…The live release all hardcore Devo fans have been waiting for, Nitrous Nightmare demonstrates a band harnessing their artistic greatness in the purest of forms. This mythic performance captures Devo perfecting some of their most iconic concepts in the raw. Expertly restored, this live recording makes for a thrilling experience, it also captures Devo as a lightening rod for hostility.
On Halloween 1975, Devo took the stage at the WHK Auditorium in Cleveland, in a supporting capacity for jazz legend Sun Ra, to perform for a raucous crowd dressed in the finest of Halloween cliché. Already riding high on Nitrous Oxide and booze supplied by the sponsoring radio station, this unaware horde was expecting to see a slick cover band churning out renditions of…
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…Johanna Summer’s collaboration with producer Andreas Brandis has been steadily building traction. Their first venture was a highly acclaimed solo album, “Resonanzen”; that was followed by “Cameo”, a duo album with saxophonist Jakob Manz, and the concert in Lucerne became the catalyst for the new album “Dialoge” (dialogues). The context here is four duos. Each of them features Summer on one of two grand pianos, with another pianist – Claire Huangci, Kit Armstrong, Danae Dörken and Igor Levit – on the other. The objective is to create an open-ended conversation between tradition and the present, between composition and improvisation. As for the repertoire, Summer’s studio guests were encouraged to take as much liberty…
The word “meditative” is as groan-inducingly overused as a descriptor for ambient music as a word can be, yet there’s really no better way to understand the work of M. Geddes Gengras. Amidst a sea of modular synth noodlers more content to show off their equipment than to make something meaningful of it, Gengras’ deep focus on carving out spacious, lived-in sonic worlds with his instrument, and his ability to transport his listeners to those mysterious places, has never wavered. His latest album Guest List represents a major departure from the solitary world-building of his previous work, bringing in a bevy of collaborators who leave no stone unturned in exploring every last corner of his sound. The result is an uncharacteristically cluttered soundscape…
When artists become big enough, they become increasingly defined not by their actual work, but what we want their work to be. We begin to think of artists as inseparable from certain qualities and judge the work from these references. This paradox looms large when listening to Exhale, the collaborative album by Batu and Donato Dozzy.
The two artists have become veritable underground institutions: Batu and his label Timedance indelibly shaped the contemporary UK techno landscape by infusing the genre with a wide variety of sound system variants. And what is there left to say about Dozzy? His name by itself is shorthand for psychedelic techno.
With the bar set that high, it’s easy to go into Exhale with preset kudos. But what makes for…
The Brazilian religious and musical tradition of candomblé is a rhythmic barrage. Originating in the 19th century among enslaved west Africans, candomblé manifested in music as a ritual practice of drumming circles, where polyrhythms were hammered out to induce possession by spirits. Athens-based archival label Flee presents a treasure trove of this ceremonial music from a community in Salvador in the late 1980s, alongside a series of ingenious remixes made by contemporary artists.
Side one of the album hosts the field recordings. Hazy, unbalanced and full of tape hiss, the 10 ritual compositions pull listeners into the frenetic environment in which they were recorded. It is as if we are sitting next to the tape recorder…
Cherry Red Records compilation album A World of Our Own is a colossal release for one with such a finite scope. Comprising three discs and 86 tracks, it covers, as its subtitle suggests, The UK and Irish Folk Explosion of 1965 with maximalist gusto. This breadth is not the result of curatorial indecision but rather commemorates a singular slice of space and time, marked by an abundance of creativity and celebrating a gamut of interpretations of musical tradition.
Such a kaleidoscopic array exemplifies the core populist values that generally underpinned the folk revival movements of the mid-20th century. So, too, do the individual cuts selected to represent the metaphorical explosion at the album’s center. What emerges from it all is a well-fleshed-out…
Ain’t Never Movin’ On marks a new chapter for the band. It is their first album in almost a decade, and it is certainly well worth the wait. With ten new songs, it feels like a very mature album that bowls along very nicely indeed while still having a pleasantly reflective feel about it.
Having formed in Victoria. They cut their teeth in the bars across Canada with their particular brand of jangly guitar-driven, tougher americana and quickly got a reputation as ‘dive bar warriors’ with a crowd-pleasing blend of rockier songs and a number of slower ballads.
