Chris Sawle, Author at Backseat Mafia

SEE: The animation for Kratos Himself’s ‘Shift’: complex beatz atmospheres

KRATOS HIMSELF is the singular musical vision of Jethro Kratos Hopmans, whose mission is to meld icy electronics, potent cinematic beats and an expansive library of sound recordings in order…

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SEE: New Bums – ‘Tuned To Graffiti’: insouciant, folksy beauty trails for March album

NEW BUMS is the freewheelin’ two-hander of two very fine songwriters in their own right: Ben Chasny, aka psychotropic voyaging genius Six Organs of Admittance; and Donovan Quinn, formerly of…

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ALBUM REVIEW: Farmer Dave Scher & The Wizards Of The West – ‘Farmer Dave Scher & The Wizards Of The West’

Dave Scher & The Wizards Of The West is like a finely reduced sauce; it packs an awful lot of psychedelic flavour and fun into a fat half-hour. Afrobeat, surf rock, funk, straight psych, country psych, jazz, shoegaze, are all seep through a lovely record with three of four moments of proper excellence and a lot of red-eyed, 1am lava lamp big-grinned fun besides. It's good to see him back.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Jim Ghedi – ‘In The Furrows Of Common Place’: a bold, proud album of working class folk

In The Furrows Of Common Place is a bold and proud album of working class folk. It bears witness with an unflinching melodious anger - it's the first essential album of 2021

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SEE: Tape Runs Out – ‘Hospital’: sheer indiepop brilliance on Austerity

AUSTERITY RECORDS down in Brighton is one of those grassroots labels with a nose for coming excellence – doing, to paraphrase the Creation compilation – god’s work. And boy oh…

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SEE: Swansea Sound – ‘I Sold My Soul On eBay’: railing against the royalty rate with pop concept

INDIEPOP with the most resonant of political points for an industry beleaguered by the pandemic and one in which anyway, let’s be frank, artists are being screwed all ends by…

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ALBUM REVIEW: John Dwyer, Nick Murray, Brad Caulkins, Tom Dolas and Greg Coates – ‘Witch Egg’

There's so many ideas in Witch Egg, from so many genres and eras: mod, krautrock, free jazz, even acid jazz; they're arrived at, explored at once, captured, moved on from. It speaks much of the restless creativity at the heart of this, John Dwyer. It's quite a journey for a fringe music head

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SEE: Tele Novella – ‘Paper Crown’: The Great American Songbook remade in absolute sweetness

WITH their wholly seductive new album Merlynn Belle just around the corner now – eeep! exciting, it’ll be out on Kill Rock Stars on February 5th – Texas psych-European-retro-country duo Tele Novella…

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TRACK: El Michels Affair to release new album of funk exotica; hear ‘Murkit Gem’, feat. Piya Malik

EL MICHELS AFFAIR are going all out with the most transporting global groove these days; witness the brilliance of “Dhuaan”, the Hindu funk exotica single drop from last summer, which…

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SEE: The animated video for Samuel Sharp’s ‘Dawn Rises’; the English dawn captured in solo sax

HE’S QUITE the scion of British solo saxophone, is Samuel Sharp; not, perhaps, on the face of it, an easy thing to comprehend, but what he’s offering over what’s now…

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