SEE: Josephine Foster’s take on Daniel Blumberg’s ‘On & On’: reinterpretations album next month
YOU HAVE to say, Daniel Blumberg is one of the absolutely most interesting, unconventional songwriters to emerge on the British scene in many a long year. His album from a month or two back, On & On, pretty much has it all: confessional, heartfelt beauty; melodic simplicity; outside-the-pocket impro composition, taking the songs right to …
SEE: Andy Bell – ‘Cherry Cola (Pye Corner Audio remix)’
AS his GLOK side-project shows, Andy Bell is a shoegazing legend who really isn’t afraid to embrace the tronica; in the spirit of which, the latest single he’s released from his superb solo album, The View From Halfway Down (read our review of the album here), comes subtly rerubbed through the prisms of Pye Corner Audio. …
TRACK: Reid Willis – ‘Finger To Pulse’: dark tech from new Mesh soundscaper
MESH, the exploratory techno label run by the brilliant Max Cooper, has added another complex and textural talent to its roster with the signing of American soundscaper Reid Willis, who’s set to debut his first full-length release for the label this Thursday. He’s preceding that deep and hallucinatory album, Mother Of, with a single drop …
TRACK: Rutger Hoedemaekers – ‘The Invention Of The Moon’: fragile wonder from Jóhann Jóhannsson collaborator
YOU MAY or may not be enough of an aficionado of modern composition to have come across Rutger Hoedemaekers, who’s recently signed to FatCat’s superb leftfield and experimental modern composition imprint, 130701 – but if this particular area of our musical landscape grabs you by the heart, you soon will be and frankly, damn well …
SEE: Alex Jayne – ‘Pictures’: grand introspection about letting go
LONDON songstress Alex Jayne, who’s released a triptych of potent, observational pop nuggets this year, is drawing down the curtain on 2020 with one final single, “Pictures”, again penned from the heart. Watch the Laurie Barraclough-directed video below. It’s a slow burn with a grand vocal performance: fragile, yet still soaring, you can really feel …
NEWS: Neil Cowley announces solo album for February; hear ‘She Lives In Golden Sands’
BRITISH pianist Neil Cowley, who released a septet of albums sitting astride the point where jazz begins to shade into modern composition and tronica over a period of ten years from 2006, has been on something of a musical journey. His previous combo, the Neil Cowley Trio, climaxed in the piano and tronica-led excellence of …
PREMIERE: Farmer Dave & The Wizards of the West – ‘Right Vibration’: Beachwood Sparks man right back in the psych saddle
FARMER DAVE SCHER may be better known to you from the string of excellent bands he’s both been in and collaborated with down the years. He was a member of brilliant West Coast country-psych outfit Beachwood Sparks, who took on Sade’s “By Your Side” and completely won (and actually chaps, while we’re here, could we …
TRACK: Lizzie Reid announces debut EP; hear ‘Always Lovely’
YOU HAVE to say, rising Essex indie imprint Seven Four Seven Six can count its blessings in enticing emerging Glasgow songwriter Lizzie Reid to its ranks. She’s announced her debut EP, Cubicle, for the label, which’ll be out on January 22nd; in celebration of which she’s shared a track from it, “Always Lovely” – which …
ALBUM REVIEW: Subp Yao – ‘Infra Aqual’: deep into the dark IDM ocean trenches
If you’re a fan of the shearing and crushing end of the dance music spectrum – anything from (on-form) The Prodigy through Harthouse and Tresor styles – and fancy the idea of that real defleshed aesthetic spliced with some darker downbeatz interludes, this is a record you’d find rewarding to explore
ALBUM REVIEW: Ian William Craig & Daniel Lentz – ‘FRKWYS Vol.16: In A Word’: fragile, seductive experimenta for voice, tape and piano is
Ian William Craig & Daniel Lentz’s FRKWYS Vol.16: In A Word is a fragile and beautiful work for classical voice, piano, and tape decay, roaming across a broad and brittle hinterland between Gorecki and Basinski