Undergoing an experience not unlike how Brian Eno came to his own experiments with ambient music, finding himself deaf in one ear and now hearing sound differently before, not to mention suffering auditory hallucinations, Jon DeRosa experimented with making music in an attempt to make sense of these disconcerting experiences. In that creative and therapeutic place No Solace in Sleep was born. Twenty-five years on from this extraordinary, in the very real sense of the word, debut album, it has been remastered by ambient/electronic pioneer Taylor Deupree a process which has unlocked an even brighter, deeper, broader, and stunning sonic experience.
As the name he chose for the project suggests, this this is an album that creates a tonal…
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Neo-disco artist Prins Thomas followed his two numerically titled 2022 albums with a full-length bearing his given name. Thomas Moen Hermansen is an apt title for a record which essentially sounds like the artist being himself and doing what he does best. Basically functioning as a one man band, he lays down steady rhythms with shuffling drums and chugging basslines, splashing them with sunny synth melodies. It’s usually pretty easygoing and carefree, but there is a touch of melancholy to these tracks.
The first one is called “Heartbreak,” and even though its brisk stroll doesn’t sound dramatic or devastated, it’s not bursting at the seams with joy either, and sounds like it could be music for a long walk while one is dealing with pain.
With a name like Binary Algorithms, you might expect the Colombian artist to make pitch-black techno that sounds like sheet metal wobbling in a freeway underpass. But Andrés Ávila’s approach to dance music is bold and saturated, with drums and synths blown up into big, skeuomorphic shapes. Ávila’s records have an ambitious conceptual bent to match their sounds. Previous EPs have been themed around René Descartes’ thought applied to a “cyber-network environment,” or a Drexciya-referencing underwater civilization called Tunja from the year 2499, accompanied by political screeds about the whitewashing of electronic music or the moral quandaries of AI. On Reminiscencias, his debut album, Ávila looks away from sci-fi and toward his own life and…
The British collective Snorkel likes to tout a review that once called them the “missing link between krautrock and Lee Scratch Perry.” Sure, why not? Endorsements like that are always a bit tongue-in-cheek. Throughout the 83 minutes and 19 tracks of Past Still Present Tense, it often sounds like someone in the band might be winking at you. These are serious beats, but not too serious.
With this latest release, Snorkel is making up for lost time. The group garnered its first attention with 2008’s Glass Darkly, then followed it up with another acclaimed disc, 2011’s Stop Machine. Fourteen years later, they call Past Still a “retrospective collection” of sorts, implying that it fills the gap on their CV and brings us back up to date.
Moundabout, the duo consisting of Gnod’s Paddy Shine and Phil Langero (of Los Langeros, Damp Howl and Bisect) release their third album, Goat Skull Table, being a spell for passing between worlds. The album opens with a spectacturaly intense invocation, chanted by Langero, against a background of disturbed electronics which sound like the kind of noises ghost hunters wish they could record: the throbbing of a psychic helicopter, string glitches from the other side, lurching music propelled against its will by malign forces. Langero summons dark spirits in a voice haunted by strange elisions and sudden emphases, as though he’s not in control of what he says. “Come back goat, to this rotting crooown!” he leers. It’s truly terrifying – which is quite an achievement,…
…featuring the 2024 remix by Mike Kennerty as well as the original mix (remastered).
My Brain Hurts is the third studio album by the Chicago-based punk rock band Screeching Weasel originally released in September 1991 through Lookout Records. It was the group’s first album on Lookout as well as the only release with bassist Dave Naked and the first with drummer Dan Panic, the latter of which would go on to appear on several of the band’s albums.
The album marked a very distinct stylistic shift for the group, fully moving toward a Ramones-inspired sound and completely abandoning their previous hardcore punk influences as a condition made by vocalist Ben Weasel when reforming the band after a brief break-up.
For The Unutterable, Mark E. Smith settled in with the (mostly) new lineup that debuted on 1999’s The Marshall Suite and recorded yet another gorgeous, rambunctious, only occasionally scrutable masterpiece. Though it’s not overly chocked with new ideas (especially for those already well-versed in the Fall canon), The Unutterable benefits from excellent songwriting and the crisp production of soundman extraordinaire Grant Showbiz, on loan from Billy Bragg.
