Chameleon: The Very Best of Toyah is the first career-spanning collection to encompass Toyah Willcox’s full recording history.
…Spanning 45 years of music, the impressive collection includes the top 40 singles ‘I Want to Be Free’, ‘It’s a Mystery’, ‘Thunder in the Mountains’, ‘Brave New World’, ‘Good Morning Universe’, ‘Rebel Run’ and ‘Don’t Fall in Love’, alongside classic cuts right up to the 2021 Top 20 album Posh Pop. Chameleon lives up to its name and highlights Toyah’s musical longevity as a singer/actress that burst out of the punk/new wave scene in the late 1970s, became a pop icon in the ’80s and who has remained an ever-evolving creative force across five decades. Toyah has made an indelible mark on the entertainment industry with…
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Suzie True are a fan’s band. Named after a line in a song by 1990s Memphis punks the Oblivians and self-described as “if the Powerpuff Girls formed a Blink-182 cover band,” they’re proud pop culture junkies. References abound — usually as shorthand for insecurities (“Collecting hearts like Pokémon/She’s such a ch-ch-cherry bomb!”) or objects of affection (“Dancing like it’s 1987/And you say I’m just like heaven”), almost always as outlets for escapism. These are songs for slamming your bedroom door because nobody understands, for pretending you’re in a music video even though you’re just driving around your hometown — with the windows down and the radio cranked all the way up, you can hardly tell the difference. The band’s embrace of youthful…
Including alternate takes of every piece, this edition sheds new light on a truly unique album. One of the highlights of the King Crimson 50th anniversary CD/Blu-Ray editions to date has been King Crimson producer David Singleton’s series of Elemental Mixes as he utilises the full spectrum of available studio sessions for each album to produce very different takes on the familiar songs and pieces.
This is especially true of Lizard where the ambition of the material, the much-expanded line-up of musicians – the background of many of them in the jazz rather than the rock world – and the number of takes recorded, resulted in a large amount of material to be considered for this album.
There was enough material for David to be able to mix and produce alternate takes for every…
The legendary Americana band’s 1983 album re-released with brand new liner notes and band interviews written by Chris Morris with rare photos and memorabilia images. The release recreates the band’s third studio album complete with a replica of the inner sleeve with songwriter Dave Alvin’s lyrics.
The 11-track set features the four core band members-Phil Alvin, Dave Alvin, John Bazz and Bill Bateman accompanied by Gene Taylor, Lee Allen and Steve Berlin. Includes band classic cuts- “Long White Cadillac” (a hit for Dwight Yoakum in 1989), “Jubilee Train”, “Red Rose” along with deep track covers of “Barefoot Rock” and “Tag Along”, sung by piano player Gene Taylor. The album was critically acclaimed with positive reviews…
As a resourceful sound alchemist and idiosyncratic sound architect with multi-layered and often floating guitar sounds that can pile up into a wall of sound, Swiss guitarist Dave Gisler enlivens contemporary jazz. Since 2017, he has been working continuously with his congenial trio partners Raffaele Bossard and Lionel Friedli.
After collaborations with the Chicago trumpeter jaimie branch, who sadly passed away before her time, and the luminary of modern jazz David Murray, the trio decided to continue without guests and focus on the essence and energy of their distinctive trio sound. This live album is another milestone for this promising trio, which is guided by style-independent factors such as density, contrasts, and energy.
