Live review: This is the Kit, Falmouth, March 4th – West Country meets West Coast and proves a very fine blend
WE’RE not quite there, you know, not yet; not quite. Back to normal, that is. It’s taken me until early March to lose my 2022 gig cherry, mostly because the ‘rona still lingers as a particularly unwelcome surprise in the nooks and crannies of life, ready to spring out with its super-infectious, gap-toothed grin, and …
Album review: Shane Parish – ‘Liverpool’: pulling sea shanties leftfield and forward, forward, ho! for a post-industrial, post-rock generation KICKERS
IF YOU don’t know Shane Parish and his oeuvre – and chances are, unless you’re a regular reader of Wire and the deeper corners of Pitchfork and suchlike, you possibly don’t – be prepared to have a new guitar soli-meets-postrock pin-up rock up on your block, as his new album, Liverpool, takes what might be …
Album review: Duncan Marquiss – ‘Wires Turned Sideways In Time’: Phantom Band guitarist conceives of an instrumental, pastoral motorik for a place yet to exist
FROM disastrous events that upend your world can sometimes come good things; sometimes, I’m no Pollyanna here. Fortunately for Duncan Marquiss, guitarist with Chemikal Underground’s The Phantom Band, a major setback has led to another path, and a rather excellent one, albeit eventually. That quartet, with four albums such as Fears Trending and The Wants …
Album review: Matchess’s ‘Sonescent’: an irresistible flow of experimental, meditative drone recollection and conscious absence
WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums that explore gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound as Matchess for a number of years now. She began in 2015 with the downtempo ambience of Somnaphoria, vocodered vocals, clock-ticking beats, swirls and aural glitter to put The Orb to shame in the cosmic stakes. Since that blissful …
Album review: The Jazz Butcher – ‘The Highest In The Land’: one final pop postcard from Northampton’s foremost gent
THE JAZZ BUTCHER is one of those artists who make indiepop kids of a certain generation go misty eyed, and with good reason; Pat Fish, the man behind the jazz curtain as it were, was an all-round gentleman of the whimsical song, someone you’d definitely find in the kitchen at parties; a sometime indie television …
Album review: Black Flower – ‘Magma’: a perfumed souk of North African psych jazz from the Lowlands quintet
THE WORLD of Belgian Eastern jazz outfit Black Flower is a well-woven and beautiful one; the quintet this week unveil their sixth full-length album for Ghent’s rather groove-obsessed Sdban Ultra imprint, with whom they’ve released two of their past three albums this past five years. Through this arch, if you will, to enter their aural …
Album review: Beirut – ‘Artifacts’: a masterful and beautiful voyage through Zach Condon’s early years in EPs, Bs and offcuts
MISSION CREEP. One of those pseudo-economic terms that make the decent among us go “eeep”, defined in dictionary terms as “a gradual shift in objectives, often resulting in an unplanned long-term commitment.” We’ve all seen it happen: something which starts to sprawl out of control in a Mandelbrot set of projects within projects within projects …
Album review: Group Listening – ‘Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works, Vol. 2’: essential ambient reworkings with a real sense of place
GROUP LISTENING is a pairing of two very fine Welsh musicians: Cardiff’s Paul Jones, a deft jazz and experimental pianist and arranger who first worked with his partner on this project, Stephen Black, on the latter’s fine and wonky Sweet Baboo project (and is there any kind of Welsh indiepop that doesn’t espouse those two …
Album review: Claude Cooper – ‘Myriad Sounds’: taut, essential Bristol jazz breaks and cinematic LSD groove
CLAUDE COOPER: a jazz breaks legend in his own lifetime, should he even exist; for who CC is remains a complete mystery. Certainly to me. Certainly to you. One physical single, early last year, “Tangerine Dreams” / “Two Mile Hill”, the initial orange vinyl pressing of which is, lemme tells ya, already ker-ching and anyhow …
Album review: Die Wilde Jagd – ‘Atem’: a dark, occluding drone masterwork
DIE WILDE JAGD – it translates as “The Wild Hunt”, Anglophones, which will surely be the only possible connection to Swedish troubadour The Tallest Man on Earth we shall ever explore – is the sonic project of producer and songwriter Sebastian Lee Philipp. Across three albums from 2015’s self-titled debut, through 2018’s Uhrwald Orange and …