Music
Album Review: Sleeps Society- While She Sleeps
Sheffield metalcore mob While She Sleeps take on the music industry on their fifth record, entitled Sleeps Society. The group tackle societal issues and mental health battles as well as providing empowering messages of self-motivation backed by heaving slabs of metallic riffing. WSS have always felt like a rougher, harsher, more punk alternative to the …
Track: Befell – Ticks
Pennsylvania based Befell are set to release their debut EP ‘Solitude’ this coming May. In preparation the band are sharing the single ‘Ticks’. Befell explain the record and the single in their own words: “Despite the overall dark melodies that sound almost in the black metal area in some parts, but overall the aggression and buildups to explosive parts …
News: Enslaved Postpone 2021 Tour And Announce Release Of ‘Cinematic Tour 2020’ Live Albums And DVDS
Enslaved have launched into their 30th year with thunder and flames. With their Utgard European Tour now taking place in spring 2022, with support coming from Intronaut, Obsidian Kingdom and Crown, the band have announced four new live albums/DVDs. Due 25th June, the audio and visuals for these releases have been taken from their revered Cinematic Tour 2020, with physical pre-orders launching today. Ivar …
Track: E.R. Jurken – ‘John Doe’: a single drop of melodic harrow ahead of Friday’s album
E.R. JURKEN is a singer-songwriter with a deeply moving, beautiful and fragile take on psych-pop with a 1968 Anglophile twist and a Neutral Milk Hotel twirl to his aesthetic, for whom Drag City have initiated a whole new boutique imprint, Country Thyme; you just know they know when they’re on to a good thing. E.R. …
Track: 1000 Robota – ‘ENDE’: German post-hardcore trio reconvene after a decade away
1000 ROBOTA, the trio of Sebastian Muxfeldt, Jonas Hinnerkort and Anton Spielmann, got together while they were still at school in northern Germany and released their debut album of stern post-hardcore, Du Nicht, Er Nicht, Sie Nicht, for Tapete in 2008. A second long player, Ufo, came out two years later, and then; nothing. Nothing, …
Album review: E.R. Jurken – ‘I Stand Corrected’: a psych-folk debut full of catharsis and melody
E.R. Jurken’s first full missive into the world reveals quite the saddest tale at an angle, never telling, always hinting. It also shows an absolute grasp of songcraft, of melody, and an abiding love of British psych-pop and later American geniuses such as Neutral Milk Hotel and Elliott Smith
EP Review: WA’s Pretty Uglys unleash ‘Party Friends’ – a blistering set of very attractive post punk anthems, executed with sneers, attitude and indelible pose.
Blasting off with ‘Emergency Room’, Western Australian band Pretty Uglys‘ new EP ‘Party Friends’ is a pulsating and vibrant set of magnificent, sneering and imposing tracks. Pure guitar-driven riffs over a thundering rhythm section and with vocals so loaded with attitude you can almost see the arched eyebrows and sneer. It is gratifyingly cathartic and …
Album Review: Electro Indie beauty from R Zak ‘s ‘Dialetcs’
Review : 9/ 10 There’s a certain folkloric quality that’s embedded in your mind, as the music shifts from the nuanced beauty to the darker , more solemn places in between. Portland based singer -songwriter R Zak ‘s album ‘Dialects’ is truly a kind of extended passage of discovery, gentle at times then suddenly haunting …
Track: Toumani Diabate & The London Symphony Orchestra debut new track, ‘Elyne Road’
“ELYNE ROAD” is the debut track to premiere from the highly anticipated recording of the masterful collaboration between celebrated kora player Toumani Diabaté and the London Symphony Orchestra. The track is a truly wonderful preview to what’s a rather fascinating combination of West African griot/jeli tradition and the neo-classical brilliance of Western European conservatoire musicians. The LSO does …
Album review: Tristan Kasten-Krause – ‘Potential Landscapes’: a debut quartet of potent longform drones
Tristan’s solo debut is a quartet of pieces that all head out from the same wellspring in different directions, different emotions; yet with a unity of feeling. If you worship at the altar of a well-executed drone-based record, then this one is mightily pleasing, if it doesn’t break new ground, it takes you for a different look round places you thought you knew and introduces them afresh. Classy