ep review
EP: Johnny Hunter – Early Trauma plus tour news
‘Early Trauma’, the new EP from Sydney’s Johnny Hunter is quite simply brilliant. It is a sweeping, cinematic and statuesque release filled with five close to perfect pop songs that have theatricality and pomp and an elegance, leavened by a satisfying post-punk gothic darkness. Bowie-esque vocals swerve into a Joy Division sombreness and Bryan Ferry …
EP REVIEW: Wye Oak – ‘No Horizon’: boundless folk-rock choral vistas
WYE OAK have never been a band to stand still; to let the silt of being typecast, the ploughing of the same groove, hem them in. Debuting for Merge back in 2008 with If Children, they brought a real US alt.guitar edge to folk. Or was it a folksy edge to the alternative guitar sound? …
EP REVIEW: Hanya – ‘Sea Shoes’
BRIGHTON’S small but perfectedly formed indie label Austerity Records, the brainchild of industry gentlemen and label co-owners Garry Saunders and Jamie Windless, has gone all chromium oxide on us with the launch of its C60 Club. A reel-to-reel move across from the singles club, Austerity launches its new venture thus: “A lot of us grew …
EP Review: Moscow Apartment – Better Daughter
The delicate fragility of the music and the achingly beautiful melodies that permeate ‘Better Daughter’ by Toronto duo Moscow Apartment plays a fundamental part in why this EP is so good. It is not, however, all that there is. Lyrically and in attitude, the band, despite its youth, is far deeper and more complex than …
EP: BARBE ROUSSE – FACTORY SETTINGS
DESCRIBING themselves as “psychedelic slop-pop”, Edinburgh’s Barbe Rousse (it’s French for ‘ginger beard’) are to these ears, conversely, a rather neat proposition. Their digitally released five-tracker, the Factory Settings EP, is the brainchild of Leith home recording magician Alasdair Kelly, and is a paisley treat. Following on from a full-length debut for Double A-Side Records …