News: Emma Houton announces debut album of choral ambience for Trapped Animal; hear ‘Watershed’
NEW YORK-based choral ambient artist Emma Houton has announced she’s to release her debut album, The Bath, on Trapped Animal Records, the home of psych-folkster Jeremy Tuplin and others, in May; and you can see the video for the first single from that immersive work, “Watershed”, here today. Born to an Irish father and raised …
Track: Brainstory -‘Bye Bye’: solid Sixties’ soul grooves from the April Big Crown 7″
BRAINSTORY came firing out of the San Bernadino Valley in California s in 2015 with a six-track, jazzy CD EP entitled A Natural Phantasm; and Big Crown over in Brooklyn properly liked what they heard, saw that it was good; quickly gathered Kevin, Tony, Eric into their welcoming arms. And Big Crown has been their …
Track: Hear the spacious delight of KMRU’s ‘OT’; an album follows in May
WITH twin bases straddling that most musically inventive of cities, Berlin, and the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, electronica artist KMRU knows a thing or two about wide vistas, a far-sighted reach, a breathtaking approach to soundscaping; as you can hear in his first single drop for his new home, Injazero Records, “OT”. Wrap your cortex …
Track: Home Counties – ‘White Shirt / Clean Shirt’: another punk-funk capitalist critique from brilliant Bristolians
FRESHLY pressed and starched, collars buttoned just so, Home Counties are back pursuing an ever more addictive, spasming line in capitalist critique encapsulated in wiry, fractured punk-funk. It’s like The Fire Engines were back among us, and hell we needed this. “White Shirt / Clean Shirt” continues their Beckettian lyrical railing against the rat race, …
Rising: We meet Sara Wolff, talk about her journey from Norway to the Mersey and see the video for her lush new track, ‘Hands’
SARA WOLFF is a rising acoustic singer-songwriting talent who hails from Bergen, Norway, but who left those surrounds to study on Merseyside; liked what she saw and it how it was, decided to stick around; soon found that songs were flowing. It’s been quite the journey from university to rising alt.folk talent whose first single …
Track: Bare Wire Son – ‘Fingernest’: the harrow of the Great War remade for towering slowcore
ART AS a means of transforming experience and particularly pain; it’s a well-tested process, and one that Olin Janusz, the artist working as Bare Wire Son, knows works. For his second album under that name (following on from 2016’s Gently), he decided to go investigate a certain and hugely traumatic period in modern history. London …
Album review: Chad VanGaalen – ‘The World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener’: an excellent, multifaceted curio of psych and fun
YOU’VE gotta love Chad VanGaalen, the Albertan singer-songwriter who completely follows his own muse, sees the world his own goddam way, thank you very much; and who’s been delighting those of us in the know for a decade and a half now. He first emerged blinking into the musical sunlight with his Infiniheart album for …
News: Wyldest is set to release her second album mid-May; hear a first song, ‘Hollow’. There’s also a tour in the offing
WYLDEST, the intelligent, dreamy pop project of London’s Zoe Mead, has revealed a new album will appear in the world at the other end of May; and by way of throwing open the French blinds and telling the world, she’s shared a first single from that, “Hollow”, which you can hear below. She takes a …
Track: ROY – ‘Where Did My Mind Go’: Toronto psychester invites you to his garage with some hazy excellence
BROTHERS and sisters: the time hath come to make a little more room in your psychedelic pop heart for a Canadian songsmith sure to seduce your Carnaby Street-lovin’ synapses; please, if you would, put your hands together for ROY. ROY is how Toronto psych scenester Patrick Lefler likes to get dressed for a night on …
See: Sarah McQuaid – ‘The Day Of Wrath, That Day (The St Buryan Sessions)’: six strings resonate from the Penwith granite
AFTER a life’s journey so far that’s taken her from her birthplace, Madrid, over to the States and on to Ireland, folk singer-songwriter Sarah McQuaid has put down roots in the vibey, windswept, granite-hard Penwith peninsula at the end of Cornwall. With all the constraints of the lockdown purdah, she’s been busy recording a series …