Track: E.R. Jurken – ‘John Doe’: a single drop of melodic harrow ahead of Friday’s album
E.R. JURKEN is a singer-songwriter with a deeply moving, beautiful and fragile take on psych-pop with a 1968 Anglophile twist and a Neutral Milk Hotel twirl to his aesthetic, for whom Drag City have initiated a whole new boutique imprint, Country Thyme; you just know they know when they’re on to a good thing. E.R. …
Track: 1000 Robota – ‘ENDE’: German post-hardcore trio reconvene after a decade away
1000 ROBOTA, the trio of Sebastian Muxfeldt, Jonas Hinnerkort and Anton Spielmann, got together while they were still at school in northern Germany and released their debut album of stern post-hardcore, Du Nicht, Er Nicht, Sie Nicht, for Tapete in 2008. A second long player, Ufo, came out two years later, and then; nothing. Nothing, …
See: The video for the nocturne dreampop glide of Wyldest’s ‘Beggar’: her album’s out late May
WYLDEST, the lyrically acute, gloriously dreampop project of Londoner Zoe Mead, has followed up her intelligent self-empowerment single drop from last month, “Hollow” (which you should so check out too) with “Beggar”, a chiming, nocturnal study that draws on that guitar swoon and glide of early Lush and wraps it up with her vocal verdancy …
Album review: E.R. Jurken – ‘I Stand Corrected’: a psych-folk debut full of catharsis and melody
E.R. Jurken’s first full missive into the world reveals quite the saddest tale at an angle, never telling, always hinting. It also shows an absolute grasp of songcraft, of melody, and an abiding love of British psych-pop and later American geniuses such as Neutral Milk Hotel and Elliott Smith
Album review: Tristan Kasten-Krause – ‘Potential Landscapes’: a debut quartet of potent longform drones
Tristan’s solo debut is a quartet of pieces that all head out from the same wellspring in different directions, different emotions; yet with a unity of feeling. If you worship at the altar of a well-executed drone-based record, then this one is mightily pleasing, if it doesn’t break new ground, it takes you for a different look round places you thought you knew and introduces them afresh. Classy
See: The acid prism of Plankton Wat’s ‘Modern Ruins’: a delicious psychedelic instrumental response to our fracturing world
DEWEY MAHOOD, the atmospheric psychedelic guitarist who released his twelfth album as Plankton Wat for Thrill Jockey, Future Times, in late February, has dropped the shroom-surreal video for one of that excellent album’s standout tracks, “Modern Ruins”, a track all garlanded about with echo and twang-shimmer and flutes – you can watch that below. The …
See: Ben Seretan – ‘Rain & Cicadas’: the piano in meshed susurration with the Appalachian rain
A FEW weeks ago we blissed into Sunday with New York songwriter and composer Ben Seretan’s absolutely luscious “Fog Rolls Out Rabun Gap”, the hero and protagonist of the piece at the piano and very much also in the world, his environment at the artist’s residency he was undertaking in the small community of that …
Album review: Secret of Elements – ‘Chronos’: the worlds of classical and electronic pirouette
A decade in a life lived richly and well, presented on an album which straddles two worlds which are becoming ever better acquainted – modern classical and electronica; when Johann really hits home the two pirouette gloriously. At times worthy of a billing on Erased Tapes or the like, at times closer to J.Willgoose’s warm analogue ambience as Late Night Final, if we can take one thing away, it’s to endeavour to live as boldly, as clearly and as truly as Johann has
Track: Rhys Langston – ‘a two state solution to soak eye contact’: cracking the political lyrical prism with an Anticon touch
ATTENZIONE, lovers of rhyme and lyricism transmitting in from the leftfield; come May 19th, POW Recordings will be presenting a new album from Los Angeles’ Rhys Langston, splicing oblique but conscious verbiage with the indie rock spirit of bands such as TV On The Radio, taking on the dominant power structures, throwing in Yiddish slang …
Track: Bobby Oroza – ‘Loving Body’: a waking lover’s dream of a soul nugget
RAISED in Helsinki’s east side by a Latin mother and a jazz guitarist father, the music seized Bobby Oroza from an early age; an excellent familial record collection included Motown, doo-wop, crooners and South American folk and set him on his path to a deal with the lovely Big Crown – a great dovetailing. And …