Punch Card delivers android funk of the highest order. The Stoke-on-Trent trio raises the ghosts of Hearpen Singles Pere Ubu and robot-funky Devo. The main flavor though is the earliest version of the Talking Heads (think “Psycho Killer”). Formal Sppeedwear moves with the herky-jerky, stutter-stepping assurance of the very earliest Talking Heads, before the incorporation of Afro-beat, all thumps and yelps and manic rants. They raise rickety architectures of post-punk syncopation, the bass plunking forward and doubling back, as fizz bombs of trebly guitar go off, synth stabs rattle and wobbly rants unfold. The music shakes like jello and bangs like junkyard metal.
…This is the band’s first album, following a hotly tipped EP from 2024. It’s a disciplined…
Category: art rock
‘Normalization’ in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s was paradoxical: rather than a return to normality, it in fact meant renewed state control over society, culture, and public life. It followed the Prague Spring of 1968, which had grown out of the political and cultural relaxation of the 1960s, where under Alexander Dubček, reforms aimed to create ‘socialism with a human face’ allowed greater freedom of expression and artistic experimentation. The Soviet Union considered these reforms too radical, however, and in August 1968 Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, bringing the reform process to an end.
From 1969 onwards, the authorities restricted freedom of expression and cultural activity, and excluded politically undesirable figures…
If not for Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark — Alvin Schwartz’s infamous anthology series of folk stories that have haunted grade school book fairs for decades — The Garden as we know them might not exist. Ever since twin brothers Fletcher and Wyatt Shears began releasing their brand of sun-bleached, goofball punk rock in the early 2010s, they’ve cited the book’s influence on their work with Biblical reverence and referenced its nightmare-inducing illustrations in the cover art of side projects. The true parallel, however, is structural: Where Schwartz’s writing was succinct and vernacular, so too is the twins’ output across The Garden’s six studio albums and various EPs (and sprawling network of alter egos).
In recent years, the typical Shears song has…
There was a fusty, claustrophobic aura surrounding Cardiacs’ 1988 debut album, A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window. Released 14 months later, On Land And In The Sea captured them basking in psychedelic sunshine. Less a transformation than a giddy blossoming, it showcased their self-created world of imagination, wonder and squint-eyed eccentricity.
Leader and chief songwriter Tim Smith may or may not have been thrilled by an increasing amount of attention from the music mainstream, momentary approval from Steve Wright on Radio 1 included, but his music spoke only of feverish, mischievous delight. The primitive, angular clatter of Cardiacs’ earliest efforts had grown into something bigger and more ambitious.
Parts & Labor were mainstays of the American noise-rock underground which flourished during the 2000s, and even if they never received the major critical acclaim or cult following of someone like Lightning Bolt or Black Dice, they toured constantly and released a sizeable discography of powerful, risk-taking records. Most significantly, they stood apart due to the way they combined freewheeling noise, triumphant melodies, and muscular drumming in equal measures. After making a few diversions such as a fully electronic EP and an attempt to make grindcore pop songs, they released their most accessible effort, Constant Future, before calling it a day around the band’s tenth anniversary in 2012. Dan Friel released solo electronic efforts which continued…
There had been rumors for years that James Grigsby was in possession of a number of live recordings from the legendary LA-based U Totem. A supergroup of sorts that resulted from the merging of two other bands – 5uus and Motor Totemist Guild, led respectively by Dave Kerman and Grigsby – U Totem was ultimately in existence for maybe six years. During that period of time they recorded two rather stunning albums, including a self-titled debut that inspired an academic publication. Throughout its course, the band played music festivals, smaller venues, and dive bars, often without PR or fanfare.
…Grigsby finally released one set of these recordings, aptly titled Set. The album combines two U Totem performances, a six-track…
After four years, North London’s For Breakfast return with Longer Than Spring, an LP trading the murky, sprawling friction of the seven-piece band’s roots for a leaner, solo-led architecture. It’s a sophisticated if occasionally sanitised evolution; while the band’s signature virtuosity remains, it is now tethered to the singular narrative of vocalist and keys player Maya Harrison.
This shift is catalysed by Harrison’s decade-long recovery from illness, framing the record’s elastic pacing as a non-linear map of healing built around lyrics the band used as a centering force for their arrangements. Longer Than Spring also reckons with the external: the relentless broadcast of global suffering ubiquitous across digital feeds. This intersection of private trauma and…
With its idiosyncratic song structures and choice of instruments, Mexico City psych rock group Diles Que No Me Maten’s new album Escrito en Agua (“Written in Water” in Spanish) has more in common with jazz than alternative/post-punk music. Listening to the album you really get the sense each song has been sculpted and moulded, fermented and buffed to perfection. Take how the pedal steel on “Viene el viento” literally seems to moan, or the utterly beautiful saxophone and clarinet duet on “La rata modesta,” on which you can hear the valves opening and closing, the resonance of the reeds, the way the dissonance occasionally resolves like sunlight beamed through the gaps in moving clouds. Shorter instrumentals such as “La rata modesta” are common across…
District Five’s Glut continues the Zurich band’s push into a sound that pulls equally from art-rock, jazz, post-punk, and experimental noise without fully settling into any one category.
