NEWS: Cabaret Voltaire announce ‘Shadow Of Funk’ EP and longform drone sets; hear ‘Billion Dollar’
SHEFFIELD’S deep proto-industrialists Cabaret Voltaire still have so much to say, some 48 years on from first beginnings. Shadow Of Fear, released November gone, was the Cabs’ first new album in more than two decades; but in a world this darkly dystopian, how can the time not be absolutely ripe for Richard H Kirk and …
PREMIERE: Fish and Scale – ‘You Can Call Me LOVE’: swoon for a folk troubadour’s embrace
HAILING from Franconia, in southern Germany, Roland Wälzlein is on a mission to bring us glowing, stirring folk as Fish and Scales – and we’re premiering his first, rather groovy and lovely, single of the year, “You Can Call Me LOVE” here today at Backseat Mafia. As a child of 6, he underwent – and …
NEWS: Gearbox Records to release EP of Don Cherry rarities; hear ‘The Ambassador From Greenland’
LONDON’S Gearbox Recotds is carrying the torch and keeping the analogue fires burning from its own bespoke production facility in the capital, has unearthed some proper jazz treasure: a quartet of sides that Don Cherry cut for Danish Radio in the mid-Sixties; and the label is issuing ’em on wax, strickly mono, 45rpm. How about …
SEE: The video for XIXA’s ‘Eclipse’: Tucson barrio sextet go back to their roots
FOLLOWING on down that seductive, dusty road from their previous singles, September’s “Genesis of Gaea” and late October’s “May They Call Us Home”, Tucson’s TexMex rock fusioneers XIXA have dropped the video for “Eclipse”, another instalment from next month’s album, Genesis. You can watch below. It’s a rousing tune, showcasing a poppier end to the …
TRACK: Firestations – ‘The Circular’: bright as a button indiepop drop preludes March EP
LOST MAP’S quirkily lovely alt.popsters Firestations have released a really bright and moreish single, “The Circular”, ahead of their March EP, Melted Medium, which sings with a indiepop summeriness last heard around these parts with Real Estate – or, going further back, maybe even The Railway Children or something on Flying Nun. Bloody lovely, it …
NEWS: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles announce April album; see the brilliant instrumental bluegrass of ‘Joy Ride’
BILL MACKAY, the Chicago-based guitarist, improviser of note and all-round scion of six strings, sure loves to enter into a two-way conversation with other artists with reliably beautiful results; witness the brace of albums he’s recorded with the freewheelin’ Ryley Walker, Land Of Plenty and Spiderbeetlebee. There was 2019’s darker two-hander with cellist Katinka Klein, …
NEWS: Clark returns with March album for Deutsche Grammophon: hear ‘Small’
CLARK, the electronica voyager who came hurtling into our lives for Warp at the turn of the century and quickly decided his mission was to empty the bones of you – an offer in equal parts thrilling and worrying – is returning at the end of March with his ninth studio album, Playground In A …
SEE: The Fernweh – ‘The Wounds Of Love’: an excellent, returning baroque psych banger
THEIR self-titled debut back in 2018 was a bit of a cracker, frankly; they received the love from The Coral guitarist Paul Molloy last year, picking them when we popped round to his (figuratively speaking) and did a Soundtrack Of Our Lives, looking at the music he loves; and lo! they’re back, be glad, with …
SEE: Nick Schofield – ‘Ambient Architect’: modular retro-futurism full of light and grace
NICK SCHOFIELD is a Montréalais composer in love with modular synths, and who has a new album, Glass Gallery, coming out early next month, composed entirely on the legendary Prophet 600. And it’s very beautiful; uplifting, even, music for a bright future we’ve yet to realise. By day he’s a member of singer-songwriter Devon Welsh‘s …
See: Sunglasses For Jaws – ‘Walk Me Home’: enter the psychedelic pop world of Frank
DAVID BARDON and Oscar Robertson have been burrowing quietly into the London psych scene since 2017 as the surreally and aptly named Sunglasses For Jaws. By day, they’re a readymade rhythm section for hire, touring the world in the business of fleshing out other people’s sound, But they’re currently more psyched right now (in both …