Consouling Sounds This is a first for me, listening to Nadja. For some reason they didn’t cross my radar, but on the strength of this re-release, I have seriously been missing out. Consouling Sounds have chosen to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the Alien8 release of this album by reissuing it with an extra disc containing an unreleased live studio version of the album and it is a […]
Mr Olivetti
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Geographic Music It seems that quite often in my reviews I am cheering the welcome return of bands that appear to have gone missing in action and enthusing about those returns, but I am particularly thrilled to be listening to the first Crescent album in ten years.
Beggars Arkive Buffalo Tom were part of that wave of post-hardcore guitar bands that came out of Boston in the late Eighties along with the likes of Dinosaur Jr and Lemonheads. They were friendly with J Mascis and he produced their first couple of albums, and that connection dictates a little as to the sound of those two albums.
File 13 I must confess The Poison Arrows are a new one on me, but a great discovery because they ply the kind of slinky bass-heavy American post-hardcore that the likes of Girls vs Boys (GVSB) and The Jesus Lizard put out years ago.
Paradigm Discs These recordings make up part of the Kymatik archive and were recorded nearly 20 years ago, yet are timeless and unfold at our leisure.
Constellation This is Do Make Say Think‘s seventh album for Constellation since their inception twenty years ago and the first in eight years and it is a glorious, Technicolor addition to their already wonderful pantheon. For me, no other band sounds like DMST
Optic Nerve There seems to have been a lot of bands returning to action over the last few years, but surely one of the most welcome must be The Wolfhounds.
Rocket Girl Originally released as a 7″, a 12″ and an LP, these tracks were then compiled as a CD back in 1992 and have since been out of print for a long long time. Is this a 25-year anniversary re-issue? If so, it is one of the most worthwhile that I have seen in an age.
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.
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 of this LP.
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 exciting. Jakuzi are one of a new wave of underground pop acts singing in Turkish
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 of detail become enormous.
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 kind of magnitude we are not fortunate enough to see very often.
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.