Album Review: Affiliate Links – Enough Light : poetic, powerful indie song-craft.

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If you got into Tom Misch and Yussef Dayes stellar album ‘What Kinda Music’ released in April this year, then here’s something to help you through the winter wilderness. Blue Note have just released bonus tracks from the album sessions , available via the usual digital suspects or cannily stitched onto a new deluxe vinyl …

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You know that jazz never goes away- it ebbs and flows in profile and popularity. But over the last five years or so jazz music has reached out, edged its way over musical borders and re-energised around unlikely geographies in south London, Chicago and Johannesburg. The label Mushroom Hour Half Hour has been a pillar …

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ON THE other side of the guitarist spectrum from the strut and stomp are the outliers, dogged explorers of the fretboard, scholars of the instrument’s sonic complexity. Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Fripp, James Blood Ulmer, Pat Metheny can be found at this end of the rainbow; along with more recent luminaries like Chris Brokaw, Yonotan …

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IF ONE artist was going to send out a press release for their new record styled on the redacted copy of a government report it is Darren Cunningham, aka Actress. Cryptic, obtuse, secretive and illusive, Cunningham has been the checkpoint of the techno/electronic border crossing for over a decade now. There have been seminal releases …

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TO CALL Oliver Coates a cellist tells you nothing at all. Oliver Coates is a musician whose work connects the circuits at the edge of dance and classical worlds. It’s not crossover, it’s not fusion, it’s experimental, rewiring sounds in a dangerous and delectable way (ask Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood) … and yes, he …

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London Jazz Festival, an amazing 28 years in, has become a big deal on the global music calendar. A stunning mix of international big hitters, emerging UK talent, old pioneers and prophets, mega-venues, tiny clubs, films, unbelievably generous free events, live broadcasts, workshops and even jazz for toddlers- it’s got the whole menu covered. For …

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Once again they come from the north-Hen Ogledd, time travelling space pop troubadours with music of weird and wonky magic. Originally the brainchild of folk experimentalist/indie anti-hero Richard Dawson and avant harpist Rhodri Davies, the addition of Dawn Bothwell in 2016 and then Sally Pilkington has sparked the collective to channel their inner wonk and …

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Keaton Henson’s music deserves all the devotion and respect it gets. From his cavernously personal home recorded debut ‘Dear’ in 2012 to the more recent tense and tormented orchestral ‘Six Lethargies’ he always makes that emotional connection. His songs, his experiences become yours. Whispers about new Henson song-craft began to filter through a couple of …

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It’s getting mighty crowded in the psych-folk district right now. So to stand out you need that little something else … enter Sally Anne Morgan. A fiddler, banjo player and vocalist with a growing reputation as a member of the Black Twig Pickers and the duo House and Land, the time is so right for …

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The trombonist – always the bridesmaid, the ugly duckling – you sometimes wonder where jazz would be if Miles or Coltrane were trombone players. Sure the big band era had its fair share of t-bone wielding leaders, JJ Johnson showed the slider could rip up be-bop’s rule book and more recently Trombone Shorty has delivered …

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