A seminal moment in modern acoustic guitar music is being revisited as Drag City released the 10th-anniversary reissue of Land of Plenty, the spellbinding 2015 debut from duo Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker.
To put things in perspective, 2015 was the same year Walker released his debut follow-up, Primrose Green. MacKay had yet to sign to Drag City (this would happen in 2017 with Esker), but released an album of John Hulburt tunes on Tompkins Square – Sunrise: Bill MacKay Plays the Songs of John Hulburt. Walker was also a Hulburt fan, having co-produced Hulburt’s 1972 private press LP, Opus III, the same year.
…The story of Land of Plenty is one of immediate artistic connection. After first…
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Holly Carter may not be a name that readers are too familiar with, but it is very likely that she soon will be, for she is a prodigious talent. Her main claim to fame so far is that she was voted best instrumentalist in the Americana Music Association UK awards in 2023 and again in 2024. Her fingerpicking acoustic and electric guitar-playing style, together with being one of the few professional female steel guitar players in the UK, attest to her musical ability, and you can add to that a substantial songwriting skill. And now comes her first full-length album, Leave Your Mark.
Carter is based in Bristol, currently a hotbed of musical talent, and has made something of a name for herself with her gigs local to that area, as well as appearances at various music…
Italian-born, France-located artist, Ailise Blake, who also operates under the moniker Ali Macabre, has been around for a while, both as a member of the bands J.C. Satan and La Secte du Futur and as a solo artist, has just released her second solo album, Soave.
This somewhat dry introduction hardly gives you an inkling of what Blake is on here. First off, that Ali Macabre moniker is just an indication that Blake has a detailed focus on all things connected with all things connected with magic, in her case, that of the ceremonial kind.
At the same time, she explains the title of the album: “I titled this album ‘Soave’ not only because of the sound of the word itself, which to my ears sounds like the wind, but because…
From their home in Belgium, Slow Crush have carved out a place at the forefront of modern shoegaze. The band’s distinct sound, built on shimmering textures and propulsive rhythms, has earned them a dedicated global following.
After a few years of deliberate quiet and reflection, they’re ready to re-emerge with something new and transformative. Their latest album, Thirst, released on Pure Noise Records, is a powerful leap forward. The band decamped to The Ranch in Southampton, U.K., to work with producer Lewis Johns, creating a ten-track cascade of sound that is both heavier and more emotionally resonant than anything they’ve done before.
…The Belgian quartet’s vocalist/bassist Isa Holliday says that the overarching themes on…
The inimitable Richard Youngs returns to Black Truffle with this third full-length for the label, Hidden. Like CXXI and Modern Sorrow, Hidden unfolds across two side-long pieces at once eminently listenable and possessed of the ‘bloody-minded’ dedication to ‘having an idea and sticking with it’ that Youngs himself has identified as one of the key qualities of his work.
At the core of both pieces are rapid, randomised arpeggios generated with a Moog Grandmother, hypnotic patterns that wouldn’t be out of place on a Berlin School classic. Alongside these arpeggios, across the seventeen minutes of the first side-long piece Youngs builds an airy structure of shakers, synthetic handclaps and a brief, repeated sample, impossible to identify but…
Inspired by the journey of his immigrant father from Cuba to the United States in 1959-60, Bryan Senti‘s La Marea takes on new relevance in the face of recent U.S. crackdowns. Once proclaiming, “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the nation – despite being founded by immigrants who cleared a path for colonization by killing the natives – has now turned its back on immigrants and refugees, especially those of color.
Senti recalls a different time, an era of hope and idealism, during which people often made the wrenching decision to leave the communities and nations they loved in order to provide better lives for themselves and their children. The music is infused with a dual feeling of…
The sophomore record from Portuguese free jazz saxophonist Rodrigo Amado’s international quartet The Bridge — with German pianist Alexander Von Schlippenbach, Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, and American drummer Gerry Hemingway — arrives with Further Beyond, a powerful statement of collective freedom and risk-taking. Across three freely improvised tracks, the quartet demonstrates a shared instinct for adventure and a deep trust in spontaneous creation.
