SEE: Jerry Joseph – ‘Sugar Smacks’: tellin’ it like it is with The Drive-By Truckers
JERRY JOSEPH is a singer who’s been there, got the tee-shirt; hell, got the entire arm-sleeve tattoo. He made his first steps into music after living a little on the wild side as a kid growing up in San Diego and, in order to quell his waywardness, his folks sent him to boarding school in …
TRACK: Richard Skelton – ‘For The Application Of Fire’: a new electronic spellbook
RICHARD SKELTON is absolutely what you might term a polymath. A poet, writer and artist, intensely concerned with the nature and experience of place, he only began to fashion musics in 2004 after a tragic personal loss. Since then he has released something like fifty albums and EPs, under his own name and aliases such …
SEE: Winter Gardens – ‘Tapestry’: dark, velvet dreampop
THE song hums in quietly on the faintest guitar shimmer. One deep keyboard chord lends heft and depth. And then vocalist Ananda appears, a ghostly image, made more eerie yet by mime make-up: she’s some shade here to sing, bringing forth a tale. Her voice is beguiling, breathy. And so we’re into the ethereal world …
SEE: Less Bells – ‘The Fang’: fashioning beauty from grief for Kranky
YOU may well have heard Julie Carpenter, if you have not yet heard of her. A graduate of the University of North Texas, multi-instrumentalist and composer Julie has been called upon to add violins to work by the Eels and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, amongst others. But she has also been creating deep, ambient drone …
NEWS: Tim Smith of Cardiacs passes aged 59
THE world of quirky indie music was left a little darker this morning with the news that Tim Smith, singer with eternally loved, eternal outsiders the Cardiacs, has died at the age of 59. Sadly, the man who brought us such quirkball, wonderfully English eccentric classics such as “Big Ship” and “All His Geese Are …
TRACK: The Seshen – ‘Still Dreaming’: luscious future beats
SAN FRAN area septet The Seshen have been nothing if not productive this year. They released their third album, Cyan, earlier this year with Brighton’s eclectic beat hounds Tru Thoughts. They’ve since taken three singles from Cyan: the crisp soul electro of “Dive”, the beautiful acoustic grace of “Don’t Answer” and cool breaks torchsong “Take …
SEE: Tiga & Hudson Mohawke – ‘Love Minus Zero’: transatlantic dance pop euphoria
THE SPHERE of dance music is one of constant, healthy cross-fertilisation and contrast, of new sounds arising. But when Warp’s leftfield hiphop and breaks reinventor Hudson Mohawke began working with Canadian electroclash hit-scorer Tiga, even the latter had to admit it looked a stretch. He said that it “seems kind of unlikely on paper, but …
TRACK: William Shatner and Canned Heat decide: ‘Let’s Work Together’
AND now he’s back. From outer space. The rebellious re-interpreter of “Mr Tambourine Man” and “Lucy in the Sky in Diamonds” on his album, The Transformed Man, in 1968. Brilliant bewitcher and bemuser of lyricist Bernie Taupin at the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards in his theatrical, declamatory, absolutely seminal take on “Rocket Man”. And …
TRACK: Bill Callahan makes it a Monday quartet with ‘Protest Song’
BILL CALLAHAN’S ongoing Monday afternoon pledge to gift us a song from his September Gold Record reached its fourth instalment today, with the downhome and evocative porchside “Protest Song”. Today’s is a bluesy, spontaneous and raggy fragment, with the meta-theme of being a protest song about a protest song on the television. “Somebody must stop …
SEE: El Goodo’s ‘The Grey Tower’ psychs like The Seeds
QUIETLY working to their own, slower calendar in the Vale of Neath since the 20th flipped to the 21st, Wales’s El Goodo offer up pebbles of psych-folk-country goodness for anyone who steps through their door. We should trust their hospitality. Take that name. Yes, of course it namechecks Big Star. How can we not be …