rescuing musical virtue in distress.
As someone wiser than myself so eloquently pointed out “John Fryer has practically soundtracked your entire life,” and it is particularly true if you have wandered a musical path littered with alternative sounds and underground bands, off-beat noise and cross-genre experimentation. Everyone from Nine Inch Nails and Cocteau Twins to HIM and Depeche Mode owe... Continue Reading →
Want a quick review of m1nk’s debut album? Sultry! Oh, you want more, how about…really sultry. Okay, I’ll play nice, but as opening track Some Elusive floats from your speakers, no other word is sufficient to describe this dark and slightly dangerous vibe, this weave of the illicit and the exciting, this transient and intangible... Continue Reading →
The title might suggest that I have downloaded the wrong music file and am attempting to write a review of a supercar chop shop business in downtown Shanghai, that is until you work out that the name is actually an anagram of Andrew Golding, founding member of C86 pioneers The Wolfhounds and what is before... Continue Reading →
Bands with such provocative titles tend to go one of two ways. Either the name is chosen for purely emotive reasons and the whole affair turns out to be a bunch of 17 year old screamo-metalheads who think such mystique is a sure way of getting a girlfriend (it isn’t, believe me) or it is... 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 →
Dance music doesn’t have to be predictable. Although a lot of what is produced in that broad genre does seem to follow very tried and tested lines, plays safe and stays within its musical comfort zones. Occasionally you find someone who is deliberately making music without the safety net, who is happier leading than following,... Continue Reading →
Indie? Possibly not but their music is so weird, genre-hopping and changeable that I'm not really sure where it fits in so this is as good a place as any. Most of my postings in this category have been real blasts from the past so far but as these splendid people are currently on tour... Continue Reading →
I tend to use the word soundscape a lot in reviews because when put together right, when suitably structured, when layered with intricate textures, when music moves beyond the familiar, it has the ability to build new worlds. They may be sonic worlds but they can be as beguiling, as varied, as wondrous as anything... Continue Reading →