Album Reviews

Album Review: Psychlona’s ‘Warped Vision’ elicits the distinct clarity of a band on a steep upward trajectory
UK stoner rock giants, Psychlona are set to release their fourth long-player, Warped Vision in the coming days, with the album set to cement them into the upper echelons of the international ‘desert-rock’ scene. Welcoming two new members into the band following the surprise departures of Martyn Birchall (bass) and Dave Wainfor (guitar) due to …

Album Review: Jack Rock – Explorations of a fourth dimension
Electronic music was always the sound of the future. Imagined soundtracks of what the world could be. The music of technology mirrored our utopian visions of the new possibilities, ideas and expanded consciousness that technology would bring. This stands in stark contrast to the reality we live in. With technology revealing its sinister side, it …

Album Review: Raffy Bushman – ‘Here Today Gone Tomorrow’: More thrilling post-bop nu jazz from the London pianist and composer.
For a musician who puts out an annual album release, pianist, cellist and composer Raffy Bushman manages to keep surprisingly under the muso-radar but you sense that’s just how he likes it. His music is part, yes a significant part, of what he recognises as his whole life. Watching any of the documentary shorts, which …

Album Review: Ross McHenry – ‘Waves’: A deep and dynamic set from the renowned Aus-jazz bassist/composer.
It’s sobering to think that it was way back in 2013 that Ross McHenry was landed with the ‘future of Australian Jazz’ strapline. If that was then then what is now? Well there’s probably a raft of other musicians who’ve picked up the ‘future of’ tag in the time that’s passed but as a bassist, …

Album Review: Nico van Wersch – Psychose
How do I explain something I don’t fully understand? How do I introduce a music theatre piece that overwhelms but continues to elude me? Van Wersch’s musical score is part of the miraculous, frightening machinery of this production at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. Like the treadmills themselves, the music is something the performers struggle against …

EP Review: The radiant Holly Hebe releases the gorgeous EP ‘Ruby’, cementing her place as one of the most exciting indie pop artists around.
We’ve long admired the output of Naarm/Melbourne chanteuse Holly Hebe ,who has produced some of the most brilliant shimmering pop delights over the past few years. Today she releases her second EP, entitled ‘Ruby’, and it is business as usual for this superlative talent. Hebe’s strength is her melodic mastery that puts pure pop treasures …

Album Review: Kenny Wayne Shepherd gives us Vol. 2 of Dirt On My Diamonds, his epic ‘virtual’ double album.
US blues-rock guitar wizard, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, along with his band, have unveiled the second half of the Dirt On My Diamonds project. Following on from Dirt On My Diamonds Vol. 1, which was released back in November of 2023, Vol. 2 sees Shepherd assemble a further 8 tracks, all of which were written at …

Album Review: WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN –’No More Apocalypse Father’: A probing, poetic and profound alt-rock record of today.
While much contemporary music of today seems required to focus on the ‘me’ some artists continue to probe wider into the things that ‘we’ do collectively, the injustices, the inhumanities, the inequalities. Since co-founding the seminal Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the agit post rock assembly Thee Silver Mount Zion, Efrim Manuel Menuck has been …