The far-too-short opener “Cyber Insekt” immediately launches the listener into a dense, chaotic sound world that’s only amplified throughout the album. The heavy rockabilly guitars and pummeling drums heard on The Marshall Suite are practically overwhelmed…
At a time when violently distorted, nearly atonal rage rap can scratch the mainstream while avant-garde jazz artists fuse traditional band arrangements with the unearthly sound design of club music’s vanguard, it’s no small feat that WRENS’ “Charlie Parker” manages to be one of the year’s strangest singles in either genre.
As drummer Jason Nazary sets the Brooklyn band’s wounded gait slightly ahead of plucky synths and a flute in hysterics, frontman and trumpeter Ryan Easter starts kicking a verse that recontextualizes boilerplate trap and drill lines into the jazz world. He’s pointing Smith & Wessons at the opps; whipping chickens on the stove like they’re the roadkill the track’s titular saxophonist ate on the day he earned his famous…
On her most significant outing to date, Dorothy Carlos conveys a distinct sense of surreality with this invitation to her secretive, perceptive inscapes. As her fifth and most substantial release since Curio (2021), the eight parts of Ear World arrest the keener observer of avant glitch-based composition to what the label aptly describe as “a take on digital form that is flirtatious and fleeting.”
Its eight bits flit in fits and hiccupping saccades from fractured folk and jazz resemblance in ‘My Buddy (Miss You in Ear World)’ to the beguiling bigger picture that emerges from multiple, scurrying and coiled sounds tabulated in the pointillist gunk of ‘Alter, Alter’.
A main section is made up of her quadraphonic installation ‘My Ideal is Windy’, a three-part…
Helmut Lachenmann is 90 last month, but the event has gone largely unmarked in the UK, where his music remains little understood and rarely performed. Elsewhere in Europe he is recognised as one of the important and influential composers of our time, whose music has opened up a wholly new sound world with its forensic exploration of the way instruments are played and the further possibilities they might offer.
At the heart of that exploration has been Lachenmann’s three string quartets – ‘Gran Torso’, composed in 1971-72 and revised in 1988, ‘Reigen Seliger Geister’ (Round of Blessed Spirits, 1989), and ‘Grido’ (Cry, 2002) – which exploit every part of the string instruments, from scrolls to tailpieces, for their sound possibilities.
Taking a classical work and playing it on different instrument is not exactly new, but it can still be quite thrilling. Musician Chris Thile’s Bach: Sonatas and Partitas, Vol. 2 doesn’t use piano or organ or guitar, but it shows the mighty mandolin. A rather plucky instrument that already thrums with a Baroque or Renaissance sound, it seems a good choice. Harp would have sounded overly dreamy and trumpet would have been totally out of the running (though maybe saxophone in the right hands). The release included Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004; Sonata No. 3 in C major, BWV 1005; and Partita No. 3 in E major, BWV 1006, piece originally written for violin solo. And unlike his first volume of Bach in 2013, Thile has decided to take some liberties with the scores.
Norway has a thriving and intriguing experimental folk scene, and multi-instrumentalist Kenneth Lien is one of its key exponents.
…For his latest offering, Norwegian Electronic Folk Music, he has teamed up yet again with DJ and electronic music producer Jørgen Sissyfus, otherwise known as Center of the Universe, for an album that does exactly what it says in the title. Lien plays Hardanger fiddle, jaw harp and willow flute, while Jørgen adds propulsive beats and effects for a high-energy set that promises to have people in Scandinavian clubs dancing to folk music in no time.
It starts with ‘Fanitullen’, a well-known Norwegian tune that in this iteration begins with a stomping electronic beat before the rousing…
There’s a difference between merely recording songs and making an album. By the time The Mammals realized they were doing the latter, they had nearly enough music for two LPs. So, the indie-roots band arranged the tracks into the double album Touch Grass. The first volume leans toward socially conscious tracks, while Vol. 2 has a more personal, introspective feel.
…It was sometime in late 2021 or early ’22 when Merenda and Ungar began doing weekly recording sessions at their Humble Abode Music studio with bassist/engineer Brandon Morrison.
The plan when they started was to make demos of the songs that Merenda and Ungar had been writing following the release of the Mammals’ 2020 album Nonet.
The debut album from Lloyd and the Leftovers joins the recent wave of Australian-flavoured Americana. Hailing from Walyalup on the west coast, their sound leans as much towards indie-tinged folk as it does any strand of country. Opener ‘Fruit and Wine’ is the closest the record gets to a strumming singalong, while ‘Kaarta Koomba’ is as near as it comes to a rocker – though neither track quite sets the tone for what follows.
