psychedelia
See: The acid prism of Plankton Wat’s ‘Modern Ruins’: a delicious psychedelic instrumental response to our fracturing world
DEWEY MAHOOD, the atmospheric psychedelic guitarist who released his twelfth album as Plankton Wat for Thrill Jockey, Future Times, in late February, has dropped the shroom-surreal video for one of that excellent album’s standout tracks, “Modern Ruins”, a track all garlanded about with echo and twang-shimmer and flutes – you can watch that below. The …
Album Review: American Darlings – ‘Afterglow’: sophisticated and psych-infused
OUT NOW digitally on Spotify and Bandcamp is the album, Afterglow from the American psychedelically-infused alt.rock band, American Darlings. Afterglow starts with “You’re Not Alone”, initially a warm, acoustic guitar haze which at first just meanders, before the whirligig of gently fuzzed-up and flange guitars fires in. Gentle 60s-style vocals glide in as the soundscape …
TRACK: Burial, Four Tet and Thom Yorke’s ‘Her Revolution’ is a psychedelic ‘tronica beauty
IF YOU’RE involved in deep vinyl Twitter, you may have noticed some shops offering a plain black 12″, plain black sleeve, strickly flesh customers only, these past few days, with some kind of whisper of Four Tet involvement about it; and indeed so, because the unmarked single is indeed a hugely limited two-track release by …
ALBUM REVIEW: Little Barrie and Malcolm Catto – ‘Quatermass Seven’: deep psych; turn on, compadre
IT’S FAIR to say that losing your drummer – the man who pins it down for you, keeps it ticking, grounded, makes sure the groove is strong – is a hell of a blow. And to lose your drummer to a sudden and untimely death, if you’re a psych power trio – well, that’s a …
ALBUM REVIEW: Mint Field’s second LP, ‘Sentimiento Mundial’ is an out-of-body experience
DESPITE the gloom-laden bleakness of this year, there has been at least some positives from the cursed chalice that is 2020. One of those is the continuation of fantastic music dropping left, right and centre, picking up from a very strong 2019 with a consistent stream of flaming hot good stuff, all oozing onto our …
ALBUM REVIEW: Paul Molloy – ‘The Fifth Dandelion’: psych-pop sunshine beamed forward from ’68
SOMEONE put music journalist and band connections-mapper Pete Frame on speed dial, because the various groovy psych-pop iterations spiralling off from The Wirral’s The Coral are like a Mandelbrot set these days and more than worthy, surely, of one of his fantastic Rock Family Trees. Besides the sprawling, sea-shanty psych majesty of The Coral themselves, …
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 …
Album Review: Warmer – Wooden Box with Strings
Warmer is the project of Nature Strip’s John Encarnacao – Backseat reviewed their last EP, Past Pacific, back in 2018. More recently the other main songwriter in The Nature Strip, Pete Marley, released ‘Savoury-toothed Tiger’ under the name Marveline which I reviewed last last month. With the release of Warmer’s new album ‘Wooden Box with …
Album Review: The Hanging Stars – A New Kind of Sky (plus tour news)
Folk music seems to be a genre I dip in-and-out of; the multi-faceted style manages to have different elements that have the roots of traditional folk music underpinning those subversions that make it so sprawling. Anti-folk, neofolk, Americana – there is a list that can go on. Be it the earnest, lo-fidelity accomplishments of Willy …
EP/Track: Fragile Animals – Only Shallow
South East Queensland’s Fragile Animals have recently released their new EP, ‘Only Shallow’ and it is an absolute shimmering delight. Infused with a dream-like melancholia and an antithetical summer sheen, this band has all the genetic makeup of classic shoegaze, but has evolved this into their own unique style. There is a developing sound from …