Album Reviews
Album Review: Between The Buried And Me – Alaska (Reissue)
Celebrating their 20th year has seen a wave of vinyl reissues of Between The Buried And Me, with the latest selected for a spruce up being 2005’s Alaska, the North Carolina quintets third album. Released by Craft Recordings, the album has been remixed by longtime producer Jamie King, who has taken the original mix, done …
Album Review: Various Artists – Hot Sauce Volume 1
Subtitled as ‘14 gems from the vaults of Amalgamated, Black Swan, Blue Cat, Doctor Bird, High Note, Trojan and many more’, the new release from Harlem Shuffle Records has pulled together its first compilation, following on from the string of much needed reggae recordings from the 1960s onwards. Taken from releases dating from 1967 to …
ALBUM REVIEW: Snowdrops – ‘Volutes’: chamber duo expand the post-classical palette with true beauty
Snowdrops have taken the post-classical palette to another place again with their use of two of the more overlooked pioneering electronic instruments, and produced a work that at its least, is intensely transporting; and in its two twin peaks, “Comma (variation 1)” and “Ultraviolet”, close to too beautiful, heartbreakingly so.
ALBUM REVIEW: Daniel O’Sullivan – ‘Electric Māyā: Dream Flotsam and Astral Hinterlands’: transporting and dazzling shortform art
Electric Māyā is a collection of short stories; of microfiction. Take your time and don’t breeze through; you’ll be peering through windows into 18 other little spheres. Dazzling shortform
ALBUM REVIEW: The Green Child – ‘Shimmering Basset’: curious and mysterious psych synth-pop second
A clever, engaging pop album, in which The Green Child’s Raven and Mikey hold up a mirror to baroque-psych and synth pop history, smash it with glee, and use the shards to scry it over their shoulders
ALBUM REVIEW: Henrik Lindstrand – ‘Nordhem’: absolute piano grace, recorded beautifully
Nordhem is a love letter to the piano with the lightest touches of other ambience, the slightest nuances and textures; like salted caramel, that tiny sprinkle brings so much richness. It’s a delight.
Album Review: Tommy Lee – Andro
You don’t have to read the Youtube comments under the videos for the album singles to realise he’s upset a lot of his long term fans. Instead of Lee dropping a glam metal album we would all expect, he has taken 2 years to craft something different, yet uniquely Tommy Lee. The album features a …
Album Review: Machinedrum – ‘A View Of U’
As Machinedrum, LA-based producer Travis Stewart has been steadily outputting innovative records broadly influenced by rave, jungle, hip hop and soundsystem music for the past two decades. 2011’s breakthrough album Room(s), released on Planet Mu, came the same year as the Sepalcure, a collaboration with Praveen Sharma aka Braille, self-titled debut album. He’s since gone …
ALBUM REVIEW: Andy Cooper – ‘L.I.S.T.E.N.’: Ugly Duckling lyrical scientist in flight
Possibly best enjoyed on tape on a decent ghetto blaster wearing elegant shades, let the old-skool embrace you
Say Psych: Album Review: Singapore Sling – Good Sick Fun
Reykjavík maverick Henrik Björnsson recently released Good Sick Fun, his eleventh album under the Singapore Sling project via Fuzz Club Records. Inspired by goth-rock, dub and big-band jazz on top of the usual fuzzed-out rock’n’roll touchstones that are seared into Henrik’s work, the latest Singapore Sling full-length is as perversely hedonistic as they come – …