album review
EP: Bodom After Midnight – Paint The Sky With Blood
What should have been the beginning for the band has become their only work and a homage to the late singer/guitarist Alexi Laiho. ‘Paint The Sky With Blood’ sees Bodom After Midnight lay down three tracks of heavy metal riffs, pummelling drums and dual guitar trickery. The band comments: “Like ourselves, Alexi was beyond stoked …
Album Review: The Coral release ‘Coral Island’ – a thrilling magical masterpiece that is a testimony to boundless imagination and the joy of creativity
To describe The Coral‘s new album ‘Coral Island’ as an magnum opus is almost too reductive. This double album is an awe-inspiring journey into childhood memories – the magic of the seaside, merry-go-rounds, penny arcades, promenades, the sound of seagulls and the smells of fast food – but it is not something mired in nostalgia …
Album review: UNKNOWN ME – ‘BISHINTAI’: a delightful, candy-coloured ambient trip
BISHINTAI is a delightful album, candy-colour bright, beamed from some offworld where fantastic cuboid furniture and hanging egg chairs are the norm; it will add a little brain-clearing wasabi to the most humdrum and dun day. If you’ve ever swooned for the Sushi 3003 and 4004 compilations; for Air at their most “Sexy Boy” cosmic and and most especially definitely, the bright retro-futurism of The Gentle People – then boy, is this album ever for you
Album review: Matt Robertson – ‘Enveleau’: analogue grandeur, ambience and acid
If old-skool British acid and ambient techno floats your boat, and let’s face it, it’s such a halcyon era for the genre, mostly never bettered; get yourself Enveleau. Maybe only the redoubtable Mr Hopkin is operating with this deliciousness in the field
Album Review : Adam Moezinia’s ‘ Folk Element Trio’ – A Sonic Travelogue
New York based guitarist Adam Moezinia first debut album ,’Folk Element Trio’ is what we at Backseat Mafia have suspected it would be , after premiering its single ‘Celebration’ last month : a triumphant celebration. It is a union of global folk traditions featuring elements of Beninese, Malian, Welsh and American folk music in a contemporary …
Album review: Conrad Clipper – ‘Heron’s Book Of Dreams’: a pseudonymous, textural ambient gem
Heron’s Book of Dreams is glorious. It knows what to do, it knows what you need, and never aims for cheap and maximal when stripping back, excellent arrangement and contrast can do the job. Think a slightly more abrasively edged, more intimate A Winged Victory For The Sullen. A very beautiful record for people who love the interstices where ‘flesh and blood’ instrumentation gets it on with drones. Delightful.
Album: Unflesh – Inhumation
Blackened melodic death metallers Unflesh have released their second full-length, ‘Inhumation’. The band partnered with artist Junki Sakuraba (Seven Spires) once again to create the killer album art for Inhumation. The album was mixed and mastered by renowned musician and engineer V. Santura (Triptykon, Dark Fortress, etc.) at Woodshed Studios in Landshut, Germany. Unflesh vocalist/guitarist Ryan Beevers comments: “Inhumation delves …
Album review: E.R. Jurken – ‘I Stand Corrected’: a psych-folk debut full of catharsis and melody
E.R. Jurken’s first full missive into the world reveals quite the saddest tale at an angle, never telling, always hinting. It also shows an absolute grasp of songcraft, of melody, and an abiding love of British psych-pop and later American geniuses such as Neutral Milk Hotel and Elliott Smith
Album Review: Electro Indie beauty from R Zak ‘s ‘Dialetcs’
Review : 9/ 10 There’s a certain folkloric quality that’s embedded in your mind, as the music shifts from the nuanced beauty to the darker , more solemn places in between. Portland based singer -songwriter R Zak ‘s album ‘Dialects’ is truly a kind of extended passage of discovery, gentle at times then suddenly haunting …
Album review: Secret of Elements – ‘Chronos’: the worlds of classical and electronic pirouette
A decade in a life lived richly and well, presented on an album which straddles two worlds which are becoming ever better acquainted – modern classical and electronica; when Johann really hits home the two pirouette gloriously. At times worthy of a billing on Erased Tapes or the like, at times closer to J.Willgoose’s warm analogue ambience as Late Night Final, if we can take one thing away, it’s to endeavour to live as boldly, as clearly and as truly as Johann has