News
News: Dark Horse Records Set To Release A Joe Strummer Collection Featuring Previously Unreleased Version Of Junco Partner
Punk poet, musician, composer, actor, and style icon, Joe Strummer spent his life smashing musical and cultural boundaries both as the singer of The Clash and as a solo artist. His songs sound as urgent and vital today as when they were written. Calling out social injustices and giving a voice to the struggles of …
See: the video for Masayoshi Fujita’s ‘Thunder’; a flow of sonic delight for electronica and marimba on Erased Tapes
IF YOU like your music deliciously abstract, abstractedly delicious; arranged beautifully, an absolute world of evocative sound; fell hard, for instance, for the albums Ryuichi Sakamoto made with Alva Noto, or are like a kid at Christmas while waiting for the lusciousness of Chihei Hatakeyama’s new album, then attendez-vous, s’il vous plait; for Erased Tapes …
News: New Model Army’s Justin Sullivan announces May solo set; hear the stark storytelling of ‘Amundsen’
NEWS which will delight members of the Militia worldwide: Justin Sullivan, founder of Bradford post-punk legends New Model Army, fierce social advocate and commentator, has announced he’ll be releasing only his second solo album come early May, 18 years on from the previous, Navigating By The Stars. It’s entitled Surrounded, will comprise sixteen new songs …
Track: Belgian’s Whispering Sons issue forth scything double single ‘Santantango’/ ‘Surgery’ and announce new album ‘Several Others’
The raw and visceral ‘Santango’ from Belgian post punk outfit Whispering Sons has the same sort of ominous and threatening pace of anything by The Birthday Party, with a Rowland S Howard level of scything guitar. There is an anxiety, a restless energy that is unnerving and disturbing. It’s brilliant. According to the band, …the …
NEWS: A Certain Ratio announce EP for May, ‘ACR:EPA’; hear a first track, ‘Wonderland’: the Mancunian funk hot streak continues
THEY’RE on such a hot streak these days; Mancunian fun legends A Certain Ratio have been absolutely on fire, creatively so vivacious and so irresistibly taut, since ACR Loco dropped in the final days of last summer, an album of which we commented “effortless Mancunian pop and the tautest funk remade anew.” “Yo Yo Gi” …
See: The video for Matt Emery’s ‘Anxiety Mist’: a samurai waiting for battle as told by solo cello
BRITISH composer Matt Emery, who calls the lovely Injazero Records home, has launched a series of recordings focusing on one instrument at a time; and for his first EP in the series has chosen to shine a light on the cello, which is starting to find a bigger appreciation as a standalone instrument through the …
Penelope Trappes announces final album in her trilogy; hear the sultry electronic noir of ‘Nervous’
BRIGHTON-based, Australian-born mistress of noir electronica, Penelope Trappes, has announced that the concluding album of her Penelope trilogy will be out on her home of the past few years, Houndstooth, at the end of May; and she’s dropped the lush, draping velvet of “Nervous” to curl you like incense smoke into her world. There’s also …
Track: Tyne-James Organ’s mellifluous voice graces shimmering track ‘Sunday Suit’ off his newly announced debut album ‘Necessary Evil’
New single ‘Sunday Suit’ has a frenetic racing pace that is energising and buoyant, augmented by Tyne-James Organ‘s mellifluous tones that somehow combine a silk softness with after effects of gargling whiskey and pebbles. It’s a voice steeped in a weariness and a tenderness that is evocative and raw as it glides over a sparkling …
Track: HIRAKI – The Alarmist
As a music writer, I have to listen to a fair bit of music I don’t necessarily like. But I was genuinely excited to happen upon ‘The Alarmist’, the lead single from Danish progressive noise rock trio HIRAKI’s forthcoming second album, ‘Stumbling Through the Walls’. The guitars are furious and the vocals even more so …
News: Secrets of Elements announces April album; hear the grand electronic sweep of ‘Cassini’
THE GERMAN composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Johann Pätzold, who records as Secret of Elements, has announced the release of his first album since 2011’s Minds. It’s to be entitled Chronos, and it’ll be with us come the back end of April; but today he’s dropped as a welcome the track “Cassini”, which you can hear below. It fuses …