There's no denying the harp slowly but surely becoming something of an instrument du jour. De l'année even, with Serafina Steer's The Moths Are Real for one right up there among the incontestable LPs of this year thus far. And here tinkering with a synthetic take on those same strings is Mancunian songstress Claire Brentnall – aka Shield Patterns – who masterfully weaves trad folk inflexions with an oneiric ambient that's at once distinctly wintry. Comparisons with Natasha Khan emulating the albeit inimitable warble of a certain Kate Bush will doubtless abound, though [...]
Chan Marshall may well have (albeit belatedly) wound up in the UK last night though she wasn't stood out with the smokers of Euston Road, but instead busying herself with the serenading of Jools Holland's studio audience over at The Maidstone Studios, Kent where rather than revisiting anything from the abnormally rowdy Sun LP of yesteryear, she instead opted to air a slight obscurity entitled Bully. Ostensibly aimed right between Giovanni Ribisi's two peepers, the track plaintively harks back to Cat Power standout album The Greatest as Marshall mourns the demise of better times, crooning [...]
Following on from Redg Weeks' superlative Run To Your Mama redux of a couple weeks back, the In to Weeks' Vada – Geoff Barrow – here clambers up the reverb tower to rework a previously unreleased Anika track entitled Bloodhound. Typically claustrophobic though at that same time a little more loose in contrast with the usual brood, the adopted Berlinerin returns with quintessentially inauspicious lyrics of "They're coming to get you/ They won't stop 'til you're found" which ooze forth from gloopy gusts of echo and fade. Similarly rhythmically, there's an [...]
Truth be known, Mount Kimbie didn't exactly stray all that far from their default MO when they last month exhibited the overwhelmingly wonderful Made To Stray as a prefatory, and indeed all too pithy peruse of forthcoming sophomore, Cold Spring Fault Less Youth . It was, to all intents and purposes, a pretty lucid continuation of their Crooks & Lovers endeavours of yonks ago, even though it transpired to be that little bit more refined. Yet even then, they'd allowed for over two years to pass – months upon waxy moons [...]
The last time we heard from Dirty Beaches – aka Québec-based avant-garde practitioner Alex Zhang Hungtai – it just so happened to be the first track unveiled as part of his mettlesome forthcoming double album, Drifters / Love Is The Devil . It was then the doleful title track from the latter, though he this time skips to the end of the former to bestow upon us the ethnic inflexions and atonal hulusi drones of Landscapes In The Mist. Now, comparisons between the two pieces outed thus far are scant to the point of becoming incontrovertibly [...]
Around about a month ago, Delaware trio FIANCÉ all too fleetingly arose to the surfaces of our attentions with the intoxicating amalgam of electronic and organic that was the therefore inappositely entitled Division though back vying for that same attention, adoration, and all else below can now be found its follow-up in the again beguiling form of For Now. This time that bit more straight-up, the indubitable Local Natives influence sticks about though as the samples subsequently abate, their refined ear for a debonair melody lingering lonesome about the key of despondence becomes that bit more [...]
Were I stranded in an endless desert with nothing but a strand-addled Discman for company while I were left with nothing to do but lose my marbles one by one with every minute seeming a year and my tongue increasingly becoming coarse as sandpaper, I'd want desert rock to play on in the backdrop 'til my inevitable demise. And on that merry note, I'd perhaps opt for something somewhere or other along the dustbowl-rolling lines of Minneapolis thrash. pop. gaze trio Gospel Gossip who, led by Sarah Nienaber, whip up a quiet maelstrom of Americana, melancholia and infinite [...]
This week will doubtless be forever remembered as that upon which The Knife returned with some explicitly outré newfangled habits, though south of their native Sweden an altogether more auspicious prospect this way comes. Anna Müller may not yet carry that same inscrutable aura nor radiant revere about her as does Karin Dreijer Andersson, though her eponymous début under the nom de plume of HVOB (or Her Voice Over Boys) may yet see her elevated high up above both her Nordic overstudy, and so too many of the umpteen boys peddling distinctly below par electronica at [...]
Truth be known, when London's frontrunning brokers of Basque Country vibe Crystal Fighters returned a month or so ago with Separator , I didn't feel as though we were quite "on the same wave" as it were. They were riding high on a disorienting Europop feel, while I suppose I was still busily unhooking myself from that Devendra Banhart LP though as the tides turn and the trio emit Wave, we're right back on track. An appositely ebullient piece of glistering Balearic beat, it's one which shines even "in the depths of my mind" that'll [...]
Is it so wrong to suggest that this, the first recording heard in quite some time of Josh Homme's Queens of the Stone Age – a band that effortlessly; endlessly exudes badass – sounds strikingly redolent of 50 Cent's P.I.M.P.? Obviously the trashy rap track in question is, well, utter claptrap by comparison though at the core of My God Is The Sun is this incisive guitar line which proves immediately evocative of Fiddy's purported finest. It's then enwrapped in rampant tambourines, an incendiary chorus, zippy fretwork, Homme's typically lethargic, bloodshot slur and all other manner of invigorating intimations of [...]
