Bloody Head have been lurking at the fringes for some ten years now, occupying a greasy, hard-to-clean crevice where noise-rock and psychedelia begin to intermingle. In this time they’ve tottered, threatened, collapsed and cajoled, their unexpected incursions akin to having a mysterious, slightly cracked ‘character’ glom onto you at the pub. Like said pub weirdo, they charm and bemuse and recount tall tales, all while a violent sense of mania flickers intermittently behind the eyes.
Bend Down and Kiss the Ground comes hot on the heels of last year’s excellent Perpetual Eden, and hews close to that album’s rangier, slightly-more-streamlined sound. Things remain ugly and warped, but they’re keeping up their attempts at sprucing and spritzing: submitting…
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…”Microwave,” the 1989 track from Japanese singer Kyoko Koizumi, opens with a plasticky creak and a kitchen timer ring. Adding in crunchy guitar samples, a thudding drum machine and a house-inspired keyboard solo, the chart-topping vocalist embraced the playful spirit that defined Japan’s experimental ’80s genre, known as techno kayō, or techno pop. Positioned on the B-side of the new vinyl-only compilation, Techno Kayō Vol. 1: Japanese Techno Pop 1981-1989, “Microwave” proves that this sometimes-underestimated genre still has the power to surprise.
Lovingly compiled by Toshihito “Dubby” Maeyama (owner of Onda records) and Antal Heitlager (co-founder of Amsterdam’s renowned Rush Hour label), Vol. 1 sets out to establish…
As an artist who tries to present your art in more forms than one, there are so many obstacles in front of you, particularly if you try to present a certain concept or concept through it. It not only requires a ton of talent but also hours of hard work to make something sensible out of it.
Producer, singer, rapper, and visual artist Quadeca is one such artist who started out by presenting his work through YouTube, whose previous work which slowly took him to a spot at last year’s Coachella Music Festival. Now, Quadeca is coming with his latest concept album and a feature film Vanisher, Horizon Scraper, through which he presents a concept, as he puts it, “about a man who sets sail alone in search of freedom but is unknowingly drifting toward destruction”.
Congolese guitarist Kiala Nzavotunga began his career playing in Le Grand Kalle’s Africa Jazz band, but he became tired of the regime in the DRC and relocated to Nigeria in the ’70s, joining Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80 and later forming the African-French Afrobeat group Ghetto Blaster.
The second album with his Afroblaster collective, One Race (Tribute to Hilaire Penda) is dedicated to the titular Cameroonian bassist who inspired and supported countless African artists and musicians worldwide throughout his life. For example, in the ’90s Penda collaborated with Mory Kanté, Tala André Marie, Salif Keita, Kassé Mady Diabaté and Amadou Balaké while based in London. Undoubtedly, Penda also left his mark on Kiala, and this can be heard in the new…
On Mahku, her striking debut for Nils Frahm’s LEITER label, Manizeh Rimer bridges ancient devotion and the smoother edges of contemporary spiritual jazz. Born in Karachi, raised in Switzerland, based in west London – where in 2022 she opened the Love Supreme Projects’ yoga and chanting centre, taglined “ancient practices for current times” – Manizeh brings an open-hearted rigour to the album’s eight chants. Co-produced with the visionary, NYC-based ganavya, who features on three tracks and with whom Manizeh frequently collbaborates when playing in London, this rather stunning debut presents Manizeh’s longtime chanting practice with a tender intimacy, more offering than performance.
The album opens with ‘Ashem Vohu’, a 3,000…
Inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech — articulating freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear — trumpeter Dave Douglas frames Four Freedoms as both political echo and musical proposition.
Although the quartet is geographically dispersed — Marta Warelis, Nick Dunston and Joey Baron residing in Europe, Douglas based in New York — the album sounds anything but remote. Distance, instead, sharpens focus. What emerges is a newly formed working band whose cohesion rests on shared vocabulary and intent rather than physical proximity, its music animated by alert listening and collective purpose.
That sense of shared language is anchored…
…Now 56 years old, Nobukazu Takemura’s first album in ten years knot of meanings is a natural (and more mature) extension from his early works like Child’s View (1994), Child and Magic (1997) and Funfair (1999). In knot of meanings, he evolves within and away from “tinkertoy electropop,” a genre he has pioneered and developed for the last three decades. While he has changed, Takemura still nonetheless marshals creative force through the memory of youth.
