Full Time Hobby The core duo of Venn have been together since 2013, with the current trio format since 2014. They have released a few 12″s and a CD-R which was distributed by hand in random places like HMV, Oxford Street, Soho House toilets and on Jack Kerouac‘s grave.
Mr Olivetti
732 posts
Rocket This is Swedish six piece Flowers Must Die‘s fourth album and the first to be made available outside Sweden. Rocket Recordings must have welcomed them with open arms after hearing the dramatic, expansive psychedelic masterclass that they have managed to squeeze into the nine tracks and forty three minutes […]
City Slang It has been about twenty years since I last listened to Turkish pop music. A trip to Istanbul for a wedding saw us return with CDs by Sertab Erener and Tarkan, amongst others. The mysterious and impenetrable Turkish language made even the most basic pop sound exotic and mildly […]
MVD For me, Morphine was one of the most important alternative bands to come form the USA in the Nineties. Their sound was unique and it is not often that can be said about a band, particularly a three-piece coming from the thriving post-punk and independent scene of Boston.
Ormo Derby Derby is a French three-piece consisting of bass, drums and electrified trumpet. For them, the perfection of a monotonous drone is their goal, the sort that takes you away, transcending the ordinary and allowing you to slip into that mantra-like mindset where the slightest variation or the minutest change […]
Arts & Crafts This is Kid Koala‘s fifth album and I have to say is a serious change of pace to his previous output. Gone are the busy turntable experiments and instead with the aid of glacial vocals from the delightful Emiliana Torrini, we have a song suite of the […]
Tip Top Well, this is quite a riot. Renowned experimental library musician The Man From Uranus has teamed up with 8-bit chiptune artist and fan of Gameboy and Commodore 64 sounds, Jellica, to produce an LP using as many duck-sounding synth noises as they can find.
Mottomotto Masselys are a Norwegian supergroup of sorts with members coming from Salvatore, 120 Days and whalesharkattacks. This supreme meeting of minds has resulted in the most affecting romp through the last forty years of leftfield western music, its eclecticism only matched by the wealth of ideas.
Dreamy Life Over the course of the five track on this EP, Signals & Alibis, a boy/girl two-piece from Fort Worth, Texas, have constructed their own brooding hinterland using keyboards, guitar and baritone.
Raging Planet Sweet Nico are an ethereal and dreamlike duo from Portugal who have been together for a couple of years and concoct a sad, intimate and at times delerious style of aching dreampop.
Thrill Jockey Doug McCombs must be the busiest man in Chicago. Not content with the amorphous beast that is Tortoise, playing bass with Eleventh Dream Day, releasing the Pullman records and undertaking various collaborations, particularly that with David Daniell, he also has what could be considered his own project, Brokeback.
Rocket Julie’s Haircut has been turning any preconceptions about the idea of Italian music on their heads for the best part of twenty years. I remember catching them with Sonic Boom in Bristol some ten years or so ago, and the record they released together at the time expanded minimal psychedelic guitar […]
Bureau B Amaury Cambuzat started Ulan Bator twenty-four years ago and after eleven albums and numerous collaborations with the likes of Faust and Michael Gira, their twelfth LP finds the band stripped down to Amaury, augmented by two Italian players on bass and drums/sax.
Bar/None Forty years after forming, it is nice to welcome back The Feelies with their sixth studio album in all that time and the second since they reconvened in 2008. The band, which still contains founding members Bill Million and Glenn Mercer (who are still writing together), have not really changed their formula […]
Finders Keepers The opening sentence of Andy Votel‘s sleevenotes for the long awaited Moomins soundtrack is just about the most perfect phrase to describe this record, so here it is for your delectation:
Crammed Discs Imagine sitting in a bar and engaging with a tan, weathered stranger who starts showing you photographs of places you are never likely to visit; some vibrant, some serene, a group of faces here, a glorious sunset, buildings, oceans.
Bureau B Conrad Schnitzler, early member of both Tangerine Dream and Kluster, must have found both of those oppressive bands too formulaic and stifling. By 1975, he had struck out on his own, producing music for films that had yet to be released or even made.
Gizeh Back in 1931, FW Murnau, director of the Expressionist classics Nosferatu and Faust amongst others was directing a docu-drama in the South Sea Islands about forbidden love between two young islanders. After filming and just before the preview, he died in a vehicle accident and the film, although winning an Oscar, was […]
Accretions The Argonauts are a four-piece underground supergroup of sorts, surfing out of Japan with this high octane album of instrumental jams that shows all the players, guitar, bass, drums and keyboards to be in excellent form.
Round 2 Oriental Sunshine‘s sole album, Dedicated To The Bird We Love is one of those treats that come along rarely in our musical travels. A psychedelic folk album recorded in Norway in 1969 with a surprising Eastern influence, it received a release from Philips back in the day but […]