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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Panamanian (now resident in Minneapolis,, USA) José James attended The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. In 2008, he debuted with his first album, The Dreamer, on the Brownswood label with Blackmagic following in 2010. 2010’s For All We Know came out on the Impulse! label and became the winner of both the Edison Award[ and L’Académie du Jazz Grand […]
Thore Pfeiffer is a young German producer who first came up on my radar on Kompakt’s excellent Pop Ambient album we reviewed back in October of last year. This is the second artist album to come from the Pop Ambient compilation series that is so carefully curated by label head honcho Wolfgang Voigt.
Tejada is a 41 year old producer and Dj based in LA who joined the Kompakt imprint in 2011 with Signs Under Test following his previous album The Predicting Machine and a load of 12 inchers. This is very much in the bleep and beats techno category with Tejada working the machines at his disposal […]
The blurb on the Naim Records websites says that Collected 1 is a collection of their favourite records from the last few years and succeeds the Naim Sampler series. It’s out on official release on 11th May and is available in hi-rez download or on limited and numbered vinyl. Its a wide reaching collection in […]
Simon Lomax is predominantly known as a producer of music for film and television, but his self released A Glimmer Of Memory sits firmly in the ambient and atmospheric category. The six tracks on this album are sparse, with pads ebbing and flowing to produce an album that is quite beautiful in its textural quality […]
Drummers have a hard time of it. You’ve all heard the jokes: How do you know when a drummer is at the door? The knocking speeds up. Or alternatively: How do you know when a drummer is at the door? He doesn’t know when to come in. It’s fair to say that, generally speaking, solo […]
You know, whatever your thoughts of Björk, what you really can’t knock is the quality of her recordings. As the first track on ‘Vulnicura’, Björk’s ninth solo album draws to its close, I really can’t help feeling that it sounds – well – fantastic. The string arrangements are just sublime. In fact, there are several […]
Out now on the Esoteric Recordings label, Now We Have Light is the third album from Oxford’s Sanquine Hum. It’s a double concept album in the finest “prog” tradition with its roots going back over a decade and the days of Antique Seeking Nuns, which was the first project guitarist Joff Winks and keyboardist Matt […]
It’s thirty years since the first release of An Inward Revolution on MCA, an album that scored The Big Sound Authority three single releases. The band came together after a competition in Smash Hits (a British pop magazine) had vocalist Julie Hodwen singing backing vocals with The Jam. The Jam’s Paul Weller put Hodwen together with […]
Whilst it’s been getting progressively more difficult to describe a ‘typical’ 4AD artist in recent years, as a label it has delivered some genuinely superb albums during this time – notably including Daughter’s ‘If You Leave’, Serena-Maneesh’s ‘#2: Abyss In B Minor’ and of course Purity Ring’s 2012 debut ‘Shrines’. I guess the first – […]
Richard D. James aka Aphex Twin returned last year after a break of 13 years with a cracking new album “Syro”. Less than 6 months later he follows this up with a horse of a totally different colour. Here we find this incredibly creative artist concentrating more on texture, ambience and mood. Similar in many […]
Matt Hales, aka Aqualung, had all but given up his recording career and moved across the pond into production & songwriting. It’s to our benefit that he had a change of heart along the way. ‘10 Futures’ is Aqualung’s fifth album (not counting compilations) – and also Hales’ first for five years. Things are somewhat […]
On her 2012 album Glad Rag Doll, Diana Krall covered a selection of 1920’s and 30’s jazz standards, inspired by her father’s collection of 78-rpm records. Wallflower, her latest album, takes a similar approach; this time with some of the songs that Krall discovered on vinyl while growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s. Krall […]
In Modern Blues, the 11th studio album by The Waterboys, Mike Scott sums up his career to date in a single phrase: “I’m not bitter and I’m no quitter”. Right from their 1983 eponymous debut album, Scott has used The Waterboys as a vehicle to explore his own particular vision – The Big Music. By […]
When deciding which albums to place in my top ten of last year (2014) there were a number that deserved a place without any doubt nor discussion. Mark Kozelek, under the pseudonym Sun Kil Moon, released one of the most emotionally demanding and yet fulfilling albums of the year. On this album Benji, Mark’s 6th […]
My favourite album of 2012 was ‘The Seer’ by Michael Gira’s band Swans. To say that I was anticipating the release of ‘To Be Kind’ last year would be a profound understatement. For over 30 years Michael Gira has been producing some of the most experimental and interesting rock music that can be had. His […]
Occasionally, when asked to review a reissue of an album, one discovers a band that failed, for one reason on another, to show up on the radar the first time around. Some of these discoveries are similar to opening a treasure chest that has been gathering dust in a dark corner only to reveal a […]
There are those who regard the Lowell George era Little Feat as one of the greatest American bands of the 1970s. Their musical chops and deep soulful funkiness meant that they were as much a live phenomenon as they were a 5 star recording unit. Some would say that it all came together in the […]
Few bands bifurcate opinion as vociferously as Belle and Sebastian. Many people simply can’t see past the image of them fostered in their early publicity shots and sleeve notes: Duffel coat donning, butterfly net wielding perma-students gathered in a gang like some Vimto version of Dexys Midnight Runners. Building that band brand was a calculated […]
You may very well not have heard of this band let alone seen or heard their 1971 album Satori. I feel obliged to put that situation to right because hand on heart this is one of those stellar overlooked gems that ought to be in every rock music collection. The band formed in Japan in […]
Released in April 2014 by two seasoned lads from Nottingham, Divide and Exit, as the title alone suggests, is akin to musical Marmite – love it or hate it – this will divide the audio marketplace. It is not something you play when Great aunt Maud or the Vicar call around for tea. On the […]