Rather literally on the horizon this one, for Cüneyt Sepetçi & Orchestra Dolapdere hail from the azure realm of Istanbul – a city which itself seems to be composed of little other than a bedazzling sunset splayed across an enticing hue blue as a nazar boncuğu amulet. It, or rather the city's Roma gypsy outpost of Dolapdere to be that bit more precise, is the (at least to me) uncharted territory clarinet doyen Sepetçi now calls home although he may be about to be brought to that slightly more occidental attention by Albuquerque duo A Hawk and A Hacksaw, who've [...]
The concept of the covers record is, in itself, an inherently disorienting experience as once cherished songs are heaved, hoed and traditionally hauled out of the cozy comfort zone that familiarity so often incurs within the musical world. Though to hear Buzz Osborne's sludge mongers the Melvins shred their cruddy way through a couple minutes of Black Betty which sound as though the sonic equivalent to the exhumed entrails of Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter himself dusted down and swung overhead to exude a blackened, gritty blend of fetid blood and granular dirt, is positively dizzying as the Afro-American [...]
A never-ending source of infinite hope and optimism for the year ahead comes in the sure to be beguiling release of When Saints Go Machine's forthcoming third full-length Infinity Pool , which grows forever more imminent. It's expected to ooze into being in a couple weeks' time and although we've already heard opener Love And Respect , here quickening its pace and so too slicking its latent house aesthetic into something all the more discernible are Ohio duo Teengirl Fantasy who've a consummately mechanical redux to bestow upon us. Featuring snaps of Killer Mike's doughy vocal scattered among [...]
"Those who handlin' damage control don't wish us the best luck" Jaime Meline contends atop a raggedy throwback beat on the first gem to be unearthed from El-P's newly polished escapades alongside Atlanta rap titan and human "Gatling" gun Killer Mike, as the duo combine to become Run The Jewels . And the New Yoiker ain't wrong, for Get It makes for a typically insurgent introduction to what may well transpire to prove an again propitious collaboration, as a faux rap battle rallying against the hackneyed tropes of bling, women, blah blah blah to have long since afflicted hip hop ensues [...]
Whether you perceive daft Californian dance-punks !!! to be nothing but deranged practitioners of a funked up pastiche, busily recomposing bits and pieces of euphoric histories past – post-punk revivalism; those more accessible entries in the annals of Warp Records; hedonistic '90s raves and whatnot; their own, even – or saviours of some indefinable other altogether, they're ever jesters worth sparing a smirk or two. And with this, the year's first truly stimulatingly titled LP, Nic Offer et al. strive to reinsert the fun back into the somewhat restrained funk renaissance of recent times. [...]
It's pretty implausible to not go loco for mesmeric Mediterraneana on a day like today, and that's precisely what we've before our baying ears and prying eyes this morning as Chilean maverick Matias Aguayo returns with El Sucu Tucu – a manic ode to a chinchilla-type critter , or so an albeit inaccurate trawl of Google Images may well lead you to believe. Once renowned for his idiosyncratic brand of minimal techno commotion although perhaps most vividly remembered for his featuring as a key ingredient of Battles' Ice Cream belter from a couple years back, [...]
Given the explicitly contentious artwork adorning Iggy and the Stooges' long overdue latest – their fifth, their first since that somewhat questionable 2007 LP The Weirdness and therefore so too since the untimely demise of long-standing guitarist Ron Asheton – its release couldn't have come at a more inopportune moment mere weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings to have since traumatised Pop's native United States. It depicts the proto-punk maven at the middle of a blood-red crosshair, plastic explosives enwrapped around his skeletal torso and as he sneers on opener Burn: "Guess [...]
DOOM has done some indefensibly dastardly things in his time – relative felonies within the context of performance and the etiquette thereof. No-shows, no-go's, and plenty of no bloody point in going's though somehow the perma-masked hip hop crusader continues to hold us rapt in the palm of his oversized hands. And as he here returns with Mike Volpe, aka Clammy Clams , aka Clams Casino on production duties he appears not only to have done just that, but also to have found a rather more apt accomplice than Jneiro Jarel proved to be as the intriguingly entitled Bookfiend effortlessly [...]
I'm about as sneery when it comes to Topshop as your average daydream disbeliever made to trudge the length and indeed breadth of the eternally tedious, smog-addled aorta of central London that is Oxford Street on any given Sunday. I was mercifully spared this weekend just gone, though I spent it instead getting faintly acquainted with an EP entitled Topshop from Brightonian trio Teardrop Factory . It's their début release on black wax, yet beyond the scratched veneer of a stereotypical lo-fi aesthetic resides a real knack for the fabricating of polychromic, '90s-inspired pop ditties which belies their newly [...]
There's nothing quite like a punningly alluring nom de plume and whether that be Joy Orbison or Com Truise, it coats a first impression in an albeit superficial patina of further intrigue. Were I to forge a band right around now, I'd probably go with Waste Coasts and in keeping with wordplay of a wry sartorial theme here's Calgary outfit Lab Coast . Unabashedly schooled in the Bradford Cox school of slackened melancholy, Chris Dadge et al. trend in similarly wistful odes to forgotten summers although unassuming standout As Usual, replete with lyrics lamenting the "apathetic society" that has all but [...]
