Chris Sawle, Author at Backseat Mafia

SEE: Le Volume Courbe take on Daniel Johnston’s ‘Mind Contorted’ with Terry Hall and Noel G

LE VOLUME COURBE, aka Charlotte Marionneau: if you love a certain cultish, Gallic erudition in your indie songwriting, you have to say it’s more than a little great to see…

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TRACK: Holy Drone – ‘Fibres’: a lovely Cheshire shoegaze drop

HOLY DRONE, Warrington’s lovely purveyors of shoegaze, are back with their first new material since last year’s blissful heathaze shimmer, “Northern Fire”. They’ve spent the past year working on new…

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TRACK: Louis-Étienne Santais – ‘Reflection 1’: a piano study for an old friend

QUEBECOIS composer Louis-Étienne Santais has only been releasing music as himself, for himself, for a matter of months now; but he’s already racked something like two million streams on Spotify…

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SEE: Tele Novella – ‘Words That Stay’: another beautiful, quirky lament

VINTAGE shop owner Natalie Ribbons and rare record collector Jason Chronis had been kicking around in various musical projects in Austin, Texas, but knew they could fashion something pretty special when they…

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TRACK: Cabaret Voltaire – ‘What’s Goin On’: a pertinent enquiry, eerily couched

…. IT’S WELL a question we could all be asking. What, indeed, is goin’ on? Society riven; the ‘rona running riot; politicians brazenly self-serving and at new peaks of mendacity.…

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TRACK: MP Productions – ‘In My Heart’: Global Comms man returns with crisp IDM EP for Warp

A PROPER old-skool British IDM general, Mark Pritchard, the man behind Reload, one half of Global Communications (just buy 76:14, OK? Just … buy it), Harmonic 33, so many other…

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PREMIERE: See the video for KJ & The Fox’s ‘Never Gone Hill’

KJ & THE FOX is the glimmering, shimmering indie project of Keith Johns Adams, who’s been releasing fun and beguiling, raw ‘n’ folksy indie tunesmithery for a while now as…

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TRACK: Marie Bashiru – ‘Joyride’: a little Afrofolk-soul sun to help us through

DEARLY beloved, gathered here today: let’s let a little smooth Afrosoul sun into our lives to keep the harsh bite of Lockdown 2: The Return at bay. And what better…

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TRACK: Maps’ ‘Sleep Today’ teases for a new four-tracker

AFTER the brilliantly varied series of remixes of his work he commissioned and dropped throughout the summer – featuring artists as diverse as soundtracks scion Simon Fisher Turner, Andy Bell…

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ALBUM REVIEW: Gabriel Ólafs – ‘Absent Minded Reworks’: Icelandic piano prodigy receives very fine electronica rerubs

ICELANDIC composer and pianist Gabríel Ólafs – who wrote his debut LP, Absent Minded, aged just 14 – is always happy to offer his beautiful music for reinterpretation – by…

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