SEE: Sigma’s ‘High On You’: it’s a summer club earworm
SIGMA, who garnered a Brit Awards nomination in 2015 for their chart-topping “Nobody To Love” are back with another, windows-down, sultry summer city evening earworm in the shape of “High On You”, featuring the vocal talents of fellow Brits nominee and chart-topper John Newman. Sitting on the foundations of a classic piano house intro, the …
TRACK: Martha Hill’s ‘Grilled Cheese’ is proud, anthemic indie
NEWCASTLE guitar-toter Martha Hill has been around on the SoundCloud/Bandcamp scene for a couple of years now, steadily, writing, recording and releasing a clutch of songs for download. She left her rural home north of the border in her teens, travelled, and later settled by the Tyne to make music. She says that she “writes …
TRACK: Bastien Keb’s ‘Rabbit Hole’ has a bone-deep 3am chill
AS renaissance men in the underground music scene go, Bastien Keb has to be near the top of the pole. Reckoning himself to be a guitarist first and foremost, he’s also adept on the trumpet, bass, drums, piano, flute, among other instruments: be they bought, borrowed, donated or found. Wearing another hat as a composer …
SEE: Karen Gwyer remixes Nathan Fake’s ‘Tbilisi’
TAKE two of the more eclectic producers working in British IDM today, and let one loose on a track by t’other. It’s a tried and tested formula, but it always produces results worthy of your ears. Nathan Fake – Norfolk-born, sometime Ninja Tune producer, who wends between pared-back, dancefloor tackle and way leftfield collaborations with …
DROPPIN KNOWLEDGE: track: Busty and the Bass feat. Macy Gray – ‘Out Of Love’
CANADIAN jazz/soul/groove octet Busty and the Bass came together during their first week as students on the jazz program at Montreal’s McGill University back in 2011. Beginning as an instrumental act, they played any and every gig they could, taking $100 for a three-hour set or exchanging tunes for wine and hors d’oeuvres at a …
TRACK: Teletronix – ‘Metropolitan’ – Quantic gets bitten by the 8-bit
WILL HOLLAND – aka eclectic polyrhythmic producer Quantic – has just released a strictly limited, clear vinyl 7” (250 only!) – under the latest of his many aliases, Teletronix. And for those of you who like your beats to carry big retrotronic vibes, this is a treat. A-side “Metropolitan” grafts the Latin percussive polyrhythms he …
NEWS: Bill Callahan drops a gold record in September
EVERYONE’S favourite gravelly, bass-voiced, sad-eyed chronicler, Bill Callahan, has announced a new LP – Gold Record – just a year on since Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest. While Bill was preparing to take Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest out on the road across the globe, for a period of perhaps a year, he opened the notebooks, pulled …
Album review: Sofie – Cult Survivor
STEEPED in music and musicality for most of her life, Viennese chanteuse Sofie Fatourechi has been quietly working away in the industry in various guises for a long while; but now, after a paradigm shift in her life, it’s time for a little limelight for herself with her first album of songs, Cult Survivor, on …
TRACK: Jane’s Party shake the powerpop fizz on ‘Change Your Mind’
THE BOX-FRESH, bounce-along-in-your-DMs zing of Jane’s Party really belies how long this Canadian four-piece have been in the game. Originally meeting in 2006, singer-guitarists Jeff Giles and Tom Ionescu, bassist Devon Richardson and drummer Zach Sutton are actually five albums deep into their recording career, but not for them the hoar and tarnish of too …
TRACK: Sean O’Hagan – ‘The Wild Are Welcome’: the Llamas collide with future soul
HE’S a man of talents, is Sean O’Hagan. Sometime member or creative force in Microdisney, Stereolab, and The High Llamas, he also turns a neat sentence, too. We haven’t heard from him musically in a little while, so my ears pricked up at the announcement of this one-off single release, “The Wild Are Welcome”, which …