TRACK: Sara Wolff – ‘Bad Thoughts Compilation’ – welcome to Sara’s homespun folk-pop world
SHE LEFT the big, big vistas of her native Bergen, Norway, and relocated to Liverpool in order to study; found she really liked it by the Mersey, decided to stick around, and soon found that songs were flowing. It’s been quite the journey from university to rising alt.folk talent for Sara Wolff, whose duvet-day summation …
News: Sony launches XXIM progressive instrumental imprint: see Eydís Evensen’s ‘Brotin’
SONY has decided to get itself a little of the modern compositional pie and to that end, has set up a new progressive instrumental label, XXIM Records; which has opened its catalogue by introducing its first signing, Icelandic pianist and composer Eydís Evensen. To mark the label’s launch, she’s released her debut single, “Brotin”, the …
NEWS: Matthew E. White and Lonnie Holley announce avant-garde folk album; hear ‘This Here Jungle of Moderness/Composition 14’
THEY may at first somewhat unlikely bedfellows: Matthew E. White, who arrived back in 2011 with his debut album The Big Inner, seemingly a fully formed gentleman of classic Southern Americana; and Lonnie Holley, the scrap sculptor who released his debut set of free-flowing outsider funk, Just Before Music, at the age of 62 in 2012. …
NEWS: Chad Vangaalen announces a March album for Sub Pop; see the properly brilliant animation for ‘Samurai Sword’
HE’S SO much fun, right? Sub Pop’s favourite Albertan singer-songwriter, Chad VanGaalen – he’s made his whimsical home at the Seattle imprint since 2006’s Skelliconnection – has revealed that actually, horticulturally speaking, he’s the World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener; well, actually that would be musically too, since that’s also how his new album will be …
ALBUM REVIEW: The Telescopes – ‘Songs Of Love And Revolution’: sexy, sleazy psych set
No Fender Jazzmasters or Vox Teardrops were likely harmed during the course of this record, but many are reported to have emerged bruised, sweat-slicked and smiling. Dirty, sexy and necessary
ALBUM REVIEW: Tele Novella – ‘Merlynn Belle’: a quirky country-psych-folk charmer
Tele Novella’s humble country-psych-folk sincerity is magic. They have, quite simply, a belief in the power of song. Timeless, quirky and utterly charming.
SEE: Monsieur Minimal – ‘Easteria’: the new sound of Greek psych
WELL, wow. If you haven’t fallen into the world of Monsieur Minimal, that’s quite the place to go for a sun-kissed visit. He’s outta Greece with a really pretty entrancing take on psych-pop; there’s a little bit of summer easy listening in there, powerpoppery à la say, Todd Rundgren; a whole whack of Khruangbinesque Eastern …
SEE: Art & Spencer – ‘Caravan’: guitar soli steps into ambient atmospheres
ART & SPENCER is a newly forged collaboration between Juan Martínez Pérez, aka Elson Complex, a fingerstyle acoustic guitarist of Andalusian and Catalonian heritage who loves soundscapes with acres of space – it’s the space between the notes that interest him just as much; in which he’s fusing a new direction with Belgian multi-instrumentalist Marc …
TRACK: Pino Palladino, Blake Mills – ‘Just Wrong’ – joint album for Impulse! in March
WHEN it was initially sketched out as project, Notes With Attachments, Welsh bass legend Pino Palladino and Californian songwriter and producer Blake Mills’ forthcoming album for New Deal/Impulse!, was all set to be a Pino solo affair; but, in the way of these things, especially when these things feature two wholly open-minded creatives, it grew, …
TRACK: Confucius MC – ‘Lanterns’: the first essential UK hip-hop of ’21 has entered the building
IT MIGHT just be the first properly essential UK hip-hop track of 2021, and it comes from Peckham’s Confucius MC, longtime friend of Kae Tempest, teacher, outreacher; and it’s a readymade headnod classic, fo sho, in which Confucius is joined in the flow by Sonnyjim, Verbz, and Jehst, a loop of bells glimmering over a …