ALBUM REVIEW: Scrimshire – ‘Believers Vol.1’: eclectic soul-jazz bliss that’ll wash you clean
Among all the circumstantial dirt and viral grime and societal schisming of 2020, hearing Believers Vol. 1 is like having your brain washed and massaged
ALBUM REVIEW: Various Artists – Selva Selects: Thunder Claps: a year in Quantic’s superb new imprint
Selva Selects: Thunder Claps wins big in touching on so many tangents in the world of music, da funk, da disco, Latin, electro: it’s so eclectic, but it all works because Quantic is like a dowsing rod for a great tune. He’s the constant, the overseer, the constant thread, and this compilation is the absolute mustard. Year-end podium position tackle.
PREMIERE: Nancy Gaffield and The Drift – ‘Song Of The Shingle’: Kent’s High Weald evoked in music and poem
THERE’S been a little upswell in recent times of interesting and brilliantly evocative collaborations exploring the spoken word and the poetic, and how that plays against music. Slowly unfolding atmospheres, words chosen carefully, set to reduce to a fine and rich sauce, every syllable counting. The touchstone for me is Will Burns and Hannah Peel’s …
TRACK: The Damn Straights – ‘The World’s On Fire (Let It Burn)’: new collab drops a fiery banger
THE DAMN STRAIGHTS is a transatlantic collaboration between Exeter’s Adam Gibbons, aka the connoisseur’s modern soul connoisseur, Lack of Afro, and Maryland rhymer Herbal T, who’d actually shared musical admiration and had decided to hook up and make some bangers quite a while ago. Adam, of whom one tweeter replying to a single drop we …
SEE: Sofie – ‘Try To Reach Me’: languid, cinematic, European pop
STONES THROW’s intelligent Viennese chanteuse Sofie, who released one of the cleverest albums of the year with the graceful, European pop of Cult Survivor back in June (read our review here), has just shared a video for one of the loveliest tunes therein, “Try to Reach Me”. You can watch below. The video, directed by …
TRACK: The Dawdler – ‘Sign Of Growth’: a sad, cruciverbalist shoegaze rush
THE DAWDLER is the low-key musical alias of Tyneside singer-songwriter John Edgar, who describes himself on his Twitter profile as “Ambient pop. Sad.” He’s more than made us sit up to attention with the brace of songs he’s released since signing to London indie Akira Records: the heart-wrenchingly sad “Lava Lamps”, about the collection of …
CASSETTE REVIEWS: A trio of leftfield beauties from Fritz Pape, Stephen Molyneux, and Laura Luna Castillo
WHITED SEPULCHRE is one of those brilliant little labels nibbling away at, and fascinated by, what’s happening out on the margins. The artists driven less by adoring teens and the bucks, and much, much more by exploring what’s possible, following their muse ever deeper into a particular aesthetic. As la mode, many of Whited Sepulchre’s …
PREMIERE: Kazumichi Komatsu – ‘Orca’: textural dreamstate IDM
KAZUMICHI KOMATSU is a Japanese electronicist and multi-media artist who you can place quite firmly in a grand tradition of sonic playfulness and interrogation that also includes microsound artist Ryoji Ikeda (with whom he’s shared a stage – as well as The Field and Julia Holter) and the free-roaming IDM of Susumu Yokota. He’s been …
SEE: Sophie Jamieson – ‘Concrete’: a siren song of a road accident teases for her EP
THEY say write about what you know; and Sophie Jamieson is a returning artist with a captivating voice who is absolutely unafraid of such a prospect. She’s been preparing for the forthcoming Release EP since late summer, sprinkling our consciousnesses with finely honed gems, diaries of her frontline, such as “Forward”, elucidating her descent into …
TRACK: Andy Cooper – ‘Heart’: grandstanding old-skool science
FORMER rhymes scientists in Californ-I-A’s favourite old-skool hip-hop trio Ugly Duckling, Andy Cooper has teamed back up with his former decks buddy Young Einstein for his latest single drop, “Heart”. Take a listen to some real breakz ‘n’ rhymez science below. “Heart” brings grandstanding brass, helium samples, and a big freak-off boom of a bass …