album review
ALBUM REVIEW: slowthai – TYRON
The funny thing about TYRON is how clearly slowthai intends towards something, but never quite approaches it. Nothing Great About Britain was excellent – not to mention very clear in its concept – and bought him considerable goodwill, but it may also have painted him into a corner. Tyron Frampton approaches things differently this time …
Album Review: The Actions unveil the luscious atmospheric ‘Flourish’
Bristol duo The Actions‘ display their home town trip hop roots adeptly in their new album ‘Flourish’, out now through Niteo Records. This album has a spacious expansive atmosphere with glitchy, sticky percussion, eclectic instrumentation and Marta Argenio’s voice a soft, silky breathless whisper floating across the surface. There is a rich luscious patena to …
ALBUM REVIEW: CAMERA – ‘Prosthuman’: the current Berlin motorik
SO, LET’S talk krautrock. In many ways, it’s all about the rhythm, isn’t it? Think Can; think Jaki Liebezeit, that perfect control, poise, underpinning. Motorik, propulsion, but also tremendous fills and patterning. Metronomic, relentless, the beating heart of the record. Berlin’s CAMERA have that. They have their own Jaki in the shape of the excellently …
ALBUM REVIEW: Indigo Sparke – ‘echo’: a jaw-dropping country-folk debut
You can hear Indigo’s very essence shot right through echo. It’s never less, at any point, than extremely lovely; at many points its genuinely bloody stunning. You know when someone has that alchemical it, and boy: Indigo incontrovertibly does.
It’s not an album to have on in the background, because it’s far too arresting and enveloping, commanding. She’s royalty in waiting on the leftfield folk scene. Astonishing; buy
EP REVIEW: Tape Runs Out – ‘Ghost Fruit’: hail Cambridge’s new intelligent indiepop geniuses
I really, genuinely think Tape Runs Out may one day take a place in the pantheon of the proper eccentric, intelligent British pop genii – they can turn their hands in any direction they wish, know how to arrange a tune so it makes you sit bolt upright, aren’t afraid to push that tune in whichever stylistic direction it seems to demand; yet are also completely enthralled to the brilliance of a well-turned pop song. Brilliant, insouciant and intelligent
Album review: Alberteen’s sparkling analogue voyage of discovery ‘Lowenva’ is a refreshing beacon of light.
In ‘Lowenva’, Alberteen have created a mesmerising, organic album that crinkles with visceral instruments – melodic crunchy bass, pounding percussion, rumbling guitars, riffing horns and deep laconic cool vocals. It is a sound that seems to encapsulate the recurring nautical and natural themes in the album – deserted coastal towns, windswept beaches and pounding waves. …
Album review: MOAT’s new album Poison Stream is a glorious collection of hybrid indie/folk vignettes that shimmer and shine.
MOAT is a fascinating collaboration between Marty Willson-Piper, founding and former member of iconic Australian band The Church and member of goth band All About Eve, and composer and multi-instrumentalist Niko Röhlcke (Weeping Willows). The former comes from an English/Australian jangling guitar pop background, the latter a composer and Swedish indie band member, and they meet somewhere …
ALBUM REVIEW: Pale Waves – Who Am I?
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a band in possession of good reviews for their first album must find the second difficult. Debuts are, after all, borne out of years of hard graft and fine-tuning, whereas follow-ups are often written and recorded amongst a brand-new dizzying schedule of touring and promotion and under the …
ALBUM REVIEW: The WITCH – ‘Introduction’: cracking Zambian garage nugget unearthed
You thought every stone had been overturned in the quest for any last garage-punk nuggets of note? You’d be wrong. Get your white drainpipes and chelsea boots on for this cracking Zambian garage album from the early Seventies
Album Review: American Darlings – ‘Afterglow’: sophisticated and psych-infused
OUT NOW digitally on Spotify and Bandcamp is the album, Afterglow from the American psychedelically-infused alt.rock band, American Darlings. Afterglow starts with “You’re Not Alone”, initially a warm, acoustic guitar haze which at first just meanders, before the whirligig of gently fuzzed-up and flange guitars fires in. Gentle 60s-style vocals glide in as the soundscape …