Album Reviews
Album Review: Enslaved – Utgard
With ‘Utgard’ Enslaved are looking behind the mirror, tracing the origins of the well-known fables of the northern world back into each and every one of us. A band that have always been more than a black metal band endlessly turning out the usual and expected. Enslaved are happier when pushing the boundaries especially into …
EP: Midnight Drive – Misery
In the absolute shit show that has been 2020, there’s some great news on the horizon for fans of the heavier side of music. Manchester based Midnight Drive are finally releasing their long awaited first EP Misery on the 9th October. Opener Faded has a cool electronic synth vibe with heavy undertones, vocalist George Holding gets the …
Album Review: Roisin Murphy – ‘Roisin Machine’
IN ANOTHER, more enlightened plane of existence, the world lauds Roisin Murphy as a famed cultural icon with a string of hit albums, maybe with a prime-time talk show, international fashion house and probable appointment as Culture Secretary … heck, why not make that PM too? Unfathomably, in our particular tangent of reality that hasn’t …
Album Review: Action Bronson – Only For Dolphins
At some point, someone must have told Action Bronson that words have multiple meanings. This isn’t something I know for sure, but you can intuit it from his lyrics. Keeping in theme, then, he must have learned that it is perfectly okay for things to contain multitudes. As he puts it on ‘C12H16N2’, Action Bronson …
Say Psych: Album Review: Death Valley Girls – Under the Spell of Joy
Los Angeles dystopian punk/occult glam rockers Death Valley Girls will release their new LP Under the Spell of Joy this Friday via Suicide Squeeze Records. While studies have been conducted aiming to understand the science behind music, our inexplicable ability to tap into the emotions of another human being by way of arrangements of sonic frequencies still …
Say Psych: Album Review: The Nude Party – Midnight Manor
The Nude Party return with their second LP Midnight Manor out on Friday via New West Records. The 12-song set was recorded live-to-tape over six days at the Outlier Inn in upstate New York and mixed by John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., Kurt Vile). Midnight Manor is the follow up to their critically acclaimed self-titled debut which Rolling Stone heralded as …
ALBUM REVIEW: Mint Field’s second LP, ‘Sentimiento Mundial’ is an out-of-body experience
DESPITE the gloom-laden bleakness of this year, there has been at least some positives from the cursed chalice that is 2020. One of those is the continuation of fantastic music dropping left, right and centre, picking up from a very strong 2019 with a consistent stream of flaming hot good stuff, all oozing onto our …
ALBUM REVIEW: Concretism – ‘Dick and Stewart: Original Soundtrack’
SCARFOLK is a fictional Northern English town created by Richard Littler, a place forever trapped in a 70s’ dystopia. Starting life as a fake blog by the town council, it soon developed into books, posters and various other parodies. Inspiration came from public information Films and kids’ TV of the era, both of which had …
Album Review: Hen Ogledd – Free Humans
Once again they come from the north-Hen Ogledd, time travelling space pop troubadours with music of weird and wonky magic. Originally the brainchild of folk experimentalist/indie anti-hero Richard Dawson and avant harpist Rhodri Davies, the addition of Dawn Bothwell in 2016 and then Sally Pilkington has sparked the collective to channel their inner wonk and …
ALBUM REVIEW: Hugar – ‘Music For The Motion Picture The Vasulka Effect’: graceful ambience for art documentary
HUGAR is the exploratory Icelandic music project of Bergur Þórisson and Pétur Jónsson, a pair of talented musicians hailing from Seltjarnarnes, which rejoices in the fact it’s the smallest town in the nation. Their collective name: it translates from the Icelandic, quite simply, as “Minds”. They’ve had a quietly stellar upward career curve, working at …