Over two decades ago, Dusted reviewed Takemura’s Sign and described Takemura’s style as a “sort of cartoonish hip-hop that your stuffed animals might listen to if you left the room, Toy Story style.” Of course, so much in the world has shifted since then, including Takemura.
What if insomnia were a great black black ball of smoke, drifting above thoroughfares, slowly unfurling into ovoid shapes before spreading its tentacles across the land? What if it were to descend upon the general populace, creeping insidiously lower and lower until it cloaked local buildings and was inhaled by those below? What if it became virtually indistinguishable from the night? Yuki Murata’s video for Takahiro Kido‘s title track may be seen as a metaphor, but the subject might be extended to depression, apathy, or even the state of the world today. The music follows suit: foreboding, patient, enveloping. On this track, Kido is joined by other members of Anoice, who will reappear throughout the set. Insomnia contains tracks with the full band and…
Chicago-born and Springfield, Illinois-based blues and soul man Charles Tiner bursts out of your speaker with the kind of unrelenting power that immediately commands attention. It’s his overpowering organ and a potent voice to match. The aptly named Good Soul grabs tight and never lets go. The soloists in Tiner’s band, whether from four different lead guitarists, tenor saxophonist Theo Fisher, or harmonicist Chris Camp, match his fire too. This gospel-infused, roof-raising session will arouse even the most slumberous types. Yet there is little spiritual fare. Only the oft covered “Don’t Let the Devil Ride” qualifies. The rest of the tracks have their roots in the blues, both musically and topically, as Tiner sings mostly about survival, requited and unrequited love,…
Black Doldrums’ set at the 2025 Fuzz Club Festival is being immortalised on wax with this super-limited live album release. The London-based band founded by Kevin Gibbard and Sophie Landers fall somewhere between dark neo-psych intensity and gothic post-punk melancholy that’s all the more powerful live on stage.
Their first appearance at the Fuzz Club Festival – which takes place every year at the Effenaar in Eindhoven, the Netherlands – was in support of their latest studio album ‘In Limerence’, released in late 2024. Their discography-spanning set comprised five tracks from the new album (‘Hideaway’, ‘In Silence’, ‘Dying For You’, ‘Tarantula’ and ‘Painting Smiles’), two from their 2022 debut full-length Dead Awake…
Scott McCloud (Girls Against Boys, Soulside, Paramount Styles, AGRIO) release his debut solo LP Make It To Forever via God Unknown Records. Starting in the late Eighties Scott was the guitarist for Washington DC’s post-hardcore band Soulside (Dischord) before moving to NYC and co-founding Girls Against Boys (Touch & Go, DGC) in the Nineties.
The album was recorded by Dimitris Dimitriades at Zero Gravity studios in Athens, Greece and initially conceived as an experiment and time capsule, stripped down raw recordings on acoustic guitar and voice with minimal adornment. Over time, and several visits to Athens, the song sketches were fleshed out with a variety of musical guests with the intent of maintaining the vulnerable…
Though little-known in America prior to 2000, Thee Michelle Gun Elephant formed in Japan back in 1991 and began playing raucous garage rock & roll inspired by the Stooges, Thee Headcoats, the Who, and MC5. Futoshi Abe’s thrashy guitar riffs propel the fast-paced, hard-hitting tunes over the driving rhythms of Kouji Ueno’s thick bass grooves and Kazuyuki Kuhara’s heavy backbeat. Yusuke Chiba’s mod, raspy vocals, alternately sung and screamed out mostly in Japanese, hold the whole thing together with a rough-as-rock-gets swagger.
