Room 13 Everybody knows The Radiophonic Workshop. Electronic musicians, eccentric polymaths and computer savants have been tinkering away in the bowels of Maida Vale on and off for the past sixty years, scaring and thrilling at equal turns with their wild and imaginative effects and soundtracks for BBC TV and radio shows.
Mr Olivetti
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Everlasting Desert rockabilly trio Guadalupe Plata have been ploughing their Spanish language furrow since 2010 and with this, their fifth full-length record (four of them self-titled), the band find themselves leaping straight into the fray with a salute to the famed Chilean songwriter and activist Violeta Parra.
Bureau B Once again, Bureau B are doing us proud with a couple of releases that showcase a couple of earlier generations of German electronic music, and also go some way to showing just how important and diverse the label has become.
Trinity Community Arts, Bristol 8 July 2017 On a roasting Saturday, a beautiful day in July, the wonderful Trinity Arts community centre hosted the juggernaut that was the fourth Bristol Psych Fest. Squeezing two dozen bands into one day on two stages was quite a feat to attempt, but seemed to go incredibly smoothly.
Tapete I remember listening to The Telescopes at the back end of the ’80s, but was never as convinced of their power as that of the likes of Loop and My Bloody Valentine. I am sure Stephen Lawrie is sick of hearing the comparisons and after a long time, it was interesting to dip my toe back into their murky waters.
Southern Lord That rock-hopping, prog-psych behemoth that is Circle have been comfortably straddling every rock-related genre that you can imagine for the best part of twenty-five years now and have been haemorrhaging albums at the rate and quality that would have most bands green with envy
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 […]
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.