80s. The first two volumes are a window on the vibrancy of this subculture
City Slang I remember first listening to Tindersticks‘ extraordinary Marbles EP on the strength of a Melody Maker review back in 1993, and falling love with their slightly shambling but immensely textured and moving songs.
Disco-ordination The idea behind The Fantasy Orchestra is one of enthusiasm, inclusion and love that has drawn two groups of people together, one based in Bristol and one in Paris, with the intention of giving an orchestral update to some of the more unusual and unexpected songs in the world canon. Started by Bristolian Jesse Vernon of the much-missed Liftmen, amongst others, the orchestra has embraced amateur players […]
Subcontinental Indian pianist Aman Mahajan has been working on the pieces that make up his album Refuge since 2005. It is a musical diary of sorts, and one that reflects the personality of this idiosyncratic player. There is an inner sense to his playing that, although it nods to jazz, Indian folk and classical, very much breathes with its own life.
Affairs Of The Heart On Cascade Lakes‘ first album, the sound has a kind of ragged heart beat to it, the opening track driven by bells and a steady rhythm, with a quavering guitar line and the sort of vocal delivery that brings to mind early Arcade Fire; the touch of melancholy in the chord structure, an evocative sweep of strings sitting quietly in the background.
Rocket When receiving this new album by enigmatic motorik outfit Och, I had hoped that the band had taken their name from the well-known Scottish linguistic trope. More specifically, I entertained vague hopes that they were perhaps (as I am) huge fans of the late Fulton MacKayi and, tuning in, had become so captivated by his expostulations of “Och, Fletcher” in much-beloved Seventies prison sit-com Porridge, that they […]