According to Roland Barthes, the event of grief gives way to an absence that paradoxically fills us. “We don’t forget, but something vacant settles in us.” The oxymoron of becoming full with emptiness. The hollows fill with more empty space. When Richard Skelton lost his wife in 2004, he began to process the tragedy by composing music. He filled the empty spaces with sound. At that time he also returned to his parents’ home in Wigan, where, in his own words, he was “reconnecting with a sense of that childhood wonder, completely refracted through the prism of grief”.
Born in the UK and most recently based in Ireland, Skelton is a multidisciplinary artist: a musician, poet, filmmaker, and writer. He resolves to bury his ghosts and then exhume them,…
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The steady, incremental rise of UK-based vibraphonist Jonny Mansfield continues with the release of his latest album, Light Finds a Way In, an album as ambitious as the ones that preceded it. Issued on Edition Records in 2019, Elftet, his auspicious debut, saw him fronting an eleven-piece ensemble. The Kenny Wheeler Jazz Prize winner followed that with The Air in Front of You (on Resonant Postcards, which he founded in 2023), an album that boldly integrated strings into a jazz context, the result a heady chamber-jazz fusion, and then Quartet! Live at Pizza Express, where a slightly smaller outfit became an exciting live conduit for his vision. With Light Finds a Way In, Mansfield presents a sequel of sorts to The Air in Front of You by reinstating…
…featuring exclusive bonus CD with four additional tracks.
The new record from Kayo Dot begins with an achy drone – think a tea-kettle whistle as filtered through the pump organ of some long-abandoned Gothic cathedral. “Day to night to following night,” frontman/primary songwriter Toby Driver growls at the record’s dawn, his voice alternately tortured and torturing as the drone glacially shifts. “I sit quietly, contemptuously/ Stalking myself.” And, later in the same song, the 11-minute-long affair that opens the group’s Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason LP, that sense of darkness and dread spreads like a stain: “Rusty garden shears cut through the weeds/ Growing over the grave,” Driver bellows, his consciously “evil”…
There’s J.D. Salinger, there’s Thomas Pynchon, and then there’s Takashi Mizutani, founder, singer and guitarist of Japanese psychedelic rock giants Les Rallizes Dénudés. How and why could someone so obviously gifted, perhaps even touched by the divine, remove themselves from a world that not only inspires their art but adores it? This question plagued some of the most dedicated and maniacal record collectors in the world, the deepest heads with the most fried and obscure psych rock platters, until 2021 when The Last One Musique and Temporal Drift opened the floodgates and let the music stream forth. It’s curious to think that if Mizutani had emerged from hiding before his death in 2019, perhaps he might have enjoyed the exposure, much in the way…
Omnivore Recordings and The International Pop Overthrow Music Festival are proud to present International Pop Overthrow: Vol. 26, a three-disc compilation featuring 66 tracks by artists from all over the world who have played the International Pop Overthrow (IPO) festival, along with some who haven’t — at least, not yet! The IPO compilations go back as far as the festival, to 1998 when Vol. 1 was a single disc. Since then, the collection expanded to two discs the following year, and then three discs in 2002 for Vol. 5, and it has remained a three-a set since. International Pop Overthrow: Vol. 26 showcases artists from across the globe, doing just about every sub-genre of pop music, including power pop, pop/rock, folk/pop, psychedelic pop, garage, indie-rock, modern…
There are albums that, because of their seeming fragility, don’t make a great first impression. The debut offering from White Magic for Lovers is a case in point. Come to The Book of Lies half-attentive in the midst of a busy day and don’t be surprised if it seems to spiral away and get lost in the ether, all too easily overwhelmed by distractions as prosaic as the pinging of an email arriving or the whistling of a boiling kettle.
But persevere because the wispiness here is deceptive. Second and third listens reveal intention, playfulness (for all the prettiness of its melodies, the LP rather ominously shares a title with a book by occultist Aleister Crowley) and a far wider sonic palette than you might initially have realised. To adapt a phrase popularised by…
…remastered by Rashad Becker with previously unheard bonus track exclusive to this edition.
