TRACK: Arca’s ‘Mequetrefe’ is shattered-mirror futurism
XL RECORDINGS’ avant-pop futurist Arca has premiered a new track, “Mequetrefe,” ahead of forthcoming album Kick i, which XL is releasing next Friday, June 26th (with a vinyl press available from July 17th). Draped in stuttering, post-Squarepusher percussive stutter, AFXy cut-up and Arca’s disembodied vocal chanting, treated and filtered into a distant century, it’s out …
SEE: Van Dammes’ garagey plea for a ‘Tax Free World’
HELSINKI’S bubblegum garage punks Van Dammes are, like most of us, making the best of a bad situation in midsummer 2020. With the cancellation of their European tour – during which the band were pencilled in to perform at the opening of Euro 2020 in Copenhagen – the guys have settled with making and releasing …
ALBUM REVIEW: McCarthy – ‘The Enraged Shall Inherit the Earth’
IF YOU’RE an old-skool, proper indie kid (and full disclosure, I count myself among that number), with campaign medals from the C86 wars – you saw action on the Creation, Midnight Music, 53rd & 3rd and Subway front lines, clutched fanzines with the finest, sipped snakebite during a set by Mighty Mighty – then Optic …
NEWS: Eno collaborations to get expanded reissue
BRIAN ENO, the father of modern ambient music, is set to reissue two collaborative albums from the 1990s via All Saints Records. Eno/Cale’s Wrong Way Up and Eno/Wobble’s Spinner have been unavailable for a decade and a half. These reissues mark the 30th anniversary of the former, and the 25th of the latter. Both reissues …
TRACK: Long Faces bring the Canterbury vibe on ‘Sail Away’
SOMETIMES the musical DNA of a city seeps into your bones. At first listen the fourth release from London-Leeds-based alt-rock quintet The Long Faces, “Sail Away”, would seem to give no clues. Big, strong, theatrical vocals with a hint of vibrato sit atop complex guitar figures, spiralling away over a twelve-string. That’s until you learn …
SEE: Siv Jakobsen’s ‘Anywhere Else’ is a fragile folk arrow to your chest
RISING Norwegian folk artist Siv Jakobsen has a voice that is at once sibilant and honeyed, yet so, so fragile. And in a recent Instagram post, she confessed that her current single, “Anywhere Else”, the video for which you can watch below, has a real fragility of experience at its core. She said: “I wasn’t …
SAY PSYCH: ALBUM REVIEW: Paint – ‘Spiritual Vegas’
STEPPING outside his home musical turf, the Allah-Las for the second time, songwriter and guitarist Pedrum Siadatian is poised to exhibit the latest deeply coloured, impressionistic canvas he has produced under his Paint nom-de-plume, 2: Spiritual Vegas. Paint grew out of the four-track experimentation that any songwriter nurtures: a little side hustle where odder things …
SEE: the fine English psych whimsy of Jeremy Tuplin’s ‘Space Folk’
“I BELIEVE in magic / space magic … put on your unicorn jacket, covered in bat ships.”. So exhorts Somerset’s Jeremy Tuplin in the opening lines of his current single, “Space Magic”. So whoah: where are we, exactly, now … ground control? As with the lyrics, the video for the song (which you can watch …
NEWS: Slowdive’s debut gets the flaming treatment
SLOWDIVE’S 1991 debut LP for Creation, Just For A Day, is set to get a limited flame-coloured 180-gramme pressing by Resident Records. The album, which was slated by the British inkies at the time but which has come to be seen as a cornerstone of the reappraised shoegaze movement, features overdriven, ambient guitar classics such …
NEWS: trio of Brian Setzer albums set for the wax treatment
THREE classic albums by rockabilly royalty Brian Setzer albums are set for a vinyl issue on July 24th. Surfdog Records will be releasing the two compilations, The Brian Setzer Orchestra’s The Ultimate Collection Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 on vinyl for the first time; additionally, his solo set, Brian Setzer ’68 Comeback Special: Ignition will be reissued …