Phantasmagoria: A bizarre or fantastic combination; a constantly shifting, complex succession of things seen or imagined. These definitions wholly encapsulate the circumstances that shaped the narrative structure and exquisite tonal palette coursing through Ani Glass’s thrilling second LP. Its long-awaited arrival ends a five-year gap since the Welsh-Cornish artist released her critically acclaimed solo debut, Mirores, a momentous milestone in her career that was unfortunately usurped by a benign brain tumour diagnosis. Glass’s latest material, on which her production style demonstrates great growth, is a sumptuous synth-pop meditation on processing that traumatic period whilst untangling the experiences and emotions that steered her to…
Category: pop
Long before Rosalía’s operatic theatrics broke the internet, Colin Self was injecting joy into the artform via an experimental trans-feminist opera project called Elation. Launched in 2011, the series consisted of multiple parts with 2018’s Siblings followed by Orphans in 2019. Self re-emerged five years later with the lemniscate EP, after enduring a particularly challenging period marked by “loss and uncertainty.”
Originally released last February, respite ∞ levity for the nameless ghost in crisis became the follow-up to lemniscate and the third full-length album for the U.S.-born composer, producer, choreographer, and multidisciplinary artist — a record described in the press notes as “a greeting after years of conscious exile.”
These days the term singer songwriter has grown in its scope from just a solo artist with an acoustic instrument and introspective lyrics to a solo artist that basically has a mind of their own and goes anywhere where their fancy, inspiration, and inventiveness take them.
You can add to the latter Delaney Bailey, who after millions of streams has readied her debut album Concave, an album where she seems to care very little about neat musical labels and genres, covering a vast ground between dream pop and everything else, keeping that introspective music and lyrics concept fully intact.
And she may be doing it all instinctively, but she seems to have a deep musical background that she has transformed into music of her…
Continuing Pet Shop Boys’ infrequent series of remix collections, Disco 5 mainly focuses on the duo’s own remixes and productions for other artists, like Disco 4 did, rather than outside remixes of their own material, like the first three volumes. Of course, when the pair remix or produce a song for another artist, they pretty much turn it into a Pet Shop Boys song, and considering that the majority of Disco 5 consists of material created during the 2020s, it’s close to being a PSB album that happens to have a lot of guest vocalists on it. Two of the set’s highlights are minor rarities that hadn’t appeared on a PSB collection until now. The duo produced several selections on the soundtrack to the 1993 film The Crying Game, including Boy George’s hit title track, but…
Clémentine March is a French British singer and multi-instrumentalist based in London, and if a first thing that comes to your mind is a possible connection to Stereolab, formally there isn’t one. Musically, though March’s latest album Powder Keg has all the trademarks of a great new Stereolab album.
Oh, and March is not a copyist, but like Stereolab, her musical style is so hard to pin down, as she veers all over the place, from sixties pop musings whether it is the psych pop or French yé-yé, or Brazilian Bossa to krautrock and anywhere else that she fancied at that moment.
And she does it with some great flair, whether she takes on the instrumentation herself or whether accompanied by quite an excellent…
My World Is the Sun, from Québécois vocalist and songwriter Dominique Fils-Aimé, is introduced by her Haitian mother, Claudette Thomas, singing “Ma Mélodie” from an old ’70s-era cassette. Its placement inspires the entire 15-track set. My World Is the Sun offers lyrics populated by the elements, weather, the sun, and the moon sung in both French and English. Fils-Aimé’s voice lies at the center of 21st century soul, jazz, pop, folk, and blues. The album is nocturnal, warm like a bath, and yet gently mercurial in its subtle abstractions. “Sea of Clouds” opens with the sounds of waves crashing against the shore. Keyboardist David Osei Afrifa offers a dark, subtle synth drone under her vocal, appended by percussion, chimes, and a wordless, chantlike lower-register…
Ten thousand years ago, a man died in what would become Somerset. His bones waited in a cave until 1903, when they were discovered and given a name: Cheddar Man. Now he’s the subject of a song by Voka Gentle, who use his story to contemplate what we’re doing to the places where people have lived for millennia. “Let’s say the sea levels rise and we lose north Somerset, which, by the way, is looking increasingly likely…” William J Stokes’s voice is dry, conversational, with the studied neutrality of a local news presenter. Beneath it, the music shuffles and twitches, glassy and off-kilter; post-punk refracted through Laurie Anderson’s deadpan intelligence.
