electronic albums
Album Review: Grace Jones – The Disco Years
1977 was an important year according to most people I know, and many I don’t. The first Star Wars film was screened, The first issue of 2000AD was published, Apple was incorporated, the rings of uranus were discovered (much to the amusement of most), Led Zeppelin and Elvis Presley played their last concerts, Elvis then …
Album Review: Lonelady – Hinterland
Manchester’s Julie Ann Campbell, aka LoneLady, piqued listeners’ interest with her debut album five years ago and has now returned with the remarkable Hinterland, an incredible hat tip to early ‘80s dance music. In a city with such a strong male-dominated mod rock tradition, LoneLady stands out a mile with classic Roland riffs and Nile …
Album Review: Mark Lanegan Band – A Thousand Miles of Midnight
Since forming the Screaming Trees in the mid-1980s Mark Lanegan has been viewed as a welcome figure on the alternative rock periphery. He has collaborated with everyone from Queens of the Stone Age and Greg Dulli (the Afghan Whigs/Gutter Twins) to Belle and Sebastian’s Isobel Campbell. For about thirty years, his prolific output has varied in …
Album Review: Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury – EX-MACHINA (Soundtrack)
Ex-Machina is a psychological thriller which follows the story of Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) a 24-year-old Coder who wins a competition to spend a week at his CEOs retreat. Nathan (Oscar Isaac) plays the reclusive CEO who has planned to use Caleb in an experiment involving the first true artificial intelligence robot which comes in the shape of …
Album Review: Björk – Vulnicura
Very few solo artists are as diverse and experimental as Björk. In a career spanning 22 years (not counting her album released when she was 12), she’s released music ranging from Alternative Rock, to Trip Hop, Jazz, Ambient and even Avant-Garde. Every album takes the listener to a new musical destination as Björk really gets …
Album Review: Melanie De Biasio – No Deal (Remixed)
Beligian/Italian singer Melanie de Biasio made a record last year, No Deal, a record that showcased her singing, songwriting, even flute playing. With a voice that approached both Karen Carpenter and (more pertinently) Nina Simone, at least stylistically, it was a wake up call that soul jazz was very much alive and well. Despite picking …
Album Review: Some Truths – Bliss Abyss
There is a lot that can be said for sobbing acid casualties. What might seem to the Conservative ballot-casting outsider like a drooling comatose corpse slumped in the corner of a dance floor is, in fact, a creature that has traversed the finer fragments of inner space. It has seen truths of unfathomable magnitude and …
Album Review: Ibeyi – Ibeyi
There’s been a fair bit of fuss about Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Díaz, known to us as Ibeyi and to some as daughters of famed percussionist Anga Díaz. Their first album, a self-titled affair is out today (February 16th) on the XL label and is a joyous mix of their own roots – the French Cuban …
Album Review: Public Service Broadcasting – The Race for Space
The Race for Space is the much anticipated follow up to Public Service Broadcasting’s May 2013 debut ‘Inform – Educate – Entertain’, which reached number 21 in the UK Album Chart and garnered rave reviews and award nominations in it’s wake. Public Service Broadcasting are pseudonymous musical duo J. Willgoose, Esq and Wrigglesworth who weave samples from …
Album Review: Jonas Munk – Absorb Fabric Cascade
Jonas Munk has very few contemporaries exploring aural landscapes in quite the same way that he does. He seems to create musical canvases that are labyrinthine in scope; yet still as intimate as a warm embrace. His first solo outing, Pan, was warm and bubbling. It floated along a cloud of analog synth chugs and phased …