Blog: Dots & Dashes

Having fallen helplessly for Utrecht at the particularly frolicsome Le Guess Who? back in November it'd seem completely logical for we, he, or indeed anyone to scheme a relocation to the dormitory canal-side town barely outside of Amsterdam. He in this case happens to be Portuguese-born João Costa and his moniker is LASERS , from beneath which he channels a ghostly ambience befitting gelid wistfulness, dark winters and biting chill, all of which may be found in our now-beloved Utrecht. Amsterdam is the standout snapshot from his Soundcloud , as spectral synth lines skiffle and dart [...]

If your preconceptions of Nordic sonic outpour centre around perfectly affable if in no way provocative tweepop propensities, treat yourself and traumatise your ears with Abulia Jubilee, the debut long-player from Uppsala's 'slacker noise rock' upstarts Tennis Bafra . Inherently recalling recently reunited, skull-crushing hardcore compatriots Refused, Abulia Jubilee is a record dripping in an intoxicating amalgam of Bitch Magnet brutality, Sonic Youth sludge, and the nonchalant recklessness, venom, and vitriol of Craig Nicholls. Tennis Bafra .

Just one glimpse of the artwork adorning Paralytic Stalks, the umpteenth (read eleventh) LP from Athens, Georgia (read Kevin Barnes)'s of Montreal suggests that it's not to be the record that sanitises his, nor indeed our sanity. That's not to say that there aren't moments of the subdued or unostentatious as Barnes hops across a spectrum of stylistic categorisation like a mildly maniacal nymph even within relatively concise pieces but we wouldn't want him any other way, right? Barnes 'doing' Piaf, or Garland, or swinging while he's winning would be categorically vulgar, no? [...]

Even in an age in which Spotify is (albeit justifiably) chastised for paying out pittances and peanuts to starry-eyed, if holey-jeaned artists it seems all but entirely illogical that a record of such startling beauty as Anywhere But Where I Am may be proffered by its conjurers free of charge. Said conjurers are Flights , or Eric Hillman and Brian Holl. Although the duo are now shacked up in Nashville, they hail initially from Wisconsin which, to the ignorant Brit at least sends surging thoughts recurring to Justin Vernon. Here [...]

Sounding genuinely, almost terrifyingly like nothing else are Human Teenager who, comprised of New Yoiker Gary War (an original and integral scribble in what later became Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti) and Taylor Richardson of Infinity Window , come together to wallow in aqueous, intermittently murky analogue stylings. Fourth Reich is the first track to be lifted off a full-length entitled Animal Husbandry that's expected March 27th via Spectrum Spools , an imprint of Editions Mego seemingly stamped with the authority of Emeralds' John Elliott - if the limited Soundcloud spiel is to [...]

The now-defunct LCD Soundsystem and Debbie Harry both had a hack at Franz Ferdinand's chugging juggernaut Live Alone for last April's Record Store Day. However NYC DJ and producer Brennan Green's rework lassoos all the emboldened aforementioned into the same pen to heave together this dancehall clobberer: hinging on wondrously rotund bass octave pummel, glimmers of synth, and Manzaneran stabs of well-preened guitar glitz has been added to what was once all but a little mundane. Harry duets with Kapranos, rendering James Murphy's involvement all but enigmatic although that's presumably just as [...]

Wade on over to Seye's Facebook page and the social network-scented surreality is that, in all likelihood, an upturned thumb and the omnipresent name of Metronomy can be seen at the top right-hand side of your browser. The predominant reasoning behind this seemingly abnormal phenomenon is that Seye (pronounced Shey-ah) Adelekan is the younger brother of Joseph Mount's left-hand man and bass-toter Gbenga and to return to prime relevance, White Noise is his autotune-tastic debut single that demands attention like a "cigarette inside your paper cut". Scheduled for an April 15th release via the now-infamous [...]

Mount Kimbie may have vanished from view just as they were beginning to really get clattering with the clacking rhythms and the momentarily cacophonous guitars although Atlas seem more than capable of tiding us over until their return. They are Rem Sutton and Luke Fantom, and the pages bookmarked in the figurative atlas are those containing the towns of Ashby and Measham from where they respectively hail. And while it may hail, sleet and snow outside, there's a snug intimacy to the Emmo-featuring This Is: like the distortion-smeared guitars of Maybes daubed generously over Before I Move [...]

Mechanisburg, Pennsylvania's Alec Koone – aka Balam Acab – can certainly be said to occupy something of a lonesome nether zonal void left in the mournless wake that followed the relieving demise of the ever-gruesome 'witch house' genre categorisation. We ought not forget that SALEM were once perceived to be the savours of all things unholy , that the questionable talents of the trio carried them from one dank corner of the globe to another far-flung yet equally glum. Koone trades in similarly flatulent bass lines while employing equally ethereal vocal strains often warped beyond human recognition [...]

A little like the optical illusion centred upon the visual dichotomy between the rabbit and the duck, the scatty, lo-fi work of Kamal Rasool's Flamingods may either be perceived as directionless lo-fi thuddery permeated periodically by wooded flute harmonies or as genuinely progressive, genre-banishing brilliance. Irrespective of whether you see a bill or a pair of ears, within the heavily percussive stuff to have already fallen out of their Soundcloud there's ample excellence to admire: from frantic piping and thumping of ethnic skins on Spirit Away Away to the mesmeric glitters and muffled vocal samples of [...]

