Album review: Matchess’s ‘Sonescent’: an irresistible flow of experimental, meditative drone recollection and conscious absence

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Album review: The Jazz Butcher – ‘The Highest In The Land’: one final pop postcard from Northampton’s foremost gent

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Album review: Black Flower – ‘Magma’: a perfumed souk of North African psych jazz from the Lowlands quintet

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YORKSHIRE hiphop? Yep. Bring it. BRING. IT. ON. Lad. Comin’ atcha straight outta God’s Own Country, Kid Acne is burrowing deep down into the world of the cheese dream to bring you his latest woozy, excellent take from a nightmare in tandem with Jehst, who really should need no introduction if you’ve got your hiphop …

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ONE of the best bands you’ll ever commune with live should you get the chance, Spiritualized, are set to return in 2022 with a new album, Everything Was Beautiful, due for release in February on Bella Union. It’ll be their first in nearly four years (since 2018’s And Nothing Hurt). They’ve also dropped a first …

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RIVAL CONSOLES are on the home straight towards the release of a new dance-collaborative album, Overflow, in the first days of December, and as you’d expect it’s pristine and beautiful while also springing from the well of the leftfield. He’s truly great, one of my top three electronica artists of the moment, along with HAAi, …

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QUEENS, New York’s The Forms have been on sabbatical for, well, quite a while now, it’s fair to say. Their last album, Derealization, came out on fellow Five Boroughs label Threespheres a whole decade ago now, and proved the last of a run of three; since when, nada, until recent singles “Head Underwater”, crunchy and …

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GINA and Ryan, the Bristol bedroom pop duo trading as Mumble Tide, have a lot of fun while delivering the goods. They’re not precious, but still so punchy; avoid the pose and the disappearance up the fundament, yet are a band to get totally serious about. The pair, who met when Ryan answered a Gumtree …

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IMAGINE for a second we’re sat in a great pub, in Bristol – say The Christmas Steps, maybe, or the Bag O’Nails – and let’s further push the fanciful that I’m Brad Pitt-as-Tyler Durden (yep, I wholly over-flatter myself here, but a scribe can dream); and I lean over, conspiratorially, to whisper to you. And …

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WITH a brace of cassettes, a couple of digital singles (2019’s “Dear Natalie” and this April’s Four Tracks) sandwiching a one-off 7″ for Nebraska’s Saddle Creek, “Enough Salt (For All Dogs)” of which there’s literally a handful left at Bandcamp, West Yorkshire’s Crake are stepping boldly forward and have signed for Fika Recordings, home to …

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OVER two phases of potent reports from the real England, with an interregnum of two decades between, David Lance Callahan and The Wolfhounds have consistently filed detailed documentation from the real England – not the England of climbing roses and parental-secured internships and unearned increments, but the England I knew and grew up with: the …

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PENELOPE ISLES, the gorgeous Brighton via Cornwall and Isle of Man combo led by brother and sister Jack and Lily Wolter, have some rather excellent news for lovers of bright, nuanced shoegazey guitar pop; their second album, Which Way To Happy is out digitally this Friday, November 5th, with CD and cassette formats also up …

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CRIKEY, it’s actually been 13 whole years now since the singular, wholly erudite, wonderfully articulate vision of Mathias Kom arrived in the wider world with that split 7″ with Jenny Omnichord – just one song to puzzle over and swoon for a little, “Grave Situation Part One” – a first cracking open of the door …

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