Album Reviews
EP REVIEW: Głós – ‘Swimming In Colors’: monumental ambience from Affin
Głós’ first EP for Affin is three whole different, astonishingly enveloping sound worlds. Let’s hope he records an album in this vein; it’d wipe the floor with your consciousness. Intelligent ambience with incredible design and edge, it’s one hell of an opening statement for an artist to make for his new home
ALBUM REVIEW: Snowpoet – Wait for Me; Chamber folk-jazz duo return with absorbing album
Third album for the London-based chamber-jazz pair
EP: Nuha Ruby Ra’s debut “How to Move” is as distressing as it is beautiful
Nuha Ruby Ra is an artist who, in her new EP “How to Move”, proves herself able to combine the cinematic with the personal without losing any of the intensity of her vision. This is to say the EP has the sonic components of a late-70s horror movie, meshed with a narrative that is somewhat …
Say Psych: Album Review: Holy Monitor – Southern Lights
Athens based quintet Holy Monitor last week released their eagerly awaited third LP Southern Lights on Blackspin/Primitive Music. They are a psychedelic rock quintet whose sound incorporates elements of krautrock, space rock and ambient music. The band’s reverb-soaked vocals crawl beneath waves of pulsating minimal rhythms, while fuzz driven guitars and prog style keys create …
EP: Hallucination reveal the destructive Hardcore punk of Hallucination EP
Destructive, defiant, devious, and D-beat – Philadelphia’s Hallucination take a smashing first step with their self-titled EP consisting of five songs (including the 37 second intro track) that stake their claim in the mania of gutter punk. Sticking to the raw cohesion of destructive impulses with a slightly metallic underflow, it calls back to the …
Boston MC Billy Dean Thomas Reminds Us That “Hope Is A Song In A Weary Throat”
Last year seemed like the year that Billy Dean Thomas would finally break through. The Boston-based hip hop artist, poet and writer had accumulated a steady list of accomplishments. Thomas had performed on The View, was nominated for a number of music awards, including a Grammy, and had won grants that enabled Thomas to worry …
Album review: Sarah Haras – ‘Mirage’: deeply effective and affecting abstraction
Often abstract albums come across like a loose series of random sketches; but not Mirage. It’s got a clear vision that binds it together and like the best electronic music suggests something different to every listener each time they tune in … and that is some achievement
Album Review: Huck Hastings unveils a sparkling and gorgeous album ‘Cheers to Progress’, draped in love, loss, longing and optimism.
Huck Hastings is a Sydney based singer/songwriter whose new album ‘Cheers to Progress’ is a cinematic sweep full of longing, love and loss – a vivid and beautifully expressed series of personal vignettes that are endearing, optimistic and heart-breaking at the same time. This a collection of beautiful personal observations on relationships and love, floating …
ALBUM REVIEW: Cameron Knowler & Eli Winter – ‘Anticipation’: excellent studies in twin guitar primitivism
We don’t get to hear quite enough of the modern fingerpicking style this side of the Atlantic, so if you’ve drifted off from the form somewhat since Jack Rose passed, or wish to explore beyond William Tyler; then hell; start right here. A grand tour of two instruments and two musical minds woven together so tightly and also unravelling like fronds of a fern, seeking all the multiplicity of new directions in folk. An excellent record
Album Review: Underground Lovers surprise again with career collection of B for brilliant B sides in ‘Others’
Not that long after releasing a superb collection of remixes spanning their career (reviewed by me here), Melbournes Underground Lovers have sprung another surprise album on the public entitled ‘Others’. This album has collected seventeen tracks of what are labelled B sides from singles, EPs and giveaways. Given the standard of output by this band, …