OK, hands up, cards on the table….I’m a huge Neil Young fan and genuinely can’t think of a record he’s made that I don’t love, even the much maligned Trans really does it for me and I reckon Daft Punk et al may well have been taking a listen to that particular record…then again perhaps not.
The Monsanto Years is Young as I like him best – electrified, rocking, belligerent and rallying against all that he sees wrong in the world. More »
Hands up, this is the first time I’ve come across this sixty six year old “stalwart” of the rock-blues industry, but apparently he’s responsible for founding New Zealand’s La De Das and Australia’s The Party Boys. Missing Borich out of my music may well have been a bit of a mistake!! More »
New Born City is the follow up to McCullagh’s 2013 North South Divide record and has been out in the UK since early May. The record is produced by John Power (Cast) and includes the singles Towerland Lullaby, Box Of Tricks and She’s Calling.
McCullagh says he influences include Donovan, Bolan, Weller and Johnny Cash and he has been playing guitar and harmonica since he was twelve…he’s still a youngen. More »
I first came across Jens-Uwe Beyer with one of his tracks on the excellent Pop Ambient series on Kompakt and The Emissary marks the artists first full length outing under his own name. More »
Classic Albums, John Scott takes a look at that perennial favourite Astral Weeks by Van (The Man) Morrsison… More »
Released in June “Before This World” is Taylor’s seventeenth studio album and represents the artist’s first album of original material since “October Road” of 2002 – for that reason alone it represents something quite interesting and I imagine partly why it was a Billboard number one album in the States.
Broadly speaking the tracks herein could be labelled as being “country”…but it’s a bit more grown up than that and I’d prefer “singer-songwriter-country-Americana” …much more easy to get a grasp of! More »
Jazz funk is not a genre I’ve explored a great deal but this album suggests it may well be having a bit of a deeper delve…
Idris Muhammad was born Leo Morris in New Orleans in 1939 and says that he’s a “natural drummer” whose gift came from the “Creator”. He made his recording debut aged sixteen on Fats Domino’s Blueberry Hill and so his credentials are certainly impressive. More »
Croatian Cacija fled that war torn land in the early 90s to seek safety with his family in Frankfurt, Germany where aged just six he began professional music lessons and received a degree in classical piano from the city’s conservatoire.
Cajica gained both a Bachelors and a Masters Degree at the Kunstuniversitat in Graz, Austria and has collaborated with the likes of Kurt Elling, Sheila Jordan and Michael Abene as well as being vocal soloist for the German Jazz Orchestra. More »
It seems that nearly all the new music I’ve been listening to lately has had a distinctly retro feel. None more so than Coming Home by Leon Bridges. Twenty six year old Bridges from Fort Worth, Texas had been working as a dishwasher but due to chance meeting with Austin Jenkins from psych-rock band White Denim – they struck up a conversation about clothes- he soon found himself in the band’s studio with Jenkins and his bandmate Joshua Block. More »
A nice release, this, from the ever-reliable 4AD label. Pixx is a new signing – and it’s immediately obvious why she’s piqued 4AD’s interest. The music will please both 4AD purists and listeners new to the label. Pixx is a pseudonym for 19 year old Hannah Rodgers from London. I’ve been intrigued by comments which I’ve read comparing Pixx to fellow 4AD band Cocteau Twins and the likes. For me, they’re not the greatest comparison, though there’s a faint whisper of the Cocteaus’ sound here. Moreover, there’s a Mick Karn-esque bass on lead track ‘Fall In’, but the vocals have more in common with Dido than Elizabeth Fraser. Musically, the instrumentation is more similar to Dif Juz. More »
Let’s start at the beginning – Max Richter is one of my favourite post-classical composers who you might say has literally been around the block. He currently records on the German classical label Deutsche Grammophon, but many of his earlier releases were via the imprint ‘130701’, an offshoot of the indie label FatCat Records, one-time home to Frightened Rabbit and current residence to The Twilight Sad and C Duncan, whose album we recently reviewed here on Hifi Pig. More »
This is the second outing in about a year from Christopher J Connelly (Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Sons Of The Silent Age) and Jason C Novak (Acumen Nation, DJ?, Acucrack, Czar) and can be summed up in one word (pretty much) BRUTAL !!! More »
30 year old Nikki Lane caused a bit of a fuss when she said she wanted to be the next First Lady of outlaw country. Some over-sensitive country fans misinterpreted this as her suggesting that she actually was the next First Lady. “On one of my first interviews, someone asked me who I would like to be and I said I would like to be the first lady of outlaw country” said Lane. “Obviously Jessie Colter—Waylon Jennings’ widow—is the first lady of outlaw country, but I was supposing there’s a new era and I would get to be the next her.” Well, if outlaw country does ever need a new First Lady, Nikki Lane will get my vote. More »
Aside from the music itself, one thing that popular music culture has always provided is a home for people – both artists and fans – who don’t fit elsewhere in the world. Ezra Furman is a cross dressing, bisexual, depressive, observant Jew. If you happen not to be a cross-dressing, bisexual, depressive, observant Jew but want to know what it is like to be one, you could do a lot worse than to listen to Perpetual Motion People. More »
