Chris Sawle, Author at Backseat Mafia

TRACK: Monzanto Sound – ’23’: off-kilter dub-punk grooves

THERE’S a real skeletal dub-funk groove, with this offbeat sway and disjuncture; on the one hand, it’s deep and smokin’, on the other, wiry and angular: very The Pop Group.…

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SEE: No Age – ‘Turned To String’: new video from low-slung noise rockers

SO LOOK, it’s not even news anymore: 2020, and the world is busy going to hell in a handcart. So just what is a scuzzily excellent, guitar-totin’ US alt.rock band…

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SEE: Siv Jakobsen – ‘A Feeling Felt Or A Feeling Made’: folk as delicate as a bee’s wing

NORWEGIAN folk auteur Siv Jakobsen is possessed of this tremendous, fragile voice which also has astonishing power. Today she has released a video for the beautiful, lamenting delicacy of “A…

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SEE: Jaga Jazzist – ‘Tomita’: jazz collective quest towards the ‘Pyramid’

THE SMALL Norwegian city of Tønsberg, 100km south-west of Oslo, isn’t somewhere you necessarily think of when you think of grand centres of jazz. New Orleans, yep, New York City?…

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ALBUM REVIEW: Jaga Jazzist – ‘Pyramid’: graceful, off-world jazz suites remind us how 2020 should be

JAZZ is back in a big way on these shores, with The Comet is Coming, BCUK, Nubia Garcia all absolutely tearing it up with triumphant, high-profile shows – at least…

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ALBUM REVIEW: Figueroa – ‘The World As We Know It’: shimmering psych-tronica from Amon Tobin

AMON TOBIN has been in there for quite a while now, toying with our heads with very fine, playful, exploratory and sometimes just wonderfully weird sonic artistry. Rio-born, he arrived…

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TRACK: Tim Englehardt – ‘Shine’: propulsive tech-house atmospheres

TIM ENGELHARDT has been quietly carving away in the world of deep tech- and deep house grooves for a while now. Based in Westerwald, a low and mountainous region on…

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ALBUM REVIEW: Box of Chocolates – ‘Fearful Symmetry’: early Brooklyn stirrings from Will Oldham, et al

EVERY era of music has those great, lost nuggets which slip out, are adored by the knowing few, lost to the many; are whispered about and traded for ever-inflating sums…

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TRACK: The Kondoors – ‘Mr Rain’: classic boy-girl power balladry wants your heart

THE KONDORS is the musical project of Gavin Conder and Jess Greenfield, who were involved romantically long before they were a musical item. Jess has come up through her involvement…

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ALBUM REVIEW: Romare – ‘Home’: fashioning broken beat into a cerebral confection

HE’S been around a bit, has Archie Fairhurst, the artiste who releases cerebral and multifaceted grooves for Ninja Tune as Romare. It’s an overused trope, but Archie really has: he…

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