TRACK: Monzanto Sound – ’23’: off-kilter dub-punk grooves
THERE’S a real skeletal dub-funk groove, with this offbeat sway and disjuncture; on the one hand, it’s deep and smokin’, on the other, wiry and angular: very The Pop Group. The percussion underpins things, but has its own ideas; it’s busy with polyrhythms of its own, thank you very much. The real heart of the …
SEE: No Age – ‘Turned To String’: new video from low-slung noise rockers
SO LOOK, it’s not even news anymore: 2020, and the world is busy going to hell in a handcart. So just what is a scuzzily excellent, guitar-totin’ US alt.rock band to do? There ain’t no gigs; there no signing sessions. Hell now even the goddam pressing plants are backing up like bad plumbing. The answer? …
SEE: Siv Jakobsen – ‘A Feeling Felt Or A Feeling Made’: folk as delicate as a bee’s wing
NORWEGIAN folk auteur Siv Jakobsen is possessed of this tremendous, fragile voice which also has astonishing power. Today she has released a video for the beautiful, lamenting delicacy of “A Feeling Felt Or A Feeling Made”, in which she explores the way we react emotionally; are we true with our feelings, or do we sometimes …
SEE: Jaga Jazzist – ‘Tomita’: jazz collective quest towards the ‘Pyramid’
THE SMALL Norwegian city of Tønsberg, 100km south-west of Oslo, isn’t somewhere you necessarily think of when you think of grand centres of jazz. New Orleans, yep, New York City? Of course; but Tønsberg? Yes, Tønsberg: which is where, back in the ’90s, a 14-year-old Lars Horntveth, his brother Martin and early fellow traveller Ivar …
ALBUM REVIEW: Jaga Jazzist – ‘Pyramid’: graceful, off-world jazz suites remind us how 2020 should be
JAZZ is back in a big way on these shores, with The Comet is Coming, BCUK, Nubia Garcia all absolutely tearing it up with triumphant, high-profile shows – at least until it descended. (Shows: they were a thing, right?) But over at labels like the eternally cool and crisp British breaks imprint Ninja Tune, jazz …
ALBUM REVIEW: Figueroa – ‘The World As We Know It’: shimmering psych-tronica from Amon Tobin
AMON TOBIN has been in there for quite a while now, toying with our heads with very fine, playful, exploratory and sometimes just wonderfully weird sonic artistry. Rio-born, he arrived with Ninebar Records as Cujo, fashioning these trademark deep bass surges out on the edges of drum ‘n’ bass, like spitting thunderheads. He came out …
TRACK: Tim Englehardt – ‘Shine’: propulsive tech-house atmospheres
TIM ENGELHARDT has been quietly carving away in the world of deep tech- and deep house grooves for a while now. Based in Westerwald, a low and mountainous region on the Rhine, he’s released one album previously, Moments Of Truth, which he out together for Poker Flat in 2017; and more than two dozen singles …
ALBUM REVIEW: Box of Chocolates – ‘Fearful Symmetry’: early Brooklyn stirrings from Will Oldham, et al
EVERY era of music has those great, lost nuggets which slip out, are adored by the knowing few, lost to the many; are whispered about and traded for ever-inflating sums until they break cover once more. It’s a cycle that can sometimes take a generation, as the actual chaff falls away to leave little beauties …
TRACK: The Kondoors – ‘Mr Rain’: classic boy-girl power balladry wants your heart
THE KONDORS is the musical project of Gavin Conder and Jess Greenfield, who were involved romantically long before they were a musical item. Jess has come up through her involvement with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, a gilt-edged name to have on the CV if ever there was; previously she’s worked with artists such as …
ALBUM REVIEW: Romare – ‘Home’: fashioning broken beat into a cerebral confection
HE’S been around a bit, has Archie Fairhurst, the artiste who releases cerebral and multifaceted grooves for Ninja Tune as Romare. It’s an overused trope, but Archie really has: he spent his childhood travelling constantly with his family as his parents moved around the world for work, before finally settling in the UK. All that …