The album circles power from multiple angles: a photoshoot, a Greek tragedy, a preacher…
After building momentum over a few years of local shows and an international tour, Hong Kong shoegaze quintet Lucid Express returns with their second album, Instant Comfort. Blurrier and less glossy than their 2021 debut, the new record is situated at the sweet spot of screwed-down dream pop, ethereal vocals draped over lush guitars and synths, with a few tense, discordant edges.
Instant Comfort was recorded in the band’s studio, an island within an island, perched in an industrial district outside central Hong Kong, with views of both skyscrapers and the Chinese border. It’s a sanctuary from the grinding realities of the city, and their music likewise plays like a delicate and immersive retreat, a space that feels temporarily above reality. Vocalist Kim Ho’s…
Tori Amos’ daring 2001 concept album Strange Little Girls returns February 20 in an expanded edition that adds rarities and previously unreleased recordings. The Grammy® Award-nominated album finds Amos reinterpreting a dozen songs written by men, shifting them to a female perspective and performing each through one of 12 personas she created for the project. Strange Little Girls (Expanded Edition) combines the original album and B-sides with two unreleased covers from the sessions.
Celebrating 25 years, Strange Little Girls remains one of Amos’ most striking and conceptually ambitious works. To bring the concept to life, she collaborated with renowned makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin, who helped transform her into 12…
Hen Ogledd’s Discombobulated is in the radical mould of music that tackles the now. Unconcerned that references may go out of date, the timelessness of their sound comes in documenting the present, rather than in seeking to transcend (or ignore) it. Lyrically, Discombobulated celebrates dissent with all the force of the protest tradition in folk music; musically, the album glues together sounds and genres to evoke the chaos of today.
Hen Ogledd is the project of Dawn Bothwell, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington. The first releases were just Dawson and Davies; since then, with the addition of Bothwell for 2016’s Bronze and then Pilkington on 2018’s Mogic, Hen Ogledd have grown both more complete and more porous. Complete, because…
…Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, and RCA Records release the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, a collection of 27 recordings heard in the upcoming film, featuring updated mixes of iconic live performances alongside new remixes and medleys of classic Elvis recordings.
…A follow-up to director Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic of the singer starring Austin Butler in a star-making, Golden Globe-winning turn as the late singer, EPiC is sourced from scores of long-vaulted material utilized for film research. Warner Bros. Pictures unearthed unseen footage and outtakes from Elvis’ concert documentaries That’s the Way It Is (1970) and Elvis on Tour (1972)…
In order to escape the world’s pressures, Moby often finds refuge in ambient and neo-classical music, and Future Quiet is one of several ventures into such territory. It isn’t the type of extended meditation session he reserves for his lengthy ambient releases, instead coming a bit closer to his orchestral releases on Deutsche Grammophon.
The album begins by revisiting “When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die,” the elegiac closing number to Everything Is Wrong that gained a new audience after it soundtracked particularly emotional moments during three seasons of Stranger Things. Jacob Lusk of Gabriels stays faithful to the Mimi Goese-sung original, if anything making the song sound more intimate and sacred. Two songs from the previous Moby album,…
…MOJO presents a bespoke CD of rare, live and previously unreleased songs from the mod icons, including storming live versions of ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’ and ‘Tin Soldier’, alternative takes, never-before-released tracks.
October 1965. ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’, the debut Small Faces single, is making its way up the UK charts. The four original members, only together for a few months, are learning how to be a band, and how to talk to the music press.
“We admire The Who,” bassist Ronnie Lane tells the NME’s Norrie Drummond, “but we have never tried to copy them in any way. We are Mods and appeal to mods, but that’s about all we have in common with them.”
Then Lane’s bandmate, drummer Kenney Jones…
Labeling any music as spiritual can play as a (fiery) double-edged sword for any artist involved, and if that is your debut full-length album, like is the case with Brooklyn’s multi-media artist AnAkA, and her album Crisis of the Concrete, those edges just might get a bit sharper, and those edges might spew just a bit more fire either way.
