In a couple hours' time, I'll be outta here and over in Shepherd's Bush as Phoenix go for broke and bring their newly released LP Bankrupt! to London for a very first time. Which, you know, is a kinda entertaining prospect, truth be known. And here to pepper the impatience with that bit more spice still is this from enigmatic crooner Reverb Prince who this afternoon comes to our attentions clean outta 'nowhere.' Were Thomas Mars et al. born of Montréal plutôt que Versailles, and were they heavily inspired by the wilfully [...]
There's no negating electronic musics being at their best when they're powered by those most cerebral capacities of the human brain, just as there's no doubting the disparate genres thereof now approaching a point of absolute saturation. It's precisely why Daphni is preferable to Modeselektor, or why Pick a Piper pips Gold Panda in the stakes of immediate intrigue. And playing into that same richly academic school of thought, production value and so forth is Canterbury's Koloto , or rather Maria Sullivan to put a name to the otherwise isolated nom de plume. Sullivan tinkers with [...]
When you're scouring the SoundCloud of any which band, it can tend to take quite some time to distinguish its pièce de résistance up to that particular point in time. Often you find yourself compelled to afford your ears a moment's respite to contemplate as you return to the bookmarked URL a fourth or fifth, or perhaps even a sixth or seventh time. And as is the case with ethereal Orlando pairing TIDEUP , https://soundcloud.com/tideup is an address I've recurrently been hibernating within of late. Which really is quite something I suppose, given that Noelle Indovino and Ben Guzman [...]
You happen upon an enigmatic London producer with a penchant for monochromic, silently woebegone imagery who just so happens to operate under the guise of Triste . That's the Spanish term for sad , and then you bash play on his latest endeavour which is one entitled Blue. By now, you'd immediately be forgiven for thinking you were about to embark upon a voyage of dejected discovery about the inner emotional workings of some perennial miserablist, though that's absolutely not the case with this one as Blue gradually blooms into a subtle work of tweaked, toned down and pared back [...]
"I ask, 'cause I'm not sure: do anybody make real shit anymore?" It's a conundrum up to which the contemporary recording artist must have to face on a nigh on daily basis and, to surmise, although there may be plenty continuing to make the real shit to which dear Kanye here refers, originality is all but a thing of the past by and large. You know, to state the ineluctable obvious, and whatnot... Though imitation can, and indeed often is the sincerest form of flattery, and this an aphorism Ontario troupe [...]
It's a bad wind that don't blow somebody some good, or so the hackneyed old adage goes and so it seems on a blustery Camden eve for Barry – the solitary inhabitant of a nearby phone box perma-clad in sunglasses even at this, the death of night. He's his eight cans of Special Brew, and a wicked tongue with which to lap them up – a devilish flicker of beard protruding forth form his chinny chin chin. It's hideously chilly out as we draw close to midnight, and yet there's an inexhaustible hope hidden deep within him as he spacks [...]
"I'm so up and down with me sleep schedule – it's kinda crazy!" It quite categorically must be, as I've questions dating back to SXSW and beyond before me. To stamp this particular convo with Captured Tracks' practically nocturnal young upstart Alex Calder with a time if not a definitive place (our proverbial wires cross over Skype, thus I'm here and he's there, and we're both apparently everywhere) it's now April 9th, 2013. Calder has released his highly propitious Time EP, by now played his début show along with a dozen others, and mopped [...]
Hutch Harris has stumbled upon a songwriting formula and has decided to damn well stick to it if Portland, Oregon trio The Thermals' sixth studio full-length Desperate Ground give any valid indication. '06 opus The Body, The Blood, The Machine perfected this heady, predetermined mix of fuzzy guitars, songs unrelentingly over and above 140 bpm, and hooks a go-go with a healthy measure of exuberant, usually shouty righteousness hurled in for added impact. And needless to say, Desperate Ground fails to stray far from this tried, tested, and so too trusted formula. [...]
You know that oh so unmistakable, incomparable feeling of going to a show you're so heavily invested in emotionally, mentally and so too corporeally that you really give not one, but two shits about it? The customary ATP flyer that flights its idiosyncratic way right into the clammy palm as you cross the threshold beneath the strict licensing stipulation; the gratuitously obligatory wait to dwindle on long after then; the overwhelmingly eccentric, and incontestably engaging support? Well, tonight is one of those ones right from arrival. Said support comes in the irrefutably beguiling form of Cosmo Sheldrake [...]
If there's the one openly recognised world wide web-wide idiom that I despise with my every ounce, then it's that of a song dropping . From whence are the fuckers descending? The sky? Or the fourteenth floor of EMI? There is no logical answer to this illogically irate questioning, though in the case of Portland, Oregon pairing Gauntlet Hair it seems just about acceptable to employ said verb, if only to play into some substandard bon mot . Craig Nice and Andy Rauworth just dropped the new Gauntlet Hair, and by 'eck can its intense reverberations be heard [...]
Phoenix ! The petits garçons of Versailles and the winsome, glinting pommes destined to hang perpetually in the eyes of staunch Francophiles worldwide who were this year promoted to headlining status without even so much as a song to corroborate such ascent! Sacré bleu! Coachella came and went, replete with an outré R. Kelly cameo ; Primavera Sound is yet to be invested with their crowning presence, and this week we've an album to substantiate the elevation. Mon dieu! Of course it's not an entirely clean slate from which Thomas Mars et [...]