The heart of the album is more whimsical, its frequent tempo changes sometimes unsettling the flow when a little more of that early crunch might have been welcome. Lead single ‘Tried It on Tuesday’ is a case in point: “I say it with a grin, I say it with a smile / Mumble my way through it, wiping tears out of my eyes” as the singer…
There’s something compelling about hearing the songs live before you hear the album. Before Megaflower showed up as a fully formed record, its crazy shapes had already blown minds in several cramped gigs on Full Flower Moon Band’s first UK and European tour. Word-of-mouth recommendations pushed spaces well past their limits, crowds edging uncharacteristically closer to the stage, jammed into the sweaty corners of spaces whose low ceilings didn’t dampen the volume. It felt like an early warning: whenever these songs finally came out on record, the band wasn’t going to stay underground for long.
Coming in hot after that extended tour, when Megaflower did arrive last summer, it dragged the Brisbane cult outfit into a spotlight…
Tomasz Stańko, Poland’s most famous jazz musician and world-renowned trumpet virtuoso, had been a regular guest at Polish Radio recording studios for years. During longer and shorter sessions he was accompanied by leading improvising artists. The desire to present an unknown part of the legendary Desperado’s oeuvre to jazz lovers turned to the idea of releasing a unique collection – a radio portfolio of the artist from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The entire collection comprises of six records.
Considering needs of the listeners, box-sets come out in several formats. Next to the regular black-vinyl edition we have a limited white vinyl box edition for collectors. For digital enthusiasts, there is a CD box-set.
If you’re into roots reggae or dub, you’ve probably heard the names The Revolutionaries and Roots Radics tossed around more than once. These two bands shaped the sound of Jamaican music in ways that still echo today.
The Revolutionaries, sometimes called the Mighty Revolutionaries, came together in 1975 as Channel One Studio’s in-house band. The Hoo Kim brothers ran that studio, and it became a serious hub for creativity. The group helped define the tight, driving rockers style riddims that gave reggae a fresh, energetic edge. Sly Dunbar’s crisp drumming and Ranchie McLean’s heavy basslines set the pace, while also players like Robbie Shakespeare, Dougie Bryan, Robbie Lyn, and Ansel Collins added their own spice. Between 1975 and…
…includes seven bonus tracks.
South London sound system owner Lloyd Coxsone ably assisted in raising the Royals’ profile in the U.K., eagerly spinning dub plates of the group’s Ten Years After album. The attention helped Royals’ frontman/producer Roy Cousins land a deal with United Artists, whose Ballistic imprint eventually picked up both that vocal set and Israel Be Wise, as well as Freedom Fighters Dub (a set Cousins dedicated to Coxsone in gratitude) and Liberated Dub. The latter set was Israel‘s counterpart, and what it lacked in imagination for track titles (did someone leave a map of Kingston and its environs on the mixing desk?), was more than made up for the music within. Israel was produced by Cousins himself, with the riddims…
Singer and songwriter Morgan Wade has extended her celebrated recent album ‘The Party Is Over (recovered)’, adding five new tracks for a Deluxe version.
The Party Is Over (recovered) follows Wade’s recent album, “Obsessed”, which was released in August 2024. In a time of self-reflection, Wade revisited her earlier writing sessions to revitalise past songs that still spoke to the person she is today. She has also been playing some of its tracks on the road to sold-out shows across the US, UK and Europe. These songs, which so many fans have gravitated to live, will, for the first time ever, be made available, connecting Wade’s past and present and breathing new life into her earlier songs.
“The Party Is Over (recovered)” sees Wade…
The deluxe includes 8 additional songs inclusive of Rein Me In (with Olivia Dean) and the new single Talk to You (featuring Elton John).
Sam Fender’s third album ends with a track called Remember My Name. It’s clearly a very personal song, about its author’s late grandfather – even revealing the address of his council house, 11 Wark Avenue. The northern British references – “Chasing a cross in from the wing / Our boy’s a whippet, he’s faster than anything” – are amplified both by Fender’s Geordie vowels and the backing, provided by the Easington Colliery brass band. It’s all very specific and individual – you really don’t hear brass bands, or indeed the mention of whippets in pop very often – and yet Remember My Name seems to have something of the self-fulfilling…