Chris Sawle, Author at Backseat Mafia

TRACK: Sara Wolff – ‘Bad Thoughts Compilation’ – welcome to Sara’s homespun folk-pop world

SHE LEFT the big, big vistas of her native Bergen, Norway, and relocated to Liverpool in order to study; found she really liked it by the Mersey, decided to stick…

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News: Sony launches XXIM progressive instrumental imprint: see Eydís Evensen’s ‘Brotin’

SONY has decided to get itself a little of the modern compositional pie and to that end, has set up a new progressive instrumental label, XXIM Records; which has opened…

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Track / Video

NEWS: Matthew E. White and Lonnie Holley announce avant-garde folk album; hear ‘This Here Jungle of Moderness/Composition 14’

THEY may at first somewhat unlikely bedfellows: Matthew E. White, who arrived back in 2011 with his debut album The Big Inner, seemingly a fully formed gentleman of classic Southern…

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NEWS: Chad Vangaalen announces a March album for Sub Pop; see the properly brilliant animation for ‘Samurai Sword’

HE’S SO much fun, right? Sub Pop’s favourite Albertan singer-songwriter, Chad VanGaalen – he’s made his whimsical home at the Seattle imprint since 2006’s Skelliconnection – has revealed that actually,…

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ALBUM REVIEW: The Telescopes – ‘Songs Of Love And Revolution’: sexy, sleazy psych set

No Fender Jazzmasters or Vox Teardrops were likely harmed during the course of this record, but many are reported to have emerged bruised, sweat-slicked and smiling. Dirty, sexy and necessary

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ALBUM REVIEW: Tele Novella – ‘Merlynn Belle’: a quirky country-psych-folk charmer

Tele Novella's humble country-psych-folk sincerity is magic. They have, quite simply, a belief in the power of song. Timeless, quirky and utterly charming.

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SEE: Monsieur Minimal – ‘Easteria’: the new sound of Greek psych

WELL, wow. If you haven’t fallen into the world of Monsieur Minimal, that’s quite the place to go for a sun-kissed visit. He’s outta Greece with a really pretty entrancing…

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SEE: Art & Spencer – ‘Caravan’: guitar soli steps into ambient atmospheres

ART & SPENCER is a newly forged collaboration between Juan Martínez Pérez, aka Elson Complex, a fingerstyle acoustic guitarist of Andalusian and Catalonian heritage who loves soundscapes with acres of…

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TRACK: Pino Palladino, Blake Mills – ‘Just Wrong’ – joint album for Impulse! in March

WHEN it was initially sketched out as project, Notes With Attachments, Welsh bass legend Pino Palladino and Californian songwriter and producer Blake Mills’ forthcoming album for New Deal/Impulse!, was all…

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TRACK: Confucius MC – ‘Lanterns’: the first essential UK hip-hop of ’21 has entered the building

IT MIGHT just be the first properly essential UK hip-hop track of 2021, and it comes from Peckham’s Confucius MC, longtime friend of Kae Tempest, teacher, outreacher; and it’s a…

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