A track that 'has stereo guitar looping, with a lashing of an old Italian funk break, an African a capella from the wonderful Miriam Makeba, a deep bass line, bongos and djembas and a wholesome brass section' you say? Why, absolutely why not! Oxgam, a spectacularly finely refined composition for a supposed 'demo', came as my perfunctory introduction to Nepheww – aka Londoner Jacob Taylor – only a couple hours ago although it's not left my attentions since. Its beat decidedly Afro ; its wompy bass end bottomless, it makes for a wondrous convergence of gritty Northern European [...]
Stupefied silence. It's a debilitation few records are in any way capable of incurring, though it's precisely what we're presented with as Deco Child returns with the sweeping grandiosity of Skinless Pt. 1. It's another step in an altogether more accomplished direction for Ninja Tune signee Alex Lloyd, who here builds a whirring blizzard of raw emotivity about a powder-soft pianistic solemnity evocative of Martin Grech's Open Heart Zoo. A typically ethereal and distant vocal inevitably features, as do scrupulously honed bloops and incongruous handclaps somehow in keeping with the rapture this one instils within for it instantly [...]
Stupefied silence. It's a debilitation few records are in any way capable of incurring, though it's precisely what we're presented with as Deco Child returns with the sweeping grandiosity of Skinless Pt. 1. It's another step in an altogether more accomplished direction for Ninja Tune signee Alex Lloyd, who here builds a whirring blizzard of raw emotivity about a powder-soft pianistic solemnity evocative of Martin Grech's Open Heart Zoo. A typically ethereal and distant vocal inevitably features, as do scrupulously honed bloops and incongruous handclaps somehow in keeping with the rapture this one instils within for it instantly [...]
Spring may still be struggling to blossom in earnest, although Brighton stalwarts of cult Brit indie-pop British Sea Power floundered not in proffering an evening's worth of potent imitation. Their merch stall strewn with mugs coated in black patinae depicting birds and bees and their stage festooned with darling buds, that it's still light outside by the time we enter the 'Empire would be novel enough on most nights, though Yan, Hamilton et al. really go the whole hog. They begin proceedings with a pretty impromptu acoustic soupçon – a lulling mélange of old, [...]
You've heard the snippet , and doubtless indulged in the phoney reproductions pieced together from its couple minutes. The internet's been ablaze with Get Lucky all week, and it's more or less kept if not the world then at least the www. spinning. Well, mercifully for all involved really, you can now hear the whole shebang below. Pharrell's falsetto is every bit as good as it sounded when it first broke free box-fresh on that Coachella-aired excerpt; Nile Rodgers' guitars effervesce joie de vivre against a quintessential Daft Punk backdrop, and all of a sudden [...]
Let's contextualise capital trio London Grammar's spiralling ascent to the vertiginous apices of mainstream intrigue a moment, shall we? Their latest, Wasting My Young Years, was uploaded to the band's SoundCloud some fifteen hours ago, has been aired 17,297 times at this acute point in time and has been snagged by no less than sixteen blogs plugged into the Hype Machine. That's over a post an hour, inclusive of a nighttime. And those are some incontrovertibly impressive figures right there. Personally, I'd have scribbled something or other of it sooner had I not (somewhat ironically I suppose, given its title) [...]
Brighton quartet Kins are of a rare breed; oddities of indie. Yes, it's guitar music which hinges on melodrama to make each individual vertebra tingle and quiver, and of course comparisons will be drawn between Thomas Savage's endearing falsetto delivery and that of Hayden Thorpe. They've even been about since 2010, thus before the purported demise of said guitar music . Though with the emergence of an eponymous EP only yesterday, they've managed to accentuate the intrinsic peculiarities to an extent which allows them to protrude forth from the ever widening mire of humdrum guitar aficionados [...]
Badwater will, I'd bet my bottom buck, be one of those classic unheralded records of the year that just so happens to be 2013. It was released midway through January, the month which for self-explanatory motives is so frequently overlooked in the end of years anyhow though most perturbing was the desperate lack of hyperbole to have greeted that initial emission of its dreamy shoegaze consistency. And it's an absolutely mystifying testament to its uniform quality that Lies – the flip to forthcoming single, Caught Up – didn't make the final cut, for this is Speck Mountain [...]
That right there's the sentiment expressed as Nina peaks with the sort of riveting chorus Prince has tried and failed to come out with for decades now, though the overriding sensation to be derived from this chugging spoken word oeuvre from Neneh Cherry and Nathaniel Hall (better known as insurgent Brooklynite Afrika Baby Bam ) is one of snug collaboration. The Jungle Brother brings a sagacious world-weariness to the piece – one incidentally pieced together by none other than Kieran Hebden – as he eulogises the recurrent greatness of life. "It always keeps me smiling" he assures in a gravelled tone [...]
Dots & Dashes
R.F.T.W.E. pt.2
DANCE BITCH DANCE: disclosure - when a fire starts to burn
Marlon Hoffstadt - Skin And Bone (feat. HRRSN)
