downbeat
Track: Tycho & Ben Gibbard’s positivity anthem ‘Only Love’ gets a woozily halcyon remix from Brijean
SAN FRAN breaks producer Tycho has been working cross-genre of late with Benjamin Gibbard, frontman of acclaimed US indie outfits Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service – not that genre purity is anything to for a second trouble Tycho, whose thoughtful and intelligent downbeatz are entirely sans frontières. They shared the blissful pop of a …
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 …
See: Blue States – ‘Plain Sight’ feat. Rachael Dadd – a step into folktronica from Andy Dragazis ahead of his sixth album
BLUE STATES, the lovely downbeatz project of Sussex’s Andy Dragazis, is following last year’s necessary and expanded repressing of his classic album Nothing Changes Under The Sun with another peek into the world of his new album, his sixth and also first in six years; come inside and twirl with the complex atmospheres of “Plain …
Album review: Scrimshire – ‘Nothing Feels Like Everything’: expansive, opulent soul-jazz with a real beating heart
ALBERT’S FAVOURITES is a label bringing the sounds of the South London scene to the world with heart; genuine heart, and care, and soul, in all iterations of that word. One only need look at the label’s name, and the tribute it pays. I’ve written about this before but it is worth reprising, since it …
See: James Alexander Bright gets it on with Fink for ‘Sundown’: keeping the rays alive as the chill bites
AUTUMN has well and truly bitten; any Indian summer which we may have had is now truly receding in the rear-view mirror; drizzle has become the lingua franca. Time to bust out the daylight lamps, grab the vitamin D anywhere we can. Thankfully Hampshire’s James Alexander Bright has been working on a plan in cahoots …
See: James Alexander Bright cools the July heat as he invites you to ‘Drink This Water’
!K7’S lo-fi rural psychedelic soul scion James Alexander Bright has emerged into the height of summer to slake our thirst with the Shuggie Otis-style leftfield chill of “Drink This Water”: nothing could be better than a deep draught of this tune, in which guitars laze, drum machines click and pop with the correct caress, James …
See: Pie Eye Collective feat. Hector Plimmer – ‘Flibbers’: gloriously subaquatic, rollin’ breaks for a dancefloor in Atlantis
PIE EYE COLLECTIVE is the solo project of Bristol-born, London-based sound scientist Matthew Gordon, who melds elements of ambient, broken beat, dub-techno and hip hop, all refracted and discoloured via a spectrum of tape-saturated synthesis. His influences are many and stylistically diverse, and include Sun Ra, Morton Feldman and Madlib; but he’s also heavily influenced …
See: Barnaby Keen – ‘Trust Me’: a little languorous neo-psych sunshine
LONDON singer-songwriter and producer Barnaby Keen brings a little languorous neo-psych sunshine into our lives with his second single as just himself, “Trust Me”, out now on all digital streaming platforms. The tune has a vitamin-D psych-soul bliss that puts him out in the same territory as maybe Lewis Recordings’ lovely Skinshape and !K7’s James …
See: The lyric video for psych-pop songwriter Barnaby Keen’s ‘Lay Our Cards’
LET’S welcome to the grand pantheon of recorded music a debuting (at least solo) songwriter and a new label: firstly Barnaby Keen, who has, on the evidence of “Lay Our Cards”, a nicely whimsical take on the psych-pop troubadour form, taking some of the quirky delirium of the post-Carnaby Street comedown vibe and giving a …
See: The Harpoonist & The Axe Murderer – ‘Forever Fool (Post-Apocalipstick)’: a late-night stoner chillout reimagining
A VANCOUVER duo who met by chance at a jobbing jingle recording session some decade and a half ago, the curiously named The Harpoonist & The Axe Murderer soon discovered a mutual wish to explore the folk and the blues; a business they’ve been about over five albums in the time since. They’ve taken the …