Six years after 1987’s celebrated Wings of Desire, German director Wim Wenders released Faraway, So Close!, an examination of the differences between the angel figures and humans inhabiting Berlin and the myriad social and political factions within the newly unified city. A sequel of sorts to 2023’s Summer Chronicles, the similarly titled second collaboration by David Cordero and Rhucle references both the pronounced physical distance between the ambient producers’ respective home bases in Cádiz and Tokyo but also how musically connected the two feel when collaborating. By sending each other tracks and adding to them in their separate studios, the two have developed a file-sharing methodology that for them functions smoothly. As research on social…
Category: ***
One of the best West Coast folk-rock/psychedelic bands, Love may have also been the first widely acclaimed cult/underground group. During their brief heyday they drew from Byrds-ish folk-rock, Stones-ish hard rock, blues, jazz, flamenco, and even light orchestral pop to create a heady stew of their own.
Love’s The Complete Elektra Albums includes the definitive selection of Arthur Lee and company’s inimitable work. In addition to newly remastered versions of 1966’s Love and Da Capo and the landmark Forever Changes (1967), this box also includes the CD debut of Lee’s original mix for 1969’s Four Sail plus a disc of single sides and rarities that appeared on a series of early ’00s CD reissues of these albums.
You might think you’re busy, but are you busy like Arnold de Boer of Zea? In addition to being the Ex’s mouthpiece for the past decade and a half, he’s been the singer, guitarist, songwriter, booker, driver, etc., of Zea for 31 years. Throughout that time, the project has continually morphed, operating as a one-man show, a stylistically chameleonic ensemble and a multi-continental, collaborative endeavor that often projects its messages in more than one tongue.
In Lichem Fol Beloften (“a body filled with promises”) is sung entirely in Frisian, the language spoken in de Boer’s northern Netherlands neck of the woods. He wrote some of the lyrics, taking others from poems translated into the dialect. If you get the CD or LP editions,…
Some albums take years to make. The Stone Roses famously took their sweet time over The Second Coming, while Guns N’ Roses made fans wait for over a decade before finally delivering Chinese Democracy. Tugboat Captain? They made Dog Tale in a week, mate – done and dusted in seven days, it’s a refreshing testament to creative brevity.
Recorded at South London studio Ctrl P – run by Sox and Josh from the band – there’s a pervading comfort to the material on Dog Tale. As time has gone on, Tugboat Captain have added baroque flourishes to their songwriting, and while the arrangements here testify to that, they equally refuse to be smothered by ad hoc additions.
As a result, it’s a beaming grin of a record, a witty series of quips, diversions, and…
The reappearance of These Were The Earlies for its 21st-anniversary is a surprise. Although The Earlies‘ debut LP received a maximum-marks review from NME on its 2004 release – and widespread praise in general – it is not an album instantly shouting “cult item.” Nonetheless, as the reissue and a tie-in reformation of the band show, there is a residual affection.
Playing These Were The Earlies confirms why. From its opening seconds, it sets itself up as top-notch modern psychedelia, with references – some overt, some subtle – to The Beach Boys, Love and, more contemporaneously, Mercury Rev. A lyric with the words “Mother Mary” cannot have been written without knowing The Beatles would instantly spring to mind.
Charlie Bruber started out slowly, building a name for himself in Minneapolis music circles (and elsewhere) primarily as a multi-instrumentalist and engineer. As is often the case, there is always an extra personal drive there to do your own music, in most cases as a singer-songwriter, whatever the results may be, for better or for worse.
Judging by Prized Burden, Bruber’s second solo outing and luckily for both him and all the listeners that venture into it, better is the direction he is moving in as a solo artist. No, Brugber is definitely not sticking to what is considered the ‘standard’ singer-songwriter formulas, although the album has that slow-building, often languorous feel.
The difference lies in the fact that Bruber has the ability to build his songs…
Listening to Excess of Loss, the new album from Xol Meissner, one can’t help but be transported to a different time and place, where the haunting baritone vocals recall Scott Walker, Nick Cave, and Jacques Brel, and the instrumental accompaniment consists of a hammered lap steel. The combination invokes a dream-like state that is dark and mysterious but oddly intoxicating. Excess of Loss draws inspiration from many places, but still sounds like absolutely nothing else.
