Album Reviews
EP Review: Fever Rouge – Feed The Villain
Brighton’s Fever Rouge return with Feed The Villain, a snarling, sprawling EP that showcases an evocative blend of post-punk, shoegaze and indie-rock. Opening with the boxing drums and melancholic yet angular riff of the playfully named ‘Shplang’, the opener soon introduces the cool, unaffected yet yearning and pointed lead vocals. Building throughout, the track brings an …
Album Review: Be Kind Cadaver –‘The World’s Greatest Mind’ : Epic electronic noise-rock exposes a deeper malaise.
Welcome once again to a rare encounter with the illusive Brighton art-punk duo Be Kind Cadaver. First sighted back in the post-Covid energy surge of 2022 with their debut EP ‘Post Partum’, Daniel Hignell-Tully and Leroy Brown released a venomous probe into the personal and political with a quartet of shell-shocked anti-pop songs. BSM dubbed …
Album Review: Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE; A love story in two halves.
After six long years, Bon Iver returns with SABLE, fABLE, a two-part odyssey that explores love, longing, and transformation with his trademark emotional depth and sonic inventiveness. More than just an album, it feels like a narrative split across two discs—SABLE, a prologue of hushed reflection and sadness, and fABLE, a blossoming, kaleidoscopic response full …
Album Review: Naarm/Melbourne’s USER release the delicious electronic late night thrum of ‘Mira Imposta’ ahead of launch dates.
USER have been together around six years and ‘Mira Imposta’ is their third album. Their oeuvre is a fascinating mix of throbbing Euro disco with pure pop sensibilities and an electronic snakiness that shimmers and slithers through the ears like a delicious unguent. And in this album, there is a heart of brooding gothic darkness …
Album Review: Lea Maria Fries – Cleo; Restless, poetic, genre-hopping brilliance from a singular new voice.
From the Swiss countryside to Berlin’s creative chaos and on to the quiet corners of Paris, Cleo, the debut album from Lea Maria Fries, feels like a journey through sound, place and self. A vivid, shape-shifting patchwork of jazz, soul, art-pop and spoken word, this debut is more than a statement—it’s an arrival. Fries, who …
Album Review: Yann Tiersen – Rathlin from a Distance | The Liquid Hour; a immersive two part journey from solo expressive piano to urgent electronics
On Ninnog – out now via Mute Records, Yann Tiersen delivers an ambitious and deeply personal double album that journeys from delicate, introspective piano meditations to full-bodied electronic eruptions. Split into two distinct halves—Rathlin from a Distance and The Liquid Hour—the record captures both the serenity and turbulence of a life shaped by the sea, …
Premiere: Naarm electronic shoegazers Double Happiness gives us an exclusive listen to their thrilling debut album ‘Derealisation’ – a deliciously dark gothic delight.
Not to be confused with Brisbane surfgaze band The Double Happiness, Double Happiness is the work of Naarm/Melbourne based multi-instrumentalist Sam Jemsek and we are ever so pleased to be able to premiere the debut album ‘Derealisation’. ‘Derealisation’ is a dark gothic delight that hums over a throbbing electronica that courses through its sonic veins. …
Album Review: Disk Musik – A DD. Records Compilation; Beautifully broken sounds from the Japanese fringe.
In the cultural afterglow of Japan’s postmodern early ’80s, Disk Musik emerges as both an endnote and a revelation—a window into a scene too strange and insular to ever fully cross over, yet too fascinating to ignore. Originally released as one of the final statements from the cult cassette label DD. Records, the compilation has …
Album Review: Penelope Trappes – ‘A Requiem’: Resonant, deeply fulfilling ambient songs which need to be heard.
Penelope Trappes recognises she makes music goes deep and once described her approach as “digging up the underworld with visual motifs, and a mystical, gothic darkness that symbolises my struggles”. Now after over a decade of excavation, through four albums and inspired side projects, the Australian, now Brighton- based, experimental musician reveals that there is …
EP Review: ‘Is It Really Goodnight?’: Celeste Madden’s Introspective and Evocative New Release
Key to London-based singer-songwriter Celeste Madden’s new EP, Is It Really Goodnight?, is its dense atmosphere. It’s not foreboding or oppressive, but rather a sleepless sheen that coats the tracklist in a way the cyanotype cover art would suggest. Madden’s sound swings between minimal, almost ambient guitar ballads and brooding alt-rock cuts that could soundtrack …