Whilst the arrestingly cheesy-peculiar front cover of Impostor Syndrome is rather offputtingly redolent of something you might easily flick past in a car boot sale crate of decades-old novelty records, inside the sleeve resides an assemblage of absolutely charming warmth and ingenuity.
album review
2660 posts
...although ostensibly jazz, the pieces recorded here run through a real mix of styles from light impressionism to dramatic rhythmic workouts.
Utilising, electric, pedal steel and Portuguese guitars along with electronics, his sparse, diffuse sounds evoke the lull of the surface and the mystery of the depths.
It is absolutely great that these pieces have found the light of day after all these years and is an essential addition to what is a relatively slender discography for such a long-standing group.
...an acute observation of a time in this country when things seemed remarkably bleak; but it doesn't jeer or harass, just observes and reports. It just so happens that the musical making is a delight and the singer has lived to tell the tale.
... a solid slice of guitar / synth graze, psychologically skewered on Adi’s impassioned delivery ...White Souls In Black Suits is a welcome Clock DVA reissue with the promise of more classics to re-released in the near future.
...really does come with a wave of enthusiasm as he and the band welcome you again into their dream-like world; the soft focus of the production, the ethereal keening voices, it all draws you in with open arms. It might be a little jaded, but there is always hope.
... after a snaky Sebadoh-infused instrumental prologue to usher us in (“Theme”), we’re firmly thrust into a series of tune-stuffed songs, with Josie’s magnetic vocals pulling things into sharp yet warm focus for the majority of proceedings.
Keith's voice is from that landscape, and his love of the outdoors comes through in the warm northern English tones; but the esoteric nature of the words, describing ancient geology, are secure in their place within this wilderness.
...they conjure up a momentous whirling sound that travels across borders seemingly at will, struggling up steep inhospitable inclines and streaming across open plains, as if something were in hot pursuit. But through it all they are reacting to one another's playing in a way that showers the portentous percussion with streams of fiery frustrated strings.
Multi-instrumentalist Jan Todd's fourth album has Frostlake has her once again teaming up with Terry Todd to provide bass tones; but the addition of Andy Peake on piano has imbued the pieces here with a timeless air and a real sense of the soft hush of a dreamworld.
Having recalibrated themselves somewhat with 2021’s towering epic Burials, Cambridge’s Fuzzy Lights return belatedly with the logical extension that is Fen Creatures. With Rachel Watkins retaining sole lead vocal and lyric-writing duties, alongside her role on violin, Xavier Watkins (guitar), Chris Rogers (guitar), Daniel Carney (bass) and Mark Blay (drums) continue to turn up both the turbulence and atmospherics, the folk-psych-rock melding appears even weightier and wider in its reach.
Terrazoku: an Earth tribe of the future brought into being by the climate apocalypse of the late twenty-first century; a ragbag of survivors for whom life on Earth is a very different experience from those of their predecessors.
An immediate ignition; a series of fluttering electronic sound signals arrival. The where is hard to spot as the constant chirrup of unknown variables the static stutter of distant disturbances. A settled reflection sits atop a burr of metallic brogue that is alive with chatter, the ironic sound of rebellion.
There is undoubtedly no productivity crisis in the broad spheres of nouveau shoegaze and DIY electronica, with complementary manoeuvres and convergence playing out between them to boot. This is certainly apparent in sifting through another review pile on the verge of toppling over, replete with a lot of familiar suspects from some reliable sources.
Swedish composer Joel Danell has been trading under the name of Sven Wunder since 2019's Doğu Çiçekler (Eastern Flowers) and each release seems to refine his romantic take on widescreen instrumental music, touching as it does on soul, jazz, yacht rock and soundtracks.
"Do we need Fall reissues" seems like the wrong question. We're getting them and they're going to be somewhere between glut and porcelain. Though it being the Fall you take the rough with the less rough. It's a wheat from the chuff review.
This dark and contemplative work, inspired by the blazing spike of William Blake's Albion, is a haunting torchlit journey into some imagined underworld, something the opener "The Milk White Path" unloads in plentiful supply. That farm-gate creak, bathed in a slow dronic yearn, pitted in plunging bass.