Album review: Matchess’s ‘Sonescent’: an irresistible flow of experimental, meditative drone recollection and conscious absence

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Album review: The Jazz Butcher – ‘The Highest In The Land’: one final pop postcard from Northampton’s foremost gent

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Album review: Black Flower – ‘Magma’: a perfumed souk of North African psych jazz from the Lowlands quintet

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BRISBANE’S Jarrod M. Mahon disappears down the rabbit hole of indiepop under the dashing name of Emerson Snowe; and he’s just released a first taster of an EP, out later this year. The track’s entitled “Frankenstein”, it’s a rather lovely slice of breezy indie, leaning out of the Chills nexus towards 1968; and you can …

ANTHEMIC Plymothians The Native have just dropped their first single of 2021, the stirring guitar anthem “Lost On You”; watch the video with us, below. Still a new band by any criteria, really – they quickly built up a fanbase by word of mouth on the back of some electric gigs down west, with a …

CATCH PRICHARD are a chamber-pop orchestral project based in the San Francisco Bay city of Oakland, who have a delightfully nuanced, baritone way with their musical stylings, the like of which you may have not heard since Tindersticks were in their early orchestral pomp. They have a new album out on April 23rd entitled I …

DANIEL MILLER’S Mute has added yet another string to its bow with the signing of Sylph, whose debut EP for the legendary imprint, Silver As It Was Before, will be out in late May; you can hear the unveiling track, “Braid” below. Sylph is the solo project of the former singer with South London post-punks …

HAILING from Lafayette, Louisiana, Renée Reed has followed up her excellent first single, “Fast One”, with a French language track, “Où est la fée” today. It’s the first song she’s released in French, reflecting her roots in the culture of her home state; and we’re told it’s one of two such on her self-titled debut album, out next month …

SUPPLYING the power of her violin to Arcade Fire from their breakthrough smash Neon Bible on; founding member of exploratory instrumental sextet Bell Orchestre, alongside Richard Parry, whose career has run contiguously with the former band; solo artist in her own right, Sarah Neufeld has her fingers in many Canadian musical pies. Initially releasing her …

MF TOMLINSON, the project of London-based, Australian singer-songwriter Michael Tomlinson, is today taking us deeper, oh! so deeper into his particular blued Montagued Terrace with a new single, “Them Apples”; the second single from his debut album, Strange Time, which is out on April 9th. Quickly following his debut EP, Last Days Of Rome, Strange Time was written slap-bang …

SO, LET’S talk krautrock. In many ways, it’s all about the rhythm, isn’t it? Think Can; think Jaki Liebezeit, that perfect control, poise, underpinning. Motorik, propulsion, but also tremendous fills and patterning. Metronomic, relentless, the beating heart of the record. Berlin’s CAMERA have that. They have their own Jaki in the shape of the excellently …

You can hear Indigo’s very essence shot right through echo. It’s never less, at any point, than extremely lovely; at many points its genuinely bloody stunning. You know when someone has that alchemical it, and boy: Indigo incontrovertibly does.
It’s not an album to have on in the background, because it’s far too arresting and enveloping, commanding. She’s royalty in waiting on the leftfield folk scene. Astonishing; buy

I really, genuinely think Tape Runs Out may one day take a place in the pantheon of the proper eccentric, intelligent British pop genii – they can turn their hands in any direction they wish, know how to arrange a tune so it makes you sit bolt upright, aren’t afraid to push that tune in whichever stylistic direction it seems to demand; yet are also completely enthralled to the brilliance of a well-turned pop song. Brilliant, insouciant and intelligent