Toyah’s 1994 studio album was recorded with Salisbury band Friday Forever and includes eight re-recordings of classic Toyah material and six original compositions. CD1 adds four tracks of which three are previously unreleased. This includes demos of album tracks Invisible Love and Lu$t For Love, first recorded in 1992 with Kiss Of Reality.
CD2 contains 16 rarities with seven of these previously unreleased. CD2 features the long-awaited release of original material Toyah wrote with members of Girlschool for their ‘supergroup’ project Strange Girls, who played live UK gigs and supported The Beach Boys in Germany. Long desired by fans who saw the Strange Girls live gigs; these three studio demos were recorded in 1991 but have remained unheard until their…
Category: indie
Toyah’s 1991 solo album Ophelia’s Shadow is released as an expanded Deluxe 2CD Edition for the first time ever. Packaged in deluxe 7”-sized gatefold packaging, it continue the series of expanded solo Toyah albums released by Edsel.
Alongside the studio album that features Robert Fripp playing guitar on two tracks, CD1 adds six tracks Toyah recorded in 1993 with Kiss Of Reality, previously available on a very rare CD released only in Germany.
CD2 adds a full 1992 concert recording of Toyah and Kiss Of Reality in Warsaw, Poland. All 10 live tracks are previously unreleased with highlights being the otherwise unrecorded vocals for Amazon, Daydreaming and Shirt Of The Muse plus a rendition of Toyah’s 1987 album track…
Samuel Holden Jaffe, more likely known by the name of his indie-alternative solo project Del Water Gap, has spent the last few years in a state of uncertainty, searching rather unsuccessfully for answers. At times, pursuing a relationship that, upon its conclusion, not even he seems to have understood, or wondering about his place in the world, it seems Jaffe ultimately concluded that it all feels like pursuing an amorphous being. Or in a more allegorical sense, like chasing a chimera. The chimera is a creature from Greek mythology that’s part-lion and part-goat, its tail ending with the head of a snake. More simply, it’s a confounding and otherworldly creature made up of incongruous parts, not too dissimilar to the feelings Jaffe has toward life. This concept he’s…
Bergen-based group Kronstad 23 are the latest trailblazers from northern Scandinavia: a creative force exploring the boundaries of musical genres, including but not limited to: psych rock, jazz, post-rock & scandinavian folk music.
The group of young players follows the footsteps of Motorpsycho, Elephant9 & El Paraiso’s own Lotus, Fra Det Onde & Kanaan, carving out their path through the musical landscape in seemingly effortless ways. One minute you’re floating on cosmic Pharoah Sanders waters, the next you’re ascending on electrified if-Tortoise-played-Allman Brothers-style jamming.
The band describes their approach as: “Sommermørket is an escape from inhumane technology and politics in search of something…
Innovation can sometimes materialise as a sleight of hand trick. We often think of innovative art as some bold, audacious show-stopper or a head-spinningly avant-garde experiment, but it can just easily take the form of a deft work of magic whose singular brilliance incrementally dawns on you. Cultural progression is a marathon not a sprint; a gradual development that needs resonant and endearing qualities as much as it does unorthodox and iconoclastic forms. Sword II’s Electric Hour is a prime example of approachable art that intuitively pushes against its own apparent boundaries.
The Atlanta trio’s gently radical second album is a warm, emotionally-resonant brand of colourful indie rock – oscillating between dream pop, psych and even hardcore – that’s flecked…
Strange Trip Ahead is Canadian Mariel Buckley’s third studio album, after her 2018 debut Driving in the Dark and 2022’s Everywhere I Used to Be. It is no great departure from these two, but that’s okay, as it is full of good songs with great “earworm” melodies and catchy choruses.
