Album review: Matchess’s ‘Sonescent’: an irresistible flow of experimental, meditative drone recollection and conscious absence

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Album review: The Jazz Butcher – ‘The Highest In The Land’: one final pop postcard from Northampton’s foremost gent

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Album review: Black Flower – ‘Magma’: a perfumed souk of North African psych jazz from the Lowlands quintet

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IN CASE you haven’t entered its fascinating, layered, granular, beautiful world yet, rest assured that Max Cooper’s Earth EP is one of the absolute highlights of IDM in 2020: what is, in the most reductive sense, a four-track techno 12″ is in fact an exercise in irresistible groove, synaesthesic sound sculpture, enthralling film collaborations – …

RIGHT. First things first, and full disclosure: we adore Bastien Keb over here at Backseat Mafia. His latest album, The Killing Of Eugene Peeps, is so brilliantly eclectic, multifaceted, genre-busting, that we’re running out of superlatives for it. It weaves together chilling. beautiful acoustic tunes, the best of Italian soundtrack jazz (Nicola Conte, Piero Piccioni), …

NEWCASTLE’S soaring ‘gazers Lanterns on the Lake have announced news of a new five-track EP, The Realist, which Bella Union will release on December 11th. The EP will include four new tracks as well as a reworked, stripped-down arrangement of the single, “Baddies”. And the quintet have shared that title track today; we’ve embedded it …

TENNESSEE-born Nathan Nicholson and Londoner Adam Harrison may be better known to readers as members of widescreen alt.rock outfit The Boxer Rebellion, responsible for big-hearted tunes such as “Diamonds”. Now the duo are embarking on a new chapter in collaboration with writer, director and photographer Ben Lankester to launch a new multi-disciplinary and creative three-piece, …

Crack A Light really won’t disappoint if you like guitars that shriek and howl in hardcore-stoner distress. A righteous noise purging

DALLIANCE RECORDINGS, the boutique label that’s already garnered the loveliness of Gia Margaret and Common Holly to its hearthside, has hit a triple score on singer-songwriters by adding Welsh border country talent Ailsa Tully to its roster. Ailsa’s been plying her line in confessional pop a little while now – you may have been lucky …

WE LOVE new and upcoming bands here at Backseat Mafia. It keeps us going, looking for that next band or song that just stops you dead and totally rearranges both your brain chemistry and your day. Isn’t that the gift of music? Ladies and gents, please be upstanding to welcome aboard the delicious rollercoaster of …

COMING atcha suited and booted, dusty with the long ride in from Tucson, AZ, XIXA have released the second single from their forthcoming album, “May They Call Us Home”. You can watch the video herein. The video was directed by the amazing photographer Charlie Stout and stars fellow traveller across the wide-open landscapes of the borderland …

MAGIK MARKERS came hurtling at us from a Connecticut basement in 2001, full of fire and noise and dirt and excellence. Back then there were four of them: singer-guitarist Elisa Ambrogio, bassist John Shaw, drummer Pete Nolan and Leah Quimby, but Leah fell by the wayside back around 2006. They began plying a line in …

MONTREAL’S excellent electronica explorers Braids will embark on their second 24HRWWWORLD TOUR today, October 29th, live streaming from their studio in Montreal, playing six concerts in six different time zones in one day via the world wide web. “This is our second marathon whirlwind livestream from our studio,” they say. “Safe to say all three of …