Album Reviews
Album review: ROY -‘Roy’s Garage’: a magic carpet ride around the psychedelic pop globe
ROY does nothing exactly new with Roy’s Garage, but he does everything with a deft touch and real understanding. If you love British and American psych circa 1966 to 1968, has many an album on Bam Caruso, Edsel, Sundazed, then you should embrace this record wholeheartedly; if your experience of this particular era of psych – before what scientists call the Iron Butterfly event horizon, when pop melody and brain-feeding sonic exploration sit in balance on the scales and before the freakout totally becomes the event – then this album is a great gateway drug. ROY knows. You’d be wise to let him guide you through. It’s time to make a little more room in your psychedelic pop-lovin’ heart for him.
Album Review: Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard and Jules Maxwell’s new album ‘Burn’ is an enthralling cinematic vision that mesmerises
Australian duo Dead Can Dance (consisting of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry) were an extraordinarily innovative band signed to the legendary 4AD label (becoming their highest selling artists), fusing medieval music with gothic undertones and ambient textures. The band has disbanded and reformed over the years since it began in 1981 – the most recent being the release of the album …
Premiere: Seasurfer showcase stunning new video for ‘Pretend’ and announce limited vinyl release of album ‘Zombies’
Hamburg psych goth band Seasurfer released a magnificent and epic double album ‘Zombies, reviewed by me earlier this year. I wrote that it is an album packed full of anthemic dream pop songs that are differentiated from the pack by an electronic spine and dark-tinged gothic attack. Throughout the album, singer Apolonia’s voice is absolutely …
Album review: KMRU – ‘Logue’: expansive ambient electronica with intelligence and a found-sound bliss
KMRU’s Logue is a window into the mind of a young African musician who really, truly gets this musical form, has crafted some astonishing little gems herein; if this is, to all intents and purposes almost a juvenilia, then we have so much to look forward to. At once old-skool and nu-skool ambient, with bookends of purer, generative analogue electronica admitting you to a more organic, blissful core. This is a bloody lovely record; blissful, thoughtful, deeper than it first appears; buy
Album review: Tomas Nordmark – ‘Exit Ghosts’: electronic landscapes that move from the amniotic to the apocalyptic
LIVING these days in London, but hailing originally from the small Swedish coastal town of Västervik, some 280km further down the coast from Stockholm, Tomas Nordmark is a electronica producer and soundscaper with a very complex and organic musical vision. His interest in the sonic avant-garde was brooked by the 1960s’ art scene in New …
ALBUM REVIEW – THE FALL – ‘LIVE AT ST HELENS TECHNICAL COLLEGE, 1981’
The chance unearthing of a bootleg of this show, by Marc Riley has been well documented by now in the press. John Dwyer, leader of The Oh Sees eagerly stepped in to release this vinyl-only album on his Castle Face label, so now we have it. It’s exorbitant price results from 50% of its proceeds …
Album review: Buffet Lunch – ‘The Power of Rocks’
BUFFET LUNCH are a four-man band from Scotland on a mission to serve up imperfect pop songs with humour and energy, formed into the kaleidoscopic debut album, The Power Of Rocks out today, May 7th, from Upset the Rhythm. The band consists of Perry O’Bray (vocals/keys/guitars), Neil Robinson (bass), John Muir (lead guitar) and Luke …
Album: Wilding introduces his impressive catalogue with ‘Hello…My Name is Wilding’ – a glorious compilation of his past, present and future music.
Melbournian troubadour Wilding blew us away last year with his concept album ‘The Death Of Foley’s Mall’ – one of the best Antipodean releases of 2020 in my humble opinion – and for many, well, let’s be honest, for me – it was the first taste of Justin Wilding Stokes’s incomparable songwriting skills. The thing …
Album Review: Dinosaur Jr – Sweep It Into Space; file under essential
The last year has been, let’s face it, odd to say the least. The global pandemic has brought a horde of fearful anxieties and a desperate need for something solid to cling on to, a life raft to pin our hopes to and sail away from all this uncertainty. Enter then Dinosaur Jr, the somewhat …
Album Review: Innov Gnawa – Lila; Immersive World-Soul on Daptone
Daptone, the home of soul and funk, is one of those labels whose judgement you can trust- when they’re onto something you just know it’s going to deliver. News of their release of Innov Gnawa’s debut album ‘LILA’ on April 30th may seem a bit leftfield given that the band are dedicated explorers of the …