album news
Track: Germany’s queen of soul Joy Denalane drops ‘The Show’ ahead of the deluxe reissue of ‘Let Yourself Be Loved’
GARLANDED in her home country of Germany as the queen of soul, and one of the first artists from Europe to ever receive the accolade of a contract with Motown; you don’t get to write these kinds of things on your CV without a reservoir of talent to back them up. And you can see …
News: Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp are set for an album in July; hear ‘Beginning’
IS IT a band, is it a group, is it a collective or an ensemble? No it’s the one and only Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, the makers of the most essential music that may have passed you by. Revolving around the mercurial bassist/composer Vincent Bertholet and emerging from the Geneva avant music scene in …
News: Noughties shoegaze revivalists Sennen’s debut album gets a vinyl issue from Sonic Cathedral; see the video for their new single, ‘Forty Years’
WHEN shoegaze was so cruelly traduced by the inkies, dazzle-eyed by their enthralment with the twin coming of grunge and early Britpop, us aficionados shed a quiet tear for a lovely sound, a gorgeous aesthetic seemingly consigned to the history books; but you can’t, as we can see in retrospect, keep a great idea down. …
News: Bastien Keb’s excellent faux-soundtrack odyssey, ‘The Killing Of Eugene Peeps’, gets a Japanese-style pressing; see the video for ‘Lucky (Oldest Grave)’
IF YOU didn’t get chance to catch up with Bastien Keb’s excellent and off-kilter, genre boundary-dispensing, musical novel of a record The Killing Of Eugene Peeps last autumn – and trust me on this: this album, (his canon) is likely to be talked about in years to come in the same breath as In An …
News: Rey Sapienz & The Congo Techno Ensemble announce a July album; hear a new track, ‘Eza Makambo’
IN CASE you hadn’t noticed, the sound of afrobeat is taking on a new dimension: riding on a surge of youthful energy; absorbing rap’s bite and electro’s drive; committed to the cutting edge but respectful of sources. Rey Sapienz and his new collective The Congo Techno Ensemble look set to add their dynamic to this …
News: Lottery Winners announce massive British tour; see the video for ‘Times Are Changing’
OK, OK, the timing wasn’t absolutely spot on, but lovers of anthemic pure pop were surely tickled of tastebud when The Lottery Winners released their self-titled first album right as the virus tore through. That didn’t stop ’em; vocalist and guitarist Thom Rylance, bassist and vocalist Katie Lloyd, guitarist Robert Lally and drummer Joe Singleton …
News: 7K! announces the latest in its series of digital ambient compilations, ‘Wind Layers’; hear a taster in Colin Stetson’s ‘Beyond The Break’
!K7’S mirror-image modern compositional and ambient offshoot label, !7K, has announced the latest in its ongoing series of digital-only, wide-ranging, thematic compilations, and this time the focus will be on wind instruments. Following Piano Layers, Strings Layers and last winter’s erudite and necessary Ambient Layers (read our review of that one, here), Wind Layers gathers …
See: Michael League – ‘In Your Mouth’: Snarky Puppy and Bokanté founder unveils a solo rock-pop sophistication
FOUR Grammys under his belt, founder member of frontier-free jazz-rock-world-funk ensemble Snarky Puppy and world-blues outfit Bokanté; musical director for, and collaborator with, one of the true greats, David Crosby; it’s fair to say Michael League is no slouch when it comes to music, and neither is he an underachiever. For the time being at …
News: Low Hummer announce their debut album for September, and there’s a Dinked edition; hear the new-wave rush of ‘The People, This Place’
FOLLOWING bdrmm into the annals of East Yorkshire’s new wave of dark, glamorous guitar royalty in waiting are Hull’s Low Hummer, who’ve finally announced their much-anticipated debut album, Modern Tricks For Living, to be released as the leaves began to fall and the fruits ripen. Ahead of that album they’ve released a new single, “The …
Track: Trippers & Askers – ‘Chance’s Wake’: warming, spiritual Americana lays out the path towards an album drawing on the near-dystopian classic, ‘The Parable Of The Sower’
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a Californian African-American science fiction author whose 1993 novel, Parable Of The Sower, has rippled out with staying power across culture, with its tale of the marginalised attempting to survive a (really, very) near-future ecological and economic collapse. it was only written less than three decades, in the lifetime of many …