Album Reviews
Album Review: Re-release of nineties underground band Sex Industrie’s album ‘Sex’ll Sell Anything’ reveals a thrilling gem
In a year when one of Sydney’s more iconic underground eighties band, The Crystal Set, is reforming with a series of gigs with fellow jingle jangle exponents Ups & Downs (see news piece here) as well as a series of headlining gigs later in the year, it is fitting that a rather obscure related band …
Album Review: Weathership – Splendid Beast
A tortured start, ‘Golden Age’ has a gilded, fragile guitar-led edge to it. It is dominated by singer J.P Riggall’s laid-back vocals and lyrics that say so much with so little—flowing sonic landscape rolls like a sea mist slowly developing into a raging storm of white-tipped cymbals and picked strings. This album is about vast, …
Album review: The Halo Effect – The March Of The Undead
It doesn’t feel like two minutes since this super group blew up my speakers with their album ‘Days Of The Lost’—a superb debut from some of the finest voices/fingers in the melodic metal scene. Now the band have regrouped for the second album ‘The March Of The Undead’ The band bring more of the same …
Album Review: The Lambrini Girls – Who Let The Dogs Out; much anticipated debut lives up to the hype and makes early play for album of the year
“Who Let the Dogs Out”, the debut album from Lambrini Girls has landed, and it’s everything fans could have hoped for—ferocious, unapologetic, and full of life. The Brighton duo, comprised of Phoebe Lunny and Lily Macieira, has long been celebrated for their unfiltered approach to music and performance, and this record captures their spirit perfectly. …
Album Review: Glenn Bennie (Underground Lovers) unveils luminescent instrumental album ‘Juno Low’ ahead of launch gig.
The new year sets of off with a veritable sparkle as Glenn Bennie, understated and undisputed genius guitar player for Underground Lovers and GB3, releases an album of luminescent instrumentals collected over the last four years. It’s a collection inspired by his love for a mixture of ambience and krautrock, elements that can always be …
Album Review: Beretta & Sullivan to release debut LP, The Loft Recordings ahead of trip to the International Blues Challenge in USA.
Australia continues to carve out a rich tradition of excellent blues musicians and artists, a history which stretches back into the 1950’s and continues to this very day, and is seemingly going from strength to strength. To that end, winners of the solo/duo section of the 2024 Sydney Blues Challenge, Nathan Beretta and Dan Sullivan …
Album Review: EWAH’s ‘Souvenir’ is a beautiful luminescent dreamscape.
Emma Waters, otherwise known as EWAH from EWAH & the Vision of Paradise, has just released the album ‘Souvenir’, her first solo album in fourteen years. After years of battling anxiety and bouts of depression, and ultimately procrastination, superstition and pedantry, EWAH says: …this is the album I kept trying to make for years. For a …
Album Review: Love Ghost X SKOLD – Love Ghost SKOLD
With creepy electric beginnings, welcome to the musical world of Love Ghost and Skold, i.e., US indie/alt-rock maverick Love Ghost (Finnegan Bell) and Swedish industrial music legend SKOLD (Tim Skold). For those in the know, the album sounds like everything you expect. For those that aren’t in the know, you are in for something unique. …
Album Review: Not Now Norman – Go Hard Or Go Home
It’s an ominous start from chanting, rising organs, and an outburst of frantic riffing crafting one of the best album openers. Delivering Hard Rock courtesy of guitarist Zander Brown with strong messages belted out by the fierce Taylor-Grace commanding the front. Fiercely independent, the album is completely in-house and a testament to these two exceptional …
Album Review: Maalem Houssam Guinia – ‘Dead Of Night’ : An unforgettable, intense offering from the Gnawa master-musician
We should be mighty thankful for the long and strong relationship that’s grown between Brighton’s Hive Mind Records and Guinia family of Gnawa musicians in Morocco. Back in 2017, the label’s inaugural release was the first vinyl press of ‘Colours Of The Night’ by the legendary guembri player Maalem Mahmoud Guinia. It was a poignant …