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New Music: Little Racer – Punk Life
I sort of miss the days when on every street corner in every town was a little gang of punks. I remember being very small and seeing these cool people with ripped up t-shirts and bullet belts and 24 hole Dr Martins and Mohicans. I used to wonder if being a punk was a full …
Album Review: Phantogram – Voices
Phantogram could’ve very easily gotten lost in the massive wave of boy/girl electronic duos that made their way into our ears since 2009. They’ve rode the wave along with bands like The Bird and the Bee, Matt and Kim, Chairlift, and Sleigh Bells into that hip hop-inflected indie dance pop that was either catchy or grating. …
Album Review: Nate Connelly – A dream about being lost
Since graduating from Leeds College of Music a decade ago, St. Annes born Nate Connolly has concentrated on writing and scoring film scores, totaling approaching a couple of dozen. But he does have a history with hard house, raves and drum and bass dating back to his teens. At first sound, it seems like one …
Say Psych: Album Review – Sky Is Hell Black by Has A Shadow (Captcha Records/ Fuzz Club Records)
In the past musical trends have tended to be broadly geographical: the Merseybeat scene, West Coast Flower Power, German Krautrock, NY Punk, Coventry’s Two Tone, Madchester – I could go on. One of the amazing things about the current psychedelic scene, however, is that it is truly global. Facilitated by social networking and the digital …
Album Review: Young Fathers – Dead
Living in Edinburgh but with the roots all over the place, but principally Scotland, Liberia and Nigeria, Young Fathers aka Alloysious, G and Kayus have made an album, their debut at that, that inhabits a musical world somewhere between hip-hop and indie, but taking in influences from all of the place, including their own heritages. …
Album Review: Solander – Monochromatic Memories
Beautiful, tender heart-puncturing songs of loss, desperation, and deconstruction by love. Bravo. “Monochromatic Memories” is a tight record, atmospherically and lyrically coherent and consistent. In fact the only real issue I have is with the title – it makes the album sound bland and that’s just not the case. I can see how it adds …
New Music: Spring Offensive – Hengelo
This is one of those songs that can invite different appreciations – an instinctively personal take perhaps, and an understanding informed by the facts behind the tale. Once you’ve read the inspiration, you might never be able to get back to your own. So here’s the track – think on for a while and then …
Track: Solander – The Woods Are Gone (plus name your price download)
Wintery sadness, gorgeously delivered. The rhythm is the perfect rendition of walking through snow – always trying to go faster, but caught by the weight of the drifts, the sadness, the longing. The shimmering snare shivers under the song like skirring flakes pelting across your eyes in moonlight and bitter winds. On top the guitar …
Spotlight on Christmas
No Rea. No Shaky. No Slade. No Cliff. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal There’s no particular rhyme or reason to the list, and I’ll concede that these aren’t all about Christmas. But Christmas hereabouts takes place in Winter, so the two go hand in hand. Alright ? Really, these are just 11 songs (to …
New Video: Ratking – 100
Tense, impressive NYC hiphop. Unsettled by the playground-taunting delivery of Wiki; troubled by the too-calm detachment of Hak; confused by the overlaid images and flitting shapes of the video; marvelling at that most-ear-catching hiphop skill of internal rhymes that seem to be falling over each other to interact; unable to relax into the music because …