Track / Video
Droppin’ Knowledge: Cocareef Conquers The World – A Profile of Hip Hop Label Cocareef Records
When Sharif Lopez, the impresario behind 7th Angel Productionz and the hip-hop label Cocareef, was around eleven or twelve, his downstairs neighbor sometimes held raucous house parties. Lopez lived in the Marion Gardens Housing Complex, in Jersey City, New Jersey, a stone’s throw from the Pulaski Skyway, a hulking bridge-causeway that crosses the Passaic and Hackensack …
TRACK: 79.5 – ‘My Dream’: timeless, crate-diggin’ retro-soul gem
IT’S absolutely fair to say that Big Crown Records, which has been down in the crates bringing you some incredibly fine cuts out of its Brooklyn base for the past four years, is deeply involved in a heartfelt romance with San Antonio, Texas, Chicano soul legends Sonny & The Sunliners. Mind you, a quick listen …
Track: Pardon Band – Eliza M
One man wonder John Cornwell, who had been delighting audiences whilst part of Little Mirrors, now goes under a couple of monikers of Pale White Dot and Pardon Bank has shared a new track – ‘Eliza M’ under Pardon Bank. Bright chirpy electric guitar is joined with strummed acoustic where Cornwell’s seductive baritone plays out …
TRACK: Olivier Alary & Johannes Malfatti – ‘Drifting’: out-classical, ISDN warmth
MONTREAL-based, Toulousain composer Olivier Alary and his Berlin-based compatriot Johannes Malfatti have been friends for many years – that kind of relationship so much easier to conduct in our modern fibre-optic world. With an album apiece under their belts: Johannes’ Surge for Glacial Movements, and Olivier’s 2016 debut for FatCat’s 130701 imprint, Fiction/Non-Fiction, it became …
Track: Jack Bratt – The Outsider
The last time we covered Jack Bratt, he had just been awarded the prestigious Grant McLennan Fellowship jointly funded by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland and the Australian Performing Rights Association and was looking forward to using the proceeds to fund a three month residency in New York last June. How things have changed. …
Track: Death Bells – Heavenly Bodies
At the core of Death Bells are an Australian duo who relocated to Los Angeles in 2018 and after an initial EP, signed on to Dais Records. They have just released the magnificent single ‘Heavenly Bodies’ in anticipation of their new album, ‘New Signs of Life’ due on 25 September 2020. There is detectable a …
Album Review: Fontaines D.C. – A Hero’s Death
If there is one thing Fontaines D.C. have stressed on the eve of the release of their second album ‘A Hero’s Death’ it is that people should not simply expect part two of their outrageously good debut, ‘Dogrel’. This is a Fontaines D.C. reboot, not a sequel. Singer Grian Chatten puts it quite buntly: I …
SEE: Ganser – ‘Projector’: a post-punk despatch from our dystopia
IT CHARGES at you on wiry guitar and rumbling tom-toms, a shadowy simmer. We’re in a lecture theatre, with vocalist and keyboard player Nadia Garafalo demure in a sweater: our college lecturer on hand to guide us through the lyric video for “Projector”, the latest slice of portent-filled post-punk from Chicago’s Ganser. It serves notice …
Track: Ben Harper And Rhiannon Giddens reveal Nick Drake cover ‘Black Eyed Dog’
Two of Blues / Folk / Americana’s standouts, Ben Harper and Rhiannon Giddens have collaborated together for the first time on their own version of Nick Drake’s ‘Black Eyed Dog’. “Rhiannon and I are both black purveyors of American roots music, and while this is not an anomaly, it is an exception within a subculture,” …
See: Aberdeen quartet Cold Years reveal new video for ‘Too Far Gone’
Aberdeen rock quartet Cold Yeahs have released a new single and video ahead of their anticipated debut album Paradise, out in September and available on cd, streaming and lovely rose and clear vinyl. Of the track, the bands frontman Ross Gordon says Too Far Gone came from being in a pretty bad place, not knowing …