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SEE: Less Bells – ‘The Fang’: fashioning beauty from grief for Kranky
YOU may well have heard Julie Carpenter, if you have not yet heard of her. A graduate of the University of North Texas, multi-instrumentalist and composer Julie has been called upon to add violins to work by the Eels and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, amongst others. But she has also been creating deep, ambient drone …
SEE: Tiga & Hudson Mohawke – ‘Love Minus Zero’: transatlantic dance pop euphoria
THE SPHERE of dance music is one of constant, healthy cross-fertilisation and contrast, of new sounds arising. But when Warp’s leftfield hiphop and breaks reinventor Hudson Mohawke began working with Canadian electroclash hit-scorer Tiga, even the latter had to admit it looked a stretch. He said that it “seems kind of unlikely on paper, but …
SEE: El Goodo’s ‘The Grey Tower’ psychs like The Seeds
QUIETLY working to their own, slower calendar in the Vale of Neath since the 20th flipped to the 21st, Wales’s El Goodo offer up pebbles of psych-folk-country goodness for anyone who steps through their door. We should trust their hospitality. Take that name. Yes, of course it namechecks Big Star. How can we not be …
SEE: Ed Harcourt returns, ‘Drowning in Dreams’
FOLLOWING his last album, 2018’s Beyond The End, dashing singer-songwriter Ed Harcourt has announced his ninth studio album, which is due in mid-September, will also be a set free of vocals – and a counterpoint to his previous. Monochrome To Colour will also be big, cinematic, and evocative, but Ed promises that this one will …
SEE: Max Cooper – ‘Swarm’: infectious IDM with an environmental edge
FOR me, Max Cooper has been one of those people whose tracks come on during Mary Anne Hobbs’ 6Music show in the car, and I think: “Wow, what was that?,” scrabbling to commit the name and the textual virtuosity to memory. But this time I won’t be tripped up: “Swarm” is the first track from …
PREMIERE: See The Citrus Clouds’ ‘A Pastel Sky’: a marvellous shoegaze rush
PHOENIX, Arizona is a place for amazing skies: we know this from that famed Orb sample of Rickie Lee Jones in childhood wonderment as used on their ambient-tech crossover hit, “Little Fluffy Clouds.” And Citrus Clouds, the Phoenician three-piece comprised of bassist and singer Stacie Huttleston, singer-guitarist Erick Pineda and drummer Angelica Pedrego, draw inspiration …
SEE: Emily Barker – ‘The Woman Who Planted Trees’: bell-clear Americana
EMILY BARKER, the British-based, Wallander theme-gracing singer-songwriter, has released a beautifully animated lyric video for her track “The Woman Who Planted Trees”, ahead of her new album, A Dark Murmuration of Words, which Thirty Tiger will be releasing on September 4th. And Emily, who grew up in Western Australia, brought an African ecological activist and …
SEE: No Age – ‘Smoothie Kings’: abstract shapes and lofi beauty
UNORTHODOX former Sub Pop noiseniks No Age have got through some virusy distribution teething troubles and finally their new album Goons Be Gone, their second for new housekeepers Drag City, is out in the world. And in celebration the duo, Randy Randall and Dean Allen Spunt, have released a rather lovely, abstract and colourful video …
SEE: the sweetness of Emma Kupa’s ‘Hey Love’
Former singer with Sheffield cult indie heroes Standard Fare, in collaboration with Hefner man Darren Hayman in the Hayman Kupa Band, and in indie fizzbomb purveyors Mammoth Penguins, Emma Kupa has been absent from our ears over the past few years in her solo incarnation. Thankfully that gap in our musical lives is about to …
SEE: Leron Thomas’s ‘Blind’ is a call to wake up from our routines
LERON THOMAS has been quietly making a stir in his native USA for a while with a conscious and deep brand of funk and jazz. More recently he has become known for his behind-the-desk work, overseeing Iggy Pop’s Free LP from last year, which he produced, wrote and toured in cahoots with the garage-punk legend …