Album Reviews
Album Review: Tolouse Low Trax – ‘Jumping Dead Leafs’
TOLOUSE Low Trax is the recording pseudonym of German composer Detlef Weinrich, and this is his fourth album under that name. The eight-track album is a 38-minute smorgasbord of all manner of musical genres, ranging from krautrock to 80s’ electronica, with pinches of avant-garde, post-rock and ambience whisked into the buffet. The album starts as …
ALBUM REVIEW: Ambassadeurs – ‘Human Stranger’: majorly uplifting, humanist floor-fillers
AMBASSADEURS is the project of Sussex producer Mark Dobson, a man who’s approach to music is deeply personal, involved. He doesn’t churn it out because he has the means; he fashions and creates and recreates and channels, he sends tunes out into the world when they’re ready to communicate what is intended. He’s got one …
ALBUM REVIEW: Sam Prekop – ‘Comma’: further into wordless ‘tronica melodies
EMERGING from that Chicago scene so ripe with cross-fertilisation and ideas around the turn of the century, Sam Prekop was part of that fountain of creativity that brought us Tortoise, Bobby Conn, Jim O’Rourke’s shift into pop melodicism, Freakwater; many more. Sam himself cut his recording teeth alongside Archer Prewitt and John McEntire in The …
ALBUM REVIEW: Sally Anne Morgan – ‘Thread’: homespun Appalachian warmth from Black Twig Pickers’ player
QUIETLY collaborating away in some of the finer, truest to tradition acts of the Americana movement such as the Black Twig Pickers, the time is now ripe for multi-instrumentalist Sally Anne Morgan to step forward with an album under her own name. Chicago’s Thrill Jockey label is a fine seeding ground for talent, and it …
ALBUM REVIEW: Matt Costa – ‘Yellow Coat’: an affair of a decade made song
TO BREATHE a little life into an old cliche, I bet my bottom dollar you’d find Matt Costa in the kitchen at parties. He’s that kinda guy. (And this is, of course, totally a compliment). He’s supremely interesting and interested, you can tell; would charm a small and randomly corkscrew-searching bunch of just-mets with wit …
ALBUM REVIEW: Susanna – ‘Baudelaire & Piano’: recasting the poet in solo dusk
TWO things to note from the off about the Norwegian chanteuse fatale born Susanna Karolina Wallumrød: firstly, she is both a deep appreciator and fashioner of the arts – no throwaway, careerist pop remixes her, no dalliance with song for song’s sake. Music, and art more broadly, is far too important business for frippery; life …
ALBUM REVIEW: The Flaming Lips – ‘American Head’: a trippy coming of age about coming of age
DEAR reader: let’s take it you need no introduction to the wayward, playful psychedelic brilliance of Oklahoma’s Flaming Lips. I can see a solitary hand raised at the back, there; where have you been all this time: the proverbial desert island? You mean to say you missed the glorious early burst of “She Don’t Use …
Meet: We have a chat with Babybird’s Stephen Jones about that hit single, his creative process and the music industry. Plus we review his new album.
While Babybird will always be associated with the global hit ‘You’re Gorgeous‘, the prodigious talent behind the name, Stephen Jones, has never ceased creating sublime indie pop over the course of his career. In a sense, the music industry may have moved away, but Jones’s songwriting magic has remained a constant. Jones might have the …
Album Review: St. Ove – County Show
St Ove hail from Aylesbury and the surrounding villages, Wendover and Quainton in England and yet a gentle, jangling air of Athens , Georgia can be detected in their sound. ‘County Show’ is an evocative album – gentle, evenly paced and full of a yearning sense of aching joy. There is a bucolic air of wistful …
Say Psych: Album Review: Dreamweapon – Rites of Lunacy
Porto’s dreamweapon take their name from the 1990 Spacemen 3 live album ‘Dreamweapon: An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music’, who themselves took inspiration from the work of minimalist drone – or ‘Dream Music’ – visionary La Monte Young and a 1965 multimedia piece titled ‘Rites of The Dreamweapon’ by original The Velvet Underground drummer Angus MacLise. Following …