The opening piece, “A Change Is Gonna Come”, begins on a fluttering rhythmic pulse that soon opens into a Coltrane-inspired spiritual voyage. Von Schlippenbach’s fractured yet dance-like piano fluxes collide with Amado’s searing saxophone cries, while Hemingway and…
Just a minute and 40 seconds into You Want That Too!, Max Jaffe and his cast of collaborators pull off the first of many head fakes. Opener “Up Top Up,” builds slowly and softly, with plinking piano, pulsing guitar, and bleepy synth organizing themselves like the multicolored tiers of a bismuth crystal. For a full minute, the quiet concatenation gurgles along, accumulating extra notes and flourishes, suggesting an eventual kosmische surge. But instead, each instrument disappears and the tempo drops to half-time, leaving only an uneasy chord structure and a lethargic drum pattern. Suddenly, Jeff Parker plucks a sighing six-note guitar run, dropping his shoulders into a solo section that carries the tune to its swooning conclusion. It’s only three minutes…
“Catman” Peter Criss, founding member and original drummer for KISS, returns with his first solo album since 2007’s One for All. The vocalist of such KISS favorites as “Beth,” “Black Diamond,” and “Hard Luck Woman” is billing this self-titled LP as his “most rock-driven solo album ever.”
Peter Criss was co-produced by Criss alongside Barry Pointer, who has worked with Ozzy Osbourne, John 5, Mötley Crüe, Steve Stevens, Pearl Aday and Dolly Parton.
Joining the legendary KISS musician on the LP are Billy Sheehan and Matthew Montgomery (a.k.a. Piggy D.) on bass, John 5 and Mike McLaughlin on guitar and Paul Shaffer on piano. The record also features the talents of backing vocalists Dennis and Sharon Collins, and Cat Manning of CAT 5.
After a yearlong hiatus, Light in the Attic’s Nancy Sinatra Archival Series is continuing with an expanded and remastered reissue of 1969’s Nancy on both CD and LP. Her 6th and final studio album for the label, the Billy Strange-helmed LP offered a cross-section of rock, pop, soul, and country tunes as only Sinatra could have delivered them.
Nancy arrived in the wake of producer-songwriter Lee Hazlewood’s unexpected move to Sweden. Hazlewood had produced all of Nancy’s Reprise albums to that point (including the soundtrack to her television special Movin’ with Nancy, not yet a part of the Archival Series) but with his departure, arranger-guitarist Strange would move up into the producer’s chair. Billy also appeared on Nancy as co-writer of “Memories.”
In the same way that the legendary label, 4AD had their in-house collective, This Mortal Coil, a revolving door of music makers generally associated with it, so John Michael Zorko gathers around him many of the great and good who orbit the Projekt Records sun to weave together the sonic beauty of that defines his Falling You project.
And it is not just the form that draws comparison to that earliest of British independent labels, the music found on Metanoia, the latest album, could easily have been one of the 4AD stable, back in the day. Metanoia means to change, but more specifically, a transformation forged from adversity, an idea first found in the writing of ancient Greece, and specifically in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which this album takes as…
…This 15th anniversary remaster of ‘Gateway’ includes a bonus disc with eight additional unreleased tracks mostly from the 2010 era.
On Gateway, Erik Wøllo presents the kind of travelog predicted by Joe Meek with I Hear a New World, a soundtrack of a visit to an alien world. The roots of the release are more readily placed in late-’70s space rock and ’80s new age, though, and while Gateway is an enjoyable listen, it’s not very inspiring in feeling like a new launching point for both sound and style. The elegant blend of dreamy synth loops, deep bass tones, soft electric guitar parts, and more simply doesn’t break through into a new, striking synthesis. There’s no question that Gateway is both well-performed and arranged; it’s a lovely sounding effort…
As the news buzzes with updates on global tariffs, Zones Portuaires 2 lands with unexpected relevance. Maritime ports have been plunged into the headlines, their workers feeling the impact while having nothing to do with the decisions. Zones Portuaires 2 honors those caught in the middle while emphasizing free trade and the health of international relations.
The first volume of Zones Portuaires was released in 2013, a double disc featuring éric la casa and cédric peyronnet. The recordings of harbors in France and Belgium highlighted the sonic wealth found at the intersection of nature and humanity. la casa’s follow-up, twelve years in the making, expands the project’s geographical scope: “the Gulf of Oman in Abu Dhabi, the harbour…
…Lebanese-born singer and oud player Lamia Yared unveils her third album, From Minho to Euphrates, a profound musical journey that interlaces sacred and secular traditions from Iberia to Mesopotamia. Joined by Spanish multi-instrumentalist Efrén López and a distinguished ensemble of international musicians, Yared breathes new life into ancient repertoires that span languages, religions, and centuries.
