album review
Album Review: Randolph’s Leap – Spirit Level
Spirit Level is the new album from Scottish folk-pop collective Randolph’s Leap. The titular ‘spirit level’ is a steady reference point over what had been an unsettled spell writing the album, with Adam Ross uprooting from a decade in Glasgow to a tauntingly lopsided house in rural Aberdeenshire, navigating his way through shifting phases in …
Album Review: Flyying Colours’ new album ‘Fantasy Country’ is a smashing and cathartic dose of shoegaze sparkle
The anthemic and statuesque ‘Goodtimes’ kicks opens the doors of the new and blistering album ‘Fantasy Country’ by Melbourne band Flyying Colours. And what you get at the beginning is what you can expect through to the end of this extremely enjoyable and highly rewarding album. In ‘Goodtimes’ there is an amusing tension between the …
Album Review: The Bats’ Robert Scott and Dallas Henley release low-fi home recorded delight ‘Level 4’
As the main songwriter for the wonderful The Bats, Robert Scott needs no introduction (read my recent interview with him). Scott has partnered with Dallas Henley, Scott’s co-owner of an Art Gallery – Pea Sea Art – in Port Chalmers Dunedin, to release a very low-fi and extremely intimate collection of absolutely gorgeous songs. Both …
Album Review: Roof Beams’ ‘This Life Must Be Long’ is a raw and graceful journey
Roof Beams have recorded an album ‘This Life Must Be Long’ filled with the most beautiful and expressive tracks. The instrumentation is delicate, the vocals raw and emotive, clever intelligent lyrics and themes and the production unfussy and raw. The band is showcases the songwriting skills of Nathan Robinson who writes of the travails of …
Album review: Mapstation – ‘My Frequencies, When We’: playful, immensely thoughtful tronica
My Frequencies, When We may not flaunt its wares with garish insouciance; but like so many of the albums that end up welded to your turntable, it keeps on enticing you back for more exploration, further interaction. It occasionally raises a grin and equally occasionally, an eyebrow; it’s varied in its approach yet thoroughly cohesive. It’s an immensely thoughtful record
Album review: A. Smyth unveils the imposing and beautiful album ‘Last Animals’
‘Lost Animals’ by Irish artist A. Smyth has an intriguing mix of acoustic and electronic instrumentation that creates a delicate fusion between a folk songwriting tradition and more rugged indie rock roots. The golden thread throughout, though, is an ear for the sweetest of melodies and an indelible melancholia that permeates every track. The result …
Album review: A Winged Victory For the Sullen – ‘Invisible Cities’: thrilling set pushes way beyond polite ambience
Invisible Cities is an intriguing and challenging accompaniment to a multimedia work of the same name. It’s also a cracking record in its own right, which is beautiful and textural and also genuinely thrilling in passages, and proves that A Winged Victory For the Sullen are not content to sit inside the pocket of modern composition and await their tribute; but wish to push onwards, much further onwards.
EP Review: Of Mice & Men – Timeless
Of Mice & Men’s latest offering Timeless marks the start of their new relationship with Sharptone Records and gives us a concise three track taste of what we can expect from this new era. The reflective intro for title track ‘Timeless’ sets up the introspective nature of this EP. This is swiftly displaced by the …
Album review: Cheval Sombre – ‘Time Waits For No One’: a luxuriant, timeless and meditative return
Time Waits For No One is not without its darknesses, its sadnesses, but they’re approached with the calm, supplicant grace that sits right in the heart of such feelings; and it is bloody beautiful. It’s an amulet, a perfect prescription; you can use it to ward off the world. Really, do
Album Review: FM Einheit orchestrates dreams with “Exhibition Of A Dream.”
Having made mention of KMFDM in a previous review, it would seem that the more euro-centric oddities that are emerging from the winter have made their way into the collective leftfield inbox a lot more than anticipated. That’s fine; when you’ve been asked to take a listen to an album by former Einstürzende Neubauten percussionist …