In 2010, Matthew Barnes emerged from The Wirral with an almost album-length EP, Dagger Paths. It immediately caught the attention of the music press with its strange, blurry mixture of psychedelic pop and languid dubstep. Engravings follows the same vein, but with Dagger Paths‘ rougher edges honed into a series of enigmatic spectral half-songs that swirl and bite in successive layers of oblique, occasionally abstract, textures.
To record Engravings, Barnes made the audacious choice of mixing his tracks outdoors, immersing himself in the supposedly spiritually-charged environment of the Wirral peninsula. As such, even if his music descends from…
The title of Kinda Out West nods, of course, to Sonny Rollins’ influential 1957 album Way Out West, but it’s just as importantly Edmonton jazz artist Aretha Tillotson‘s homage to her native Alberta and the province of British Columbia. The acoustic bassist’s follow-up to 2024’s Introducing Aretha Tillotson partners her with drummer Dave Laing and the Nanaimo, BC-born sisters Ingrid and Christine Jensen. The hardships prairie residents endure inhabiting the land make them strong and resolute, and it’s not stretching things too far to suggest said qualities are part of Tillotson’s DNA and the music she creates. In keeping with someone who grew up surrounded by large open spaces, the pieces on her sophomore effort are similarly expansive in providing…
Red Bull Records and AWOLNATION present the limited edition of Run, celebrating the 10th Anniversary of this album. Remastered for this release, the Anniversary edition includes the original Run album, and a bonus songs of previously unreleased material.
Run is an ambitious and impressive project. AWOLNATION’s sophomore album was written, performed, and produced entirely by lead singer Aaron Bruno. The album features 14 new songs that go in many different directions, offering softer, more acoustic sounds, energetic almost-punk-like sounds, and everything in between. The album starts off strong with “Run,” with its heavy beat and eerie lyrics like the repeated “I am a human being/capable of doing things”…
…features five new tracks, including her recent singles, “Elton John,” and “Mid July,” the original demo of “Erotica,” and “LTTL”, a new version of “Light Through the Linen,” feat. Chrome Sparks.
Returning for her third full-length outing, with Erotica Veronica Miya Folick has delivered a record that’s equal parts haunting, spectral folk-pop and anthemic, guitar-drenched heft.
A cathartic sonic exorcism, it duels between the melancholy and the empowering, showcasing Miya’s ability to switch from tender and serene to grungy power pop.
Take the saccharine opener ‘Erotica’, which serpentines between indie rock and folk; the synthpop richness of ‘La Da Da’; or the impassioned war cry of ‘The Fist’.
Souvlaki is Slowdive’s second studio album, originally released in 1993.
Though not as big and swirling as Just for a Day, there’s more of an attempt to put advanced song structure and melody in place rather than just craft infinitely appealing, occasionally thunderous mood music. Everything is simplified, as if Brian Eno’s presence on two songs – he contributes keyboards and treatments and co-wrote one tune after turning down the band’s invitation to produce – hammered home the better aspects of “ambient” music. This is no Music for Airports though.
On the opening “Alison,” the largely uplifting “When the Sun Hits,” and the darkly blissful “Machine Gun,” Slowdive are still capable of mouth-opening, spine-tingling flourishes.
Before Chat Pile took on sold-out tours and widespread critical acclaim, they played Roadburn 2023-their biggest show to date, in front of a packed room of 3,000 on the festival’s main stage. Fresh off the release of God’s Country, the Oklahoma quartet brought their suffocating, sludgy noise rock to Tilburg for their first-ever European performance, delivering a set that felt like a milestone. The bleakness, the anguish, the raw absurdity-it all scaled up effortlessly, proving that Chat Pile’s chaos could consume any audience, no matter the size.
