EP reviews
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 …
EP review: Lindsay Munroe’s ‘Softest Edge’ packs so much into four tracks; she can sing literally anything the human soul can feel
MANCHESTER’S Lindsay Munroe is, it’s fair to say, someone whose voice you can fall for on first encounter. I speak from personal experience here; I’d been writing for Backseat Mafia for what? … days, really, when I got offered the chance to pick up a lead single from last year’s Our Heaviness EP; I went …
EP Review: Lazarus Kane – ‘Psychobabble’
Just as one rainy British season follows another, the increasing excellence of another Speedy Wunderground alum is surely similarly guaranteed; Lazarus Kane perhaps no finer example. Their funk, Americanism-heavy swagger brought them the cult following they deserved. However, the band have just as abruptly dropped the character and thrust their complex yet incessantly repeatable song-writing …
EP review: Dundundun – ‘Dundundun’: electronically charged debut from the wild West Country
THE WILD West Country has always taken beats and grooves seriously. From the dub haze agitation of The Pop Group, through Smith & Mighty’s mashed -p visions to trip-hop’s treasure trove and beyond, it’s a place with a sonic core like no other, always bubbling, always explosive. Now courtesy of Bristol sound purveyors Worm Discs …