Album Reviews
ALBUM REVIEW: Bill Jr. Jr. – Homebody
A first suprise for 2021 from a Vancouver-based indie-folk-rock project
ALBUM REVIEW: Cheap Meat – People Are the Worst’
Cheap Meat are, the promotional material asserts, back with their debut album, ‘People Are The Worst’, released 29 January 2021 via Jerk Store Records. Their return follows a four-year hiatus between a 2016 EP, ‘The Parts That Show’ and December 2020’s ‘Marigold Moon’ single (included here), in which Ross Drummond (vocals and guitar), Matt Rebeiro …
Album Review: Ngozi Family – ‘45,000 Volts’ (reissue)
At times it’s hard to keep tabs on the overflowing treasure chest of re-issues from the ever-giving seventies African rock and funk scenes. But here is one gem that shouldn’t be missed- it’s got pedigree, it’s got provenance but more importantly it’s a blast. Originally released in 1977 Ngozi Family’s ’45,000 Volts’ was a sharp …
Album Review: Kieran Mahon – Eternal Return
The latest from St. Leonard’s prime manipulator of drones, loops, and echoes uses adeptly generated, cyclical synth-komische to delve into Mahon’s newly realised perspective upon the notion of ‘Eternal Return’ and everlasting life. Mahon elucidates on this realisation, saying that rather than “seeing the prospect of living life over, unknowingly, on an endless loop as …
Album Review: Tommy Guerrero – ‘Sunshine Radio’
Tommy Guerrero’s ‘Sunshine Radio’ is the latest release in his pretty consistent turnover of albums, with the skateboarding legend turned musician averaging at least an LP every three years since 1997’s ‘Loose Groove And Bastard Blues’, as well as slotting in other projects (check out last year’s ace Los Days). On a similar path to …
Droppin’ Knowledge: Jay Cinema & WilfMerson Know “What You Need Ain’t What You Want!” – Album Review & Interview
A trans-Atlantic collaboration between the Harlem-based rapper and London producer WilfMerson yields an album of depth and beauty. The Internet and the portability of sound files can open up the world for anyone who wants to find like-minded artists across the globe with which to collaborate. Social media allows musicians to find each other on …
ALBUM REVIEW: Bolomite Jr. – ‘Cold Feet’: classical meets experimental in tectonic layering
BEN CALHOUN has been quietly working away for a while now, leading a double life as a construction worker-cum-experimental musician having begun using Digital Audio Workstations as a creative tool way back in 2014, reconnecting him finally to a performative sphere as a childhood musician he’d left behind Since then he’s digitally released a series of …
ALBUM REVIEW: Aaron Cupples – ‘Island Of The Hungry Ghosts’ original soundtrack: a sonic film in itself
There’s always that caveat with a soundtrack that this is music in service to another artform. But Island Of The Hungry Ghosts is a sonic film in itself. It wholly lets the soul of the island through and onto your record deck. If you’re a fan of labels like Touch, Kranky, this is so a record for you.
ALBUM REVIEW: Richard von der Schulenberg – ‘Moods And Dances’: a fun, exotique library music trip
Moods And Dances is the sort of album you cheekily slip onto the deck at a very groovy soiree at about, ooh, midnight, to bring some bizarre and spacey dimensions to proceedings and during which at least two of your friends turn to you and say with a bewildered grin: “Wow, what is this?”
Album Review: Anna B Savage – ‘A Common Turn’
If, for Anna B Savage fans, it has felt like a long wait for this, her debut album, that’s because it has been. The question is, has it been worth that wait? It’s nearly six years since the release of ‘EP’, with its tracks, ‘I’, ‘II’, ‘III’ and IV’. On the undoubted, shining strength of …