See: Keinemusik’s ‘Pay To Play’ feat. Bell-Towers explores the concept of the ear worm quite literally – eeep
KEINEMUSIK as a going sonic concern came into being around four years ago, when Berlin electronica producers Adam Port, &Me and Rampa – born Adam Polaszek, André Boadu and Gregor Sütterlin, respectively – came together to bring some crisp electro science to the party. A debut album, You Are Safe, at the very end of …
Tracks: Ring in the shortest day with the fine English folk of Craig Fortnam’s ‘Witchy Grid’/’God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’
IT’S BEEN a productive and busy year all round for Craig Fortnam, the man known best perhaps for his role in the English contemporary music ensemble, North Sea Radio Orchestra; he’s been on sabbatical from that fine outfit all year but so very busy in other musical guisings. If you’ll permit me to track back …
News: Bitchin Bajas bring their Sun Ra moogfest out on the road Stateside and in Europe
COOPER CRAIN’S side-alley Moog buccaneers Bitchin Bajas are taking their their latest album, a re-exploration of the works of Sun Ra purely for synth and keyboard, out on the road in the new year. That album, Switched On Ra, their seventeenth, sees them apply the concepts of one avant-garde legend to that of another: Cooper …
Track: PYNGU’s ‘Everytime’ brings uplifting, bittersweet dance-pop futurism to the Christmas run-in
SOMETIMES it’s best to keep it short and sweet and let a track speak for itself. PYNGU is the reincarnation of the German DJ, artist and producer who could formerly be found working as Kyco, under which moniker his work achieved some 27 million streams. His first single newly baptised and capitalised as PYNGU was …
See: Oan Kim – ‘Mambo’: the Parisian composer splices an indie-jazz noir that lets the sax tell the story
FORMERLY a member of the romantic, cinematic Parisian quartet Film Noir and also of the lower-slung David Lynch rock ‘n’ roll outfit Chinese Army, Paris-based saxophonist and composer Oan Kim has struck out to carve his own path, drawing on the aesthetics of those previous outfits – a noirish romance, a late-night evocation and thrill …
Not Forgotten: The Jasmine Minks – ‘The Jasmine Minks’: on older brothers, cassette pets and discovering the world of Creation
MY ROUTE into The Jasmine Minks and the whole world of early Creation Records – Slaughter Joe, Biff Bang Pow, Revolving Paint Dream and so many others? Mine was the time-honoured one: that is, the combined good agency of a friend’s older brother and the humble cassette. It’s a story repeated everywhere there are older …
See: Nell & The Flaming Lips drop their take on the Nick Cave classic, ‘Red Right Hand’
IT’S the latest brilliantly wonky full-covers project from Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd and the boys, whose new heady fwend is budding Canada-via-Yorkshire songsmith Nell, in the company of whom they’ve taken on the catalogue of no lesser a god of the darker side than Nick Cave himself. With that full album of Cave covers, Where …
Track: Drew Smith – ‘Whose News’ feat. Isla Craig: the Toronto scene brings us another gem of blissful, ambient synthpop-triphop
BESIDES his other bow-strings playing in Toronto power-poppers Bunny and the heart-hookin’ bubblegum fun of The Bicycles, Toronto’s Drew Smith also fashions a lovely ambient synthpop under his birth name: dreamy, fun, blissful, and very much of an effect with Montreal’s Afternoon Bike Ride. It’s sorta candyfloss brittle and ice-melt pure and futuristic and just …
See: Belfast’s The John Andrews Band bring the skiffly punk of the jailtime stomper, ‘On The Run’
JOHN ANDREWS, the Belfast singer-songwriter who fronts the band which takes his name, isn’t someone who’s taken a trip to the wild side just for edgelord slumming kicks in order to inform his breezy, skiffly punk-blues – as evidenced by the lawmen-evading single the band have just released, “On The Run”. Take a dive for …
News: As one heavenly body sets, another rises: Khruangbin and Leon Bridges announce their ‘Texas Moon’ EP – watch the video for ‘B-Side’
TO FLIP the orbs from the bright orange to the white, and after that impossibly catchy previous A in particular, “Texas Sun”, Khruangbin are once again joining forces with Leon Bridges for an EP outing; this time entitled Texas Moon, out on February 18th. And after the bright sunbliss of that quartet of songs that …