Blog: Dots & Dashes

It were a sad one the day the Books called time on said project and sadder yet still when Nick Zammuto conceded to chapters scribed with erudite accomplice Paul de Jong being slammed shut definitively . All good things must come to an end if the hackneyed proverb is to be read into and if one irrevocably great thing may have come from the drawing of proverbial line beneath endeavours Bookish then it's this lustrous debut from its compulsive creative, who here beams in an opus of sorts from some bucolic bit down the back of the [...]

An inventive and exceedingly intelligent indie pop LP, The Antlers' fourth full-length Burst Apart courted an admirable heap of adoration from most corners musical. A record to fall in love with and indeed to, profound intricacies and secret spaces seemed to unlatch once it was allowed to nestle away in the rosiest atrium of your heart in order that it fully bloom. It's thus somewhat unsettling that when the diminutive figure of Peter Silberman initially emerges to emit a gruff "Good evening" any wooing to have gone on with the record is reciprocated with an apathetic [...]

The boy/girl rapport between the both amorously and harmoniously aligned pairing of Ed and Alice is, needless to say, pivotal to the course of Sunless '97 . New cut Body Weather, one half of a limited 7" out June 18th on boutique indie Not Even , sees the balance tip toward the ethereality provided by the latter's intelligent, emotive vocal soars however as jelly-like synths wobble and Yebga Likoba hoots a sax solo – the like last heard soundtracking televised daytime dross at some point toward the end of the last century – to combine in a resplendent [...]

Fresh from signing to Best Fit Recordings , The Line Of Best Fit's label de seemingly chaque jour since it was recently established, Fanzine are just starting to pen some serious chapters into their still short history. And although this particular interview may never make the contents page, lead vocalist Jock's eloquence in these As to the Qs hurled his way suggests they'll be able to substantiate the claims to greatness insinuated by latest single L.A. long beyond its release this coming Monday... [...]

Last Record Store Day release; promise. Vagrant's offering came from woozy shoegaze types School of Seven Bells who had a stab at Siouxsie and the Banshees' Kiss Them For Me, stab being the operative word: Alejandra Deheza and Benjamin Curtis hack away the guitars, instead opting for a cut-and-thrust industrial approach that's irrefutably devastating. Unerring on the searing melody of the original take yet unmistakably SVIIB in overall aesthetic, it achieves – at least subjectively – the essential objective of any cover and is consequently a pretty consummate recording. [...]

How many East Coasters does it take to programme a drum machine? Erm in the case of Cat Martino's contribution to Weathervane Music's latest Shaking Through compilation, I Promise, that'd be two and they'd happen to be a certain Sufjan and Chris Powell of Philadelphian experi mentalists Man Man. If the Stevens-featuring single Yr Not Alone from Martino's forthcoming full-length of the same name signalled an approach to the histrionic grandiosity of The Age of Adz then I Promise conversely harks back to somewhere solemn; solitary; sometime in '97. [...]

The Waiting Room is, generally speaking, an unenviable place to linger: shuddering gusts pass through its poorly hinged doors incessantly and irksomely; the floor is scarcely discernible beyond a crusty gloss of crud; malingerers squirm atop sticky benches to the left, to the left and to the right. Field Day's newly acquired Stoke Newington haunt of the same name is, however, a rather more inviting environ, its walls embellished with faded tiles and incongruous planks of floorboard. Factor in the fiddler in the basement, of Montreal's unsung superlative Kishi Bashi , and you've suddenly got something the hordes may [...]

Cast your mind back to Ghostpoet's crossover single Survive It and it's the chorus that'll first bite. Those otherworldly yet quintessentially London vocals came from the bocca e polmoni of Fabiana Palladino and, if latest demo Young Thing is anything to go by, there'll be further puffing, panting, ranting and raving over this youthful being sooner rather than later. Mooted to have been snapped up by Kwes.' very own microlabel BOKKLE. , the Warp upstart's gooey mellifluousness and honeyed keys are smeared all over it and, as Palladino chirps: "Young thing I'd like [...]

An adorably unkempt, scarcely presentable mess of a thing is Waste A Lot Of Things, the lead track from Wisconsin trio Jaill's second effort on Sub Pop , Traps (out June 11th). Sounding like We Wish You A Merry Christmas being puked up against corrugated iron garage door by mangy lo-fi peddlers with an aversion to metal one moment and like snotty saviours of aestival psych-pop the following it's the rudest of re-awakenings to the brazen bluster of these three quite brilliant, if equally unlikely lads. Jaill .

Sometime [circa 2006], somewhere [likely Falkirk] a solitary tear will most probably have trickled down bristled whisker to the sound of Philophobia , the news of Arab Strap's untimely demise bungling about within churning stomach like jittering die sheltered from the perils of this world by the plastic rotunda of a Pop-O-Matic. It's not as though the band's constituents Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat have receded into periods of protracted mourning nor lengthy spells of hibernation since; it's just that they're indubitably at their best when strapped into the same voyage, sat side by side in solidarity. Thus for [...]

