album review
EP REVIEW: Max Cooper – ‘Earth’: cutting-edge IDM for our life on it
IN FORMER times, he’s what you would call a renaissance man, a polymath, Max Cooper: active and proficient in so many fields of creativity and science; jack of all trades, oh; master of them, too. A childhood dalliance with the violin proved a false dawn; instead he pursued biology and was awarded a PhD in …
ALBUM REVIEW: Fritz Pape – ‘From My Guitar At Homes’: inventive sonic studies for the ambient-minded
FRITZ PAPE began his musical journey under the alias Zijnzijn Zijnzijn!, under which banner he undertook to create impenetrable, even frightening, waves and barrages of guitar, right up in your face a la Swans or Boredoms. With an eye to the trail laid by Glenn Branca, he’s also been known to put together ensembles of …
NOT FORGOTTEN: The Irresistible Force – ‘It’s Tomorrow Already’: the loud, great finale of British rave-ambient
“IT’S TIME to lie down and be counted”: so goes Mixmaster Morris’s brilliant call to very relaxed arms for the 90s’ British ambient scene. It was a manifesto banner that he jointly flew with The Orb’s Alex Paterson in that era, 1991-95, when the appetite for strange interweavings of found sound, Krautrock washes, environment recordings, …
Album Review: Blues Pills – Holy Moly!
Thirds the charm is a phrase you can throw at Blues Pills and it will certainly stick. With a cracking pair of previous albums behind them the band took a 3 year break before releasing any new material. During the bands short break they built their own studio, Lindbacka Sounds, in an old factory in …
Album Review: Kulk’s damn fine debut album ‘here lies kulk’
Kulk is Thom Longdin (Guitar and Vocals) and Jade-Ashleigh Squires (Drums and Synth). Their new debut LP ‘here lies kulk’ is heavy and noise filled, due 21st August 2020 on Hot Fools Records. The album was recorded at Rum Records locally in Ipswich on half inch tape in true fuzz style with the band taking …
Album Review: The Waterboys – Good Luck, seeker
The Scottish genre wandering folk rockers are sharing their next chapter in their music legacy with the release of album – Good Luck, seeker. A romping, roaring collection of tracks displaying all of what this band have become. The singles ‘My Wanderings In The Weary Land’, ‘The Soul Singer’, ‘Low Down In The Broom’ and …
ALBUM REVIEW: Keys – ‘Home Schooling’: lo-fi Welsh powerpop gems
COMING at you out of the Welsh capital Cardiff, Keys are a quintet who, we can glean from their photograph, love a pair of shades. A listen to their new digital-only release Home Schooling, which is out on August 21st, will also show that behind those tinted lenses there are ten eyes with an absolute …
ALBUM REVIEW: Siv Jakobsen – ‘A Temporary Soothing’: fashioning a gem of folk delicacy from the lived experience
SIV JAKOBSEN, who grew up on the south-western edge of the wider Oslo conurbation, is a folk artist who is really is singing from the heart. Hailing from the fjordside community of Asker, she studied at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachussetts, honing and exploring. She took her first steps out there …
ALBUM REVIEW: Paul Molloy – ‘The Fifth Dandelion’: psych-pop sunshine beamed forward from ’68
SOMEONE put music journalist and band connections-mapper Pete Frame on speed dial, because the various groovy psych-pop iterations spiralling off from The Wirral’s The Coral are like a Mandelbrot set these days and more than worthy, surely, of one of his fantastic Rock Family Trees. Besides the sprawling, sea-shanty psych majesty of The Coral themselves, …
Album Review: Sons of Southern Ulster – Sinners and Lost Souls
It would be hard to talk about the new album from Sons of Southern Ulster and not to reference the currently exploding Fontaines D.C. – the same vein is gloriously plowed: Irish punk poetry wrapped in a visceral anger and melody. Given Sons of Southern Ulster’s debut album ‘Foundry Folk Songs) came out in 2016 …