To say that this album explores medieval religious music from around the Mediterranean undersells it. The record subverts our sense of time and place. Centuries-old hymns are arranged to sound both antique and innovative. The repertoire also explodes simplified assumptions about where certain religions should be rooted.
Gekidan Buraiha was a theater company, a part of the so-called Angura scene that included notable troupes such as Tenjō Sajiki, led by Shūji Terayama; Jōkyō Gekijo, led by Jūrō Kara, Black Tent Theater (originally known as Theater Center 68), led by Makoto Satō; and Waseda Little Theater, led by Tadashi Suzuki.
Gekidan Buraiha began through the efforts of its main actor Kanna Ten (Minoru Takahashi) and his friends, who were all members of the same theater workshop at Kokugakuin University. It was the early ’70s, and the crew would frequently drop in at the rehearsal space occupied by Jūrō Kara’s Jōkyō Gekidan, essentially becoming part of the group’s support crew, and appearing on occasion as extras in their performances.
MOJNA blends newly composed music with contrapuntal fragments and improvisation in their inventive take on Nordic folk music. Featuring fingerstyle guitar, Hardanger fiddle, and clarinet/bass clarinet, they create a distinctive sound that has become their signature.
There are bears and boats here, gusts of wind, a drooping cigarette, though you don’t really need to know the details: this is music so beautiful, so expressive, that you can just ride the waves with this outstanding Swedish/Norwegian trio. They have, quite rightly, been showered with awards for their unique sound, sumptuous and spacious, sometimes playful, sometimes gentle and reflective, with a rich bass clarinet, tiny bird-like fiddle notes and a guitar that ranges from…
Iranian percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi is a master of traditional Persian instruments, the tombak (a goblet drum) and the daf (a frame drum). A virtuoso since childhood, he’s firmly embedded in the tradition of these ancient drums, constructed of wood and skin. Yet he’s also deeply committed to extending their range and possibilities in bold new ways.
On stripped-back and intimately recorded tracks like ‘Void’, it feels like the drum is mere millimetres from our ears, as we hear the textures of fingertips striking skin, and the myriad sonorities and timbral possibilities created by subtle variations in placement. He really makes the drum sing, creating a hypnotic rhythmic cascade from the leanest of source material. But pieces like…
This is the 10th release from the Nigel Price Organ Trio and like a mantra from a corporate business consultant, they have a commitment to continuous improvement, resulting in their sparkling album It’s On. Acknowledged as one of the UK’s leading jazz guitarists, Nigel Price has a career that has brought him multiple awards, contributions to over 60 albums and appearances with Van Morrison and Gladys Knight. He is also the founder of Grassroots Jazz, a charity that raises money for jazz clubs facing financial difficulties.
The trio is completed by Ross Stanley on Hammond organ and Joel Barford on drums, both of whom take pleasure in the creative freedom and interplay that the trio format provides. The album features six Price originals alongside…
Philadephia-based drummer and arranger Tom Cohen uses groups of various sizes from trio to octet recorded over a ten-year span to tailor an elegant musical “love letter” to Brazil and its iconic dance music, the bossa nova, on Embraceable Brazil, an album whose charming melodies and vibrant rhythms represent the best that picturesque South American country has to offer.
Of course, Antonio Carlos Jobim is here, as would be true on any survey of Brazilian music, with “Brigas Nunca Mais,” “Look to the Sky” and the ageless “Girl from Ipanema,” the last sung by Barbara Mendes with support from one of Philadelphia’s jazz legends, tenor saxophonist Larry McKenna. Mendes also sings (quite well) on “Brigas Nunca Mais” and the album’s…
What if midwestern emo was less concerned with confessionals and the relitigation of unrequited adolescent love and more focused on telling dick jokes? What if the Front Bottoms skateboarded in Bushwick, did coke and had liberal arts degrees from NYU?
Such are the quandaries answered by My Son the Doctor, a pop-punk/emo/slacker rock outfit based in Brooklyn. Glamours, the group’s debut album, is a blend of competent pastiche, catchy hooks and near-terminal self-awareness. While it doesn’t fully scratch the itch for those seeking a new champion of snarky-but-vulnerable pop-punk, it manages to justify its existence by being a fun ride that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
My Son the Doctor’s lead vocalist, Brian…