rescuing musical virtue in distress.
Not all music needs the direct communication of a lyrical component. In fact sometimes it can really get in the way. A smart artist knows that music is just as powerful a medium as words when it comes to getting your message across and Joe McCann is a smart artist for sure. The difference is... Continue Reading →
Music, all too often, sounds very much like the product of the human world. Even when it is trying to express more abstract concepts, talking about the wider world or dealing with intangible ideas such as emotions and feelings, it still generally sounds, without wanting to sound obvious, man-made. How could it not? What has... Continue Reading →
Greg Smith has always had a way with understatement. Even when mining a more upbeat sonic seam he does so in a spacious and tasteful way, employing the minimal amount of musical building blocks to the maximum affect. Here, he really takes that idea to its logical conclusion. In the Vicinity of Miracles is gentle... Continue Reading →
There are a few words which get over used in music writing. Words such as haunting, ethereal, otherworldly, I should know as I, as much as anyone, have been responsible for their dissemination and proliferation. But how can you review music as gorgeous, as unique, as unusual, as mystical as David Åhlén’s without at least... Continue Reading →
We get so used to hip-hop's core sound being used as a vehicle for hard-hitting, socially aware, sonic salvos and lyrical attacks that we forget that this is only one of many avenues down which it is possible to take the music. What if you took those same beats, and ways of sampling and styling... Continue Reading →
It isn’t so much the case that Sebastian Reynolds hops genres or even attempts to merge them like some sort of sonic alchemist, it is more that he floats without concern above them. And whilst you could make a good argument for elements of avant-garde classical, trip-hop, free jazz and ambient experimentation all finding their... Continue Reading →
“I like working alone and also I like collaborating.” Andy Ellis’ seemingly dualistic statement may have been an irreconcilable conundrum in a previous age, but thankfully the technology of the modern world means that he can still weave his magic with the other half of Black Lab, Paul Durham via the long distance file-sharing that... Continue Reading →
He doesn’t do things by halves does that Mr Lawton. Whilst most other musicians are using the current restrictions to add half-baked covers of songs I never really liked in the first place to the ubiquitous flotsam and jetsam that is modern, on-line music, he has contributed something truly original, truly necessary and perhaps more... Continue Reading →
The fact that both classical piano and avant-garde metal have featured in Leah Hinton’s past comes as little surprise when you listen to the first full blown Murmur Tooth album. It’s not an obvious thing but it might account for the fact that the album is on the one hand peppered with a sense of... Continue Reading →