Skep Wax Carrying on from a richly productive 2023, Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s stealthily effective Skep Wax label set-up has this year continued to alternate between curating latter-day ventures from indie-pop veterans and nurturing newer talents. Whilst this has manifested in a slightly lower output in terms of records released, in favour of more live events, the tail end of 2024 and the start of 2025 seems […]
Album review
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Wanu is the solo nom de plume of Swiss bassist and composer Sébastien Pittet, but for this Magma project, he is assisted by Sébastien Guenot, who provides live drawings, and Mathias Durand who deals with multicasting and sound processing. Seb Pittet's background is in jazz, but this latest project moves far away from any kind of structure and into the realms of shadowy soundscape
Whilst many bands at certain operational levels come alive for evenings and weekends, it seems as if the members of Chicago power-trio Stomatopod need them more than most outside of their day jobs, to discharge emotionally and recharge electrically. With this second full-length album from the ensemble – following on from 2022’s sturdy six-song Steve Albini-cut Competing With Hindsight mini-LP – it feels like the post-nine-to-five uncorking is positively explosive.
Main man David Christian has been releasing bits and pieces since 2019's Fireraisers Forever, but now the admirable but shambolic London punk'n'soul, rock'n'roll band have not only had their BBC sessions reissued as part of Tapete's ongoing campaign, but have also had their 1999 album 'Tigertown Pictures' re-released for good measure and what entertaining listens both these albums are.
Considering that Niton's line-up consists of electric cello, synths and amplified objects, their sparse soundscapes leave plenty of space to accommodate poetry, percussion, saxophone, guitar and more and the guests range from solo performers to bands and hail from all parts of the globe. This truly is the most expansive and inclusive album and one that ranges like a giant across all styles and emotions.
In a noisy, over-stimulated world, The Necks' new album Bleed provides the perfect antidote -- an intimate homage to quietness and what can be done with the emptiness between.
Having first emerged thirty odd years ago in Leicester, as a lesser-known and more bucolic presence in the UK’s post-rock micro-boom, the longevity of Lazarus Clamp recently feels like it has followed the operational influence of chameleonic Chicago legends Eleventh Dream Day. Not in the sense that the band has had a major label dalliance to survive and evolve on from, but in the way that Michael Larkin and co. have latterly only come together to record when the songs, people, day-jobs, family commitments and logistics all allow -- which can take literally years.
While the gravitational pull and distraction of the festive season leads to a slowdown of new releases in most music scenes, in the expanded electronic sound universe, things carry on pretty much regardless 365 days a year. Hence, the need to wrap a few things up again in a like-minded -- but not limiting – bundle once more, just to keep up.
As a group, they share some aesthetics with the likes of Dinosaur Jr and Shellac: trios with a powerful post-hardcore sound; but where Daydream Three diverges from those groups is in Enzo's diverse vocal stylings, coming on at times like an Italian Ian Curtis, his doomy baritone outlining tales of loss and heartache and at others in a more forlorn manner, almost as if there were two vocalists.
It seems to be a sweet period for those lovers of '90s American dark guitar rock for not only have we had a new Jesus Lizard album after a twenty-six-year hiatus, but their near neighbours and Steve Albini collaborators Big'n have released their first long player in nearly three decades, and boy what a cracker it is.
...this album, possibly their last, has taken ten years to compile as files were sent between the UK and Australia, two guys tinkering in bedrooms as if the last forty years had never happened. Finally sitting together to finish things off and settling on a track-list, the ultimate Icarus album in many ways is a masterclass in magpie electronica, with not a single second of opportunity to draw breath.
My head caught in the hazy drift of "Coast" and the questioning romance of the opener, "Nobody Loves You More". Kim Deal's unique vocal style holds you in a close-knit spell, then slams you into the party sparkle of "Crystal Breath". What a gem of alt-ness, roasted on paunchy fuzz and glittery abstraction as her words stitch their freestyle sense.
Milanese multi-instrumentalist Lorenzo Parisini is following up his 2021 EP release Something Stranger with his first solo full-length, an ambitious suite of song-based tracks in thrall to the ever-evolving world of synthesisers but structured in a way that dance music, kosmische and electro-pop all find an opportunity to rub shoulders. Various members of RevRevRev, Clustersun and The Mystic Morning add layers of guitar to a few tracks, but on the whole this is one artist's vision.
After years of them being out of print, 4AD have taken the decision to repress the two LPs and an EP and allow them to straggle back out into the world, hopefully spreading their ramshackle charm to a new generation of listeners. Cass has been constructing his own little musical universe over the last quarter-century, so to listeners old and new alike, it is fascinating to rediscover how this journey started and all three of these releases are essential to that.
It’s been almost ten years since System 7’s chillout project has released anything, so obviously something in the mind of Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy felt that now was the perfect time to reactivate the project and create something new. In true old style, the album also features Alex Patterson from The Orb, someone who has worked with Hillage many times since the early '90s.
Frise Lumière is an experimental project from composer Ludovic Gerst that uses just bass guitar in an attempt to explore the rhythmic, textural and percussive possibilities inherent in the instrument. Over the course of nine tracks, he uses broomsticks, mallets and other percussive implements to draw secrets from the body of the instrument, offering up unexpected sounds and feelings.
Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu has been based in Ireland for the last twenty years and it would seem that the desire for travel and the stimuli of being a collaborative player in a European country has opened his mind and heart to a whole wealth of influences. Those influences, be they home-grown like soukous or more wide-ranging like flamenco or jazz, have enabled his elegantly fluid playing to become truly continent-spanning yet unique to him.
Although Ghanaian-born trumpeter Peter Somuah's latest release has the title Highlife, his is a unique interpretation of the musical style. Born in Accra, he is now settled in Rotterdam and with a group of four Netherlanders and a Dutch-Surinamese percussionist, plies a pan-continental version that shows its love of the African tradition while happily melding it with European influences. Recording the album in Berlin only adds to the constant sense of movement.