The music can be described as indie-alt-country, which is a bit like later Lilly Hiatt albums, but lighter and less raunchy. The rock in it is tempered by the electric guitar being pushed back a little in the mix, whether it is riffing or being played as a lead. You can’t help but be reminded of eighties and nineties pop, but with no synthesisers and with a country feel, partly coming from the gentle steel guitar added. The music complements Buckley’s vocals very well to give a sound…
Guitarist Joshua Condon and bassist Eliza Weber have been leading Chicago’s Glyders for more than a decade with a revolving door of drummers, but they didn’t release their debut album until 2023 — and it wasn’t really until they linked up with drummer Joe Seger that everything clicked. A formidable power trio was born.
Forever is Glyders’ first album for Drag City, which is a perfect home for them, and not just because they share a hometown; there’s a mix of skill, tunefulness, glammy riffs, urbane wit, and rural jamminess that fits right in next to Ty Segall, Bill Callahan, David Berman et al.
The artist they have the most in common with, though, is on a different Chicago label, Touch and Go: Ripley Johnson of Wooden Shjips,…
This is Independent Project Records’ own take on digging deep and unearthing revelatory treasures from its 45-year history. A trip through the past, present and future of a label that since 1980 has made the most prominent part of its name, that resounding “Independent”, not a trendy epithet but a mission. This two-album compilation is an invite to join the dots and find out what makes Afterimage – the early ’80s band the Los Angeles Times once called “LA’s own Joy Division” – and Alison Clancy – the artist making ethereal ambient dream pop in the basement of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, where she works as a dancer – kindred spirits. You’re invited to find similarities in the way The Ophelias reclaimed San Francisco’s unfettered psychedelic rock roots…
The Smith Street Band, release their seventh studio album, Once I Was Wild, out via Pool House Records and Remote Control Records.
Recorded at the band’s own solar-powered Bush House Studios in regional Victoria, ‘Once I Was Wild’ sees The Smith Street Band in-studio with long-time live sound engineer Joel Taylor. The album was mixed by Anton Hagop (Silverchair, Powderfinger) and mastered by George Georgiadis (Gang of Youths, Alex Lahey).
Following singles This Is It and Star Child, today’s focus track Constellation captures the emotional shift that inspired much of lead singer Wil Wagner’s writing across the album.
“Constellation is a song about a lot of things. It started with the line about sleeping…
Loula Yorke’s Hydrology is an effortlessly flowing universe of modular synthesis. Deeply rooted in the essence of water as a starting point, the six pieces on the album explore fluidity in different forms and atmospheres, always true to Yorke’s unique and personal live expressive canvas.
From the circular mantra of the opener “SICL,” we are smoothly and progressively spiraling from the outer limits of the album towards the denser compositional artery of “Gleam” where whispering and at times manipulated voices form a backdrop for the tonal fluctuations of the repetitive synthesizers that zoom in and out like watery particles gleaming in the dark.
The reverberant and spacious production of the album allows for a clean and transparent…
Nick Quan’s song “Heavensafe,” which runs big feelings through a bigger pedalboard, features a funny declaration: “I’ve turned to slop again.”
This past August, when the extraordinary guitarist released Warbrained, shoegaze might have been saying so, too. By then, its latest — and most puzzling — progeny was “cloud rock,” a budding vanguard that subverted its central extremes: numbness first, and noise, if at all, second. On record, Quan, a digi-rock savant who has toured with Slowdive, sounds groggy yet ridiculously technical, like a sleep-deprived Berklee student on a bender.
When a simplistic song, “life imitates life,” blew up on TikTok in 2023, they responded with a complex album, that year’s Stepdream,…
…includes four previously unreleased tracks.
Irish indie-folk outfit Kingfishr have really been making a mark for themselves since their formation in 2022. With a blend of traditional Irish folk and a more contemporary indie sound, the Limerick band have really marked themselves apart from the competition. Their debut LP – Halcyon – now releases to a sense of feverish anticipation. Does it live up to the hype of their previous releases? The answer is an emphatic yes.
‘Man On the Moon’, one of the group’s most recognisable tracks, packs a mighty punch with a soaring chorus. It’s sure to be a live favourite with its infectious energy and sets the tone for the album. ’21’ leans more into traditional Irish sounds, showing a softer side to Eddie Keogh’s…
Trinity, the third collaborative album between Lawrence English and Stephen Vitiello, continues the pair’s patient, pliable musical explorations while marrying them with a unique collaborator — one per track — to map new territories.
