Soundtrack of Our Lives
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Emma Spartz
It’s one thing to admire an artist’s work from afar, behind a screen, or in the crowd of a show. But it is something else entirely to share a personal connection with an inspiring artist — for myself and singer-songwriter Emma Spartz, that personal connection was SPEA-A 236/336: Music Industry I/II at university. In a …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Bo Moore of The Peacers brings the groove
SAN FRAN’S Sic Alps, living guitar legends, were one of those bands which, with the amount of the talent in its ranks, could only burn bright and, like an unstable isotope, emit members to spin off into other musical pursuits, eventually to transform itself in a musical half-life. Tim Hellman went into the ranks of …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles freewheel us through great handpicked tracks
BILL MACKAY, the Chicago-based guitarist, improviser of note and all-round scion of six strings, sure loves to enter into a two-way conversation with other artists with reliably beautiful results; witness the brace of albums he’s recorded with the freewheelin’ Ryley Walker, Land Of Plenty and Spiderbeetlebee. And loving that American instrumental guitar tradition in all its iterations, from …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: breaking psych-folk troubadour E.R. Jurken takes us a for a trip through the music of his life
THEY loved what they heard so much they set up a label just for him. Yep, that’s the tale of E.R. (Ed to his friends) Jurken’s slow peregrination towards a recording contract once he’d landed in Chicago after one of those periods when life gets dismantled, leaves you tumbling in its riptides; criss-crossing the States, …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: New Bums’ Ben Chasny takes us for a musical trip
NEW BUMS is the collaborative shore of of Six Organs of Admittance’s prolific psych voyager Ben Chasny and Donovan Quinn, of erstwhile Jagjaguwar psych-folk mainstays Skygreen Leopards. The duo first ventured into the world of recorded sound for Drag City six? Nope, seven years ago now, their debut album Voices In A Rented Room containing such raggedy lovelies as “Black Bough” and “Your Girlfriend …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Eilish Gilligan takes us through her fascinating musical influences, plus we review her epic EP ‘Hospital’
Melbourne’s Eilish Gilligan is a one person tour de force who has bloomed during the harsh (but ultimately very successful) lockdowns in Victoria. She has been releasing some stunning singles over the past year, undertaking fascinating live shows during lockdown through Twitch and has now released an epic self-produced EP, ‘Hospital’. This EP is a …
Soundtrack of Our Lives: Tom Joshua
TOM JOSHUA is a young singer-songwriter from Stockton-on-Tees, who’s set a course to seduce us with sweet and emotive, well-sculpted guitar and piano-led songs such as the autumnal fragility of “Meteor Showers”. He’s just released the Undergrowth EP (watch the video for the title track, here), and not content with just that, has made a …
Soundtracks of Our Lives: Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Markers
MAGIK MARKERS came hurtling at us from a Connecticut basement in 2001, full of fire and noise and dirt and excellence. Back then there were four of them: singer-guitarist Elisa Ambrogio, bassist John Shaw, drummer Pete Nolan and Leah Quimby, but Leah fell by the wayside back around 2006. They began plying a line in …
Soundtracks of Our Lives: Mt. Doubt
EDINBURGH’S Mt. Doubt is the musical vision of Leo Bargery. The band have been picking up regular airplay on BBC Scotland and 6Music; has shared a stage with names such as Idlewild and We Were Promised Jetpacks. They recently featured on, and were one of the undoubted highlights of, the Wakefield festival compilation Long Division: …
Soundtrack of our Lives: Pixy Jones of El Goodo
YOU MAY not have taken a dive into an El Goodo album; that, I’m afraid, may be a flaw entirely laid at your own door. OK, they don’t work to a Tin Pan Alley rhythm – there’s only been three albums since their eponymous debut for Super Furries’ Placid Casual imprint in 2005, the most …