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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“SIGNALS FOR SIGNS” is a hard cut to horns heralding and welcoming the euphoria of the new. “The music invokes the sound of a union, not unlike a marriage ceremony. It unabashedly reaches toward the beautiful while grounding and holding us in a low-end hug.” So says Sam Genovese of his new and deeply wrapping ambient single …

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BERLIN’S Hainbach, the avatar for the world of the sonic and the aural which Stefan Goetsch comes out to invent under, is all set to release a new investigation of sound for London-based SA Recordings come April 9th; and a very inventive, avant-garde excursion it is too. For on Landfill Totems, Stefan’s irrepressible wonder in …

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No Such Thing As Free Will is a much prettier and more enveloping record than words can convey; it has a really nice poise between the disciplines of the leftfield, the guitar soli and that of bright folk melody. In this regard if you’re a fan of early to mid-period James Blackshaw, but also very much the quartet of ‘free folk’ albums Stockholm’s Andreas Söderström released as ASS in the decade from 2006, you’ll find an awful lot to love. A bright, studious, harmonic, pastoral gem

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CHAZ KNAPP, the Dallas-based lo-fi organ frontiersman whose previous single drop, the warm ‘n’ weird “My TMJ Pain Might Be An Abscess” and accompanying blood-soaked video we fell down the rabbit hole of at the back end of January, has just dropped another self-styled drune, “97F At 9PM”, full of the Texas heat. Come drench …

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LONEY DEAR is the wholly unusual solo vision of Emil Svanängen, part of the stable of talent over at Peter Gabriel’s Real World imprint, with a curiously timeless and very intelligent take on the solo singer-pianist auteur thing; at once wholly himself but seeming to draw on elements of the drama of early John Grant and equally …

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YOU WANT dreaminess? Kalbells, the collaborative synthpop-cum-artpop project of Kalmia Traver, Angelica Bess, Sarah Pedinotti, and Zoë Brecher, has just dropped a dear little nugget of Eighties-inflected pillowtalk bliss, “Diagram Of Me Sleeping”; yet another reason to get yourself booked aboard the first flight out on their album Max Heart, which is coming out on …

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MY NAME IS IAN, the lo-fi trio outta Cardiff with a fantastic line in song titles (“If I Was A Gentoo Penguin, I’d Find You The Smoothest Pebble”, anyone?) and who self-describe as a “a bipolar, odd rock, anti-folk loser super group” have dropped quite a fiery little dancefloor-friendly number this week, with more than …

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POSSIBLY the absolute best live band in the world right now and for quite a while, John Dwyer’s Osees are determined we don’t go through our second pandemic spring without a prescription of garage rock fire, to be taken aurally. They’ve announced another Levitation Session for April 10th – if you caught either their Christmas …

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GIZELLE SMITH, the glorious voice of deep funk freestylers The Mighty Mocambos, alumnus of WahWah 45s, Big Crown and other rather fine labels that should tell you everything you need to know as a trademark of quality, is all set to release her debut solo album for Brighton’s Jalapeno Records later on in the year. …

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IN CELEBRATION of the release of his rather excellent longform essay into piano and electronica, Hall Of Mirrors, Neil Cowley is presenting a live-streamed performance from London’s Lafayette. The performance, live-streamed for the first time last night, will be available to watch in full until March 18th. The contemporary composer who has moved from jazz …

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