rescuing musical virtue in distress.
With a lot of artists, it is easy to set the scene before heading off into a the rabbit hole of writing a review. So many seem to have a definite direction of travel or a style or sound which is easy to sum up in a few short soundbites. But where do you start... Continue Reading →
When you write about music for a living, you tend to be able to get a handle on most things. You have either heard something like it before, or can see some of the joins between this genre and that style, perhaps you can even hazard a guess at what might be in the artists... Continue Reading →
Titles can tell you a lot about music. Not so much what that music might sound like but it does suggest something about the way the artist behind it thinks. Anyone who capitalises their title and introduces unnecessary spacing, writes track names in lowercasewithnospacing, removes vowels from a ttl or uses one title to reference... Continue Reading →
Get Your Shit Together is like little that you have heard before. Well, it’s like little I have heard before and I basically listen to music for a living. I guess the clues where there to see in the track titles. What does Observation of Obfuscation really mean? Is it actually possible to have a... Continue Reading →
A few months ago I reviewed an album by STANLÆY called The Human Project, it was more of an art piece in that it took in performance art, videography and the ‘album’ was merely the soundtrack to this piece. It was strange, unnerving and unlike anything I had heard before, so with eager ears I was... Continue Reading →
Rules are made to be broken. We all know that. To some that is a worn-out cliche, to others it is a way of life. Rule breaking for the sake of it is fine if you want to head off down some belligerent, non-conformist, punky-rant route, but rule breaking with a purpose is where it... Continue Reading →
If the idea of a post-genre world is one that is now widely embraced by modern music makers, some artists, Cellista certainly being one of them, have gone much further, even bluring the lines between the various artistic disciplines themselves. And if the recent Transfigurations album painted this idea across a wide canvass, current single,... Continue Reading →
No Regrets is an exercise in atmosphere and anticipation. There is an art to the slow burn and the pay off, that long smouldering musical journey which at any moment feels like it is about to burst into life, break the tension, deliver the goods. This takes that one stage further slowly building in... Continue Reading →
It’s a brave choice to turn your back on the traditional structure we find in most albums, the well-trodden path of verse, verse, chorus, verse is tried and tested but what Oxford-based musician Sebastian Reynolds has done on his follow up to his 2017 release (sensibly titled Solo Collective part one) is present the listener... Continue Reading →
When you think of albums based around one instrument, you might immediately think of a guitar or piano, both of these instruments have a full range of notes at their disposal, tonal differences between bass and treble and with the added technology you can simply plug in, in the form of synthesizers and a library... Continue Reading →
The good thing about being introduced to independent artists is that the music you hear is, more often than not, is the music they want to play, before producers add commercially-friendly touches and long before managers talk of shifting units, the music is written and played without the worry of losing fans or losing recording deals.... Continue Reading →
Music as an art form has been slowly diminishing in favour of the search for the next global hit, especially one that equates into massive download numbers. Songs aimed at the teenage market have always dominated the music scene, it’s the bread and butter for the marketing men and producers and goes a long way... Continue Reading →
It seems that everything about this album is designed to confuse and confound expectations. The duo’s chosen name suggests that it should perhaps be found in the rock or metal section of the music shop, the cover is wilfully non-committal but sort of leans towards the anti-cool stance of 90’s alternative bands. But the fact... Continue Reading →
When music is stripped down to its raw ingredients, you tend to end up with the word sound. Once you have a sound you can add pitch, rhythm and tempo and you have something that can be called music. If you’re feeling even braver you can bring in structure, maybe a melody and you’ve got... Continue Reading →
Pas Musique seem to revel in confusion, in a good way of course. Even within their chosen electro-industrial sphere they seem more mercurial, more wilfully tricksy, more difficult to grasp than their contemporaries and you have to look back to the early art-attacks of the likes of Throbbing Gristle to find their parallel. The Phoenix... Continue Reading →