It's been seven years since The Knife last emerged with an album of which to moan and groan, and Silent Shout was then of course met with much wax lyrical. This week, they return with its lamentably belated follow-up in the altogether less effable form of Shaking The Habitual which resides deep within the grooves of an altogether more tangible wax (or rather black vinyl plastic) – Deep Cuts again made by Karin Dreijer Andersson and brother Olof Dreijer's Rabid Records imprint. Though to contextualise the timeframe across which they've now been [...]
"This is the first installment in what we hope to be a yearly festival, focused on disparate music and genres. Artists are chosen based on their ability to resuscitate, set fire to the air, or to mesmerize. All of the performers chosen for this year’s festival I find personally to be compelling in this regard. The goal: joy!" Michael Gira's words; not ours, though the inaugural Mouth To Mouth curation courtesy of Swans to have taken place at Koko, Mornington Crescent oozed oodles of this prophesied joy which was brought to we, the open eared, [...]
The establishing of an annual metropolitan festival in a city alien to his own during which our weatherbeaten curator intends to congregate practitioners of explicitly "disparate music and genres" may initially appear an immoderately audacious endeavour. Though so spake the inimitably intimidating, and indeed ever valiant Michael Gira ahead of the inaugural Mouth To Mouth – a showcase of sorts geared toward just the one lone goal, with that being the engendering of undiluted joy. It's surely the solitary sensation every show aims to provoke and though centred around artists "chosen based on their ability to resuscitate, set [...]
Hotly anticipated on the back of 2011 breakthrough album Smoke Ring For My Halo , Kurt Vile’s latest – Wakin' On A Pretty Daze – immediately establishes an overtly colourful tone right from its opening title track. Clocking in at nine minutes-plus, the song has it all: prolonged jams, striking nods to Neil Young, and a laid back eminence that is all too easy to become lost in. As Philly-dweller Vile’s fifth studio album duly unravels however, it becomes ever more evident that the elements responsible for making this introductory wig out oh so appealing [...]
The post Gallery: Mouth To Mouth, Koko, April 4th 2013. appeared first on Dots & Dashes .
A month or so ago, we came to bathe in the luminescent ambient of Quiet Sun – aka highly proficient UK electronica producer Jack Hyde, and his Conflate masterpiece. Since, we conversed at length with Parquet Courts who, perhaps self-explanatorily, quite rationally accredited the contemporary boom in electronic music to "a rise in the widespread accessibility" of the equipment that so readily facilitates its fabrication. They're absolutely right of course, and indeed there are now so many practitioners of mellow electronica that it's becoming increasingly complex trying to ascertain which are worthy of your time and attention though [...]
Indie, eh? Not since the turn of the millennium has it stood for its true meaning of independent, its reputation instead sullied by the disreputable nonsenses of the exclusively British likes of Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, Bombay Bicycle Club, The Courteeners etc. ad infinitum. It's a grave shame, not least as what was once a blanket term has been bastardised by the dirtiest of explicit connotations. Though in amongst all the turgid, and in many respects cheapskate sonic templates – not to mention the lazy categorisation itself – are glimpses of brilliance; of innovation, and so too relative independence. That [...]
I'm only too aware of the perhaps somehow narrow-minded preconception of music blogs purely being outlets for exclusively new music . We're going out on a limb and against that particular grain here, though I'd reckon them to be portals facilitating musical discovery anyhow and so as I've only just happened upon this unhurried convergence between two of my absolute favourite contemporary artists in Sharon Van Etten and Marie-Claire Balabanian of Speck Mountain, here we darn well are and you may yet thank us for returning not only to the bare-boned basics of Keep Trying, but [...]
It wasn't so long ago that we were singing the effusive praises of doleful instrumental guru shak. aka Netherlands resident Shakuru Tajiri, and we're here stopping off at that same place, albeit at a later date as the enigmatic virtuoso unleashes Same Time, Same Places upon us. Beginning with a crystalline wash of neutral ambience, it's only seconds before a searingly emotive guitar line pierces the sombre opacity – hauling softly scuffed clacking into the frame right with it. Again, it keens for a certain Abel Tesfaye to bring his shame and so too his pain along to [...]
And so here we are: it's 2013, and we've another potentially incendiary album from the enfant terrible of rap. Gone is the beef with Tegan and Sara and the furore surrounding his exclusively misogynistic lyrics has died down somewhat, allowing us to focus on Tyler, The Creator's purported purpose – the music itself. Opening with the fanfare of Wolf, our 'Creator lures us into a false sense of security as Marvin Gaye-like vocals and soulful piano greet us. For a moment you'd be forgiven for thinking, 'Ooh! He's grown up! This may [...]
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