album review
Album review: A Winged Victory For the Sullen – ‘Invisible Cities’: thrilling set pushes way beyond polite ambience
Invisible Cities is an intriguing and challenging accompaniment to a multimedia work of the same name. It’s also a cracking record in its own right, which is beautiful and textural and also genuinely thrilling in passages, and proves that A Winged Victory For the Sullen are not content to sit inside the pocket of modern composition and await their tribute; but wish to push onwards, much further onwards.
EP Review: Of Mice & Men – Timeless
Of Mice & Men’s latest offering Timeless marks the start of their new relationship with Sharptone Records and gives us a concise three track taste of what we can expect from this new era. The reflective intro for title track ‘Timeless’ sets up the introspective nature of this EP. This is swiftly displaced by the …
Album review: Cheval Sombre – ‘Time Waits For No One’: a luxuriant, timeless and meditative return
Time Waits For No One is not without its darknesses, its sadnesses, but they’re approached with the calm, supplicant grace that sits right in the heart of such feelings; and it is bloody beautiful. It’s an amulet, a perfect prescription; you can use it to ward off the world. Really, do
Album Review: FM Einheit orchestrates dreams with “Exhibition Of A Dream.”
Having made mention of KMFDM in a previous review, it would seem that the more euro-centric oddities that are emerging from the winter have made their way into the collective leftfield inbox a lot more than anticipated. That’s fine; when you’ve been asked to take a listen to an album by former Einstürzende Neubauten percussionist …
ALBUM REVIEW: slowthai – TYRON
The funny thing about TYRON is how clearly slowthai intends towards something, but never quite approaches it. Nothing Great About Britain was excellent – not to mention very clear in its concept – and bought him considerable goodwill, but it may also have painted him into a corner. Tyron Frampton approaches things differently this time …
Album Review: The Actions unveil the luscious atmospheric ‘Flourish’
Bristol duo The Actions‘ display their home town trip hop roots adeptly in their new album ‘Flourish’, out now through Niteo Records. This album has a spacious expansive atmosphere with glitchy, sticky percussion, eclectic instrumentation and Marta Argenio’s voice a soft, silky breathless whisper floating across the surface. There is a rich luscious patena to …
ALBUM REVIEW: CAMERA – ‘Prosthuman’: the current Berlin motorik
SO, LET’S talk krautrock. In many ways, it’s all about the rhythm, isn’t it? Think Can; think Jaki Liebezeit, that perfect control, poise, underpinning. Motorik, propulsion, but also tremendous fills and patterning. Metronomic, relentless, the beating heart of the record. Berlin’s CAMERA have that. They have their own Jaki in the shape of the excellently …
ALBUM REVIEW: Indigo Sparke – ‘echo’: a jaw-dropping country-folk debut
You can hear Indigo’s very essence shot right through echo. It’s never less, at any point, than extremely lovely; at many points its genuinely bloody stunning. You know when someone has that alchemical it, and boy: Indigo incontrovertibly does.
It’s not an album to have on in the background, because it’s far too arresting and enveloping, commanding. She’s royalty in waiting on the leftfield folk scene. Astonishing; buy
EP REVIEW: Tape Runs Out – ‘Ghost Fruit’: hail Cambridge’s new intelligent indiepop geniuses
I really, genuinely think Tape Runs Out may one day take a place in the pantheon of the proper eccentric, intelligent British pop genii – they can turn their hands in any direction they wish, know how to arrange a tune so it makes you sit bolt upright, aren’t afraid to push that tune in whichever stylistic direction it seems to demand; yet are also completely enthralled to the brilliance of a well-turned pop song. Brilliant, insouciant and intelligent
Album review: Alberteen’s sparkling analogue voyage of discovery ‘Lowenva’ is a refreshing beacon of light.
In ‘Lowenva’, Alberteen have created a mesmerising, organic album that crinkles with visceral instruments – melodic crunchy bass, pounding percussion, rumbling guitars, riffing horns and deep laconic cool vocals. It is a sound that seems to encapsulate the recurring nautical and natural themes in the album – deserted coastal towns, windswept beaches and pounding waves. …