Album Reviews
Album Review: Fazerdaze – Morningside
I’m just going to go straight to the point about Morningside, the debut album from Fazerdaze (essentially the output of New Zealand’s Amelia Murray). It is an extraordinarily accomplished work of art. I could just say go and order the album without hesitation and leave it at that. It’s that good. However, I shall indulge, …
Album Review: The Vibrators – The Epic Years 1976-78 4CD Set
Along well before 1976, The Vibrators had done there time playing the London Pub circuit, hanging at The Elgin Pub, with Strummer and the 101ers, and crafting there own sound, early recording s with Chris Spedding on the RAK label were pretty much overlooked although they got a Peel session on the back of it, …
Album Review: Year of Birds – ‘White Death to Power Alan’
For fans of The Fall, The Wolfhounds, Clinic, and the noisy end of the C86 sound ‘Year of Birds’ are a Teesside based post-punk outfit and have just released their new album ‘White Death To Power Alan” The LP out on Odd Box (Wolfhounds) and is their most focused to date whilst still retaining they’re …
Album Review: Laura Marling – Semper Femina
By Pete Wilding It bears reminding ourselves – however disconcerting it might be – that Laura Marling has just turned 27. Nine years of unique, personal creativity on a broad canvas have passed since the release of Alas, I Cannot Swim. Critics have always been quick to admire Marling’s maturity, both in song and in …
Album Review: Hauschka – ‘What If’
Golden Globe and BAFTA nominee Volker Bertelmann AKA Hauschka’s is about to release his eighth album ‘What If’, haunting melodies, mysterious sounds, pristine ambience, minimalism, frenetic buzz, vintage sci-fi echo and complex patterns ‘What If’ is the representation and culmination of everything Bertelmann has worked towards over the past dozen or so years. “I was …
Album Review: Craig Finn – We All Want the Same Things
In late 2007 I encountered an album that saw me regain my faith in rock music. With its cranked up guitars, big choruses and quick-fire repeated lyrics, that album was Almost Killed Me by The Hold Steady. In a matter of weeks I had bought all three of the albums they had released up to …
Album Review: Spoon – ‘Hot Thoughts’
It’s been over 20 years since their debut album Telephono was released in 1996, and they have done nothing but look forward ever since. I have no problem saying that Spoon have released some of my generations best rock records, and they’ve done it continually on their own terms. Through a major label fumble that …
Album Review: Blanck Mass – World Eater
Benjamin John Power’s Blanck Mass is the kind of musical project that is unforgiving in its need to evolve. He pushes the boundaries of what you thought electronic music was supposed to be. Much like Daniel Lopatin’s Oneohtrix Point Never, Power takes the canvas of electronic and experimental music and pushes the boundaries; painting on …
Album Review: The Shins – Heartworms
The Shins confuse me. Heartworms is the fifth album by a band that was effectively a side project of a band which only released one album. In the past initial listens to their albums have left me disorientated, confused and of the opinion that they had ‘lost it’, only for the album of theirs that …
Album Review: David Douglas – Spectators Of The Universe
David Douglas used to do videos now does music…….ok more info…………he has a wealth of analogue equipment, including a prized Roland Space Echo with which he creates waves of celestial melodies, intertwining them perfectly with crisp, driving beats, swerving through the cosmos, leaving a shower of arpeggiated synths and hypnotic vocals in his wake………more?…. well …