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SEE: Cory Hanson – ‘Angeles’: mellow LA country-psych with the darkest heart
BY DAY Cory Hanson is singer-guitarist with LA psych quintet Wand, but he also pursues a rather seductive solo vision: a very LA blur of blissful, rootsy psych, part-Laurel Canyon, part-peyote in the deserts out past city limits. He’s got only his second full-length solo outing, Pale Horse Rider, due for release on Drag City …
SEE: Visionist preludes his March album for Mute with ‘The Fold’
LONDON’S musical scryer Visionist has announced details of a new album, A Call To Arms which, after his 2017 LP Value for Big Dada, will be his debut for Mute. The album, which will be released come March 5th, sees a departure in aesthetic methods as for the first time he brings his own voice to …
SEE: The video for Ben Harper’s ‘Black Beauty’: a proud, gospel soul rush
“IT WAS an honor to have been asked to write a song for this culturally vital documentary,” says singer-songwriting legend Ben Harper of “Black Beauty”, the song he’s dropped the video for today. “After watching Black Boys and discussing it in-depth with [director] Sonia Lowman, I went immediately to work on composing ‘Black Beauty.’ “I’m old-school …
SEE: John Paul Keith – ‘How Can You Walk Away’: raunchy soul blues lament gets visuals
WE’VE taken a look at this before here at Backseat Mafia, but at that point it was visually denuded as you might say: and given it’s a bit of a raunchy simmer in terms of tuneage, we’ve more than happy to go around the block one more time for John Paul Keith’s “How Can You …
SEE: Danny Elfman – ‘Sorry’: high, scouring prog-industrial from soundtrack giant
IT WAS quite a thing when ANTI- secured the signature of globe-straddling modern soundtrack composer extraordinaire Danny Elfman last year; yep, the Sunset Boulevard-based label which brings us Andy Shauf, Yves Jarvis, M. Ward, Jolie Holland, Fleet Foxes et al, teaming up with the man behind the theme from The Simpsons and soundtracks to such …
SEE: Cassandra Jenkins – ‘Michelangelo’: subtle, haunting Americana
NEW YORK folkie Cassandra Jenkins has stepped away from the world of self-releasing on her own Cassandra Complex imprint to ink her signature for Brooklyn’s Ba Da Bing, which imprint – sometime home to Damon & Naomi and Comets On Fire, among others – hosts her second album, the detached, observational beauty of An Overview …
SEE: The Telescopes – ‘Strange Waves’: languid, dirty and all the good things
STEPHEN LAWRIE’S The Telescopes are old hands at this beautifully dirty, scuzzy psych-rock game – but don’t think for a second that means they’ve lost an ounce of potency, as illustrated by their forthcoming album Songs Of Love And Revolution, out at the beginning of February. You would be so wrong, so wrong. The band …
SEE: John Smith – ‘Friends’: honey-voiced folk salutes those dear to us
A SIMPLE name, perhaps, but far from simple tunesmithery: John Smith is coming into 2021 with positivity and a grab-bag of songs to beguile you. Essex born but raised on the Devon coast, he’s earned his crust previously as a session musician, lending his chops and precision to bigger names across the globe, such as …
SEE: Tamar Aphek – ‘Russian Winter’: power trio scorcher will thaw your January
SHE’S pretty much already Tel Aviv’s favourite guitar-wielding daughter, Tamar Aphek; and if you like your power trios full of flame and energy and neo-psych atmospheres akin to the Jimi Hendrix Experience upon arrival in London – make no mistake, Tamar, bassist Uri Ketner and drummer Yuval Garin are hellish tight – then they will …
SEE: Jon Mueller – ‘Welcome’: glorious drone textures from Wisconsin
WISCONSIN musician? Sound artist? Explorer? Curator? – all of these things, Jon Mueller is always seeking new confluences of thought and sound. He may be best known to you as part of Volcano Choir, in which he lined up alongside Justin Vernon of Bon Iver to push out the boundaries of alt.rock into weirder, treated shapes, employing …