Laputa, a title taken from the fantastical floating island of Gulliver’s Travels is aptly named as ‘The album that never landed’ for, apart from a limited touchdown in Japan, Laputa was never released.
Laputa‘s obscurity was a prime reason Lo Recordings decided on the Skintone retrospective. Falling as it did between The Boy and the Tree on The Leaf Label and our own debut of Symbol. It was something of an audio crime that the album had never been properly explored and discovered.
…Susumu Yokota makes albums that increasingly worry the boundaries of IDM, ambient and sound collage. Yokota has come at abstract music from the origin of being a house DJ in his native Japan, meaning that his sensibilities are not always aligned with those who balk at the cheesy…
Category: indie
“Power pop” can be a troubling genre label for musicians. Though Elliott Smith, who earned the label in the ‘90s, was celebrated early on in his career, and ‘70s Big Star, in retrospect, have gotten more than their fair share of flowers, there were — and still are — many that, after their brief flicker in the spotlight, have largely been forgotten. Despite this, we now seem to be in another renaissance of the genre, and acts like Bory represent the upper echelon. The project name of Portland’s Brenden Ramirez, with one LP (Who’s a Good Boy) and an EP (Sidelined) to his name, has released his sophomore follow-up, Never Turns to Night. The 10-track album is a significant step up from his previous output.
That, of course, doesn’t mean that 2023’s…
When Stockholm-based musician Kendra Egerbladh started sharing her music under the handle waterbaby in the early to mid-2020s, she was noted for a sophisticated alt-pop that combined light touches of jazz, hip-hop, downtempo, and atmospheric bedroom pop on songs with highly personal lyrics.
Her full-length and Sub Pop label debut, Memory Be a Blade, reveals a surprising evolution in sound that retains the influence of jazz and broader alternative inspirations while relying less on gloss and aura and more heavily on acoustic instruments like strings. The result is something physically closer, more delicate, and more diaristic while at the same time more intricate. The album was produced by Marcus White, her main…
…Tentative Decisions includes the baker’s dozen of 1975-1976 demos (plus one live recording and two tracks from The Artistics, an embryonic version of the band) that was released on one clear vinyl LP and 7″ last November, adding an impressive 32 additional demos (taken from an abortive session to audition for CBS Records) and live cuts from early shows performed as a trio of David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth.
While Talking Heads were one of the most striking acts to come out of New York’s late ’70s punk scene, Tentative Decisions shows they didn’t start there, offering early versions of single “Psycho Killer” and deep cut “Warning Sign” credited to The Artistics, a group frontman Byrne and drummer Frantz formed with bassist…
The newest offering from the Fremantle, Australia-based GUM is a swirling collection of psych-pop as Jay Watson (Pond, Tame Impala) lets layers of synths and effect-laden guitars wash over the listener throughout Blue Gum Way.
Watson’s last offering as GUM found him partnering with Amborse-Smith Kenny (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, The Murlocs) for the more swaggering, glam-laden Ill Times. On Blue Gum Way, Watson has reigned in a bit of those funky dance-laden efforts in favor of more restrained, nuanced tunes. However, the first single, “Celluloid,” is the closest to that Ill Times sound as the pulsing tension builds winningly before cracking open and dripping out a warbling, effect-laden guitar solo that cooks.
This lush but elusive record promises depth for ambient heads, but might feel too little too late for fans of kwes.’ earlier work.
Kwesi Sey came up almost two decades ago among the loose London scene that always seemed to centre on Mica Levi: their collaborative mixtapes as Kwesachu featuring a range of local cult heroes like Ghostpoet and Tirzah. Sey eventually became a prolific producer, working with everyone from Bobby Womack to Solange.
In a career thick with such backseat collaborations, it’s easy to miss the thin stream of solo records Sey has released as kwes. But 2012’s Meantime EP and 2013’s ilp. were both singular — notable not only for Sey’s trippy, warped productions but also his quavering, almost childish vocals.
