Music
News: Fusion supergroup Asteroid Ekosystem, with Ed Kuepper, Lloyd Swanton, Alister Spence and Toby Hall, announce their debut gigs in the new year.
The material composition of the Asteroid Ekosystem alone is stunning: Alister Spence is the leader of avant-improv group the Alister Spence Trio and touring keyboardist with Sunnyboys, The Aints! and Laughing Clowns, bassist Lloyd Swanton plays with jazz giants The Necks and the catholics, world class percussionist Toby Hall on drums and the legendary and …
Track: Blackbirds FC unveil the sparkling and evocative track ‘Transport Planes’: a dreamy elision of memory and reality.
With an expansive poetic expression, the new track from Blackbirds FC rings with clarity and yearning as it is carried by luminescent harmonies and jangling guitars. Blackbirds FC have a deeply ingrained antipodean genetic make-up that stretches from over the ditch with The Chills and The Bats to The Go-Betweens and all that glorious jangle …
Feature: Calmness gives us the track by track lowdown on new album ‘don’t ask if I’m okay’; see new video for opener ‘pretend’ here
Calmness, the Lisbon non-binary artist, aka Gui Galão recently released their album ‘don’t ask if I’m okay’, which details the breakdown of a relationship, the aftermath, new love and new expectation. Throw in a little regret and tragedy and mask it all up in melancholy indie pop, and something rather special seeps out. We spoke …
Live Review: Eagles Of Death Metal – O2 Ritz Manchester 5.12.2021
There’s a perceived wisdom with us Brits, that Americans don’t get irony. This is of course not true. It shows up in whipsmart network comedies like Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm, they just don’t use it as much socially as us. We use it to tease our friends. We’ve weaponised the use of sarcasm as …
PREMIERE: Ben Auld wards off the winter chill with ‘D4A’; debut album ‘Lemongrass’ sprouting in February
It’s December, so we could all do with a little additional warmth in our lives. Bristolian Ben Auld is here, right on cue, with the lead single from his forthcoming debut album; and it is (we cannot stress this enough) absolutely gorgeous. If homespun indie folk sounds like the kind of thing you might be …
See: Penelope Isles share the video for ‘Have You Heard?’ ahead of their Islington gig on Saturday – and they’re criss-crossing the UK in the new year
WITH DESERVED rave reviews across the board for their second album, Which Way To Happy, out now digitally and with vinyl, cassette and CD following really early into 2022, the lovely Penelope Isles have dropped a new video, this time for the Lily-led “Have You Heard”. They’ve also been added to the bill for Bella …
Premiere: Montmartre Remix of Tim Ayre’s Mexican Holiday is out today via Kitsuné; hear it here first
French producer Montmartre has just released (today no less) his new remix of ‘Mexican Holiday’ the recent release from Australian indie pop artist Tim Ayre, on Kitsuné Musique. It ahead of an anticipated second album from the Frenchman, a follow on from his debut, Hope, which has contributed to his impressive 120,000,000 streams online. Of …
Meet: Beautiful Machines on new single Control, their forthcoming album, and recording during a pandemic
After hearing the dark, yet beautiful, synth-pop of their single Control, out now via Republic of Music, we knew we wanted to try and track down its creators, duo Beautiful Machines. With an album to follow, theres a sense of the dystopian, and a journey, inspired as it is by Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’. With the …
Track: Jake Whiskin wraps us up in the delicate whisper of ‘Cold Morning’ – a song of loss and dawn rising
LEEDS singer-songwriter Jake Whiskin, a man of considerable and empathetic talent, knows not only the horrible cold of a dank mid-December morning, but the terrible soul-deep chill of awaking into loss from that respite, sleep; count one, two, three and plunge from your dreamworld into a waking, aching nightmare. Out today, is the tender, sparse …
Track: Washington’s Weeed bring an opulent flute sway to the psych of ‘Do You Fall?’
WEEED are a psych-stoner quartet who began hanging out and rocking the weirder, spliffy end of music together as teenagers, growing up so near yet quite separately to one of America’s big guitar band meccas, Seattle; they hail from across the water in Bainbridge Island, immersed in the glow from the lights from the city, …