Album Reviews
Album Review: Phosphene – Lotus Eaters
Out now is the new album by Phosphene, a band who combine Shoegaze with a Post-Punk sound and nods to Alternative rock bands of old. ‘Lotus Eaters’ is available on July 7th over on the bands Bandcamp site. This album has an experimental feel which is reminiscent of Alt-Rock bands such as Sonic Youth, the …
Say Psych: Album Review: Bo Ningen – Sudden Fictions
Meaning ‘Stick Man’ in Japanese, Bo Ningen are a London-based four-piece alternative rock band. Though they come from Gunma, Tajimi, Nishinomiya, and Tokyo in Japan, they coalesced in London. Two met one another at a gig in 2006 and first formed Bo Ningen as a duo, later joined by the other two members. With three studio …
Say Psych: Album Review: The Vacant Lots – Interzone
Interzone is the third full-length album by New York’s electro post-punk duo The Vacant Lots (Jared Artaud and Brian MacFadyen): a genre-blending synthesis of dance and psych made for secluded listeners and all night partygoers, meant for headphones and the club. It was released on Fuzz Club Records last week. Created with aid from Alan Vega’s Arp synthesier …
ALBUM REVIEW: King of the Slums – Our Favourite Trainers
THEY emerged from Hulme in 1986, breathing sour fire and an eagle eye for unfashionable detail. Second cousins of The Fall in the way they filtered and spat language to reach deeper, following the grimy thread of it back through 21st-century estates and the Industrial Revolution to a lost, almost medieval rural folk tongue, as …
Album Review: Maceo Parker – Soul Food – Cooking With Maceo
Fans of Maceo have had a whole 8 years to wait for his latest studio album. Well let me tell you I don’t think they will be disappointed. Soul Food – Cooking with Maceo serves up a nourishing, all you can eat buffet of classics and originals infused with New Orleans Funk. ‘Cross The Track’, …
Album Review: Pottery – Welcome to Bobby’s Motel
If you asked a band what was the idea behind their new record and that record was called ‘Welcome to Bobby’s Motel’ and they told you that it was based on an ‘all encompassing alt-reality’ that they had built around themselves where the band is Bobby and the motel is wherever they are….you might think …
SAY PSYCH: album review: Venus Furs – ‘Venus Furs’
IT’S an album that’s been even longer in the creation than My Bloody Valentine’s legendary Loveless. Five years to write, five years to record and hone; but finally Montreal psych-shoegaze perfectionist Paul Kasner is poised to release Venus Furs’ self-titled debut LP. Paul says: “”This album has been a long time coming, and I could …
ALBUM REVIEW: Khruangbin – ‘Mordechai’
THEY weren’t an outfit that was hyped into the musical consciousness worldwide by a huge machine, fully packaged and billboarded; rather Houston’s Khruangbin have seeped into the world gradually but effortlessly via all the coolest of channels. First breaking through in the UK on the back of their inclusion on Bonobo’s LateNightTales mix compilation, they …
EP REVIEW: JOCKSTRAP – Wicked City: we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto
WARP debutantes Jockstrap – the duo Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye, jazz and electronics students respectively in a previous life – really do screw with the ol’ head, in the nicest possible way. It’s not like you haven’t heard many of the influences they draw on before, perhaps; but it’s the insouciant way they combine …
Album Review: Nadine Shah – Kitchen Sink
Kitchen Sink follows up Nadine Shah’s Mercury Prize nominated 2017 album Holiday Destination which received critical acclaim including AIM Awards ‘Independent Album of the Year’, a #7 ‘Album of the Year’ from BBC 6 Music, #5 from The Quietus and more. Shah has always written important songs. With Holiday Destination she sang about the refugee …