Dundee composer extraordinaire Andrew Wasylyk enlists some well-known names for his latest project, Irreparable Parables. From Gruff Rhys and Kathryn Joseph to Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch, for first-time listeners this is likely Wasylyk’s most accessible material, blending his cinematic noir charm with pockets of jazz, classical and indie flair.
It’s counterpointed by two key highlights: the first being ‘Love Is a Life That Lasts Forever (ft. Molly Linen)’. Reminiscent of Glasgow duo Cloth via Linen’s hushed vocals, its bright trumpets and textures echo waves of joy and hope, with Wasylyk looking to the writings of Derek Jarman for inspiration. Constrastingly, Kathryn Joseph’s pain-ridden vocal delivery on…
Felix Mackenzie-Barrow probably could have been forgiven for resting on his laurels creatively after the 2025 he had; the band he fronts, Divorce, were one of the indie rock stories of the year, and their debut album, Drive to Goldenhammer, made the business end of many a year-end list. Quietly, though, he’s been working on a side project, with quietly being the operative word; this debut album under his solo moniker, Book of Churches, is a minimalist effort in the grand tradition of indie folk singer-songwriters.
The tracks were each written and recorded in a single day and then set aside, making this a collection of snapshots in which Felix ruminates on some weighty issues in quiet moments stolen away from the noise of Divorce’s rise.
One would hope that to deem Surfbort an act who really need to be seen live would do nothing to diminish their recorded output. Captivating as largely a consequence of vocalist Dani Miller’s chaotic on-stage persona, there’s nothing from this third album from the New York outfit to suggest that’s likely to change. However, it’s in the less obvious moments – for an act renowned for their frenetic vintage-hued punk rock, at least – that Reality Star twinkles brightest.
‘Jessica’s Changed’ is the runaway winner of these. There’s a wonderful juxtaposition of an imagined ‘then’ and now: the ‘90s slacker rock-via-2010s lo-fi resurgence sound that’s instead clear, crisp and almost epic in its sonic scale; the titular Jessica – a mainstay, at least from…
For a band that spent nearly a decade on the road — stopping to record albums before getting right back to the grind — Nashville’s The Brook & The Bluff reaped the rewards of living out of a suitcase, winning over fans across the globe, churning out viral hits online, and sharpening their live set. But finally slowing down and parking the van for a while proved transformative in the creation of one of their most compelling records to date.
Werewolf, their most rock-forward album yet, is not a road record. It came together much like the band’s earliest material did – worked out slowly in their rehearsal space, day after day. Oddly enough, despite taking shape at a more leisurely pace, Werewolf plays like a live record, with the amps turned up, the drums hitting harder,…
France’s near-revolution of May ’68 kicked the country’s small but vibrant counter-culture into overdrive and birthed a local underground music scene. The bands it spawned made music with far less rock purity than groups from the UK and US – their influences foregrounded improvisation, disjunction and genre-blending: Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, free jazz and radical politics. The introduction of the synthesiser in the early 1970s added fuel to the fire.
This six-track compilation inaugurates a series to accompany Ian Thompson’s Synths, Sax & Situationists – the first English-language book to investigate this extraordinary and still largely unknown movement. It focuses on the second wave of bands that emerged in 1972/3, when…
There are a couple of trajectories that the opening trio of albums by a new artist often take. The first is a debut album planned to perfection after years of playing and dreaming, then a second that is like the first but maybe not as strong, followed by a third that is less so. The second is an artist finding their studio feet in the simplest configuration of their music on their debut album, gently building on that with record number two and by the third, blossoming into an expressive, confident studio artist overflowing in decorative, colourful ideas and ready to push on with the creation of their most fully realised and sonically evolved work to date. Katherine Priddy belongs firmly in the second group of these examples; her 2021 debut, The Eternal Rocks Beneath, heralded…
Cancelled gigs, avoidant record labels, crackpot outbursts… for some time, things have been ‘complicated’ in the world of Morrissey. Yet if neurosis, despair and paranoia remain his materials, here he uses them well.