It's not purely the hood – the quintessential cloak of anonymity – that homogenises the genetics of Vancouver's Christopher Oliver (aka Buffalo Tide ) and a certain William Bevan: from the condensed and contused vocal samples; to the euphoric yet mildly ominous house-y synths; to the ebb, flow and full retention of attention Mess Hall Malnutrition sounds like Burial facing up to fellow Four Tet collaborators Rocketnumbernine . One worth entwining in the inner wirings of any computer, the track is now available on a 'name your price' download. <p><a href=" http://buffalotide.bandcamp.co m/track/mess-hall-malnutrition ">Mess Hall [...]

Straddling the spheres of analog and digital and stuffing airborne genitalia on the sleeve for your third LP, British Columbians Hot Panda aren't exactly your average bunch. Sounding somewhat like a sedate Blood Brothers circa final war cry Young Machetes , Future Markets is the first thing to be outed from forthcoming full-length Go Outside (anticipated July 16th via Mint Records ) and it's a rollicking stomp, its opening flickers of guitar equal parts punk and funk. A twitchy, schitzy listen that's locked in constant coming-to-terms with the rage located within as it forbiddingly [...]

Cologne microlabel Fjellsmug proffers this belief-affirming objective: 'It's all about the music we like and we hope that you like it as well. The spirit of a melody, the wideness of a soundscape, the chord that dwells deep down within yourself.' In releasing a two-track by the name From Tulsa To Des Moines from Silent Enjoyment , the pairing of local youves Mäd Mandy and Lasse Løberg, they've ticked the aforesaid boxes so vigorously that were they scribbled down on the sturdiest of card then pen would scorch through just as From Tulsa cuts straight to [...]

To designate the debut Twin-Hand Movement and the follow-up Nootropics suggests, if nothing else, a confidence in full bloom. Named after smart drugs and nutraceuticals aimed at aiding in the enhancement of intelligence, if the title suggests Jana Hunter has furthered hers through forming Lower Dens , growing into its skin and whereby surrounding herself with merchants of harmonies to haunt even the most equilibrated of minds then its contents numbering ten intimate she's furthered functions sonic as well as academic. We've already experienced so-called 'single' Brains [...]

If Beach House's donation to last weekend's largely hugely successful Record Store Day, Lazuli represented a slight detour from their sumptuous stargaze soundtracking then its flipside, Equal Mind sees the duo back on the tracks of soaring melodrama: Alex Scally's guitars scale such great heights, whilst Victoria Legrand chimes: "There is no way you could know/ These waves they come and they go" over appositely cyclical washes of oneiric majesty. Although not to feature on forthcoming fourth Bloom , you can't help but sense that had Equal Mind featured as the A-side then that [...]

In this salubrious nook of planet Earth, anticipation simmers as we anxiously await the arrival of German electronica stalwarts Mouse on Mars . It's Freitag Nacht; the joys and overjoys of the weekend are but nigh and yet there's a rather odd atmosphere within these four exposed brick walls. This drab reality stems primarily, arguably, from excessive floorspace and a complete disregard for support act: whilst it may not seem entirely imperative (nor even applicable maybe) for artists of their ilk to indulge in warm-ups, the ambience summoned is more minimal than the most obscure and anti-musical strands of [...]

The day I eventually dared to wade into overflowing inbox to extract and download Death Grips' Epic Records debut The Money Store (legally, of course) just so happened to be the very same day that my withering iTunes finally conked out. Coincidence? Perhaps not – this lumbering hunk of electronic had been puking up error messages for yonkers but such notion may add a certain impact to this here intro, whilst simultaneously elucidating the aural devastation located within this heap of impeccably heady hip hop. Now extradited to the outhouse that is the external harddrive like [...]

I first became acquainted with Empty Pools' lead vocalist Leah Pritchard in the alluring glow of one of Butlin's myriad claw cranes, some unsightly winnings in hand and an odious jingle ringing in both ears. It therefore serves as little surprise subjectively that Vanderbilt Cup, the first track to fall from the Bristol quartet's Soundcloud , is an erudite affair littered with astute pop culture references ( The Dark Is Rising , the Gates of Eden , etc.) that stream perfectly into the track's fluid aesthetic. They're intertwined with the tale of Patti Smith's abstruse emotional [...]

Doubtless Record Store Day , as with any no; absolutely every institutionalised day of celebration, has its pros and cons. Its primary pro I would contend, what with black wax now rendered omnipresent, clamoured for and consequently a touch extortionate (another debate for another time further from Friday perhaps), stems from its capacity to re-inform and remind – or alternatively inform and educate – the glaringly obvious: that every vinyl is, as 88 Fingers Louie would put it, a "two-faced bastard". There's a wealth of possibility within the split 7" concept that's largely been neglected over the past little [...]

If the stereotypically gelid Scandinavian climes were to increase a negligible fraction of a degree every time one of its acts or artists were interrogated as to why they'd opted to articulate their deepest (and in many cases darkest) sing-song secrets via the grotesquely universal medium that the English lingo has irrefutably become, the temperatures would be veritably Bahaman. Arguably Nordic musical outpour would be diluted, perhaps infused with a Balearic lethargy; the place would be filled with pallid Brits; the exchange rate would in all likelihood descend further into absurdity. Brian Batz thankfully doesn't really buy into this concept [...]