Track: Bandicoot – ‘Dark Too Long’: bringing the glammy punk to Libertino
WHO ARE Bandicoot? Is the question on your lips, and even their own, if you judge by their social media handle across the various platforms. Their new single for Libertino, “Dark Too Long”, out on February 26th, helps reveal a little more. Out today and embedded below, they’ve certainly got the rock ‘n’ roll; guitars …
Tracks: Hear ‘Mothra’ and ‘Ecce! Ego!’ ahead of Leon Vynehall’s new album for Ninja
NOTHING IS STILL, Leon Vynehall’s third album and his debut outing for Ninja Tune, absolutely elevated the British electronica explorer to the top echelons of cutting-edge creativity in the form; don’t believe me? Luxuriate in the swoon of “From The Sea/It Looms (Chapters I & II)” and then come back to me. (Oh yeah, Ninja …
Track: Brooks Williams, Findlay Napier, Boo Hewerdine and Kris Drever – ‘Farewell To Gold’: cult singers in quartet for a dream made reality
IT’S PRETTY much a cult, folky singer-songwriting dream; despite the lockdown and the all of it, that Cambridge Americana adept Brooks Williams, former The Bible! man Boo Hewerdine, Scotland’s Findlay Napier and Lau singer and potent artist in his own right, Kris Drever, should combine forces in song. … And so it came to pass, …
Album review: Samuel Sharp – ‘Patterns Various’: diaristic, timeless sax explorations
Patterns Various sits in a emerging tradition of very beautiful single-instrument essays; a very personal journey, and a very English one, captures its moments so well that people will be sure to revisit it for decades to come
News: Andy Bell announces trio of EPs and a compilation; see the GLOK remix of ‘Indica’
RIDE guitarist, singer and sonic explorer Andy Bell has announced a series of three EPs and a compilation to keep you satiated with leftfield shoegazey pop supreme right the way from spring to midsummer. It looks lush; see for yourself. The series of EPs is entitled Ever Decreasing Circles and will begin on April 9th …
Track: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles – ‘I See God’: that old time religion beautifully recast for guitar and banjo
KEYS, the soon-come long-playing conversation between Chicago’s Bill MacKay on guitar and North Carolina’s Nathan Bowles at the banjo, ranges back and forth across the great bluegrass and guitar soli traditions, both pushing forward with free-flying chemistry and grounding their essaying in the canon of the form; and it’s the latter angle they’re examining on …
Track: Mike Lazarev – ‘Finale’: Ukrainian composer drops the final curtain from next week’s delicious mini-album
THE IDEA of a soundtrack to an imaginary film is something we here at Backseat Mafia love straight off the bat, right back to when we fell for Barry Adamson’s rather wonderful Moss Side Story all those years ago. Injazero Records, the imprint overseen by London and Istanbul-based producer and journalist Siné Buyuka, which we’ve …
See: The Lottery Winners feat. Louise Wener – ‘Bad Things’: a sweet pop drop with sadness in its heart
LANCASHIRE’S Lottery Winners, who we last touched base with last month when they got it on with Frank Turner for the cans-aloft-in-a-field anthem in the making, “Start Again”, have got together with Sleeper’s indie femme fatale Louise Wener for a sweet pop drop with a little sadness in its heart, “Bad Things”; you can watch …
Album review: Cheval Sombre – ‘Time Waits For No One’: a luxuriant, timeless and meditative return
Time Waits For No One is not without its darknesses, its sadnesses, but they’re approached with the calm, supplicant grace that sits right in the heart of such feelings; and it is bloody beautiful. It’s an amulet, a perfect prescription; you can use it to ward off the world. Really, do
Track: Resplandor – ‘Adore’: exceptional shoegaze from the Netherlands, via Lima
IF YOU love the way shoegaze can really thrill, really transport, with that amazing combination of sweetly abrasive guitar and blurry, beautiful vocals – less the dream pop thing, for all its joys, I mean the real heartwood, that surge and the gleam that can’t help but induce ecstasy – then you really want to …