Forty years ago, The Twinsets were the ultimate “you had to be there” band, a vibrant, ethereal presence in the history of Scottish independent music. They commanded massive fees for an unsigned act on the university circuit and delivered high-octane sets at the Edinburgh Nite Club, yet they vanished into the mid-80s ether without ever releasing a formal record. Only with the archival devotion of Precious Recordings of London, that silence has finally been broken. This release of the 1982–1983 sessions is more than just a compilation; it is a vital act of musical restitution and a long-overdue correction to the indie-pop canon. The mastering preserves the tension between the girl group sweetness of yesteryear with the grit of punk, ensuring the tracks…
Category: indie
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…
…Musician, composer, producer, collaborator and more, Kramer, of Noise New York/Shimmy Disc/Half Japanese fame, is so prolific in so many fields that the fact that it’s been five years since his last solo album barely registers. For those who are aware of him, he’s a presence, rather than a specific kind of artist. For those who aren’t …and the crimson moon whispers goodbye, “a 4-part ambient drone-poem for The Living and the Dead,” will give an idea of some of the sides to his talent. It is maybe as good a place to start as any, since there’s no such thing as a typical Kramer album.
Compared to his work of the early 2020s like Music for Films Edited By Moths or And the Wind Blew it All Away, …and the crimson moon whispers goodbye feels almost conventional,…
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…
Yeah, mostly is a new collection of 11 songs resembling a collection of short stories traversing a person’s relationship with their dishwasher, a grandparent’s funeral, an ungodly cold night in Los Angeles and other scenes that float in and around the rhythms of daily life.
It is the most personal and self-assured album yet from Will Epstein – also known for his work under the moniker High Water, in addition to collaborations with Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington (Darkside) – as well as the most seemingly effortless application of his songwriting talents. His work composing for movies, like his recent IDA Documentary Award-nominated score for Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV, bleeds into his recent, more accessible work.
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,…
When solo and collaborative releases are counted, the discography Ian Hawgood‘s amassed is nothing short of staggering. What makes it all the more impressive is that, as this latest release shows, he’s still capable of creating vital and imaginative work unlike anything he’s produced before. One of the ways he accomplishes that is by devising ever new strategies for creating material, in the case of Savage Modern Structures the sound-generating gear he used, specifically guitar and that beloved prog standby, mellotron. It’s all Hawgood, though in October 2024 he and Will Bolton brought the album to its final form by using the AKG BX20 spring reverb units at Elektronmusikstudion EMS in Stockholm to give the material extra analog warmth and organic reverb.
French musician Sébastien Roux is an inveterate sonic explorer, utilizing an engineering background in computer signal processing to develop compositions, multi-channel sound installations, radio pieces and site-specific performances. Over the course of the last 20 years, he has released recordings like More Songs and Quatuor which use the individual parts of Beethoven’s “String Quartet No. 10” as the basis for an electroacoustic exploration of form and timbre.
Inevitable Music #5 is a sonic translation of Sol Lewitt’s instructions for wall drawings composed for the Dedalus Ensemble while Musiques D’ordinateur is computer music developed from formal investigations into algorithmic procedures. Roux’s most recent release, Les disparitions…
Greet, the songwriting project of Matthew Broadley, seems to have a direct line to the weird and the uncanny. Broadley is based in Leeds, a city of half a million people that has developed a reputation for producing musicians with an affinity for desolate and wild landscapes (see also Phil and Layla Legard’s projects, Hawthonn and Xenis Emputae Travelling Band). I Know How to Die is Greet’s debut, and as its title suggests, it is primarily concerned with the darker, doomier corners of traditional music. The album cover’s typeface hints at some kind of pagan darkwave or celtic black metal, and the photography carries the tang of Gallows Pole-style folk horror, and there are elements of all of these things contained within, but the most prominent feature…
Some musicians get their first glimpse of celebrity, flinch in the glare of the spotlight, and quickly burrow their way back underground. But Duncan Sumpner, you suspect, knew from the beginning that fame – even fame on a very small and grassroots indie level – was not for him.
A schoolteacher from Oughtibridge, a residential village on the outskirts of Sheffield, Sumpner has released a string of records under the name Songs of Green Pheasant without ever quite stepping into the light. The project’s origin story speaks volumes about his elusive approach. A demo that Sumpner sent to Fat Cat in 2002 became a fixture on the label’s office stereo. But when they decided to get in contact to offer him a record deal, the email bounced back, and it took them…
Multiple recordings are available featuring Melbourne guitarist Cam Butler with ensembles of varying sizes — in addition to the eleven solo instrumental albums he’s issued, Butler’s also contributed to other artists’ projects — but there’s something undeniably special about one featuring him alone. In that context, his command of the instrument and associated gear is especially apparent, especially when it’s not put to self-indulgent or egoistic ends but instead used to realize the artistic expression for a given piece. It also allows his singular tone to be heard clearly and for the listener to better appreciate the textures he coaxes from his Gibson Les Paul.
Being an album of unaccompanied pieces, Spirits Flying Home is naturally intimate and…
Príncipe have been championing the music coming out of Lisbon’s suburbs for the better half of two decades. The dominating style has been batida, a mashup of two Angolan rhythms — kuduro and kizomba — bound together by whatever sonic glue a producer sees fit. Following the success of batida’s first wave, an increasing number of producers have begun experimenting with this style of music; despite the label’s best efforts, it’s becoming nearly impossible for them to house this ever-expanding pool of talent.
Não Estragou Nada is Príncipe’s third compilation and, at 37 tracks long, its greatest. It features music spanning two generations of producers: 19-year-old wonderkid Helviofox shares the roster with OG batida and kuduro producer…
There’s some search for definitions needed here. Of course, both OdNu and Ümlaut are monikers, in this case referring to New York artists Michel Mazza and Jeff Düngfelder.
Then we come to Mitochondria Johatsu, the title of their second joint project. Using two separate terms, they seem to want to create a new one – mitochondria are small organelles found in nearly all eukaryotic cells, often referred to as the “powerhouses of the cell” because they generate most of the cell’s energy. On the other hand, johatsu is a Japanese term for people who vanish from their lives without a trace, often to escape shame or stress.
In many ways that combination of terms does seem to define the music Mazza (electric guitar,…