The four-piece has spent over a decade developing a sound that feels loose and spontaneous without losing focus, and this album captures that balance particularly well.
Recorded with minimal overdubs, the record has the tension and unpredictability of a live performance, but the band’s control over dynamics and texture keeps it from spiraling into chaos. Instead, Glut feels like a document of a group constantly reacting to one another in real time.
“Seed” opens the record with uneasy momentum as scattered guitar lines, pulsing bass,…
…compiled by Robert Fripp, including Brian Eno, David Sylvian, Andy Summers, The League of Gentlemen and more.
“[Panegyric label head] Declan Colgan told [Fripp’s manager] David Singleton: ‘Robert has more ampersands in his professional life than anyone I know!’ We went through three iterations of this CD – a David version, a Declan version, and then I made my own comments, and we have this CD that you have. Primarily this is stuff that I want to sit down and listen to. How do we begin? How do we get drawn into this? And then in the middle, when everything sags, what do you do there? And then at the end, well, how do you complete and wind this all up in such a way that the beginning and the end have gone full circle? And there you are.”
Seelie Court – the world’s premier label for rare and previously unreleased archive recordings of underground folk, rock, proto-metal, and psychedelic music presents Too Many Late Nights.
Showcasing The Great Crash’s more experimental and progressive side, these studio sessions emphasise long-form, intelligent art rock compositions, pairing shifting structures with witty, 10CC-like subject matter and a distinctly British sense of irony.
The material impressed John Peel, leading to a BBC Peel Session and placing The Great Crash among the more adventurous voices of the early-1970s UK underground. Formed around the songwriting of drummer and lyricist Piers Geddes, the group blended piano-led…
Green World Image is the second album and Sub Pop debut of spirited post-punk revivalists Telehealth, a group that build on both the sound and subversion of acts like Devo and the B-52s while updating subject matter for the 2020s. Launched from the Seattle music scene by married couple Alexander Attitude and Kendra Cox, Telehealth are fleshed out by members of Slowdive, Tomten, and other indie projects. Attitude and Cox particularly evoke the B-52s at times thanks to the couple’s dual and rotating lead vocals and accented enunciation. The album begins, however, with the soothing voiceover track “[user onboarding sequence],” which asks, “What if there was a model for living that connects people, finances, nature, and technology into one seamless…
Once mainly something that existed in a live setting, the group drifts further into its own orbit with a second collection of songs. What began as a collaboration between two voices now expands with the presence of a third, adding new layers that sometimes verge on something almost familiar.
The work continues to explore a method that feels less like collecting from the outside and more like rearranging from within. Fragments are taken apart and reassembled: rhythms, echoes, remnants of recognizable forms. This time, there is a stronger sense of movement, though it never quite settles. The vocals wander through it all, as if searching without urgency to arrive. At unexpected moments, other sounds surface briefly, then disappear again. The whole seems to find…
…includes the entirety of their ‘Moderate Air Quality’ EP as bonus tracks.
The British-American poet W. H. Auden, in his poem “The Age of Anxiety” (1947), highlights humanity’s isolation in an increasingly industrialized and failing world.
Nearly 80 years later, The Sick Man of Europe is picking up the threads of the same discussion: how to navigate in a world that is diametrically opposed to our needs? How not to lose your ipseity in a data-driven culture vying for your attention? Sick Man of Europe’s eponymous debut album is an exploration of these existential matters — and more.
Yeah, the Sick Man of Europe does not shy away from fundamental issues — does he?
The third solo album by New Orleans D.I.Y. musician Urq (Spllit, W-9), This Dismal Village marks his Exploding in Sound label debut.
It’s his first to be recorded entirely on a four-track cassette Portastudio, almost ditching any digital elements in the process (although some chords from a phone app were looped into “Kings in Bed,” for instance). A dingy, lo-fi blend of playful prog-pop, druggy psychedelia, angular punk, and alternate tunings, it’s a dystopia-themed concept album that travels through time with stops in the Dark Ages, the 1950s, and the present, and each track represents a location in the village. While not recommended for those in a dour or earnest mood, cynicism is welcome.
Inspired by Shirley Jackson’s novel We Have…
Newly remastered 4CD box set by Peter Hammill featuring his first four studio albums issued on his own label, Fie! Records, between 1992 and 1996. Peter Hammill first came to prominence as the founding member and voice of the legendary progressive rock group Van der Graaf Generator.
Alongside his work with Van der Graaf Generator, Peter Hammill has enjoyed a long career as an innovative and ground-breaking solo artist. In 1992 he established his own label, Fie!, to handle his solo work, beginning with the release of the acclaimed ‘Fireships’ that year. A more introspective work, the album was labelled in the original liner notes as “Number 1 in the BeCalm series” and received much critical praise thanks to songs such as ‘I Will Find You’, ‘Curtains’ and ‘Gaia’.