rescuing musical virtue in distress.
Well, it is the season for the cover song, a time when everyone from the established mainstream music-maker to the reality show, also-ran celebrity…and I use the word celebrity quite wrongly… is crooning out a Christmas tune in an effort to pay for a new wing on their Cheshire manor or perhaps pay off their... Continue Reading →
Is a song ever truly finished? Can there ever be a definitive form, one that can’t be improved on? Isn’t there something to be gained from revisiting, reimagining, reclothing music which is already close to your heart? These are all the sorts of questions which must concern Michael Ciravolo and in trying to answer them... Continue Reading →
No-one does a cover like John Fryer’s Black Needle Noise. Some people understand the idea of making a song your own, even if it is such a permanent fixture of the musical landscape, as we find happening here. A few have the imagination to subsume familiar music into such shockingly dark sonic underworlds. But no-one... Continue Reading →
I’m not sure how I feel about this. But that has to be a good thing, right? Music should confuse rather than conform... shouldn’t it? And the coming together of such a well-respected producer and artist and such an iconic song is going to blip on a lot of people's radars. But anyone expecting a... Continue Reading →
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 →
He may have got his step up fronting Rock Star Supernova after winning the show of the same name, getting to rub shoulders with the great and the good of the rock world along the way, but that doesn’t mean that Lukas Rossi can’t turn out a neat anthemic yet balladic pop song too. And that... Continue Reading →
If 4AD were launched today as a dance label, this would be their signature release. It’s a simple as that. Ballad of JC Quinn runs along on pulsing dance grooves, the sort of thing that Bristol’s underground scene revelled in during the 90’s, but then swathes itself in layers of shimmering sonics. The background beats... Continue Reading →
Any album which bills itself as “music for movies you haven’t dreamt of yet” is going to blip on this dream-poppers radar that’s for sure and not just blip but blip and resonate, shimmer and fade…luckily I have my radar plugged into a Big Muff and reverse reverb pedal for just such an occasion. John... Continue Reading →