Album Reviews
Album Review: Buddy Glass – Wow and Flutter
Buddy Glass is the nom-de-plume of Bruno Brayovic who plays in Sydney Peabody (a veritable institution). He has a colourful history – arriving as a refugee from fascist Chile with his family in 1983 and starting life in the infamous Villawood Migrant Hostel. This colourful past bleeds into his new album ‘Wow and Flutter’: a …
Album Review – Marilyn Manson – We Are Chaos
Marilyn Manson’s eleventh studio album ‘We Are Chaos’ has just been released via Loma Vista Recordings. Co-produced by Manson and GRAMMY® Award winner Shooter Jennings [Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker], the ten-track opus was written, recorded, and finished before a pandemic blanketed us all. “Making this record, I had to think to myself: ‘Tame your crazy, stitch your suit. And try to pretend …
EP REVIEW: The Illness – ‘Descending’/’Phrases Redacted’: alt rock gets the tronica feels on cassette
HERE at Backseat Mafia, we’re really quite fond of The Illness. No, god, not that one – not the year-destroying one; we’re talking the Transpennine band who’ve been something of an in-house Wrecking Crew for York’s Sea Records, and who finally got their name up on their own 12”, “Descending”/”Phrases Redacted” back in July. We …
EP Review: Semisonic Release Their New EP – You’re Not Alone
After 2 decades away Semisonic have returned with a five track EP entitled ‘You’re Not Alone’ via Pleasuresonic Recordings/Megaforce Records. Due September 18th, the EP was recorded on and off over the last few years at Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and producer Dan Wilson’s Los Angeles studio with his co-founding bandmates John Munson and Jacob Slichter. From the opening jangling …
ALBUM REVIEW: King of the Slums – ‘Encrypted Contemporary Narratives’: the life we live now as we may not wish to see it
MANCHESTER: that great north-west city with, in the words of an idol very much on an unfortunate downward curve these days, so much to answer for. It’s given us some of the most amazing acts and subcultures of the popular music age. But I’ll advance a theory here, if I may; there’s very much two …
Album Review: Eight Rounds Rapid – Love Your Work
We’re late to the party (literally, this album has been out a couple of weeks already) but we’re happy to commit their third album ‘Love Your Work’ to review because, well, it’s so damn good. It’s the sound of new British music, cutting edge style – referencing Sleafords, Fontaine’s, Cabbage and Idles even, but wrapping …
Album: BOB – You Can Stop That For A Start
I recall a time in the late eighties and early nineties where one could venture out to see a band and BOB were almost always the support act! One of the hardest working bands at the time (possibly only Mega City 4 hit the road more often), BOB toured everywhere on an endless crusade to …
EP: Jeremy D’Antonio – Spinnin’ Wheels
Out now is the debut solo release from former Tiny Television and San Geronimo man Jeremy D’Antonio, Spinnin’ Wheels. He’s accompanied by musicians from the Buck Owens band (and ended up playing with Merle Haggard) which, according to Jeremy, “came to fruition because of studio owner John Macy and has been in the country music …
ALBUM REVIEW: Richard Skelton – ‘These Charms May Be Sung Over A Wound’: enthralling, organic electronica arising from the earth itself
MUSICIAN, free versifier, deep landscape investigator; psycheogeographer, artist, publisher: British polymath Richard Skelton is all of these things with a singular focus and identity. He turned to the sphere of music in 2004 after a close personal loss, making albums with a fierce geographical, experiential focus – initially very much about the undervisited, bleak West …
Album Review: Tolouse Low Trax – ‘Jumping Dead Leafs’
TOLOUSE Low Trax is the recording pseudonym of German composer Detlef Weinrich, and this is his fourth album under that name. The eight-track album is a 38-minute smorgasbord of all manner of musical genres, ranging from krautrock to 80s’ electronica, with pinches of avant-garde, post-rock and ambience whisked into the buffet. The album starts as …