album review
Album review: Cluster – ‘Cluster 71’: the German electronica scene on the cusp of breaking through, lovingly reissued
AS WELL as hosting a whole stable of contemporary bands that are mainly spinning in the leftfield electronics and synthpop galaxies, Hamburg’s Bureau B has also been doing sterling work in curating the krautrock archive, keeping the torch burning with deep dives into the unreleased tapes of Conrad Schnitzler, reissuing lost gems and offering that …
Album review: John Thayer – ‘Supermundane’: a palimpsest of nuanced, intelligent ambience
NEW YORK percussionist, audio engineer and all-round musical polymath John Thayer, fresh from two collaborative, cassette-only albums last year – Untangling The Ghost, on which he sparred with reeds player Stank Zenkov, and Mountain Rumors, in tandem with Craig Schenker – is not about to depart this grinding year of our lord 2021 without dropping …
Album Review: Seven Days And Doesn’t Die – Seven Days And Doesn’t Die
When we reviewed their last single, we described Seven Days and Doesn’t Die as “snarling, sneering, punk-tinged rock n’ roll, with an aggression that many bands aspire to but so few pull off with such aplomb, yet filled with singalong, gang-vocal chorus and hooklines that sink their teeth in and refuse to let go”. Seven …
Album Review: Land Trance & Aging produce utter cinematic-sonic immersion with ‘Embassy Nocturnes’
Very rarely does a record manage to capture a spectrum of cinematic detail in it’s profoundly illustrative composition, spinning yarns across it’s runtime like neighbouring scenes. However – with far greater ambition and grace than any crassly conceived concept album – the new collaborative project between Land Trance and Aging does just that, envisioning a …
Album Review: Aliens – 30lbs of Air
Aliens have dodged a bullet with 30lbs of Air – a “concept album” that captures the essence of war while escaping the clichés. The term “concept album” tends to send a shiver down my spine. This turned into a shudder when I heard that the concept of this particular album was the ordinary men and …
Album Review: Smote – Drommon
Newcastle has been a veritable hub for a wide spectrum of psych and noise, from the raw trio of Blóm to the relentless clamour of Pigs x7; the same city’s Smote offers a different, but similarly singular, vision of psych. Drommon comprises the previously released titular, two-parter, bookending new material ‘Hauberk’ and ‘Poleyn’; a more …
Album review: The Pro-Teens – ‘I Flip My Life Every Time I Fly’: low-key cinematic funk immaculacy from mysterious Melbourne collective
THE PRO-TEENS – or, to give them all due full credit, Snooch Dood and the Pro-Teens, and we wouldn’t want to be putting Snooch’s nose out of joint quite this early in our relationship, who knows what vengeful redress he might seek – describe themselves as being “a collection of professional teenagers from the Darebin …
Album Review: GOAT – Headsoup
All manner of questions abounded throughout the long absence of psych collective Goat, since the 2017 release of their third album Requiem. Would the great Gods of psych-dom return, especially considering the fullness and finality of this last record – and the ambiguous, ominous meanings given off by the title? Would a goat – perhaps …
Album Review: Otherish cast a glittering, intrigue-filled environment with their self-titled debut
Featuring a blend of Belfast and Bristol musical genes – primarily from four multi-instrumentalist’s – the first full statement from Otherish splices Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and folk elements to nourish their fermenting threads of philosophy, humanity, and fallibility. The band carry deliver these themes with deserving musical diversity and grandiosity; along with their rippling drums …
Album Review: Infinity Broke swagger out on to the streets with ‘Your Dream My Jail’: a brilliant and visceral coating of indulgent excess and cathartic chaos – plus tour news.
Infinity Broke are a band that does not go gently into the night: their new album ‘Your Dream My Jail’ is an excoriating, driven, thunderous slice of post-punk cake that is angular, studded and visceral. Guitars wail and caterwaul, drums crash like waves on an exposed coast and singer Jamie Hutchings (formerly of nineties indie …