Chris Sawle, Author at Backseat Mafia

Track: Sam Genovese – ‘Signals For Signs’: ambience with a ceremonial concept ahead of April’s album

“SIGNALS FOR SIGNS” is a hard cut to horns heralding and welcoming the euphoria of the new. “The music invokes the sound of a union, not unlike a marriage ceremony.…

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Track: Hainbach -‘Funktionsverlust’: Cold War-era technology sings its dying drone song

BERLIN’S Hainbach, the avatar for the world of the sonic and the aural which Stefan Goetsch comes out to invent under, is all set to release a new investigation of…

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Album review: Deniz Cuylan – ‘No Such Thing As Free Will’: a pastoral instrumental guitar gem

No Such Thing As Free Will is a much prettier and more enveloping record than words can convey; it has a really nice poise between the disciplines of the leftfield, the guitar soli and that of bright folk melody. In this regard if you're a fan of early to mid-period James Blackshaw, but also very much the quartet of 'free folk' albums Stockholm's Andreas Söderström released as ASS in the decade from 2006, you'll find an awful lot to love. A bright, studious, harmonic, pastoral gem

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Track: Chaz Knapp – ’97F At 9PM’: The Texas heat captured in off-centre organ drune

CHAZ KNAPP, the Dallas-based lo-fi organ frontiersman whose previous single drop, the warm ‘n’ weird “My TMJ Pain Might Be An Abscess” and accompanying blood-soaked video we fell down the…

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Track: Loney Dear – ‘Oppenheimer’; the atomic age examined delicately in falsetto and solo piano

LONEY DEAR is the wholly unusual solo vision of Emil Svanängen, part of the stable of talent over at Peter Gabriel’s Real World imprint, with a curiously timeless and very intelligent take…

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Track: Kalbells – ‘Diagram Of Me Sleeping’: languid synth’n’sax pop to wrap up in the covers to

YOU WANT dreaminess? Kalbells, the collaborative synthpop-cum-artpop project of Kalmia Traver, Angelica Bess, Sarah Pedinotti, and Zoë Brecher, has just dropped a dear little nugget of Eighties-inflected pillowtalk bliss, “Diagram…

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Track: My Name Is Ian – ‘For Love’; Welsh collective bring the baggy

MY NAME IS IAN, the lo-fi trio outta Cardiff with a fantastic line in song titles (“If I Was A Gentoo Penguin, I’d Find You The Smoothest Pebble”, anyone?) and…

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News: Osees come firing out with another Levitation Session live stream in April; see a taster, ‘Snickersee’

POSSIBLY the absolute best live band in the world right now and for quite a while, John Dwyer’s Osees are determined we don’t go through our second pandemic spring without…

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Track: Gizelle Smith – ‘King Of The Mountain’: Mighty Mocambos soul queen takes Kate Bush into orbit

GIZELLE SMITH, the glorious voice of deep funk freestylers The Mighty Mocambos, alumnus of WahWah 45s, Big Crown and other rather fine labels that should tell you everything you need…

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News: Neil Cowley presents a live-streamed recital live from London upon the release of ‘Hall Of Mirrors’

IN CELEBRATION of the release of his rather excellent longform essay into piano and electronica, Hall Of Mirrors, Neil Cowley is presenting a live-streamed performance from London’s Lafayette. The performance,…

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