video
SEE: Andy Bell – ‘Cherry Cola (Pye Corner Audio remix)’
AS his GLOK side-project shows, Andy Bell is a shoegazing legend who really isn’t afraid to embrace the tronica; in the spirit of which, the latest single he’s released from his superb solo album, The View From Halfway Down (read our review of the album here), comes subtly rerubbed through the prisms of Pye Corner Audio. …
SEE: Alex Jayne – ‘Pictures’: grand introspection about letting go
LONDON songstress Alex Jayne, who’s released a triptych of potent, observational pop nuggets this year, is drawing down the curtain on 2020 with one final single, “Pictures”, again penned from the heart. Watch the Laurie Barraclough-directed video below. It’s a slow burn with a grand vocal performance: fragile, yet still soaring, you can really feel …
PREMIERE: Farmer Dave & The Wizards of the West – ‘Right Vibration’: Beachwood Sparks man right back in the psych saddle
FARMER DAVE SCHER may be better known to you from the string of excellent bands he’s both been in and collaborated with down the years. He was a member of brilliant West Coast country-psych outfit Beachwood Sparks, who took on Sade’s “By Your Side” and completely won (and actually chaps, while we’re here, could we …
Track: Thomas Keating – Cold Night
Sydney singer Thomas Keating has just released an absolutely gorgeous track ‘Cold Night’ and a dazzling accompanying video for the song. Inspired by time spent in Melbourne, the song is imperial and statuesque – crisp, sparkling instrumentation flow under Keating’s melancholic and expressive vocals. Keating says: A few years ago, I moved to Melbourne for …
SEE: Grandbrothers – ‘All The Unknown’: prepared piano meets techno in widescreen
PIANIST Erol Sarp and producer-cum-electronic engineer Lukas Vogel first began to collaborate under the warped familial relationship concept of Grandbrothers eight years ago, looking to investigate the possibilities open to them in the prepared piano; that is, a piano with various insertions, be it purely analogue (the insertion of objects between the strings – under the bonnet, …
SEE: Francis of Delirium – ‘Lakes’: sweet-edged punk pop explores our emotional reservoirs
TAKE a Canadian and an American, base them in Luxembourg; fill their bellies with garage-punk-pop fire; give ’em a gentle shake. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Francis of Delirium. Over here at Backseat Mafia we last encountered 19-year-old singer Jana Bachrich and her partner in musical crime Chris Hewett in early September when they …
SEE: Tom Joshua – ‘This Still Life (Live Session)’: Stockton singer rings clear as a bell
STOCKTON-ON-TEES songsmith Tom Joshua grew up with a wealth of inspiration around him – the industry, the history, the landscape – all of which he’s channelled into his debut EP, Undergrowth, which is out now. “I’ve always considered the skyline you can see from the flyovers between Stockton and Middlesbrough pretty epic and unique – …
PREMIERE: Post Moves – ‘Bob’s Peace In West Texas’: exploring the distorted bliss of the pedal steel
IF YOU’RE an avid reader of these pages, you’ll have come across Sam Wenc only recently in connection with RON, the very fine textural ambient twosome he forms exactly one half of in connection with Carl Laukkanen; and whose “What Can The Feeling” we were more than a little pleased to premiere a few weeks …
SEE: Le Volume Courbe take on Daniel Johnston’s ‘Mind Contorted’ with Terry Hall and Noel G
LE VOLUME COURBE, aka Charlotte Marionneau: if you love a certain cultish, Gallic erudition in your indie songwriting, you have to say it’s more than a little great to see her back. Following a brush with mortality last year, the urge to release music again for herself “became like a vital thing”. (She’s been a …
SEE: Tele Novella – ‘Words That Stay’: another beautiful, quirky lament
VINTAGE shop owner Natalie Ribbons and rare record collector Jason Chronis had been kicking around in various musical projects in Austin, Texas, but knew they could fashion something pretty special when they met and started creating tunes: ladies and gentlemen, we give you the medieval outsider country of Tele Novella. (Hey, it’s what they call themselves). They …