Album Reviews
Album Review: Jessica Moss – ‘Unfolding’: The Montreal violinist/composer’s most incisive, inspirational statement to date.
Violinist and composer Jessica Moss has always made instrumental music that speaks out. Her essential work does more than reflect times, events and tragedies, it engages with them and voices our emotions about what is being witnessed or endured. Her last two studio albums, ‘Phosphenes’ from 2021 followed a year later by ‘Galaxy Heart’, captured …
Album Review: Mykah – Long Time Coming
Mykah shares something vibrant and deeply resonant with his new eight-track project Long Time Coming, a seamless fusion of bopping R&B, Afrobeats, and soulful pop. At once danceable and introspective, the album radiates bright, melodic soundscapes that balance summery ease with subtle undertones of melancholy and reflection. Known for his meticulous ear and genre-blurring versatility, …
Album Review: Smote –‘Songs From The Free House’: A striking return for the drone rock/ dark folk adventurer.
Daniel Foggin, landscape gardener, guitarist, psych folk expressionist and drone rock interpreter works relentlessly. His creative portal Smote is now five albums into its journey with the venerable Rocket Recordings, an expedition which only began in 2021 with the folk trance deep-dive of ‘Droomin’. Since then Smote music has intensified, from rustic rhythm-driven psychedelic ceremonials …
Album Review: Joe Harvey-Whyte & Paul Cousins – ‘In A Fugue State’: A contemplative dreamscape of pedal steel and tape loop alchemy.
Joe Harvey-Whyte may be a go-to pedal steel player (Liam Gallagher, Billy Bragg, Josephine Foster, Nilüfer Yanya and more) but as a multi-instrumentalist and solo artist he’s been calmly extending the cosmic-country boundaries beyond its imagined cosmos for a while now. Working with Sheffield based guitarist Bobby Lee, he’s helped conjure up two mind-stretching kosmiche-americana …
Album Review: Rianne Downey, The Consequence of Love
Scottish singer-songwriter Rianne Downey drop her sunny debut album
Album Review: Snakeskin –‘We Live In Sand’: Enlightening, intense dream pop from the ever impressive Beirut duo.
Lebanese, electronic dream pop duo Snakeskin don’t so much shed layers from release to release, they harden their resolve, reinforcing their messaging into songs which are even more powerful and defining. Formed by singer-songwriter Julia Sabra, of alt-rock/experimental scene stalwarts Postcards, and Fadi Tabbal, founder/producer at Beirut’s irreplaceable Tunefork studios, Snakeskin’s soundscape first emerged in …
Album Review: Yelka – In a Rose Hat
A strikingly different take on contemporary America—YELKA’s In A Rose Hat offers an artistic perspective far removed from stadium rock or trap trends. It’s an intimate, almost cinematic interpretation that upends expectations. “Crawl into your hibernation, don’t wait for a new sensation…” the opening, ´Colors Will Come´— begins the new album of the Berlin post-rock …
LP Compilation Review: Don Letts – The Rebel Dread @ Echo Beach
Echo Beach proudly presents: Don Letts – The Rebel Dread – legendary film and video director, disc jockey and musician. Don Letts, in his capacity as a selector (it’s not for nothing that he hosts his own show on BBC6 radio), enthusiastically accepted the invitation to create a compilation from Echo Beach’s extensive catalog to mark …
Album Review: Yara Asmar – ‘everyone I love is sleeping and i love them so so much’ : Extraordinary electro-acoustic stories crafted from simple things.
Tinkering, testing, tuning and transforming, Yara Asmar is a restlessly inquisitive multi-instrumentalist. Since her debut release on Hive Mind, ‘Home Recordings 2018-2021’ the Beirut- based musician has used music boxes and metallophones, accordion and toy pianos to sculpt her sonic narrative. It’s not Art Ensemble avant or Cage-ist experimentalism powering her practice though, the pull …
Album Review: Sliver Fleet Ships set sail into the darkness with their atmospheric debut album ‘Before Never, After Forever’.
Nipaluna/Hobart band Silver Fleet Ships are signed to the tremendous Meanjin/Brisbane label False Peaks Records, and this is a sure guarantee of the quality you can except in their debut album ‘Before Never, After Forever’. It’s an album which bleeds atmosphere from every pore: statuesque and gilded with an Antarctic chill exacerbated by the sharp expressive guitar …