Album Reviews
Album Review: SURVIVE – RR7349
Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein seemed to know what they were doing when they formed and created the score to the Duffer Bros Stranger Things. They captured a feeling in those synth-heavy pieces that you can’t just get from a plug-in you use in some computer-based program. These were hands-on pieces; meticulously strung together using …
Say Psych: Album Review, Moral Machine by Colonel Petrov’s Good Judgement
By and large I have a list of reviews to do and gradually work my way down it, it’s simple and orderly and works for me. Every once in a while, however, an album comes along that just blasts me out of my organisational reverie and just demands that I listen to it (over and …
Album Review: The Wedding Present – Going, Going…
In 1994, my irrepressible* psychedelic band (*back then, rip-off promoters, total lack of press or record company interest, and poor quality drugs were seen as challenges, compared to today’s climate, where the literal end of the world is a “no” from Simon Cowell) landed a management/publishing deal with Brian Hallin, the long-time manager of The …
Album Review: Axis: Sova : Motor Earth
Before hearing Axis: Sova’s newest album called Motor Earth I had no idea who he was. Yes, Axis: Sova is a he. That’s the name Chicago guitarist Brett Sova goes by when creating grainy garage rock albums. If you’re at all familiar with DIY, scuzzy rock gods like Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Kelley Stoltz, …
Album Review: Cymbals Eat Guitars – Pretty Years
I can remember hearing “…And The Hazy Sea” for the first time back in 2009 and being completely floored. Cymbals Eat Guitars had created this musical world that encapsulated all those wonderful elements that made the early 90s indie rock movement so magical. Bombastic guitars, quiet moments, tinkling keyboards, wobbly vocals that go from fragile …
Atticus Ross/Leopold Ross/Bobby Krlic : Almost Holy S/T
Almost Holy is a documentary directed by Steve Hoover, and it’s about Pastor Gennadiy Mokhnenko, a rogue man of the cloth that works and lives out of Mariupol, Ukraine. In his city there was a massive influx of homeless, drug-addicted children and “Pastor Crocodile”, as Mokhnenko likes to call himself, felt it was his duty to help …
Album Review: Luke Haines – Smash The System
Former Auteurs frontman Luke Haines has had a varied career. As part of his former band he was responsible for some of the best albums of the nineties, including (in my opinion) his finest work to date ‘After Murder Park’. As a solo artist he has created a series of conceptual albums. His last release …
Album Review: Preoccupations – Preoccupations
Preoccupations is the band formerly known as Viet Cong. Viet Cong was a band that put out one of my favorite albums of 2015. Preoccupations is a band that may have put out one of my favorite albums of 2016. Not only for the fact that their self-titled album is a beautifully dark concoction of …
Album Review: Purling Hiss – High Bias
Purling Hiss are a band that can’t really be labeled. As soon as you think you know who they are the sound changes. Mike Polizze and his Purling Hiss project began as an experimental outlet for him to record his white noise and fuzz-drenched solo songs, but it turned into more than that. Comparisons to …
Album Review: Conrad Schnitzler/Schneider TM : Con-struct
Conrad Schnitzler was a German experimental music pioneer. He founded Berlin’s legendary Zodiak Free Arts Lab, a subculture club, in 1967/68. He was also a member of Tangerine Dream, showing up on their debut record Electronic Meditation. He left Tangerine Dream and then formed Kluster with Roedelius and Moebius. Schnitzler recorded three albums with Kluster then …