There are so many reasons that trumpeter Theo Croker graces the June 2025 cover of DownBeat. For starters, he’s been steadily building a loyal fandom with his beautiful tone and creative mind — from 2019’s Star People Nation to 2021’s BLK2LIFE // A FUTURE PAST to 2022’s LOVE QUANTUM. His live shows are mesmerizing, danceable joyfests. Moreover, he does all of this while refusing to be boxed neatly into any specific musical genre, as deftly displayed by his latest release, Dream Manifest. Jazz? Yep. Soul? For days. Hip-hop? No doubt. R&B? Yes, siree. All of that and some trippy melodies and beats to glide over. The album, which brings together members of Croker’s past and current bands, has a true party feel. It’s a group that transcends generations,…
In 2009, Guy Brewer, riding high as part of drum’n’bass duo Commix, looked around the room at a party he was DJing and thought, “This is fucking shit.” He was part of one of the genre’s most consequential acts of the late ’00s — one of a rare few acts to get an official Burial remix — but he didn’t feel at home there. So he switched gears to burly, monochrome four-on-the-floor beats and found equal success making po-faced, sound design–obsessed techno under the name Shifted. He had one foot in experimental ambient and noise music, and another in the Berlin-centric techno playboy DJ circuit. But as techno became bigger business (Brewer, in fact, coined the sardonic term “business techno”), he came to find it just as stifling as drum’n’bass.
“Ladies Night,” the third song off Crippling Alcoholism’s epic new LP Camgirl, is the best song the harrowing Boston sextet has put to tape – so far. It’s not the post-punk-inspired group’s most carefully crafted composition to date. Or its darkest. Or most intricate. Or even its best performed. But the tune, somehow the second-shortest offering on the new 15-song outing, embraces the subversiveness Crippling Alcoholism has always toyed with (and, yes, proudly continues to toy with) to tremendous effect. And we don’t just mean the subversiveness of frontman Tony Castrati’s lyrics, which often teeter among the morose, the horrific or, simply, the NC-17-stamped. But the group’s ability to co-opt musical phrasings or timbre, especially from…
There’s a timeline where Eliza McLamb is nearly finished with a law degree, and another where she’s climbed the corporate ladder in the solar paneling industry. In lieu of that, McLamb has fully committed herself to music, something that was once a hobby. At nineteen she gained TikTok virality from a replayable ditty about adolescent sexual confusion, and used that wit and self-awareness as a jumping off point for the career she’s built since. Now at twenty-four, McLamb’s sophomore album Good Story is her first release after stepping away as co-host of Binchtopia, the prolific and successful podcast she ran with Julia Hava. She doesn’t take the trial and error for granted, though.
…“Catch it quick/Frame the image/Make your…
If 1968’s Brigitte Fontaine Est Folle (Brigitte Fontaine is Crazy) is the sound of madness, then sanity is vastly overrated. When French singer/ songwriter Fontaine started working on her second solo album, she was kicking against a lot of things. She wanted to move French pop music beyond the trendy pinup-girl chirp of “yé-yé” singers like Sylvie Vartan and France Gall, to fly in the face of the sexism that was still so prevalent even in French society, and to do it all with dark, poetic visions that poked and provoked, standing out even amid the iconoclasm of the emerging counterculture.
Fontaine’s 1966 debut LP, 13 chansons décadentes et fantasmagoriques was, as its title suggests, already plenty dark and strange. But it operated mainly in a kind of post-Jacques Brel…
Tian Qiyi’s sophomore album Songs for Workers is a rare kind of record: one that refuses to settle into the familiar categories of world music fusion or post-punk revival, instead carving out a space that feels both ancestral and futuristic. The duo — brothers John Tian Qi Wardle and Charlie Tian Yi Wardle — draw deeply from their multicultural lineage: their mother, orchestra founder Zilan Liao, instilled Chinese classical traditions, while their father, legendary bassist Jah Wobble , infused them with the heavy-lidded throb of dub and the restless experimentation of post-punk.
…Charlie contributes erhu (two-stringed vertical fiddle), morin khuur (horsehead fiddle) and vocals. John handles a drumkit, plus an assortment of percussion, including paigu…
On her debut album Center of Affection, released under the alias Wilby, Maria Crawford manages to guide her musicians like a veteran.
With vibrant sonic ideas and intimate lyricism, the album stands as a striking distillation of beautifully composed rock.