The set was recorded by the Roadburn staff and later remixed by the band’s longtime engineer, Jared Stimpfl, capturing the full weight of the performance. The result is something both…
Taking their name from the mining byproducts that litter their home state of Oklahoma, American four-piece Chat Pile attempt to make sense of a crumbling world through their sludgy strain of noise rock. After finding online viral success with their 2019 debut EP, This Dungeon Earth, the group built their tense sound across the 2020s with acclaimed albums like God’s Country (2022), Cool World (2024), and In the Earth Again, a collaborative album with guitarist Hayden Pedigo.
Blood at Night: This release contains the entire collection of manipulated tape loops recorded during the making of Cool World. Sections of most of these tracks were dissected and subtly woven into the final version of the record. All the original cassettes used on this collection were sourced…
The distance traveled on William Prince’s new album, Further From the Country, is generational, aspirational, and metaphysical. Expansive and declarative, Further From the Country is the work of an artist who meets the challenge of putting incisive and enduring words to this age of uncertainty. William Prince’s perspective – a songwriter who carries great legacies of family and songcraft forward – is singular and significant. Further From the Country, his fifth LP, is an extraordinary work of observation, reflection and ambition, a work that will leave its mark on listeners for its humanity and its potency.
The two-time JUNO Award winning artist continues to build an exceptional body of acclaimed work, with recent accolades including…
Widely and rightly regarded as one of the best ever soul and funk bands, the now legendary Average White Band tore-up the rule book and conquered the US, UK & International charts with a series of soul and disco hits between 1974 and 1980.
Although probably best known for their global hit, the US #1 signature single ‘Pick Up The Pieces’, which reached #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart, this superb collection features 34 classic recordings from ‘Show Your Hand’/’Put It Where You Want It’ (1973) to ‘Cupid’s In Fashion’ (1982).
The Essential Selection also includes their other UK and US hits, ‘Cut The Cake’, ‘Queen Of My Soul’, ‘Walk On By’, ‘For You, For Love’, the much sampled ‘School Boy Crush’, ‘When Will You Be Mine’, ‘If I Ever Lose This Heaven’, the track that…
…Only a few months ago, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith released GUSH, a vocal synth set packed with perky, romantic, danceable club cuts, with an undercurrent of social commentary. On Thoughts on the Future, the artist returns to the instrumental realm, offering three extended ambient-electronic meditations. The first single, “I Miss the Way You Swim,” is rife with melancholy, easing the way into the new year. Bubbling at the center, the nearly ten-minute piece blossoms into a gorgeous glockenspiel suite. As the orchestral elements enter, one takes a breath and whispers, “Maybe the new year won’t be so bad after all.”
The title track is peaceful and melodic, with percussive textures increasing in density, relaying a feeling of forward movement. Wordless voice…
Founding work of minimalism, Music with Changing Parts is a piece with free instrumentation. The musicians choose which part to play among the 8 staves of the score. At each indicated cue, the musicians can change part, which produces an abrupt change of instrumentation. While the music is based on a melodic material limited to a few notes that are repeated in patterns that expand or contract, the changes in orchestration refresh the listening experience by producing sonic contrasts. These techniques at work in Music with Changing Parts, written in 1970, will lead Philip Glass to renew his language and move from the monochromatic works that precede it to more dramatic works such as music in 12 parts and especially…
We thought that this was a concluded trilogy, but here comes Polarity 4, further Brooklyn encounters between tenorman Ivo Perelman and trumpeter Nate Wooley. They sustain this intimate concept quite well, discovering new tube-depths to plunge, fresh structural windings to entangle. Space is the place, as each player always leaves ample instants for their sonics to settle in the ears of the concentrating listener. As with previous sessions, the horn tones retain an allegiance to jazz tradition, but it’s the structures, interactions and breakneck intuitiveness that edge this music towards the free zone.
Now on number 4, this pair are fully embraced in creation. Softness can be partnered with a burr, and often each player will choose…