Album Reviews
Album Review: Nino Gvilia – ‘Nicole/Overwhelmed By The Unexplained’ : a surreal experimental song saga with an indefinable magic.
It’s been a challenge to keep up with the unravelling of singer songwriter Nino Gvilia’s recorded output over the last few months but now we’ve arrived at some sort of finale. Her exquisite ‘Nicole/ Overwhelmed by the Unexplained’ double EP is at last fully available in both digital and vinyl forms via the ever-resourceful Hive …
Album Review: Okvsho – ‘A Place Between Us’: sophistication, groove and sonic depth – a new force in jazz fusion emerges.
Operating out of Zurich the brothers Kiss, Georg and Christoph (a.k.a Okvsho) are on some kind of a mission to shake up the music scene in their city. Unlike say Geneva that throbs to pulse of a vibrant underground art network, Zurich may lack some impetus but the producer/ instrumentalist brothers are looking to pick …
Album Review: ‘Once Upon A Time’ – Badinage serve up a kaleidoscope of sonic treasures in their debut album.
Badinage‘s new album ‘Once Upon A Time’ is a treasure chest of tangible, organic instrumentals that express raw feelings and emotions without words. A veritable smorgasbord of aural pleasure and moods. The details behind the structure of the album are fascinating. Comprised of ten chapters, presented as Book One and Book Two, the album is …
Album Review: Alma Leta’s Nik Brinkman-produced ‘Time Of Our Lives’ sparkles and shines like a glittering jewel in the firmament.
Born in California but raised in New Zealand, Wellington-based singer and songwriter Alma Leta (the nom de plume of Emmanuelle Alma-Rose Baur) has worked with one of our favourite antipodean producers Nik Brinkman to bring out an enchanting and ethereal debut album ‘Time Of Our Lives’, out today. The album is a deeply personal reflection …
Premiere: Modern Guilt release the anthemic and style-laden EP ‘We’ll Always Have Vegas’, and we bring you an exclusive early listen.
We are honoured to bring to you an exclusive early listen to the new EP from Modern Guilt entitled ‘We’ll Always Have Vegas’ ‘We’ll Always Have Vegas’ is a delicious set of guitar-driven tracks imbued with an incandescent pop sensibility and a verve and energy that is thrilling. At the heart is an emphasis on …
NYC trio: Trinket coalesces new shades of jangle-pop dreaminess on debut EP ‘New Hobby’
Trinket are a fresh new entry into the increasingly growing stir of jangle-pop bands. With their previous singles fusing shimmering, sweet guitar riffs and featherlight dream pop sensibilities well enough to book them for this year’s SXSW, I was excited to see what a fuller length exploration of their sound would be like. ‘New Hobby’ …
Album Review: Meril Wubslin – Faire Ça : Bluesy drones, alt-rock crunch and a world of rhythms make this band unique.
Does Bongo Joe Records have a signature sound? Well listen through the bulging rosta of releases since the label first output way back in 2015 and the conclusion would probably be a resolute ‘No’. But it does have a mission to give a platform to the extraordinary and less conventional, whether from the Swiss underground …
Album Review: Sheherazaad – Qasr
‘Sheherazaad’ translated in Hindi and Urdu means a “free city” which is at odds to her mini-album, ‘Qasr’, which translates to “castle” or “fortress” in Urdu, it was written during a time of family estrangement, grief over a lost elder, and the racial polarisation of her country as she knew it. “It was maddening” Sheherazaad says, “that the music of my origins …
Album review: Fleeting Persuasion unveil their new gothic-tinged album ‘Will They Come Back’ – a collection of dark yearning tracks from the underworld.
Masters of the dark arts of post punk atmospheric music, Fleeting Persuasion today unveil the new album ‘Will They Come Back’. It’s a powerful dark epistle highlighted by arching ambulant bass, jangling and scything guitars with distant dreamy vocals that seemingly hang in the ether. Fleeting Persuasion is driven by James Harrison (guitar/vocals) who wrote and …