This collection of songs may be slightly more reflective and possibly less high-energy, but make no mistake: it rocks along very nicely indeed, especially on the numbers that…
Broadside Hacks have quickly established themselves as the UK’s premier folk conglomerate. As a London-based promotion company, they’ve hosted some of the most innovative darlings on the contemporary scene. They’ve also been doing the Heimlich on some classic albums – arranging star-studded presentations of Mike and Lal Waterson’s masterpiece ‘Bright Phoebus’ and Mark Fry’s ‘Dreaming of Alice’, as well as retrospectives of the music of Martin Carthy and Incredible String Band in some of the capital’s most glittering venues. They also find time to run a record label that houses some of the more gleefully weird trad artists in the UK (Milkweed, Goblin Band, Spitzer Space Telescope et al). Tinderbox, the debut album by Bristol-based multi-instrumentalist…
Key to World Peace, the second album by Australian musician Sam Perry, aka Prophetic Justice Ministry, is an odd bird: Sometimes it rattles and churns, synth and drum machine scraping up against each other like ungreased pistons; at other points, it floats like fog, sounding a little like the creeping, elegant scores of Angelo Badalamenti. It frequently feels like a DIY folk record, not least when Perry, who was raised in New Zealand, faithfully covers Lana Del Rey’s “Mariners Apartment Complex” with a distinct Kiwi lilt. Uniting these decidedly disparate moods is a keen sense of atmosphere: Key to World Peace sounds like it was recorded live in some kind of emptied swimming pool, Perry standing at one end and his recording equipment at the other. The resulting…
Las Robertas make a move away from the surf and garage influences of the past on 2026’s All We Need is Now, adding a third guitar player, and diving headfirst into dream pop. The Costa Rican band were very good at raucous garage rock and moody psychedelia, they also prove to be really adept at big, bouncy dream pop. They splice it with shoegaze, Brit Pop, Madchester, and indie rock, while still keeping a little bit of swirling psych in the mix. Not surprisingly with three of them in the band, the guitars are the star of the show. They are huge, taking turns jangling, chiming, crunching, and threatening to rip the speaker cones to shreds, but never overshadowing the wide-open melodies or the vocals. Mercedes Oller’s lead vocals are the calm inside the storm and when…
Phish release a new digital box set, Phish: Live In Saratoga Springs 2025. The 55-song compilation collects the Vermont quartet’s complete three-night run at Saratoga Springs, NY’s Broadview Stage at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, which takes place at the tail end of the first leg of the band’s 2025 summer tour. Each of the shows, held from July 25–27, 2025, contains some notable moments: Phish’s opening night features a completely seamless second set, the middle night includes teases of N.I.B. by Black Sabbath, Walk This Way by Aerosmith, December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night) by The Four Seasons, and other tunes, while the final night becomes an instant classic, opening with Tweezer Reprise and culminating with the first-ever “Tweezer” encore…
Carry On the sophomore solo album by the late rocker Chris Cornell has recently been reissued and expanded. The Steve Lillywhite-produced 2007 album finds Cornell shifting the alt-rock sounds he cultivated as frontman for Soundgarden and supergroup Audioslave into a more introspective, darker direction. Highlights include singles “No Such Thing” and “Arms Around Your Love,” a cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” (here extended from its original album release) and the film mix of Cornell’s hard-driving “You Know My Name,” the terrific theme song to 2006’s Casino Royale, the first James Bond film to star Daniel Craig as the British spy. This digital edition also includes two studio bonus tracks initially available on U.K. and Japanese pressings.
“Walden consists of a series of musical sketches inspired by the 1854 novel of the same name by Henry David Thoreau”, thus reads the short description of this project by Heiner Goebbels. But those familiar with the oeuvre of the German trans-media conceptualist and composer know that with Goebbels it’s never quite that simple. In his 1998 creation Walden, composed for expanded orchestra with speaker, Goebbels incorporates a wide-flung stream of inspirations and approaches, spanning excerpts from Thoreau’s “Walden”, soundscape-design in the spirit of audio plays, arsenals of outlandish instruments and sonic layouts as much at home in the avantgarde as they borrow from popular music, all brought to life with Peter Eötvös conducting and Bob Rutman…
Yusef Lateef was a multi-instrumentalist, writer, professor, and thinker and created a genre of his own called, “autophysiopsychic music.” He led countless bands and made recordings showcasing his study and practice of musics from across the globe. His quartet on this unreleased date from Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase club included pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Bob Cunningham, and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath; all were present on several of Lateef’s Atlantic recordings during the 1970s. Lateef, a longtime friend and favorite of Segal’s, played the illustrious Jazz Showcase many times. The recordings on Alight Upon the Lake are drawn from a June 1975 residency at JSwere and produced by Zev Feldman and Michael Velasco for George Klabin’s Resonance label. This set…
The term tropicanibalismo has been circulating within experimental music scenes in Colombia since at least the early ’00s, broadly encompassing new and innovative approaches to coastal popular and folkloric music forms. Cumbión Planetario is Bogotá-based duo Rizomagic’s newest contribution to this tropicanibalismo landscape. Rooted in cumbia (with a particular nod to languid, Monterrey-born cumbia rebajada), perhaps the most emblematic Colombian music and dance genre, the slow-motion music of Cumbión Planetario is distinctly contemporary.
