album review
PREMIERE: Free Country – ‘The Life Of Riley’: wistful, essential lofi from his hometown basement
FREE COUNTRY is the indie pop project of LA’s Jason Ribadeneyra, a man with an ear for a wistful, low-key melody delivered with weary truth in his voice. Tomorrow he releases his latest six-tracker, the introverted, pretty-as, guitar and piano indie pop stylings of The Life of Riley; but tomorrow, as Annie sings so famously, …
ALBUM REVIEW: Osees – ‘Protean Threat’: John Dwyer trips us further into prog-tinged fuzz garage
JOHN DWYER’S Osees. I mean, they’re an absolute force of nature; a vivacious, fiery, disciplined, fun, piledriving force. If you’ve never seen them, by jiminy you need to: kinda meh at Vampire Weekend on the main stage, I wandered into their second-stage headline set at End of the Road in 2018 and stopped dead. Absolutely …
EP REVIEW: HAAi – ‘Put Your Head Above The Parakeets’: a quartet of hard future tronica floor-fillers
HAAi is the future tronica smithy of London-based, Australian-born sound forger Teneil Throssell. She’s taken a meandering journey to become who she is musically now, moving through a myriad of scenes and influences in order to fashion the sound she’s arrived at for Mute. A teenage guitarist with a vision of where she wanted to …
ALBUM REVIEW: El Ten Eleven – ‘Tautology’: ambitious, thrilling post-rock triple set from LA duo
YOU have to admire the scope and ambition of Los Angeles postrock duo El Ten Eleven, who are about to release their eighth full-length LP, Tautology, on September 18th. You certainly get a lot of bang for your buck. They’ve been releasing it bit by bit in the digital world for months now: Tautology I …
ALBUM REVIEW: Arch Garrison – ‘The Bitter Lay’: a psychedelic folk song of the Wiltshire downs
ARCH GARRISON is, in some ways, the flipside of the coin to Craig Fortnam’s excellent, self-styled alternative chamber group North Sea Radio Orchestra. But it’d be wrong to think of them as the ‘other’ band; although perhaps it’s the latter outfit who claim the higher profile, they’re both remarkably potent musical creations. North Sea Radio …
ALBUM REVIEW: Junkboy – ‘Sovereign Sky’: fraternal pastoral-psych excellence finally gains a proper issue
ONCE you’ve taken a listen to Junkboy’s Sovereign Sky – out on Fretsore on September 25th – you’ll have reason to thank label boss Ian Sephton. He signed the band, at whose heart are brothers Mik and Rich Hanscomb, and released their rather lovely album from last year: the baroque acoustic wondrousness of Trains, Trees, …
ALBUM REVIEW: Huw Marc Bennett – ‘Tresilian Bay’: Welsh psychedelic Afro-jazz warmth
EMERGING from the London jazz and groove scene, South Wales producer and bassist Huw Marc Bennett is a low-key enigma whose musical vision means he won’t stay that way for long. What do we know of Huw? He’s a South Wales boy, as he evidences in the title of his debut LP, Tresilian Bay, named …
Album Review – Marilyn Manson – We Are Chaos
Marilyn Manson’s eleventh studio album ‘We Are Chaos’ has just been released via Loma Vista Recordings. Co-produced by Manson and GRAMMY® Award winner Shooter Jennings [Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker], the ten-track opus was written, recorded, and finished before a pandemic blanketed us all. “Making this record, I had to think to myself: ‘Tame your crazy, stitch your suit. And try to pretend …
Album Review: Tolouse Low Trax – ‘Jumping Dead Leafs’
TOLOUSE Low Trax is the recording pseudonym of German composer Detlef Weinrich, and this is his fourth album under that name. The eight-track album is a 38-minute smorgasbord of all manner of musical genres, ranging from krautrock to 80s’ electronica, with pinches of avant-garde, post-rock and ambience whisked into the buffet. The album starts as …
ALBUM REVIEW: Ambassadeurs – ‘Human Stranger’: majorly uplifting, humanist floor-fillers
AMBASSADEURS is the project of Sussex producer Mark Dobson, a man who’s approach to music is deeply personal, involved. He doesn’t churn it out because he has the means; he fashions and creates and recreates and channels, he sends tunes out into the world when they’re ready to communicate what is intended. He’s got one …