Hop Along hail from the distant riverside haven of Philadelphia although along with much homegrown music, Tibetan Pop Stars (lifted from forthcoming debut full-length Get Disowned) was constructed in a vacant warehouse (albeit one in the northernmost reaches of the Pennsylvanian city). The track itself bristles with raw and emotive guitars, and is propelled by Frances Quinian's desperation-embalmed vox and the visceral repetition of the refrain: "Nobody deserves you the way that I do." Sounding like Kathleen Edwards letting her every hair down and dribbling her heart out over a chaotic studio session with The Thermals [...]

For all those to have been reared predominantly on secondhand smoke on the booze-splatted viscosity underfoot on the carpets and plastics of Brixton's Academy, La Femme's debut London show at The Garage on this significantly more salubrious corner of Highbury is for we. And for seemingly every Frenchman and woman currently shacked up in the capital. For the Le Pré-Saint-Gervais retrospection-revelling outfit hark back to glorified ages and eras past, delving into a history of all things Gallic, groove-laden, and New Wave as the sextet surf triumphantly towards the brightest of horizontal futures. Needless to say horizontal is [...]

Deaf Club's Lull EP of yesteryear was one of the finest, most colourful splashes of extended-play to have graced t'internet over the course of them there twelve months. Sunday, released February 20th via White On White, picks up precisely where the Welsh outfit left off with despondence-engendering guitars infected with an unshakeable sheen of reverb and has us lauding their return in place of longing for progression. It's lifted from a limited six-track cassette release on club Kissability , a tape-only imprint of the omnipotent Transgressive and as Polly Mackey wistfully sighs periodically throughout, it'd appear to [...]

While their Soundcloud page may rather unobligingly profess broody stargazers moon. to hail from 'Your face.', there's some genuine wonder behind the insolence. Beaming in from Mesquite, the Texan quartet comprised of Moses Paul, Jordan Burnett, and Alana and Robbie Nabors whimsically hop from one style to another without ever entangling themselves in knotted, nonsensical hybridity nor embroiling themselves in contemporary clichés. The BRAIDS-via-Nintendo-via-RATM expansiveness of Spiritualized. is just about slinky enough to justify their again-sardonic genre categorisation of 'Porn', while the clacky wobbles and reverberations of Revelations. float about rather graciously. It's latest track Ghost [...]

Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose, the debut full-length from perfectly vivacious Geordie lass Beth Jeans Houghton ( & The Hooves of Destiny ) has been so impatiently awaited that to at long last be able to ferociously tear record from shrink-wrapped viscose must, for Houghton, be comparable to a childhood Christmas in which some inconceivably gargantuan Lego vessel is unfurled from gaudy wrapping paper. When our paths crossed and voices conversed back in September Beth Jeans was, visibly, deeply affected by the arrival of a clutch of Liliputt seven inches thus to clasp an LP for the [...]

Much ado has been made – progressively emphatically – about the sparsity within the work of the almost unfeasibly juvenile Nicolas Jaar . First and foremost the hype and hubbub around tonight's sold out show in the capital's finest musically-orientated establishment is, superficially, equally inconceivable: commuters haggle for spares on bustling tubes and every spluttered word centres upon the man who, at the wondrously tender age of twenty-two, is over to showcase his very own label and multimedia outlet, Clown & Sunset. The venue itself meanwhile is ideal in that it is later to give superlative sounds from the [...]

Loose and languid lines of heads pounding and eyes burning perhaps aren't anticipated of Charlotte Gainsbourg , the elder stateswoman of Gallic sulk although with the world having witnessed her perform the crudest of gynaecological surgery in Lars von Trier's Antichrist, contemporarily, implausible is nothing. Now forty, the daughter of France's most celebrated ashtray-larynxed crooner resembles a figure as relevant as ever, Stage Whisperer opener Terrible Angels attesting to this with its glitched-up glam stomp and vapid, utterly disinterested vocal delivery. It's as exhilarating as anything to have been committed to black [...]

Always a somewhat problematic predicament is the side-project: whether it arouses foreseeable, feasible tensions or indicates endemic issues with the collaborative creativity of the artist(s) involved, it's a term sullied by multitudinous howlers. Last year's pairing up of Lou Reed and Metallica provided an example as unequivocal as any as to why sticking to the day job, however dirgy or dreary it may be, is an unadventurous direction that should sometimes be followed. It was largely regarded as the defecating on and defacing of not one but two illustrious legacies and the potential perils and jagged-toothed traps around [...]

Hacked out of mixtape ViCKi LEEKX and subsequently polished and spruced up substantially with the aid of Timbaland producer Danja, Bad Girls sees everyone's preferred brattish gal from Mitcham block, M.I.A. , return to the infectious bhangra-infused beats that rendered debut full-length Arular such a compelling listen. Insistent Punjab inflexions underly Arulpragasam's bumpy vox re: her "chain" hitting her chest as she bangs on the dashboard of a corybantic Jeep, the track in question thundering through the speakers. An inevitable single and surely a surefire hit at that, she's still cruising in the fast lane and doing [...]

Establishing a 'night' on the one most synonymous with the obscenely punctuated Anglicism P.A.R.T.Y. is, I would uneducatedly contend, a tricky business. To do so while illuminating exclusively Scandinavian sonic outpour (albeit sans Swedish impetus these days), I would furthermore hypothesise, only renders the joyous, moderately precarious task at enthusiastic hand all the more treacherous. Irrespective of whether or not Ja Ja Ja welcome such danger with snow-chilled arms there are plenty of strangers in the vicinity that is The Lexington's sensually lit, salubrious first floor sanctum to suggest these Nordic enthusiasts are laughing, joking, and generally doing [...]