What do you think of when you think of New Zealand? Sheep perhaps? – the country has 7 sheep for every human inhabitant. Hobbits maybe? – Peter Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations have made the islands practically synonymous with Middle Earth. The Haka? – The Maori war dance is famous for striking terror in the hearts of opposing rugby teams. Country and Western singers? – Nah, not so much now you come to mention it. Tami Neilson is going to change that. More »
Judith Owen describes her latest album, her 10th studio release, as “a love letter to Laurel Canyon”. In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles was home to several members of the Californian rock music community. Joni Mitchell lived there and David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash first met in her living room. The area played host to names such as J.D. Souther, Jackson Browne, James Taylor and Carole King. The Canyon, along with LA’s Troubadour club, became a crucible for the Seventies singer-songwriter scene. More »
Dave Pen and Mike Bird formed BirdPen while sharing a flat in their hometown of Southampton. Self-releasing a handful of well-received EPs, the duo went on to release their debut Album On/Off/Safety/Danger in 2009. Evolving and honing their sound, new album In The Company Of Imaginary Friends, their third, harnesses subtle melodies to evoke widescreen emotions. More »
Duo Inga Calstrom and Leck Fischer were discovered by producer Mike Mason in a club in the small Swedish town of Sveg. Unimpressed by the entertainment on offer, Mason was on his way out. “A monstrous bass line rabbit punched me in the back of the head and a voice made me weak at the knees” he said later. He was stopped in his tracks and witnessed “The best performance I’d seen in years”. Returning home to Oxfordshire, Mason lost no time in flying Calstrom and Fischer over to record their first album American Teeth. More »
Woozy Summer days. The French TV version of Robinson Crusoe. Sky Ray ice lollies. If these things could have a sound, it would be the sound of Sarah Cracknell’s new album. An album that the words “pastoral” and “sun-kissed” were made for.
Sarah Cracknell is, of course, the singer with Saint Etienne; a band that have always embraced the sounds of the sixties and seventies. These influences remain on this, her second solo album. More »
Back in November 2013 I reviewed Bird Radio’s first outing “The Boy and The Audience” and said ” Bird Radio is like a demented Pied Piper cum Cat Weasel character for the Ableton Live generation – fail to listen at your peril!” and he’s just released is his Oh, Happy England album.
Oh, Happy England is a collection of poems by Walter de la Mare, an English poet born 1873, set to music. I must confess to being completely unaware of de la Mare but you live and learn. Bird Radio (Mikey Kirkpatrick) says about de la Mare “When you enter into a poem by Walter de la Mare, you are never certain of the boundaries between reality and dreams. His poetry covers a broad spectrum of textures and emotions from moments of realisation and self recognition as in The Englishman to dark, isolated and nightmarish scenes such as Drugged and reveries such as Time Passes”. More »
Known as the French Elvis, Johnny Hallyday is a bit of an iconic figure here in France and he still manages to draw huge audiences. Eighty or nine years ago he headlined the Vieilles Charrues festival a few minutes up the road from where we live and folk travelled from all over the country to catch a glimpse of this living legend. So beloved is Johnny that in 1997 Jacques Chirac awarded him the Legion Of Honour medal. Personally I’ve always seen him as a bit of a caricature, but then I’d never taken the time to listen to his music, though he’s had 33 number one singles and sold over 110 Million records in his time…perhaps this was a bit remiss of me. More »
I used to hammer “Laughing Gas” by Juno Reactor on the Nova Mute label back in the day (1993 if memory serves)…I can still remember the yellow and blue cover, but the 12″ is long gone sadly and since then I’ve not really taken much notice of his output. This may have been a mistake and a bit of an oversight on my part I must confess…
The “label” here is Psy-Trance, but I reckon Ben Watkins (for it is he) goes far beyond what I would expect of the usual formulaic stuff churned out under this banner. Juno Reactor are apparently huge in Australia, Japan and pretty much everywhere but the UK and I can see why… the Juno Reactor live experience is by all accounts a bit of a spectacle with loads of musicians, singers, percussionists and dancers taking to the stage. This album certainly feels like a bit of an epic that would be really something at a huge festival whilst in an enhanced state! More »
Since forming in 1983, Ozric Tentacles have released almost 30 albums of psychedelic, space rock goodness. Technicians of the Sacred, their first double album since 1990’s classic Erpland, delivers dubby bass, trippy electronic grooves and extended Steve Hillage-influenced guitar explorations over the course of 11 tracks.
Ethnic instruments are marinated with guitars, synths, bass and drums to produce a heady stew but there is no risk here of indigestion. My only criticism is that there is a lack of variation in the structure of the individual tracks, they all tend to build to a climax in much the same way. More »
Recent output from 4AD continues to amaze me. One minute you think you’ve pretty much nailed the type of musical output which 4AD produces – and then comes along ‘Platform’ by Holly Herndon, like a kid who comes running into the room, kicking over everybody else’s creations and then leaves through a different exit, completely oblivious of the devastation he’s caused. More »
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