News: Yann Tiersen announces an album for August, ‘Kerber’; see the video for a first track, ‘Ker Al Loch’
BRETON composer Yann Tiersen, the man behind the soundtrack for Amélie and Good Bye Lenin! and modern classical genius has announced he is to release a new album, Kerber, for Mute on August 27th, for which there’ll be a few lovely limited vinyl options (see below); and it comes with a first taster today, with …
Track: Last Days of April – ‘Alone’: a readymade and prescient fuzzpop anthem
STOCKHOLM’S lovely Last Days of April, with singer and guitarist Karl Larsson the ever-present guiding light, are firing into their quarter-century anniversary year with a tenth album of high-octane guitar pop fun in June: eight songs that look a life with a bittersweet, fuzzy melody, entitled Even The Good Days Are Bad. Today they’ve dropped …
See: The beautiful animation for Cheval Sombre’s ‘Sunlight In My Room’ ahead of his second stunning LP of the year
HE REALLY is spoiling us, is Cheval Sombre, the transporting, ethereal folk-shoegaze guising of Chris Porpora; who, not content with the hushed emotional whirlwind of Time Waits For No One, his album from back in February, is shortly to drop his second album of the year, an album that works in lighter correspondence with the …
Track: GoGo Penguin celebrate the release of ‘GGP/RMX’ with a video for the lush Cornelius remix – and launch a beer
MANCHESTER instrumental trio GoGo Penguin have released an absolutely superb, eclectic remix album, GGP/RMX on Blue Note today, bringing together talents such as Squarepusher, Clark, 808 State, James Holden, Machinedrum and so many more to spiral their most recent, eponymous album out into delicious fractal directions. It really looks likely to be remixes set of …
Track: Ishmael Ensemble – ‘Morning Chorus’: Bristol collective sans frontières deliver intelligence and lushness
BRISTOL jazz explorers Ishmael Ensemble are flexing their embouchures and are ready to step on and out from their acclaimed debut set from two years back, A State of Flow, a love letter to jazz and the capital of the South West, pushing out into dub, the dancefloor, ambient and more. The new album is …
Track: Glassmasterer – ‘Turn On The Big Machines’: an old-skool acid banger from the eclectic Glaswegian
GLASSMASTERER, the obscure musical reproduction process adopted as the operational codename for eclectic Glaswegian musician Lewis Bigham, has today dropped just a teensy bit of a banger, “Turn On The Big Machines”; you can dive into the accompanying visuals below. Lewis has previously wended his way through folk, hiphop, jazz and funk; all’s fish to …
Track: Louien – ‘Fire’: a track of ethereal grace teases for next month’s EP
WITH her No Tomorrow EP due out a month from now, Norwegian indie-folkie Louien has one final come-hither single to share with us, after the bold country rock of “Better Woman” and the effortlessly heart-stealing “Deep Within”; that track’s called “Fire”, and you warm yourself at its flame below. She’s left behind the exploration of …
See: The video for Alasdair Roberts og Völvur’s ‘The Green Chapel’: fine folk in Nordic collaboration heralds a new set for Drag City
HE’S GRACED us with a very Northern European and delicious take on introspective folk since that trio of lovely albums, The Rye Bears A Poison, Daylight Saving and The Night Is Advancing as Appendix Out, beginning back in ’97; and it should come as no surprise that a man whose music arguably sounds best with …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles freewheel us through great handpicked tracks
BILL MACKAY, the Chicago-based guitarist, improviser of note and all-round scion of six strings, sure loves to enter into a two-way conversation with other artists with reliably beautiful results; witness the brace of albums he’s recorded with the freewheelin’ Ryley Walker, Land Of Plenty and Spiderbeetlebee. And loving that American instrumental guitar tradition in all its iterations, from …
See: Fuzzy Lights – ‘Maiden’s Call’: wood-smoky acid folk beauty from returning Cambridge collective
IT’S BEEN all of eight years now since Cambridgeshire post-folk collective Fuzzy Lights have graced our ears with an album, that being Rule Of Twelfths; but the planets have aligned favourably for such a sonic missive and, scrying the near future, their fourth album of atmospheric acid-folk, Burials, will be handed down to us come …