Following a string of independently released EPs throughout the 2020s, Wilby signed with Hit the North Records earlier this year. Center of Affection, financed by a crowdfund, undoubtedly carries a more sweeping and grand scope compared to her past EPs. The production sounds large-scale, the song ideas are more ambitious, and Wilby sounds unapologetic and personal. Her vocals are quiet and intimate most of the time; she either channels the soft and ghostlike vocals of…
Lawn’s songs alternate between lackadaisical slacker pop and driving rock propulsion.
Early single “Davie” is a sweet natured slice of California guitar pop, as aimlessly charming as its not-too-ambitious protagonist. “I’m on top of the world just because/I’m not keeping score,” the singer declares, and the song, too, is pleased as punch to be right where it is, no striving required. But then, check the other single “Sports Gun,” pummeling on with urgent bass and squalling guitars and a sung-spoken spray of words that seethes with all the aggression missing in that earlier salvo.
Perhaps it’s down to the two songwriting personalities involved — the guitarist Mac Folger wreathed in California sunshine, the bassist…
If great art, as many believe, is inherently polarizing, then the Stone Temple Pilots’ Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop easily ranks as the California-based band’s finest album.
Simultaneously celebrated and castigated upon release in spring 1996, the group’s third full-length finds vocalist Scott Weiland and company expanding their “grunge” palette with a smart blend of glam rock, psychedelia, jangle pop, and other related styles. Having benefited from long-view reassessments that shed the biases and meanness of initial criticisms, the double-platinum effort is now largely and rightly seen as a creative masterwork. All the more reason why it deserves reference-grade production.
Sourced from the original master tapes,…
Fears are very individual, and how one person copes with theirs might not make their struggles evident to others. So while Argentinian artist aylu took a generally delicate approach to her latest album, she’s made explicit that it is an exercise in processing with the title Fobia.
aylu – real name Ailin Grad – sets a panicked tone with short, laboured breathing from the opening seconds of Fobia. Depending on your own mental state, this might be the only uncomfortable aspect of the album. But if your brain has ever played a round of pinball with your thoughts, Fobia will resonate in a different way.
Fobia is the sound of nervous energy and someone trying desperately to quell it. Afflicted with claustrophobia and agoraphobia,…
…remastered by Kevin Vanbergen.
By developing a flair for tight, melodic hooks on Star, Tanya Donelly unexpectedly achieved the crossover success with Belly that eluded her with the Throwing Muses and the Breeders. Evidently inspired by such success and eager to prove that Belly was a full-fledged band, not just a solo project, Donelly and company made a bid for stardom with their second album, King.
Veteran producer Glyn Johns gives the band an appealingly punchy sheen, and with the assistance of Tom Gorman and new bassist Gail Greenwood, Donelly cuts away her remaining arty preciousness, concentrating solely on big pop songs. While some fans will miss the occasional detour into spacy dream pop, Belly’s makeover is…
The Len Price 3 have been around for over 20 years, long enough to know what works for them and how to deliver it in the studio. Their trademark variety of garage rock filtered through the memories of the first British mod era and the maximum R&B that walked hand in hand with it is bold and brawny on 2025’s Misty Medway Magick.
That said, while they reaffirm their strengths with ease here, they also move ever so slightly forward on this LP, with dashes of psychedelic pop and freakbeat audible in tunes like “The Luckiest Guy Alive,” “She Brings the Morning,” and “Emily’s Shop,” as if they’ve chosen to live in the year 1966 instead of 1965 for a change. (They also take a brief detour into 1977 with the punk fury of “You’ve Changed.”) The trio’s instrumental skills are…
>> Unrealities – 8 compositions ( 2hr 50mins ) in the spirit of Audio Art commissions by radio stations across Europe in the early 1970s ( partly because Avant-garde composers found it difficult to have their work performed ) Eight Compositions by The Future Sound of London were created to accompany the Touched Music Album launch evenings (2019 to 2025).
Boundary-pushing electronic duo and technological pioneers the Future Sound of London have charted a magnificent, unpredictable course throughout their multi-decade career, ranging from early rave staples to ambitious excursions into ambient soundscapes, psychedelic rock, modern classical, and more. Prodigiously releasing club records under various pseudonyms since…