Album Reviews
Album Review: Brad Laner – Micro-Awakenings
Brad Laner is one of the most creative musical minds you’ve probably never heard of. He’s a California guy that’s been deep in the experimental music scene since the mid-80s. From cassette excursions with Debt of Nature and Steaming Coils, to the monumental noise pop provocateurs Medicine in the late 80s and early 90s, to …
Album Review: Cellophane Garden – Illuminations
When you think of a musician holed up in the Ozarks of northwest Arkansas creating music amongst those storied wooded hills, the sound that comes to mind is a particular one. That sound probably isn’t of the atmospheric and spatial variety, but more of the old time-y, bluegrass variety. In fact spatial, atmospheric, dreamy, and …
Say Psych: Album Review, Phantom of Liberty by Camera
Camera are a band who I have always had high regard for, something that seems to grow with each of their releases. If the band’s previous album ‘Remember I Was Carbon Dioxide‘ marked a move towards a more electronic sound, then ‘Phantom of Liberty’ further completes the move. Furthermore, it also broadens out the band’s …
Say Psych: Live in San Francisco by Feral Ohms
Oh. My. Fucking. God. When a bunch of guys from bands who have been partially responsibly for some of my favourite releases of the year get together to do a live album I’m going to take notice. But this? THE SCUZZ! MY MIND? THE SCUZZ! BLOWN! Feral Ohms are Ethan Miller (Heron Oblivion), Chris Johnson (Andy Human …
Album Review: Ashley Bellouin – Ballads
After the needle drops on Ashley Bellouin’s debut album titled Ballads you know right away this isn’t going to be a sappy collection of odes to lovers and significant others. The pastoral drone of harmonium, glass armonica, and other assorted spectral toys hit your ears and seem to open a portal that leads into some …
Album Review Mac Quale – Mr. Robot Original Soundtrack
For the longest time TV shows just bored me. I felt that TV had become this vacuous void where art and commerce said “F*ck it, let’s take a dump on the viewing public and see how long it takes them to say anything.” Of course the only “art” involved was the art of selling. Not …
Psych Insight: Album Review, Zement:Werk by Zement
I’m going to break with tradition here and begin with a the band’s press bio, basically because it tells you all you need to know: “This duo is less about an inorganic building material and more about an improvised jam to drift away. More analog meets digital as a bulk product. Repetitive meet psychedelic sounds, …
Say Psych: Album Review, Dandelion Sauce of the Ancients by Terminal Cheesecake
Fans of 1980s/90s psychedelia will no doubt be aware of Terminal Cheesecake, a band so in your face that not even a death mask would stop them from giving you serious attitude; one of those bands who always seemed to be on the edge sometimes tipping over in to the abyss of inaccessibility. Well hold onto …
Album Review: Honeyblood – ‘Babes Never Die’
Honeyblood haven’t just survived second album syndrome – their triumphant sophomore record, ‘Babes Never Die’, proves they’ve thrived on the challenge. The follow up to the 2014 eponymous debut album from the Glasgow-based duo, of Stina Tweeddale and drummer Cat Myers, has been eagerly awaited. Having appropriately fallen for Honeyblood around thirty seconds into ‘Fall …
Reissue: Terry Allen – Lubbock (On Everything)
I’m not a huge fan of ‘country’ music. Sure, I can appreciate its narrative qualities, I have a well chosen Johnny Cash compilation in my album collection, I love the output of Dr Hook before they took the full-on cheese-ballad route, I have a healthy respect for the music of Frankie Laine and Marty Robbins, …