Wherever does one go from a glistering synth-pop opus reconceptualising the life of John DeLorean? Well, to an ever blithe re-envisaging of the life of Italian lefty Giangiacomo Feltrinelli – the inspiratory founder of one of the Mediterranean's most widely lionised 20th century publishing houses, of course. And Praxis Makes Perfect – the wondrously outré sophomore recording from the pair comprising Gruff Rhys and Bryan Hollon known only as Neon Neon – is, appositely I suppose, the sound of the duo becoming that bit better acquainted with one another. And although the power balladry [...]
That inscrutable Swedish psychs Goat should return with a single entitled Stonegoat seems to make absolute sense. We've previously become acquainted with Goatman, Goathead and Goatlord alike, though this rare delicacy from the enigmatic Korpilombolo ensemble could only be more appositely entitled were its sleeve to signal prerequisite directions for maximum enjoyment: roll; kindle; toke 'til smoked . Though that may go some way to intimating toward a languid inertia when in fact, quite antithetically, Stonegoat reeks of a giddy, if ever primordial euphoria that's at once both conscious and conspicuously active as squiggly guitars shadow elaborate [...]
Salvatore Mineo played the existentially alive understudy to James Dean in Nicholas Ray's 1955 flick Rebel Without a Cause and perhaps aptly, Sal Mineo – a collaborative endeavour between Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu and Eugene Robinson of Oxbow – proves a wilfully obstreperous listen. It's a recording altogether detached from all identifiable reality – an exercising of Robinson's "literary fancies" lyrical and a flexing of Stewart's avant-garde muscles musical. The fibres from which it is constructed are those connecting fear to disorientation and although the work proves tendinous in its sheer [...]
Monday? Innately awful. New BRAIDS ? Ineffably brilliant. They've no need to make Amends for anything in particular, not least as the ringleader of the Montréal troupe Raphaelle Standell-Preston already has our album of the year thus far under her belt in the inscrutably excellent form of Blue Hawaii sophomore, Untogether . It's an endeavour which has by now quite evidently had a not insubstantial impact upon her more widely renowned, and with that revered escapades alongside the blokes of BRAIDS, and I say blokes as opposed to guys as they've recently parted ways with [...]
"We can't understand German, so we got yelled at by some bus driver telling us we were in the wrong place. He was nice enough to turn around, otherwise it would've been kinda awkward having to lug our equipment around. 'OK, yeah! Danke! Danke Schoen! Bye-bye!' Pfft." That's the jovial reasoning behind this afternoon's scheduled Plausch with Alex Zhang Hungtai of Dirty Beaches taking place that bit belatedly. He's currently, well, not exactly living in Berlin but he's been there since December. "I don't know how long we're gonna be here, but I guess [...]
It's a testament to the almighty brawn of this year's The Great Escape billing that our beloved likes of Allah-Las , Darkstar , Roosevelt , Sean Nicholas Savage , and so on and so forth weren't in with even so much as a shout as we concisely round up our essential picks from next month's Brighton shebang. For contrived as it may, and indeed doubtless will sound, the UK's leading metropolitan festival has well and truly outdone itself with its programming for the coming edition. The full line up for it can be encountered here , although [...]
Following on from last year's adroitly punishing collaborative Carter Tutti Void endeavour alongside Nik Colk Void of Factory Floor, onetime Throbbing Gristlies Chris & Cosey here return to the comfort of intimacy as Carter Tutti and indeed to a degree, Coolicon sees them revert to the motorik intricacy intrinsic to much of Transverse . Though whereas that was then an exploratory, and so too sporadically challenging affair – its songs built with about the same sense of urgency as Darwin's proposed evolutionary theorem, despite being live recordings from a one-off Roundhouse date – this forthcoming [...]
Way to demonstrate a reprehensible negligence in stuffing this one in the ol' On the Horizon section, though it just so happens that Kodak To Graph only just charted on our hopefully ever broadening field of musical vision. Michael Maleki's been producing music under that very nom de plume for years now though on the off-chance you've not yet heard of him either, well, we'd implore you dip in below. For Aurescent is a dextrously interwoven patchwork of Jakatta-styled ambient, finely nuanced downtempo, and flashes of Eastern eccentricity. The fluttering rhythms, chirping birdsongs, clinking of pots and pans, and [...]
Been hankering to hear something; anything from Milwaukee’s Dennis Ancevic – Alias Pluto – since In Visible English registered last summer. The song itself has since been removed from Ancevic's SoundCloud account, making the wait that bit more silent and excruciating still. Though as he here returns with an unnamed lass in tow on vocal duties, all faith has been emphatically repaid for Seventeen comes across a thoroughly accomplished lo-fi glister – two minutes of blistering Sonic Youth effervescence bubbling beneath a jangle-pop sheen. Thrilling to have Alias Pluto crashing back down to Earth. [...]
"This is our first and last time in London" Kaizers Orchestra ringleader and founder Janove Ottesen confesses before a seething throng, only to then revert to the safe haven that is his default Norwegian. I needless to say can't even so much as begin to comprehend that last bit, but he seems pleased with himself as he stands proud on the cusp of the stage – a Scandi hybridity of Mike Patton and Alan Smith. The Bryne ensemble, now in its fourteenth year of existence having formed at the dawning of this contemporary millennium, may be [...]
Dots & Dashes
PREVIEW: Hyperbits – Karekare (Original Mix)
The Cosmonauts :: Shaker
Deadmau5 Returns With Techno Track "Monophobia" After Being Absent For Months
Stream: Disclosure – When A Fire Starts To Burn