Of course, that spiritual element that the artist might be trying to evoke could have more or less openly religious content (less in AnAkA case here), and it can involve a number of musical elements and/or genres, and AnAkA certainly goes that multi-genre route here. Very often, the best music with that spiritual element was done with quite a few jazz elements, and AnAkA certainly doesn’t shy away from bringing them in,…
Working with some musical legends and renowned musicians (often both) can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you not only gain specific experience, but it means you have capabilities and are doing something right. On the other hand, when you have to go on your own and present your individually conceived music, it might be a burden if you are not able to come up with something that is at least above average.
That could have possibly been a burden for L.A. vocalist Holly Palmer, whose long list of artists she has worked with includes David Bowie, Gnarls Barkley, Seal, Michael Buble, Billy Preston and Dr. Dre. So far, Palmer has recorded three solo albums, with Metamorphosis being her fourth.
Whatever Palmer, who is also a vocologist…
It’s all blurring together. Ambient is emo now. Rap sounds like harsh noise. Drum’n’bass is basically bedroom pop. And Ben Bondy, who until now has primarily dealt in disorientingly dubby ambient music, has emerged with something resembling a singer/songwriter album, but not quite. Bondy, a New York/Berlin-based producer who’s made a name as part of the latter’s cozy Kwia collective, has built a sprawling body of work across a number of labels representing the bleary haze of the left-field electronic underground. West Mineral Ltd., 3XL, Motion Ward, Quiet Time — if they deal in grainy, dissociative soundscapes, Bondy has probably released something for them. Across his scattered releases and DJ sets, Bondy’s demonstrated a voracious, shapeshifting…
“Three people will die listening to this album,” the Bandcamp description of Nashpaints’ first record since 2020, Everyone Good is Called Molly, reads. “Zzz they will endup in the same place.” There’s no backstory to Finn Carraher McDonald, only mystery and angelic voicings spread across decaying pop tapes with a butter knife.
Lead single “Boyfriend First” is this seven-minute mass of swirling noise with guitar streaks you’d have to break your nails just to make. There’s a lot of color in here even as the static fattens and the synths undress, because McDonald has melodies coming out the eyes. “Boyfriend First” sounds more like Natalie Imbruglia covering Deerhunter-or maybe it’s Deerhunter covering Natalie Imbruglia-in a sewer tunnel than the Duretti Column…
Not to be confused with Stranger Things: The WSQK Collection — a fun, in-world treat from the same season — this official soundtrack for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things includes much of the same that fans have come to expect: beloved classics and forgotten throwbacks that tie neatly into the plot of the show. While there’s no big “Running Up That Hill” moment here, the mixtape feel of the track selections makes it a decent compilation. One can imagine — if one is old enough — sitting in front of a boombox with the pause and record buttons compressed, waiting for just the right moment to bridge an early Michael Jackson gem with a Tiffany smash hit. Meanwhile, ABBA, Bowie, and Iron Maiden weave seamlessly with Pixies, Butthole Surfers,…
Callum Beattie speaks truth to the people. The Scottish artist’s penchant for connection has taken him from dusty barrooms to the biggest venues his homeland can offer, including a packed-out night at Glasgow’s epic OVO Hydro. New album INDI kicks off another mammoth year for the songwriter, and it’s packed with huge amounts, music that unashamedly aims for big crowds, and wide open spaces.
Produced alongside Joe Cross, comparisons range from Bruce Springsteen in his prime to Sam Fender or Stereophonics; honest songwriting rooted in everyday experience, Callum has a tendency to keep things raw, and not to over-think his studio arrangements.
As such, every track on here could be a…
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys build a captivating sonic world tinged with intimacy on Pale Bloom. The Berlin-based band’s seventh studio album maintains a hauntingly atmospheric quality, ultimately honing the gothic art-pop sound the group have become known for.
Opening track ‘Bloom’ establishes the album’s persistent eeriness, initially playing with the melodies and lyrics of nursery rhymes. This almost ghostly nostalgia for childhood is evoked throughout Pale Bloom, supported by a mesmerising viola part courtesy of Jean-Louise Parker. The song’s instrumentals build, combining strings with electric guitar effectively. Like its title would suggest, ‘Bloom’ unfurls organically – a manifestation of slowly…