In as impressive voice as he’s ever been, with a polished rock/ funk-lite/ continental trip-hop production, it revisits multiple past phases: homesick, ‘The Monsters of Pig Alley’ reprises the Anglo-coshboy ’90s; the booze-sodden, priapic ‘Boulevard’ recalls noughties European visions; his more recent American sheen emerges quizzically from the Parisien cemetery-stalking title song.
Best is the stark ‘Many Icebergs Ago’, a soliloquy of East End pubs, suggestive “stirrings below” and the long dark corridor of his life as it…
Will Oldham wants us to be aware of structure, of dualism and symmetry. His new album, We Are Together Again, released under his Bonnie “Prince” Billy moniker, opens with ‘Why Is the Lion?’ and closes with ‘Bride of the Lion’. The two iterations of the same song share similar (but subtly adjusted) lyrics, structured as a series of questions about fear, metaphysical in nature, to which the answer is difficult to fathom but seems to involve love at both personal and infinite levels. ‘Why is the Lion?’ is slow, discursive, easy on the ear, decorated by Jacob Duncan’s flute. It approaches the realm of baroque folk, like some of Donovan’s work with flautist Harold McNair, but where Donovan was lighthearted even at his most melancholic moments, Oldham admits…
…includes a bonus live track.
Since putting out their debut album Projector in 2021, Geese have become one of the most respected bands of their generation.
The former NME Cover stars have built a fierce reputation for making consistently interesting, experimental indie–rock that makes you believe original ideas still exist, even as they reference acts who’ve come before them.
Their growth has been a word-of-mouth sensation, chatter around that first LP – a solid slice of post-punk thrills – getting increasingly louder with 2023’s country-tinged rock’n’roll record 3D Country and frontman Cameron Winter’s acclaimed solo debut Heavy Metal last year.
Now, with their third album Getting Killed,…
zakè’s deep attachment to the seasons of the Midwest, along with his intuitive approach to sound creation, has led to a deep and varied body of analog ambient drone recordings across the past ten years. Many of his albums take on the forms and colors of the space in which they are heard, but others convey something more fleeting and indefinable, far beyond the five senses. Cantus for Winter in Six Parts creates a space for comfort, contemplation, nostalgia, and longing; a moment of stillness that honors the cycle of all things, wandering fallow landscapes while dreaming of their renewal.
…The music billows and drifts like snowbanks under wind, and as such is well-suited for playing while indoors, watching the flakes fall…
The thing about finding yourself is there’s always another corner to turn. The Vermont-based singer/songwriter Liz Cooper wrote her third album during a period of intense self-discovery. She moved to New York for the first time, weathered a pandemic, came out to herself after falling in love with a friend, and experienced her first queer relationship and breakup, all in the course of a few years, all while tracing out the songs that would come to make up New Day. These ten tracks scintillate with the kind of self-confidence that only beams through after you’ve aimed a sharp gaze inward – and realized that whatever you see in there will always keep changing, no matter how much you feel like you’ve got a grasp on it.
Despite its boisterousness and verve, New Day…
“I wanna live on the wings of desire,” are the first words Hemi Hemingway sings on his new album, Wings of Desire. There’s a reference here, of course, to the 1987 Wim Wenders classic about an angel who gives up his wings so as to experience human love, the aesthetics of which all make sense within Hemingway’s universe: the grimy yet romantic pulse of 1980s Berlin, the way its detached black-and-white gives way to full colour, its post-punk soundtrack. But more than that, this opening line is a statement of intent which fuels the entire album. Grappling with the end of a long-term relationship and a relocation from London to New Zealand, Hemingway’s songwriting began to explore the possibilities of a new, uncertain future.
“A friend of mine described it as…