album review
Album Review: The Ghost of Helags unveil the shimmering and impressingly beautiful album ‘We Came From the Stars’
Here at Backseat Mafia HQ we have been following synth pop duo The Ghost of Helags for a while – covering a series of extraordinary beautiful dreamy singles and even capturing a live session of single ‘Chemistry’. The Berlin-based Swedish duo have collected all the singles together and added more tracks to release an exquisite …
Album review: Sarah Haras – ‘Mirage’: deeply effective and affecting abstraction
Often abstract albums come across like a loose series of random sketches; but not Mirage. It’s got a clear vision that binds it together and like the best electronic music suggests something different to every listener each time they tune in … and that is some achievement
Album Review: Huck Hastings unveils a sparkling and gorgeous album ‘Cheers to Progress’, draped in love, loss, longing and optimism.
Huck Hastings is a Sydney based singer/songwriter whose new album ‘Cheers to Progress’ is a cinematic sweep full of longing, love and loss – a vivid and beautifully expressed series of personal vignettes that are endearing, optimistic and heart-breaking at the same time. This a collection of beautiful personal observations on relationships and love, floating …
ALBUM REVIEW: Cameron Knowler & Eli Winter – ‘Anticipation’: excellent studies in twin guitar primitivism
We don’t get to hear quite enough of the modern fingerpicking style this side of the Atlantic, so if you’ve drifted off from the form somewhat since Jack Rose passed, or wish to explore beyond William Tyler; then hell; start right here. A grand tour of two instruments and two musical minds woven together so tightly and also unravelling like fronds of a fern, seeking all the multiplicity of new directions in folk. An excellent record
Album Review: Underground Lovers surprise again with career collection of B for brilliant B sides in ‘Others’
Not that long after releasing a superb collection of remixes spanning their career (reviewed by me here), Melbournes Underground Lovers have sprung another surprise album on the public entitled ‘Others’. This album has collected seventeen tracks of what are labelled B sides from singles, EPs and giveaways. Given the standard of output by this band, …
Album Review: DMA’s bottle their indie pop magic into the spectacular ‘Live At Brixton’ Album
DMA’s‘ concert at Brixton this time last year marked the launch into the precipice that was the COVID lockdown. As such, it has achieved a certain iconic status as one of the last big gigs of 2020, and it is now hard to remember the feeling of bouncing cheek by jowl in a heaving hall …
Album review: Field Works – ‘Cedars’: Stuart Hyatt fuses cosmic Americana and Arabic sounds; the results are luscious
Cedars is quite a record – two records really; the first more orange and various other colours of the sun’s framing of the beginning and the ending of the day, alive with a heartfelt yearning and cosmic sonic thrill. The second is far more verdant, deep green, homespun, and focuses in very much in on the wonder of the simple; the moments we all return to, perhaps, at least us rural dwellers. If you’re at all conceptually familiar with the work of William Blake, his Songs Of Innocence And Experience, you’ll see; the twining and correspondences. Climb into Cedars, join the two worlds for yourself; the album is long on thought and also on beauty.
Album review: Neil Cowley – ‘Hall Of Mirrors’: A love letter to a city and an instrument
Neil Cowley has been on a journey away from, and returning to, the piano; Hall Of Mirrors is a striking love letter to the instrument, and also to his adopted city of Berlin. But all these conceptual asides fade away beneath the main thrust: it’s a truly bloody great record. Buy.
Album review: Rutger Hoedemaekers – ‘The Age Of Oddities’: a breathtaking, humanistic debut for 130701
Stirring, seeking, wide-spectrum emotional,The Age Of Oddities is a stunning debut and part-tribute to Jóhann Jóhannsson from a friend and collaborator; 130701 has the golden touch at present
Album Review: Jessica’s ‘The Space Between’ is an immersive masterpiece of haunting dream pop
Backseat Mafia had the pleasure of premiering the track ‘Silence’ from Sydney artist Jessica last week which lead inexorably to listening to the source album ‘The Space Between’. And what a completely immersive and enthralling journey this album is. ‘The Space Between’ as a whole is impossibly beautiful – quiet, reflecting vignettes filled with a …