Well, that’s just plain silly. Or perhaps it is a stroke of genius. After all the two are often the same thing and shift from one to the other only depending on how you look at them. It’s probably something to do with Heisenberg’s Uncertainly Principle…well, it all feels a bit quantum to me anyhow.... Continue Reading →
Aleksandar Vrhovec is certainly a name that we have come across on this site before. We have encountered his more accessible and perhaps even chart friendly side with LucidFer and the more intricate and progressive moments with Acid Hags. And if, as you step from one to the other, you find yourself moving into ever... Continue Reading →
ZGTC has always been a beguiling and fluid prospect. Live shows seem to be free form and largely improvised, or at least they give that impression, often dependant on what other musicians are around to collaborate with and what instrument takes the whim of the man at the heart of the operation. But sometimes it... Continue Reading →
If this were a competition I would already be awarding additional points for the band having such a cool and interesting name. But this is a music review and as such things can’t be so easily measured but I can award interesting words. Words like strange, beguiling, hypnotic, exploratory perhaps even challenging, all meant in... Continue Reading →
A strange title for a strange album. And I mean that in the nicest possible of ways. Strange is good, strange is interesting, strange is the opposite of safe, strange is unpredictable. Strange is often great and there are certainly many great aspects to this album. The first great thing is its approach towards genres…Matthew... Continue Reading →
Pioneer Generation showed us just how uniquely Jamit thinks when it comes to modern dance music and MRT carries on down that same path, one that wanders well away from the mainstream and seems to travel parallel to film score, avant garde meanderings, video soundtrack and electronic experimentation. MRT could stand for a lot of... Continue Reading →
The most adventurous music takes you way beyond the usual concerns and questions normally found surrounding songs and hopefully makes you debate what music is even about. Where do the boundaries between music and art, between the frivolous and the academic, between bold exploration and musical deconstruction actually lie? Like most creativity activities too, it... Continue Reading →
Despite having only encountered Floating Beauty twice before, via the single Larissa and the album that spawned it, Larva, I already look forward to any of their music which finds its way to my review pile. Why? Because musically it is so different from almost everything else that comes my way, it runs against the... Continue Reading →
There is something wonderfully glacial about Verve Crystal. The songs are wilfully unhurried seeming to ooze and crawl forward rather than be driven by anything more urgent and anyone who opens an album with an opus clocking in at just under twelve minutes has got to be applauded. So already loving the way Humboldt Been... Continue Reading →
Coming on like a long lost Berlin-era Bowie track that fell down the cracks and missed its place on one of those three strange and sublime albums only to resurface years later, Brotherhood is the perfect way to kick things off. I don’t know if the Bowie reference is being too obvious but, despite so... Continue Reading →
What a breath of fresh air. In a world that sees new music scribblers and celebrators of emerging artists bombarded with cliched, mumble rap set to that same trap beat and taking that same self-aggrandising lyrical tough man act in an effort to just gain more views, likes, followers, money, gold, cars, houses... ad infinitum,... Continue Reading →
This latest 10 track slice of chilled loveliness from The Kunig comes from a very interesting place, one where psychedelic and progressive experiments of the likes of Tangerine Dream still float in the air above the more modern and mellow electronic dance vibes that form the album's backbone. And like the mercurial nature of those... Continue Reading →
Outermost Edge is a collection of songs which sees contemporary classical music heading into experimental jazz territory and takes the form of sonic creations which happens as much between the notes and in the breaths between the lyrics as in the more conventional sonic communications. There is a wonderful minimalism and deft composition at work... Continue Reading →
Whilst On Top feels like a strange and beguiling soundtrack, what the film it is the score too really does defy imagination. If soundtracks seek to underline and emphasise the action and emotion taking place on screen, then On Top belongs in the company of a tense and intense film noir or a slow burning... Continue Reading →
I have to confess that when lead single and album opener There’s Nothin Like You first drifted past this reviewers ears, something strange happened. That odd sensation that here was a band that was at once brilliant yet bonkers, original less because they had stumbled across a wonderful new sound but more because they had thrown... Continue Reading →