Hints of dub, a deeper camaraderie with music that might be termed IDM, and particular investments in the idea of cosmic tuning serve as important contours. Group members…
The late singer-songwriter revisits his roots on this 2010 set-his first unedited concert recording-from the Chicago venue where he got his start as a young musician.
When John Prine was 14 or 15 his brother Dave took him down to the Old Town School of Folk Music. John’s problem, his brother figured, was a lack of direction. He was interested in gymnastics and art but otherwise just hung around the pool hall. Little by little, Dave was getting him into folk music, teaching him a few chords and playing him Carter Family records. In the early ’60s, the Old Town School was located in a ramshackle storefront on Chicago’s North Avenue, but it had already hosted legends like Pete Seeger, Mahalia Jackson, and Big Bill Broonzy.
Originally released on April 1, 1986, Book of Love introduced a new voice in American electronic pop with enduring classics including “Boy,” “I Touch Roses,” and “You Make Me Feel So Good”.
40 years later, this special anniversary edition has been remastered by its original engineer, Ted Jensen. The album artwork has also been refreshed in collaboration with original art director Nick Egan to honor the anniversary, including a four-page insert featuring outtakes from the iconic photo session with Michael Halsband. Furthermore, in celebration of this milestone release, it features new liner notes by writer and music historian Kurt B. Reighley, who sat down with founding members Susan Ottaviano and Ted Ottaviano to reflect on the album’s creation and its lasting cultural impact.
Wildest Dreams was Turner’s ninth solo album and her first for almost seven years, at the time. It featured the previous year’s Bond theme ‘Goldeneye’, written by Bono and The Edge of U2, as well as collaborations with Pet Shop Boys, Sheryl Crow, Barry White, Sting, and a cover of Massive Attack’s ‘Unfinished Sympathy’.
The super deluxe edition includes the original album remastered, a disc of contemporary B-sides and remixes, the 1996 Wembley Stadium show over two CDs and a Blu-ray featuring a remastered Live In Amsterdam / Wildest Dreams Tour, originally released on VHS and Laserdisc in 1996 and DVD the following year. The booklet features new liner notes from journalist Jason Draper. In the U.K., the album reached #4 and was certified…
After the early-Nineties alt-rock explosion, bands that had made it big in the Eighties largely pulled their hair out trying to fit in. U2 went disco. Guns N’ Roses spent about 25 years chasing Chinese Democracy. And Metallica? Well, they just got weird — and, contrary to popular belief, that wasn’t a bad thing.
Neither of the quartet’s Load albums, released in 1996 and 1997, sound overtly “alt,” since James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett’s riffs owed a greater debt to the blues and Lynyrd Skynyrd than shoegaze or Pixies. But they achieved a simulacrum of “alt,” at least for headbangers, by playing with a looseness that still feels like a rejection of the white-knuckle thrashing that earned them their legend. Hetfield had learned…
Though vaguely considered along the lines of noise, space rock, dream pop and psychedelic, The Telescopes have consistently expanded boundaries, colouring outside the lines with possibility. This house has many rooms, embraced across genres, influential to many, all embracing, in an orbit of its own. Static Charge is The Telescopes’ 19th studio album since the group’s inception in 1988 – and their 7th release on Tapete Records.
After a three-month tour of the UK and Europe, the all embracing sounds of The Telescopes return with a lean blitz of seditionary hits. Take a jolt of Static Charge and step beyond the realm of natural vision. Stone age beats, outsider sounds, low end disturbance unite in resistance to the new weirdness of existence.