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, and one of the funniest tweeters in music, Ryley Walker has just dropped a new track, “Axis Bent”, from his early April album Course In …
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 to that initial spark: the creative act. The initial trio of bassist and violinist Clément Libes, drummer Damien Gouzou and guitarist Théophile Antolinos didn’t even …
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 could be lifelong friends, have announced a remix album for Blue Note, to be entitled GGP/RMX; and boy have they lined up a mighty cast …
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! Soul, in May, by way of previewing which he’s just dropped a lead single, the (almost) title track “Lo Soul”. Take a listen and read …
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, or are like a kid at Christmas while waiting for the lusciousness of Chihei Hatakeyama’s new album, then attendez-vous, s’il vous plait; for Erased Tapes …
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
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”. Even now, in adulthood, having returned to Japan, he speaks English, German and Japanese at home. His internal response to this deep-rooted search for meaning …
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 anything to go by, maybe even they haven’t. But if trippy electronic sound is your bag, and it oughta be, then perhaps now is an …
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 a mutual wish to explore the folk and the blues; a business they’ve been about over five albums in the time since. They’ve taken the …
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 2nd; and you can watch that below. Singer, drummer and producer Paige Stark says the song “… is about the challenges of romantic love and how …