Album Review : Huw Marc Bennett – Days Like Now : Folktronica, funk and global beats make inspired new connections
Welsh producer and bassist Huw Marc Bennett is one of those orbital artists who washes up on your essential listening zones with a tidal regularity. A global beats innovator and world music synergist, his inspired 2016 album ‘Kiera’ under the guise of Susso emerged from his trip through Gambia making music with Mandinka griot families. …
Track/Video: Electro-psych pioneers Teeth Of The Sea preview new album ‘Hive’ with the pulsating rush of ‘Megafragma’.
Techno doom, electro metal, dub psych, industrial prog, prog techno, doom psych, metal dub, doom prog disco…Teeth Of The Sea have been sending the genre-makers scrabbling at their combinations for a decade plus now. One reviewer once got so desperate to describe the band as ‘android kestrels’ …you know that sound? What’s more important is …
Track/Video : Ambient explorer Kilometre Club announces new album ‘How To Unravel’ with exquisite preview ‘Moving Mountains’.
Those sonic excavators from Toronto We Are Busy Bodies have been re-charging the electronic side of their eclectic catalogue this year with a string of impressive releases. Rich AuCoin’s ‘Synthetic Season 2’, Michael Scott Dawson’s ‘Find Yourself Lost’ plus Kristen Roos ‘Universal Syntheziser 1 &2’ have all been released through the portal and now comes …
Album Review: Peace Flag Ensemble – Astral Plains : Shimmering electro-acoustic jazz for wide horizons.
The first time you hear the music of experimental jazz collective Peace Flag Ensemble, you sense that it will be good for you. This is a band that make soundscapes, often spacious, often serene, so fluid, so open that as you listen there’s a sense you are being listened to. It’s music that leaves room …
Track/Video : New age travelling band TENGGER preview new album with the lush electro melodics of ‘PANAPTU’.
Seoul based, Pan Asian new-age troubadours TENGGER gloriously float around the edges of the music world, beyond the usual concepts, processes and mechanics. Musical couple Itta and Marqido first performed as the duo ‘10’ but with the birth of their son RAAI in 2012 they became TENGGER. Meaning ‘unlimited expanse of sky’ in Mongolian the …
Track/Video : Saxophonist, composer and jazz chronicler Matana Roberts announces new album ‘In The Garden’, Chapter Five in the visionary Coin Coin series.
Many new releases are anticipated but few have the added importance of Matana Roberts fifth instalment in their Coin Coin series ‘In The Garden’, due via Constellation on 29th September. The jazz composer, saxophonist and multi-disciplinary artist’s significant song cycle began in 2011 with ‘Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres’. This staggeringly visceral …
Album Review: Jonny Wickham – Terra Boa: Vibrant new jazz with a Brazilian heartbeat
Well you can’t say that Jonny Wickham’s first solo album lacks ambition. ‘Terra Boa‘, out now via Fresh Sound Records sees the jazz bassist and composer leading a sizeable band through a set of originals that in his words make up a ‘love letter’ to the complex tapestry of Afro-Brazilian rhythms. Added to that he’s …
Album Review: Me Lost Me – RPG : folk music of the future now
Folk music for today, what’s that then? Playing the old songs in new ways? Playing new songs in the old ways? Maybe the one tradition that’s certain is that the discussions will circle on and the definitions remain distant while the possibilities of the folk labelled soundscape remain endless. Step up once more Jayne Dent …
Album Review: Emily Kuhn – Ghosts Of Us : Bouyant, melodic, refreshing jazz from the Chicago trumpeter.
Emily Kuhn’s new album ‘Ghosts of Us’, out now via the consistently impressive BACE Records, may have been written during the cloying pall of pandemic times but it represents an artist emerging with regenerated focus. Not that the Chicago based jazz trumpeter and composer’s 2020 debut ‘Sky Stories’ lacked vitality or purpose. It captured Kuhn’s …
Album Review: Daniel Alexander Hignell-Tully – I Hope They Let Us Hunt Like Men In The Next Life: Thrilling experimentalism/challenging sounds from the DAMM founder.
Difficult music, what does that mean? Is it something at the opposite end of the spectrum to easy listening? Or is it all relative to the individual? I mean there are some people (and this may be a confession) who find any Abba song excruciatingly difficult to get through. Or maybe difficulty simply means that …