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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WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums exploring really gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound for a number of years now as Matchess. Her journey in this guise began in 2015 with the downtempo ambience of Somnaphoria, vocodered vocals, clock-ticking beats, swirls and aural glitter to put The Orb to shame in the cosmic …

FOLLOWING the low-slung, out-there, conscious funk rumble of last month’s single, “Be Better”, which came heralding a second album of excellence on that reliable marque Stones Throw, Virginia’s DJ Harrison has today dropped a second deep cut from that forthcoming set; it’s called “Cosmos” and it features the verbal acuity of Pink Siifu, all wrapped …

NONEXISTENT is the three-waters-meet of exceptional leftfield talents Astrud Steehouder, otherwise of Opal X and Paper Dollhouse; Alex Tucker, whose work as MICROCORPS and Grumbling Fur we’ve had occasion to be beguiled by elsewhere in these pages; and Mancunian-in-London Luke J Murray, known for his work as and with Grimescapes, Iceman Junglist Kru and Stonecirclesampler. …

I REMEMBER the first time I fell down the LOOP rabbithole, as an uninitiated 17-year-old in love with the jingle-jangle sound of early Creation Records, grappling with the situationist excellence of Bogshed and Stump; finding my way into The Fall’s This Nation’s Saving Grace with a whole armful of questions for Mark E Smith. In …

NIN3S is how Catalan progressive house DJ and producer Uner is recasting himself as he moves to explore a nuanced and intelligent jazz palette, and under which name he’s signed for London’s cool Dorado Records, home at various points to Brooklyn Funk Essentials, Jhelisa, D*Note, Beth Hirsch and others. And the first fruits of that …

A MAN who’s made his name and his fortune behind the scenes as one half of the world-bestraddling production dup Jarami, Jacob Olofsson is a name to be reckoned with behind the faders; but he’s stepping out behind a slightly retooled surname these days, entering the placidity and the calm of the modern compositional solo …

THEY’RE creating more than a bit of a buzz in their adopted New York are Momma, the fuzz-pop collective of singer-guitarists Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten, bassist Kobayashi Ritch, and drummer Zach CapittiFenton, who’ve signed on with one of London’s hottest imprints, the better to air their wares around the globe. The label to land …

SOUTHAMPTON’S roaring guitar power trio Mystic Peach release their debut EP, the evocation of the dark side of the heart in loud, loud guitars that is M?, out today; and what’s more, they’re hitting the road, too, so you’ll be able bury your head in the bass bins to your heart’s delight. That EP is …

WHERE his EP from last year, beech, got aficionados of a certain stripe of nocturnal, confessional singer-songwriters talking about great potential and one to watch, it looks like Joey Donnelly, the artist in his early twenties who appears with a guitar, a hushed voice and a bag of beautiful tunesmithery as elkyn, is set to …

THE GUITARS swirl and chime, roar with suppressed passion, the bass and drums kick in with massive propulsion; this song is heading places and you’re aboard, among noir guitars. Your protagonist? Alone, perhaps, but purposeful, exultant even’ living. Moving. Escaping. “Rolling down the road at night / Singing on your own feels right, ” he …