experimental
EP review: Clarice Jensen – ‘Identifying Features’: a second, delightful leftfield venture into filmic cello
WAY BACK in January we took a dive into Ainu Moisir – our full review can be found, here – a deft, brief quarter-hour of exploratory cello and electronica meshing and also a first entry into the world of the soundtrack for Clarice Jensen, the artistic director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. The titular …
Album review: Spiritczualic Enhancement Center – ‘Carpet Album’: filmic, psychedelic and enveloping – travel deep, travel wisely
IT’S ONE of those sentences you hear periodically when chewing the fat about the music: “Ooh no, though, I really don’t like jazz”. Which, each to their own, live and let live, vive la difference without question; but, which, you imagine may be based on some particularly untethered, free-associating inversion of the style, say, Coltrane’s …
Album Review : Twofish release the cinematic and transfixing album ‘At Least A Hundred Fingers’: a dynamic sonic landscape that defies genre.
The album ‘At Least A Hundred Fingers’ by duo Twofish is an epic, cinematic musical journey that ebbs and flows with intensity and dynamism. Difficult to slot into any genre, it has the vibrancy of Dead Can Dance with an infusion of world instrumentation – many synthetic, some organic – and a syncopated thrum throughout …
Album review: Mildred Maude – ‘Sleepover’: From Cornwall with beautiful, incendiary love
SONIC CATHEDRAL: it may not be the most prolific of labels in terms of releases – but never mind the width; feel the quality. Just take a look back, wouldya, over the past year and a bit of releases: an excellent, excellent new generation of the ‘gaze debut from East Yorkshire’s vowel-free but guitar thrill-replete …
Meet: We have a chat with Remy Boccalatte, head honcho at the ultra chic False Peak Records in Brisbane
As part of our irregular series on the important and often silent figures behind the music scenes – the record labels, promoters and managers – we are today having a chat with venerable Brisbane figure Remy Boccalatte of the shining star that is False Peak Records. We here at Backseat Mafia have covered many bands …
PREMIERE: Chayse Porter invites us to ‘Chay’s Palace’ with weird and wonderful lead single ‘Purpling Dawn’
Also part of Human Beat and Seriously, the Alabama-based Chayse Porter has put in further work as a solo artist. He’s performed with a live band, which used to be an entirely separate thing from his solo work, but not anymore – the band name has duly been lifted for the title of his next …
Album Review: Drott – Orcus
Drott is comprised of Arve Isdal (Enslaved), Ivar Thormodsæter (Ulver) and Matias Monsen and hails from Bergen in the west coast of Norway. With their varied musical background ranging from metal and jazz to classical music, the band have created their own genre which can only be described as Drott. Inspired by forces of nature, …
Album Review: Sarah Davachi – ‘Antiphonals’
Sarah Davachi is a composer and performer who, like fellow keyboardists Ana Roxanne or Anna Von Hausswollf, relentlessly navigates the tidal intersections between electronic and drone music. As an artist she has serious collaborative credentials, having worked with such luminaries as Basinski, Grouper, Donald Buchla and Loren Connors, but since 2018 Davachi has focused more …
Album review: Cahill/Costello – ‘Offworld’: contemplative dubspace, ambient and post-rock shimmer that steps gloriously out of time
KEVIN DANIEL CAHILL and Graham Costello, guitarist and drummer respectively, first set off on the path that would lead to them wedding as a musical act with an oblique and rapturous aesthetic when they met at Glasgow’s prestigious Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, at which Kevin was pursuing a classical music education and Graham, jazz; they …
Album review: Bruno Bavota – ‘For Apartments: Songs And Loops’: protection against those days of lockdown in warm piano vignette and glorious modular sweep
WE LOCKED the door; we waited. We waited, we combed the airwaves; we counted the days some more. The experience is nigh on universal, save those of you lucky enough to be reading in Taiwan, Christchurch, Auckland and elsewhere. Italy was caught by the pandemic earlier than many, and as it swept across the country, …