album news
NEWS: The Wedding Present announce album of lockdown versions and more – see the stripped back ‘Crawl’
ALL THIS viral mess around us: it’s meant musicians have had to lock and load, get going as the going got tough. Plates, stepped up to. New ways adopted. New records made. And you can bet your bottom dollar that David Gedge’s The Wedding Present wouldn’t sit back and let it wash it over them. …
NEWS: Gazelle Twin & NYX announce March album – hear their distention of The Wicker Man’s ‘Fireleap’
GAZELLE TWIN: love her or baffled by her, you cannot deny the deep, artful, playful, pranksterish, eerie, sheer damn potency of her work. The creative extension of composer Elizabeth Bernholz, her last album, Pastoral, held a mirror up to the steadfast old folk tales and traditions of Merrie England, fucked that mirror into unimaginable and truer …
SEE: Josephine Foster’s take on Daniel Blumberg’s ‘On & On’: reinterpretations album next month
YOU HAVE to say, Daniel Blumberg is one of the absolutely most interesting, unconventional songwriters to emerge on the British scene in many a long year. His album from a month or two back, On & On, pretty much has it all: confessional, heartfelt beauty; melodic simplicity; outside-the-pocket impro composition, taking the songs right to …
NEWS: Neil Cowley announces solo album for February; hear ‘She Lives In Golden Sands’
BRITISH pianist Neil Cowley, who released a septet of albums sitting astride the point where jazz begins to shade into modern composition and tronica over a period of ten years from 2006, has been on something of a musical journey. His previous combo, the Neil Cowley Trio, climaxed in the piano and tronica-led excellence of …
NEWS: Mouse On Mars announce February album; hear ‘The Latent Space’
BERLIN’S Mouse on Mars, the playful and textural duo who have been seducing us for many a year with their particular brand of off-kilter sonic wobble, have announced a new album, AAI (Anarchic Artificial Intelligence), which will be out on Thrill Jockey on February 26th. Jan St Werner and Andi Toma’s new album promises to be their …
SEE: Calexico to release seasonal album; watch the video for ‘Hear The Bells’
ARIZONA’S atmospheric Tex-Mex outfit Calexico have returned after last year’s collaborative album with Iron & Wine, and have announced a new album whose songs are very much concerned with this time of year in the shape of Seasonal Shift. The album is a celebration of the wider winter and festive season and will be released …
SEE: Jim Ghedi – ‘Beneath The Willow’; new album in January
MODERN fingerpicking scion Jim Ghedi has announced he’s releasing a new album in January; and he’s just released a video and short film for the first single to be taken from it, “Beneath The Willow”. Have a watch, below. And with the times we live in ever darker, ever more strewn with polarisation, he’s coming …
NEWS: Khruangbin next to offer us their ‘Late Night Tales’ – hear their Kool & The Gang cover
LATE NIGHT TALES, the long-running and superb compilation series curated so far by pretty much every cool band of our times, from Belle & Sebastian to Air, from Jon Hopkins to MGMT, from The Flaming Lips to Nils Frahm and, most recently, Hot Chip, has announced that the latest in the series will see Texan …
SEE: Daniel O’Sullivan and Richard Youngs’ ‘Don’t Hang With Angels’; album announced for December
IF YOU like your singer-songwriting meaningful, deep, exploratory – in short if Daniel Blumberg, Richard Dawson, Jad Fair, David Thomas Broughton et al spin your dial – then the news that two of the British leftfield’s scions, Daniel O’Sullivan and Richard Youngs, have got together to fuse their thinking and have announced a debut collaborative album, Twelve of Hearts, …
SEE: Tele Novella – ‘Technicolor Town’: ramshackle and beautiful Texan alt.country
COMING atcha outta Austin, Texas, Tele Novella is currently the duo of vintage shop-owner Natalie Ribbons and Jason Chronis, who collects rare records. Tele Novella arose from the ashes of other musical projects they were involved deep down in Texas: Agent Ribbons, Voxtrot, Belaire. When they met they knew they could fashion something pretty special. Self-described as “medieval …