Trinity presents five collaborations with acclaimed artists who work at the edges of sound and genre: Chris Abrahams (The Necks), improvising turntablist Marina Rosenfeld, Brendan Canty (Fugazi, The Messthetics), multidisciplinary artist Aki Onda, and the late contemporary artist and lowercase musician Steve Roden. The results deepen the music’s immediacy and directness, while pushing it in directions neither English nor Vitiello could have foreseen.
…In English’s words, “this record’s surprise…
Across a 40-minute drum-based suite, drummer and composer Sarathy Korwar reveals the transcendental nature of repetition as a thing of awe and beauty. Combining tablas, Southern Indian clay pot ghatams, drum kit, bells, xylophones, vocal drones and a Buchla Music Easel, Korwar unveils a morphing and organic investigation into rhythm itself. With previous work exploring identity, migration and futurism, Korwar is going back to basics on his latest release, There Is Beauty, There Already, showcasing the depths to which the drums can reach as instruments for ascension.
Korwar’s rhythmic layering is of particular note. With a clear debt to minimalist composers Steve Reich and Terry Riley, Korwar’s use of dense counterpoint is masterful, undulating…
Implosion is a purely instrumental, collaborative album of cinematic, dystopian sounds from dubstepper and extreme electronica experimentalist the Bug and his pal Ghost Dubs. However, rather than working on the same tracks together, as could be implied, they have each applied their production know-how to alternate tunes on the two discs that make up this recording.
That isn’t to say that the sounds on Implosion swing from one flavour to another and back again. This is an album with a singular vision that is consistently eerie and sinister and has much in common with early 1990s ambient techno heads Sun Electric and the Sabres of Paradise, as well as Kevin Richard Martin’s (the Bug’s given name) alternative film soundtrack…
Strings swirl. A flute drifts like a bird floating on warm air. The melody is subdued, its tonality evoking The Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please, Let me Get What I Want.” A wistful, French-accented voice sings “I’ve always been so cruel, Hard on myself, You say I’m just a fool, Trying to be somebody else.” Mood set with opening track “Bluer Than Blue,” How and Why subsequently showcases nine more similarly moody, acoustic-centred songs.
The dreamy, slightly husky, voice is recognisable. Since 2003, Mélanie Pain has been a main vocalist with France’s Nouvelle Vague, Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux’s endeavour dedicated to recording and performing archly bossa nova-esque, acoustic-framed versions of songs from the new-wave and new-pop eras.
Los Angeles electronic duo The Hellp are often characterized as “indie sleaze,” but Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy have said they’d prefer for you to think of their music as “American” — not in the sense of jingoistic nationalism or dudebro country rock, but in the sense of “America” as a place of constant reinvention. You can spot this appetite for remix in the band’s no-holds-barred approach to genre looting: a smattering of crunchy Justice electronica here, a sing-along pop-rock Phoenix chorus there; throw in some dark and droning Salem production, glitchy Crystal Castles beats, and, hell, why not some Strokes-y guitar riffs while we’re at it.
On last year’s LL and the 2021 compilation Vol. 1, this reappropriation of post-punk,…
Kai Slater is obsessed with the past. For those of us who share his interests, that’s working out splendidly. Slater, a 21-year-old Chicago singer-songwriter, first gained renown as a member of Lifeguard, a trio whose noisy, melodic post-punk songs turn ’70s and ’80s classics into rocket fuel. He dresses like a mod dandy and publishes a handmade zine titled for NEU!’s krautrock classic “Hallogallo.” It’s not just that he devours the stylistic palette of the 20th century underground; he’s also keeping the flame for its DIY ethos, gritty and grounded in community.
Some of the leading figures from that world have taken notice. Lifeguard signed to Matador Records, one of the current indie landscape’s most direct links back to the years before…