Album Reviews
EP: Elle Músa’s gorgeous ‘sun, sun,sun’ is filled with dappled filtered sunshine and hints of melancholia
Brisbane’s Elle Músa has released an EP that literally sparkles and shines like the sun on the Queensland coast. A bucolic and sleepy air hangs over the EP – but it is far from soporific. Rather, there is a bleach-white brightness evoking lazy summer days in the turquoise-blue waters of the reef, there is a …
ALBUM REVIEW: Julien Baker – Little Oblivions
Memphis-born Julien Baker returns with her haunting, ballad-filled 3rd studio album, that you would have to be oblivious to not be enamoured with. In her first solo album since Turn out the lights in 2017, Julien Baker is showing that she is back and better than ever before with a slowcore, self-produced album that is …
Album Review: Smith And Burrows – Only Smith And Burrows Is Good Enough
It’s been some nine years since Tom Smith and Andy Burrows delivered their bleak winter masterpiece ‘Funny Looking Angels’. Now the duo return treating us to another full length release of 10 tracks of their unique brand of songwriting. The album Only Smith & Burrows Is Good Enough sees both musicians writing and fulfilling instrumental duties. …
Album review: Samuel Sharp – ‘Patterns Various’: diaristic, timeless sax explorations
Patterns Various sits in a emerging tradition of very beautiful single-instrument essays; a very personal journey, and a very English one, captures its moments so well that people will be sure to revisit it for decades to come
Album review: Cheval Sombre – ‘Time Waits For No One’: a luxuriant, timeless and meditative return
Time Waits For No One is not without its darknesses, its sadnesses, but they’re approached with the calm, supplicant grace that sits right in the heart of such feelings; and it is bloody beautiful. It’s an amulet, a perfect prescription; you can use it to ward off the world. Really, do
Album Review: FM Einheit orchestrates dreams with “Exhibition Of A Dream.”
Having made mention of KMFDM in a previous review, it would seem that the more euro-centric oddities that are emerging from the winter have made their way into the collective leftfield inbox a lot more than anticipated. That’s fine; when you’ve been asked to take a listen to an album by former Einstürzende Neubauten percussionist …
Album Review: Bradford release ‘Bright Hours’: a magnificent follow-up to ‘Shouting Quietly’, 31 years on
SOME things change and some stay the same. Whereas before, with debut album Shouting Quietly, there was a car journey home from nearby Loughborough, Left-Legged Pineapple bag strewn on the floor, I pored over the lyrics typed onto the inside sleeve, studied who played what, did what, wrote what and where; anticipation building, found the …
Album Review: Loathe – The Things They Believe
This is an album Loathe have been threatening to make for a while, something more conceptual, akin to that of a film score; less Meshuggah, more David Lynch. The heavy, distorted guitars are absent for the duration of The Things They Believe. Instead, they are replaced by waves of otherworldly synths and more subtle instrumentation. …
ALBUM REVIEW: slowthai – TYRON
The funny thing about TYRON is how clearly slowthai intends towards something, but never quite approaches it. Nothing Great About Britain was excellent – not to mention very clear in its concept – and bought him considerable goodwill, but it may also have painted him into a corner. Tyron Frampton approaches things differently this time …
Album Review: The Actions unveil the luscious atmospheric ‘Flourish’
Bristol duo The Actions‘ display their home town trip hop roots adeptly in their new album ‘Flourish’, out now through Niteo Records. This album has a spacious expansive atmosphere with glitchy, sticky percussion, eclectic instrumentation and Marta Argenio’s voice a soft, silky breathless whisper floating across the surface. There is a rich luscious patena to …