Album Reviews
Album review: Bruno Bavota – ‘For Apartments: Songs And Loops’: protection against those days of lockdown in warm piano vignette and glorious modular sweep
WE LOCKED the door; we waited. We waited, we combed the airwaves; we counted the days some more. The experience is nigh on universal, save those of you lucky enough to be reading in Taiwan, Christchurch, Auckland and elsewhere. Italy was caught by the pandemic earlier than many, and as it swept across the country, …
Album Review: SUNGAZE – This Dream
Sungaze’s new album This Dream truly reflects its title, it is a dream. Sungaze, made up of husband and wife duo Ian Hilvert and Ivory Snow have only been producing albums since 2019, making This Dream only their second album ever. The album does not break new ground in the genre of dream pop but …
Album Review: Tedeschi Trucks Band – Layla Revisited (Live At LOCKN’)
A little history, for the uninitiated; on the 9th November 1970, a certain young guitarist called Eric Clapton and his blues/rock band Derek and the Dominoes released their first (and only) studio album, ‘Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs’. Despite Clapton’s latter-day ‘elder statesman of guitar’ status, the album flopped commercially – despite the critics’ favour …
Album Review: Lorde’s Solar Power Is A Journey Through Healing
I woke up bleary-eyed on Friday to an equally bleary morning. The sun struggled to shine through natural clouds and unnatural haze, blanketing the earth with a dull, heavy light. New York City was not the best place to be for inhabiting the space of Solar Power, the new album from Lorde. Despite all of …
EP: Sydney’s DMA’S release surprise EP, the euphoric ‘I Love You Unconditionally, Sure Am Going To Miss You’ featuring shock and awe shoegaze single ‘We Are Midnight’
After a hectic past 18 months with the release of the album ‘The Glow’, a live double LP of their gig at Brixton and winning a slew of awards at the Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR), DMA’S have just released a surprise new EP entitled ‘I Love You Unconditionally, Sure Am Going To Miss …
EP Review: Desperate Measures – Rinsed
Desperate Measures formed in Christchurch, New Zealand, way back in 1981, a bundle of angry, aggressive polemic, pissed off with politicians, fake news, and the unfairness of fucked-up society. Not much has changed, then, in the forty years since – apart from geography, the internet, and the odd line-up change along the way. With original …
EP: Romanie’s ‘Little Big Steps’ is an ethereal and glowing paean to resilience and hope.
Originally from Belgium, Romanie relocated to Melbourne a few years ago and found herself in the midst of the COVID pandemic and a number of lockdowns: events that can create anxiety and uncertainty for locals, feelings that can only be even more exaggerated if you are far from home. Romanie’s EP, ‘Little Big Steps’ is a shimmering …
Album Review: Polish Club’s ‘Now We’re Cookin” is a delicious banquet of pop, flavoured with a hint of darkness.
Australia’s Polish Club have just released their album ‘Now We’re Cookin”, and it’s a very pleasant ray of sunshine when all else around is dark. And yet this bright ray of colour is a little more nuanced and layered than is expected. This is a band with a presence and diverse sonic textures: a veritable …
Album review: Maarja Nuut – ‘Hinged’: percussive and playful, free as a bird future folktronica from Estonian genius
BORN in Rakvere, a small town in the very north of Estonia, a handful of miles from the Baltic Sea, the experimental musician Maarja Nuut was first introduced to music by her mother, a choir conductor, which opened up a world which would become her métier. Aged 7 she began taking violin lessons, studying at the Tallinn …