SEE: The animation for Kratos Himself’s ‘Shift’: complex beatz atmospheres
KRATOS HIMSELF is the singular musical vision of Jethro Kratos Hopmans, whose mission is to meld icy electronics, potent cinematic beats and an expansive library of sound recordings in order to take you into a place of dark breaks. He’s set to release his fifth album of the past decade, Vectors, on February 26th via …
SEE: New Bums – ‘Tuned To Graffiti’: insouciant, folksy beauty trails for March album
NEW BUMS is the freewheelin’ two-hander of two very fine songwriters in their own right: Ben Chasny, aka psychotropic voyaging genius Six Organs of Admittance; and Donovan Quinn, formerly of the truly lovely and cultist Jagjaguwar baroque-psych-folk outfit Skygreen Leopards. They’ve got together before, almost seven years back, for the loose ‘n’ lovely Voices In …
ALBUM REVIEW: Farmer Dave Scher & The Wizards Of The West – ‘Farmer Dave Scher & The Wizards Of The West’
Dave Scher & The Wizards Of The West is like a finely reduced sauce; it packs an awful lot of psychedelic flavour and fun into a fat half-hour. Afrobeat, surf rock, funk, straight psych, country psych, jazz, shoegaze, are all seep through a lovely record with three of four moments of proper excellence and a lot of red-eyed, 1am lava lamp big-grinned fun besides. It’s good to see him back.
ALBUM REVIEW: Jim Ghedi – ‘In The Furrows Of Common Place’: a bold, proud album of working class folk
In The Furrows Of Common Place is a bold and proud album of working class folk. It bears witness with an unflinching melodious anger – it’s the first essential album of 2021
SEE: Tape Runs Out – ‘Hospital’: sheer indiepop brilliance on Austerity
AUSTERITY RECORDS down in Brighton is one of those grassroots labels with a nose for coming excellence – doing, to paraphrase the Creation compilation – god’s work. And boy oh boy, have they ever hit the ground running in 2021 with recent signings, Tape Runs Out. Tape Runs Out are a seven-piece who formed in …
SEE: Swansea Sound – ‘I Sold My Soul On eBay’: railing against the royalty rate with pop concept
INDIEPOP with the most resonant of political points for an industry beleaguered by the pandemic and one in which anyway, let’s be frank, artists are being screwed all ends by the dominant digital business ‘models’. Now that kind of indie is a wholly good thing. Step forward Swansea Sound: Amelia Fletcher of Heavenly, Talulah Gosh, …
ALBUM REVIEW: John Dwyer, Nick Murray, Brad Caulkins, Tom Dolas and Greg Coates – ‘Witch Egg’
There’s so many ideas in Witch Egg, from so many genres and eras: mod, krautrock, free jazz, even acid jazz; they’re arrived at, explored at once, captured, moved on from. It speaks much of the restless creativity at the heart of this, John Dwyer. It’s quite a journey for a fringe music head
SEE: Tele Novella – ‘Paper Crown’: The Great American Songbook remade in absolute sweetness
WITH their wholly seductive new album Merlynn Belle just around the corner now – eeep! exciting, it’ll be out on Kill Rock Stars on February 5th – Texas psych-European-retro-country duo Tele Novella have decided to lift the tasteful drapes on the record one final time and reveal “Paper Crown”. (And a very lovely long player it is …
TRACK: El Michels Affair to release new album of funk exotica; hear ‘Murkit Gem’, feat. Piya Malik
EL MICHELS AFFAIR are going all out with the most transporting global groove these days; witness the brilliance of “Dhuaan”, the Hindu funk exotica single drop from last summer, which seems to wizard into being the kind of 7″ you can only crate-dig in some 4am dream. Such a tune can’t really exist, right; can …
SEE: The animated video for Samuel Sharp’s ‘Dawn Rises’; the English dawn captured in solo sax
HE’S QUITE the scion of British solo saxophone, is Samuel Sharp; not, perhaps, on the face of it, an easy thing to comprehend, but what he’s offering over what’s now a triad of single drops and next month’s album, Patterns Various, is experimental, pretty, dubby, evocative; pastoralist, impressionist, and I think an album which will …