See: Craig Fortnam – ‘Ark’: North Sea Radio Orchestra man sets course for a July solo album, two by two
DEEPLY rooted in a leftfield English folk music tradition, composer and singer for North Sea Radio Orchestra and Arch Garrison (whose excellent last album, The Bitter Lay, we reviewed here), Craig Fortnam is finally to step out solo with an album, Ark, due for release mid-July. In announcing that today, he’s revealed the video for …
See: Andy Bell’s ‘See My Friends’ 10″ is out today; watch the video for the gloriously electronica-psych Pye Corner Audio remix of ‘The Commune’
ANDY BELL’S delicious Ever Decreasing Circles series continues today with a rather too desirable yellow vinyl 10″, the See My Friends EP. The EP features the two tracks from Andy solo debut 7″, “Plastic Bag” and “The Commune”, itself a hyper-limited release as part of Sonic Cathedral’s Singles Club in the winter of 2019, and …
News: Erasure to release ‘The Neon Remixed’ to end July – watch the lyric video for a new track, ‘Secrets’; British and European dates announced for the autumn
STRIDING across the synthpop world for 36 years now in a career absolutely without parallel, Vince Clarke and Andy Bell are back with a remixes take on last year’s album, The Neon; and they’ve also announced a string of dates across the UK and Europe for the autumn. Double whammy! The Neon Remixed collects together …
See: Helvetia – ‘Rocks On The Ramp’: a lo-fi basement shuffle sidles into your affections
HELVETIA – besides being the female national symbol of the Swiss, we’ll leave that aside for now, is the latest musical doings of Jason Albertini, otherwise known to your American alt.rock-lovin’ ears as precisely 33% of San Jose’s Duster; and time spent wisely as bassist for the glorious Built to Spill for six years from 2012 to 2018. He’s …
Track: Emma Kupa – ‘Happy Birthday’: loving your nearest and dearest and yourself with a sweet indie-folk tune for Lost Map
NOW THERE’S a good match between two of these isles’ loveliest indie-folk musical forces. Lost Map, the cottage caravan industry label run by Pictish Trail’s Johnny Lynch from his fastness on the Inner Hebridean island of Eigg (pop: 87 or thereabouts), thus proving you can do lovely musical things far, far away from the capital …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Bo Moore of The Peacers brings the groove
SAN FRAN’S Sic Alps, living guitar legends, were one of those bands which, with the amount of the talent in its ranks, could only burn bright and, like an unstable isotope, emit members to spin off into other musical pursuits, eventually to transform itself in a musical half-life. Tim Hellman went into the ranks of …
See: Emma Houton – ‘Bow & Balance’: a Scots murder ballad reframed as soaring ambient folk
EMMA HOUTON, the ambient-folk artist based in New York who draws on the traditional songs we’re all surrounded by and those of her Irish ancestry, has released the video for a second track to be taken from her forthcoming debut album, The Bath. It’s her plaintive, bold reworking of the traditional murder ballad “Bow And …
See: Barnaby Keen – ‘Trust Me’: a little languorous neo-psych sunshine
LONDON singer-songwriter and producer Barnaby Keen brings a little languorous neo-psych sunshine into our lives with his second single as just himself, “Trust Me”, out now on all digital streaming platforms. The tune has a vitamin-D psych-soul bliss that puts him out in the same territory as maybe Lewis Recordings’ lovely Skinshape and !K7’s James …
See: The monochrome patterning for Chris Liebing’s ‘Whispers And Wires’ (feat. Ladan): a drop of dancefloor abandon heralds a winter album
FRANKFURT techno scene founding father Chris Liebing has announced that he’ll be releasing his first album in more than three years for Mute this November, and has garlanded that announcement with a slice of airy dancefloor abandon, “Whispers And Wires”, the monochrome visual patternings accompanying which you can watch below. It simmers, surges and thrums …
Track: Alexa Rose – ‘Clearwater Park’: those endless childhood summers evoked in rootsy folk magic
WITH a third album of heartfelt, bell-clear folk songcraft due out in the autumn on Fat Possum’s Big Legal Mess imprint, Black Mountain, North Carolina-based Alexa Rose has released a sweet and ethereal evocation of those endless days of childhood summer, the sun hot and high, the evenings endless, the sense of expectancy and joy …