album reviews
Album review: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Bill Callahan – ‘Blind Date Party’: a rolling thunder lockdown revue of the Drag City stable, cast in cover versions
NOTHING at all, really. That, for a lifer musician with new songs in the back pocket, older ones to take out and share with fans on the road across the country and the world, no chance to get into a proper studio even, if it is only to kinda dick around and have a laugh …
Album review: Various artists – ‘Home – Volume One curated by Ali Tillett’: a beautifully tessellated, warming set of old-skool chillout
Y’KNOW, it’s not just the people out front – the bands, the writers, the DJs – who know a thing or three about music; there’s plenty of people quietly working away behind the scenes who have incredible appreciation and knowledge of the sounds we fall for, too. One such gent is Ali Tillett, who’s deep …
Album review: Mumble Tide – ‘Everything Ugly’: a short, sweet-as mini-album burst from the insouciant Bristolians on their way to massive things
MUMBLE TIDE have a sweet and unusual back story: the Bristol bedroom pop duo of Gina Leonard and Ryan Rogers first met through a Gumtree ad which singer Gina had placed, looking for a bassist. But there was a proper meeting of minds, they saw that the musical thing they had going on was more …
Album review: Jim Wallis & Nick Goss – ‘Pool’: immersive, ocean-going, pastoral ambience
MODERN NATURE might be flying under your radar, but the Bella Union band who’ve just one full-length and one-mini album to their name – 2019’s How To Live and last year’s Annual, respectively – are someone you should be wrapping your head around, especially if the post-rock pastoral brilliance espoused by Mark Hollis and Talk …
EP review: Shida Shahabi – ‘Alvaret (Original Soundtrack)’: Stockholm composer soundtracks a short film of domestic tragedy with drone warmth and acuity
WE LAST encountered that Stockholm-based talent Shida Shahabi in these pages just over a year ago, when she released the soundtrack EP for Jennifer Rainsford’s subtle sci-fi short Lake On Fire; and rather a lovely thing it proved, seeing Shida step away from the piano with which she recorded her 130701 debut Shifts in favour …
EP review: Deca – ‘Source Material’: mining the library crates for instrumental breakz
LIBRARY music. It’s the crate-diggers’ crate-dig, the study of the deep connoisseur; that (formerly) unloved, workaday, copyright-free realm of production music, originally only of use and interest to the makers of TV programmes – and a useful session payday to everyone from electronic originators such as Delia Derbyshire and Ron Geesin to Pentangle guitarist John …
Album review: David Christian & The Pinecone Orchestra – ‘For Those We Met On The Way’: Comet Gain man sends a folk-rock postcard, looking back with sadness but without anger
THIS record begins not in the virus, lockdown, careers suddenly and virally iced, like the back story of so many records of recent times. Which in itself, may be a relief of sorts. No: this record begins with that other cultural tragedy of our isles and times. B. B. Can I even say it? Brexit. …
Album review: Tom Dissevelt – ‘Fantasy In Orbit’: seminal Dutch space-age electronica gets a deserved reissue
WELCOME. Now, before we fasten your belts – they’ll keep you safe against the enormous Gs as we break the atmosphere, gain the vast promised land of outer space – it’s as well as we run through a final checklist to ensure a safe and enjoyable journey. So. Question. When names like Broadcast, Stereolab, Vanishing …
Album review: Devin Hoff – ‘Voices From The Empty Moor (Songs of Anne Briggs)’: the canon of the Notts folk free spirit judiciously reinvented
BASSIST Devin Hoff may well be one of those names little known to you, but whose invaluable contributions to a record you’ve likely loved; as a four-string sharpshooter of absolute repute he’s contributed to not far shy of a hundred releases by the likes of Julia Holter, Nels Cline, Xiu Xiu, Cibo Matto, Sharon Van …
Album review: Poppy Ackroyd – ‘Pause’: solo piano pastoralism excellently captures a life lived this past year
WITH four albums proper, so to speak, under her belt – Escapement and Feathers from further back last decade, and a brace for what’s now One Little Independent in 2017, an acoustic mini-album, Sketches and the full-length Resolve – we really haven’t heard nearly enough from Poppy Ackroyd in recent times; but then what with …