Chris Sawle, Author at Backseat Mafia

Track: Ryley Walker’s ‘Axis Bent’ is a baroque and complex glory; his new album’s out soon

TROUBADOUR genius touched by the hand of the Tim Buckley, collaborator on some very fine albums, sole architect of yet other records that fall very much in that same category,…

View Post

View Post

SEE: Toulouse post-rockers BRUIT ≤ announce April album; see the video for ‘Renaissance’

ITS MEMBERS having been through the major label wringer, Toulousain post-rock outfit BRUIT ≤ had no desire to make the same mistakes again; and its members decided to strip back…

View Post

View Post

NEWS: GoGo Penguin announce Blue Note remix album with a stellar cast; hear the MachineDrum remix of ‘Atomised’

THE LEFTFIELD, inventive Mancunian piano trio GoGo Penguin, who work out in the truly creative zones where dancefloor and intelligence and a jazzy feel bump into each other, decided they…

View Post

View Post

Track: Roddy Woomble to release a new solo album in May; hear a first single, ‘Lo Soul’; there’s tour dates, too

FORMER Idlewild man turned solo songcrafter of considerable talent, Roddy Woomble has finally turned his hand to a follow-up to 2017’s The Deluder; he’ll be releasing his new album, Lo!…

View Post

View Post

See: the video for Masayoshi Fujita’s ‘Thunder’; a flow of sonic delight for electronica and marimba on Erased Tapes

IF YOU like your music deliciously abstract, abstractedly delicious; arranged beautifully, an absolute world of evocative sound; fell hard, for instance, for the albums Ryuichi Sakamoto made with Alva Noto,…

View Post

View Post

ALBUM REVIEW: Cameron Knowler & Eli Winter – ‘Anticipation’: excellent studies in twin guitar primitivism

We don't get to hear quite enough of the modern fingerpicking style this side of the Atlantic, so if you've drifted off from the form somewhat since Jack Rose passed, or wish to explore beyond William Tyler; then hell; start right here. A grand tour of two instruments and two musical minds woven together so tightly and also unravelling like fronds of a fern, seeking all the multiplicity of new directions in folk. An excellent record

View Post

View Post

Track: Ueda Takasayu – ‘Every Clouds Calls My Name’: Phantom Limb debutante’s impressionistic, psychotropic odyssey

BORN in Hiroshima and raised partly in Germany and Austria, debuting Phantom Limb artist Ueda Takayasu says he spent his childhood feeling stateless, distant from his own cultural identity and curiously “un-Japanese”.…

View Post

View Post

Track: UNKNOWN ME’s ‘Open The Sense’ is a rainbow ambient bonbon

YOU QUITE possibly haven’t come across UNKNOWN ME, a Japanese collective with a very particularly glimmering, space-age approach to the the business of ambience; in fact, if their moniker is…

View Post

View Post

See: The Harpoonist & The Axe Murderer – ‘Forever Fool (Post-Apocalipstick)’: a late-night stoner chillout reimagining

A VANCOUVER duo who met by chance at a jobbing jingle recording session some decade and a half ago, the curiously named The Harpoonist & The Axe Murderer soon discovered…

View Post

View Post

See: Tashaki Miyaki – ‘Castaway’: yearning, leftfield LA guitar pop

THE LA dreampop trio Tashaki Miyaki have dropped a a single and accompanying video of the title song from their forthcoming second album, Castaway, which will be released on July…

View Post