news
See: DITZ get fiery ‘n’ wiry on declamatory new single, ‘The Warden’, extend their tour into next year
BRIGHTON’S DITZ, who, on more than one occasion this year we’ve found the overwhelming urge to catapult into the perspiring throng to, only to find our living rooms sadly lacking in the requisite, adoring crowd, have this very morn shared a vid for a new track, “The Warden”, which, like last month’s roarer “Ded Würst”, …
Track: Erin Rae glides into an album and tour in the new year on the psych-country of ‘Candy & Curry’
WITH a sweet, hook-laden but straighter country-pop number, “Modern Woman”, dropping last month, Nashville’s Erin Rae has revealed a more gossamer, delicate psych-folk side to her forthcoming third album in the lighter-than-air “Candy & Curry”, sprinkled with a little retro synth and possessed of a real Margo Guryan harmonic feel; you can swoon for that …
News: New Zealand’s pop prodigy BENEE announces world tour for 2022 and releases exquisite shimmering single ‘Doesn’t Matter’
New Zealand pop sensation BENEE has just announced her first world tour since the pandemic struck, with forty shows scheduled in the northern hemisphere (Europe and the UK in April-May and North America in June) well as new and rescheduled shows on her New Zealand tour in February-March, followed by her return to Australia – for the …
See: North Carolina’s Owen FitzGerald invites you to his outsider country confessional, ‘Bismuth, The Last Gentleman’
HE’S a gentleman of the leftfield country music scene, is Durham, North Carolina’s Owen FitzGerald who, after appearing in the music world as Jokes&Jokes&Jokes awhile, has returned to his ‘government name’ – the name under which he snuck out two fine if lyrically troubled and akimbo albums digitally in 2015, Tight Gyre and Pointer. That …
News: Sweeping Promises sign for Sub Pop and bring you the post-punk stomp of ‘Pain Without A Touch’, reveal tour dates our side of the pond
SUB POP has made another fine addition to its roster with Sweeping Promises, who come extruding outta the campus town of Lawrence, Kansas with the post-punkery of “Pain Without A Touch” and a comprehensive British and European tour ready to roll. Listen to one and find out more about the other, below. Sweeping Promises is …
See: LA’s Independent Project unveil Alison Clancy with the brooding, potent ‘Mutant Gifts – Live At St John’s’
SHE’S a multivalent creative force who moved from the mountains of California up to New York to pursue a creative life; but the potent, brooding and mantric gem that is Alison Clancy’s “Mutant Gifts – Live At St John’s” came about mainly as her then-day job went on hold thanks to that viral wrecking ball. …
Track: North Carolina’s Boulevards sings an addiction siren song in ‘Better Off Dead’ – an album follows in February
WE’RE born of the good earth, and thence shall we return. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Mud to mud. It’s that thick, wet, good earth of home that keeps up a siren song to songwriter Jamil Rashad, who trades in and around the musical frontier posts as Boulevards; time and time again he leaves …
Track: As Oldham’s TikTok sensation Seb Lowe releases his debut mini-album, delight in the rollicking Pennine lyricism of ‘iPhone’
WITH something like a hundred thousand-plus followers over on shortform video app TikTok, bard of the Oldham streets Seb Lowe is working from the ground up with a fascinating and absolutely necessary line in acerbic socio-political commentary on the state we’re in, AD 2021 – and one in which he leaves us less tech-compliant old …
See: Matchess invites us to embrace meditative drone and transcend the flesh in the practise of ‘Almost Gone (Excerpt)’
WHITNEY JOHNSON has been releasing albums exploring really gorgeous deep inner space in song and sound for a number of years now as Matchess. Her journey in this guise began in 2015 with the downtempo ambience of Somnaphoria, vocodered vocals, clock-ticking beats, swirls and aural glitter to put The Orb to shame in the cosmic …
News: Psych legends LOOP return with their first album in 32 years; see the immaculately acid strobe-fest of ‘Halo’
I REMEMBER the first time I fell down the LOOP rabbithole, as an uninitiated 17-year-old in love with the jingle-jangle sound of early Creation Records, grappling with the situationist excellence of Bogshed and Stump; finding my way into The Fall’s This Nation’s Saving Grace with a whole armful of questions for Mark E Smith. In …