Xol Meissner is the alias of New York City-based composer Mauro Hertig. Classically trained and the 2019 Laureate of the Voix-Nouvelles Académie in France, Hertig had regularly used text in scored works prior to writing songs full-time. His unique style of lap steel was previously…
Manslaughter 777 are powerhouses of forward-thinking rhythmic music and production. The duo, composed of drummers/programmers Lee Buford (The Body, Sightless Pit, Dead Times, Everyone Asked About You) and Zac Jones (MSC, Nothing, Braveyoung), combine their prowess as percussionists and producers into beat-centric music that delights in turning unexpected sounds into razor sharp rhythms. Buford and Jones, along with engineer/producer Seth Manchester of Machines with Magnets (The Body, Model/Actriz, Liturgy), have collaborated for nearly two decades, consistently shattering genre boundaries and redefining the role of the studio in the process. God’s World uses innovative sound sampling to create expansive sonics driven…
Anyone approaching this album unawares needs to be warned that its playing time of 36′ 34″ is divided into sixty nine tracks ranging in length from six seconds to a minute and 41 seconds, and that the tracks are labelled as Roman numerals from one to 69 with 10 of the track titles being extended by dedications to unidentified individuals (for example, “XXXIV to Sisa Wandeler”). For anyone keen to know more, the track titles are printed on the rear sleeve. Given the album’s release day, this is not an elaborate joke…
The clue to this mystery is in big blue letters on the front of this album sleeve — “Yet Dish” “Gertrude Stein.” Born in Pennsylvania in 1874, Gertrude Stein was a renowned American novelist, poet and playwright who moved to Paris…
Moon Orchids delivers stately country rock ballads that explode into squalls of guitar noise, shards of trumpets embedded in their Crazy Horse-like roar. This first full-length, following the Kalamazoo, Michigan-based band’s Skin/Skein EP and a single, evokes Neil Young certainly but also the Band and, in quieter moments, Bill Callahan.
That Callahan reference derives in part from bandleader Jacob Simon’s hollowed out tenor, but also from his offhand grace with lyrics. The words are simple and straightforward, but they slant sideways revealing mystery beneath the skin. In “Gospel Tree,” one of this disc’s best cuts (Simon liked it enough to include it twice), the image of castrati monkeys singing falsetto is striking, this tossed off couplet is maybe…
There was a time, around the start of this millennium, when rock music got its act together and offered something new and refreshing, something satisfying and so much more than the usual style over substance that the genre is known for. Bands like The Strokes, The Killers and Arctic Monkeys arrived on the scene and started delivering music woven from both style and substance. Listening to “America’s Favourite Pastime” makes you think this could be the opening sonic salvos being fired for another wave of such greatness. And, of course, the secret to such success was that those bands were more than just rock acts. Sure, the music kicked some arse, but it was also forged of indie coolness and no small amount of pop accessibility too.
A staggering 36 years into their mission to explore strange new sounds, to boldly embed themselves inside rewardingly thorny knots of riff, Brighton-based mavericks I’m Being Good’s fascination for the delectable complexities within subterranean noise thrives unabated.
Their ninth full-length is the sound of insatiable curiosity on the prowl, an exercise in just how many dangerous twists and occasional jump-scares this kind of post-math, post-prog, post-post-rock music can encompass. Spaceshitter’s not simply out to unnerve you – that would be ungentlemanly, and the group have plenty more ideas in their quiver. But this is definitely a record that savours every curveball it sends out there.
Like forebears Polvo and contemporaries…
Caspar Brötzmann, founder and leader of the avant-rock power trio Massaker, has been away from the spotlight for a while without being inactive. The band went on hiatus after releasing five glorious albums between 1986 and 1994, and touring the globe several times.
They continued to play live occasionally, but weren’t interested in recording. The guitarist recorded an album with his father Peter Brötzmann’s tentette (The März Combo Live in Wuppertal), issued three duo albums with F.M. Einheit, Page Hamilton, and Robin Guthrie, and did session work. In 2013, he formed the power trio Nohome and issued an eponymous album. In 2017, Brötzmann teamed with bassist Massimo Pupillo and drummer Alexandre Babel for…
Not since Cities and Memory’s The Chimes has an album delved so deeply into the resonance of church bells; and Campana Sonans (Ringing Bell) has the dual advantage of being a single-artist LP and a physical release. One may even purchase a printed stained glass tote bag to carry one’s record (plus 19 more)!
After relocating from LA to Berlin in 2019, Jake Muir became enamored with the sound of the city’s church bells. This led him on a Europe-wide trek as he began to record and examine the vast differences between sonorities and approaches, most especially the staid practices of Germany versus the melodic sequences of England.
But of course the album is not just bells; Campana Sonans is a reflection of history and…
Even if you are the type of person not to overthink the notion that it should be “Irish goodbye” instead of “Irish exit” — not for nothing, but The Temple Bar can’t sufficiently resolve its origins — in the very specific case of Tantrums in Tandem, it’s still something of a misnomer. Ryan Palmer’s first full-length under this alias follows an accelerated origin of its own that’s resulted in a hello denizens of any nation could recognize and one of the year’s better indie rock debuts.
Palmer is an artist on the ascent, but he hasn’t come from nowhere. The Marine Park resident has spent time playing in Brooklyn bands that include Screwbawl, Wince, Best Girl and Kid Nice, most of them associated with the mischievous Cropsey Records (aka “Brooklyn’s…
Throughout her debut record, Things I’ve Said Before, classically trained folk musician Remi Goode relies solely on a nylon-stringed guitar. While this is not unheard of for country and folk musicians — Willie Nelson has been playing one for 55 years — it’s certainly not the norm nowadays. But the choice gives rich warmth and softer tones to an already ethereal sound.
The nine-track record – the recording of which was split between various bedrooms and a proper studio – has an intimacy to it that feels almost intrusive. With “Don’t Drive Me Home,” the set begins on a mellow note — acoustic guitar and soft violin framing Goode’s warm, confident vocals in a bittersweet song of conflicted love. While not every song that follows is as placid,…