Album Reviews
Album Review: Gonora Sounds – Hard Times Never Kill: Jump, jive, bounce and bite, direct from Harare.
Heard about ‘paying your dues’– well Gonora Sounds leader and inspiration Daniel Gonora’s back-story makes him a bone fide member of the dues-paying club. Twenty years ago the blind guitarist and song writer was a key player in Zimbabwe’s ground-breaking Jairos Jiri Band, a group that tragically imploded as successive members passed away. Forced to …
Album Review: D.C. Cross releases ‘Hot-wire the Lay-low’ – an album of evocative instrumentals that provides escape and fresh air.
Last year, Darren Cross released the visceral album, ‘Distorder’, which I described as: …a brilliant expression of our times: discordant, unsettling and at times bleak, but delivered with a swagger and a panache. Cross puts on display his musicianship and creativity, creating something dark and elusive yet touched with a certain element of wry amusement. …
Say Psych: Album Review: A Place to Bury Strangers – See Through You
A Place To Bury Strangers release See Through You today on Dedstrange, a label of their own devising. Fans all over the globe know Oliver Ackermann always brings surprises. The singer and guitarist of New York City’s APTBShas been delighting and astonishing his audience for close to two decades, combining post-punk, noise-rock, shoegaze, psychedelia, and avant-garde music …
Album Review: Ceramic Animal – Sweet Unknown
New signings to Black Keys’ frontman Dan Auerbach’s fledgeling Easy Eye Sound label Ceramic Animal release their new album, ‘Sweet Unknown’, on March 4th. Hailing from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Ceramic Animal’s previous three albums have all been ruggedly self-released DIY efforts, with this, their fourth, being their first foray into outside label-dom. Also produced by Auerbach, …
EP: Sydney’s A Place In The Sky unveils the melodic pop jangle brilliance of ‘Isolation’.
‘Isolation’, from Sydney band ‘A Place In The Sky’ is a pulse-quickening and heady collection of jingle jangle pop classics, with vaulting choruses and harmonies that sparkle and shine. There is a fundamental pop sensibility that winds its way through the EP: a golden thread of sparkling guitars and indelible melodies. Opening track ‘Judge and …
Album review: The Jazz Butcher – ‘The Highest In The Land’: one final pop postcard from Northampton’s foremost gent
THE JAZZ BUTCHER is one of those artists who make indiepop kids of a certain generation go misty eyed, and with good reason; Pat Fish, the man behind the jazz curtain as it were, was an all-round gentleman of the whimsical song, someone you’d definitely find in the kitchen at parties; a sometime indie television …
Album Review: Dowdelin – ‘Lanmou Lanmou’: Creole rhythms and a Soul-Jazz twist make for the sound of now.
It’s been over a couple of years since Lyon located fusionists Dowdelin were last seen bouncing across the WOMAD stage and pulling the horizontal sun soakers up onto their dancing feet. Now comes evidence of renewed activity with their latest album ‘Lanmou Lanmou’, available from 28th January from Underdog Records, and proof that the band …
EP Review: Jeremiah Moon – Sputnik
Seattle-based singer/songwriter/classically trained cellist and illustrator Jeremiah Moon has released his debut solo EP – Sputnik. The EP was recorded with friend and producer Adam Black in a remote cabin in Florence, OR. “We laid down the main tracks during this time and pieced together the rest of the EP and arrangements over the next couple of …
Say Psych: Album Review: Yard Act – The Overload
In many ways, Yard Act exist through the fusion of seemingly opposing entities. Old friends in a new band, they seek out shades of socio-political grey, imbibing their stories with sharp, satirical spoken-word humour. Spearheaded by James Smith (vocals) and Ryan Needham (bass), the now four-piece, completed by Sam Shjipstone (guitar) and Jay Russell (drums), …
Album review: Black Flower – ‘Magma’: a perfumed souk of North African psych jazz from the Lowlands quintet
THE WORLD of Belgian Eastern jazz outfit Black Flower is a well-woven and beautiful one; the quintet this week unveil their sixth full-length album for Ghent’s rather groove-obsessed Sdban Ultra imprint, with whom they’ve released two of their past three albums this past five years. Through this arch, if you will, to enter their aural …