Album Reviews
MIXTAPE REVIEW: Blue Hawaii – ‘Under 1 House’: your deep house cassette pet
BLUE HAWAII: now there’s a name that conjures up a blissful vision of lazy heat and crystal-clear waters, especially for me sat in subfusc September Britain. And the same appeal of vision would apply, you’d think, to a duo one of whom is working out of Montreal, Quebec. Blue skies, bluer waters. A lightness of …
ALBUM REVIEW: Yves Jarvis – ‘Sundry Rock Song Stock’: a thrilling solo quirk-psych vision
WHEN historians of future days come to write up the glowering all-round evils of 2020, they will, hopefully, take note of one glimmering shaft of light through the fog-plague; how great the sphere of quirky Canadian music has been this year. There’s been another sonically luxuriant missive from Montreal’s Braids in the shape of Shadow …
ALBUM REVIEW: Olivier Alary and Johannes Malfatti – ‘u,i’: beautifully humanist post-classicism, listening to the world talk to itself
ISDN, fibre-optics, the web. Sharing platforms, Skype, Facebook, Zoom; instantaneous transmission, the world shrunk to a pebble’s dimension. Our modern world, and especially the broader swathe of this fractured year 2020 would be unimaginable without it. And the latest offering from FatCat’s ever-intriguing leftfield imprint, 130701, a collaboration between Montreal-based Toulousain Olivier Alary and Berlin’s …
ALBUM REVIEW: A Certain Ratio – ‘ACR Loco’: taut Mancunian future funk and effortless electronic pop
“THIS album is a culmination of everything we’ve ever done,” says A Certain Ratio’s Jez Kerr. “We’ve got some real momentum at the moment.” He’s talking about A Certain Ratio’s first album in 12 years, ACR Loco, which drops this week. Excited much? You wouldn’t bet against a musician so steeped in the groove; A …
ALBUM REVIEW: Various Artists – ‘Sunrise On The Blues: Sun Records Curated By Record Store Day Vol. 7’
SAM PHILLIPS’ Sun Records imprint is arguably the first truly great label of the modern era. It was founded in Memphis in February 1952 by Sam, Alabama born, who lived through the great American depression and who cut his musical teeth at the Muscle Shoals radio station WLAY, which didn’t categorise its music by colour …
Album Review: Arrest! Charlie Tipper – ‘Red’
STARTING out in 2013 as The Charlie Tipper Experiment, then The Charlie Tipper Conspiracy and more recently adopting the Arrest! Charlie Tipper moniker, these Bristol-based indie stalwarts have certainly kept us guessing about their name whilst releasing a steady stream of quality albums and singles. I once contacted the band to ask who Charlie Tipper …
Album Review: Napalm Death – Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism
There are a few bands out there who have the years behind them yet are still rising to the challenge and blowing expectations. 2015’s Apex Predator – Easy Meat certainly did that and now five years later Napalm Death are back with another album, Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism’ which carries on the great …
Album Review: The Electorate – ‘You Don’t Have Time To Stay Lost’
We’ve already met and fell in love with Sydney band The Electorate after the release of their single ‘Decades in a Day‘. If life is a series of unrelenting miseries leavened by brief moments of sunshine, then The Electorate manage to capture the former and express them perfectly into the latter through their songs. ‘You …
ALBUM REVIEW: Big Bill Broonzy – ‘The Midnight Special: Live In Nottingham 1957’: music of truth delivered with power
BIG BILL BROONZY – he’s one of those names you hear in hallowed tones, whispered and discussed on forums and in the music press, alongside such company as Robert Johnson, Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, as being right in there at the roots of modern black music; in the blues, the devil’s music, which of course …
Album: Matt Berry – Phantom Birds
Matt Berry’s debut album on Acid Jazz, Witchazel, included prog gems and a McCartney-featuring track; since then he’s released well-received albums like The Small Hours and Television Themes. New album Phantom Birds is no different to previous marvels, confounding expectations once more. This sees a simpler sound, with Berry accompanied only by pedal steel guitarist …