Initially, Thee Michelle Gun Elephant’s sound was derived from British punk and blues. The band recorded their first EP, Wonder Style, in 1995. They soon followed up with their debut album, Cult Grass Stars, recorded in London with…
In January 2021, unassuming clubbers looking for a Saturday night out at Taipei’s FINAL might’ve been surprised to encounter Taiwanese drone-doom duo Scattered Purgatory flooding the room with noise, in what was billed as their last performance. Yet the duo had already been toying with the boundary between the city’s rock and electronic scenes; guitarist Lu Jiachi, who cut his teeth in the stoner rock band Sleaze, dabbled in deconstructed club music throughout the late 2010s, eventually putting out tracks for local labels like JIN, OverMyBody, and Sea Cucumber. Five years after that cacophonous “farewell” show, the band is back with an album that builds on their foundation of Earth-esque guitar-and-bass rumbling, incorporating more bite-sized song…
Portland-based duo Natural Magic’s II was the final vinyl release that Keith McIvor aka JD Twitch put into production before his untimely departure in late September ’25.
“Having been a long time lover of everything krautrock, space rock, experimental and psychedelic it seems more than fitting that he leaves us this LP as his parting gift; because this sublime album is all these things wrapped up into one and much more.
The album’s opening track “Galaxy Builder”, with its driving tempo, monolithic bass and screaming guitars might give the impression we’re about to hear a Neu for the 21st Century, but no, by the 2nd track we’re already on the first of several wild detours into uncharted territories…
CBGB’s was the center of the N.Y.C. punk explosion, as well as a welcoming place to play for all the artists and bands who followed in the wake. CBGB: A New York City Soundtrack 1975-1986 is a four-disc set that seeks to paint a picture of the original scene as it burst out into the open as well as detailing the various sounds and movements, like no wave and hardcore, that were born in the ensuing years. All the groups one would hope for are here, represented by slightly deeper cuts — Talking Heads’ sprightly live version of “A Clean Break” for one — along with a ton of lesser-known bands and a healthy dose of super-obscure ones. It’s the kind of collection where even someone with a healthy knowledge of the scene will be constantly surprised. One surprise element…
There are some notable firsts for UK singer/songwriter/guitarist Laurence Jones’ On My Own. It’s not only his debut on the blues-rocking artist’s own, recently established label (Ron Records), but the only instance in his eight title catalog recorded entirely in solo acoustic mode. It’s also his most personal statement.
Most of these changes to the once fully plugged-in, some might say over-amped, and roaring attack Jones typically favored are integral to continuing his career dealing with Crohn’s disease. It’s an ailment he has suffered from for years and has become a spokesman for. According to his notes, the physical toll of leading a band and constant touring was not something he could continue due to the illness sapping his energy.
It’s been four-and-a-half years since hearing from Harlem-based vocalist and guitar slinger Solomon Hicks (no longer using “King” to precede his first name) on his album, Harlem. Now in his late twenties, Hicks’s sound continues to progress. When many of us were first introduced to him about a decade ago, we reveled in his clean, no pedals sound and pure, soulful Sam Cooke-like voice. He came across as an ‘old soul’ in a young man’s body, with a handsome smile, dressed to the nines. At that time, he was playing mostly covers, and many of us were projecting what he might sound like with original material.
That core of his sound and propensity to lean on covers remains intact, but his sound is now shrouded in electronica and a bit of gadgetry…
Was it a matter of timing, or simply living in the shadow of giants, that has kept saxophonist Charles Tyler off most listeners’ radars? Born in Kentucky in 1941 and raised in Indianapolis, Tyler first gained recognition through his association with Albert Ayler. After relocating to Cleveland in the early ’60s, the two became fast friends, and Tyler’s fiery saxophone can be heard on Ayler’s early ESP-Disk recordings Bells (1965) and Spirits (1965). He soon stepped forward as a leader with Charles Tyler Ensemble (1966) and Eastern Man Alone (1967), two albums that have drifted in and out of print, perhaps casualties of a moment when Ayler and Ornette Coleman’s groundbreaking work dominated the conversation and left little room for similarly adventurous voices.
Talk Show is a collaboration between two interesting figures in the underground NYC jazz scene. One half of the duo is Steph Richards, a trumpeter with a lengthy history in building multimedia performances combining disparate elements of art to create buzzy performance pieces. The other half is Qasim Naqvi, best known for being the drummer for Dawn of Midi, an acoustic group who opened a couple of dates for Radiohead on the 2016 A Moon Shaped Pool tour.
Richards’ work is characterized by providing a hook of some sort. There’s always something going on, be it choreography, experimental film or something else entirely. 2019’s Supersense, a collaboration with Jason Moran, Kenny Wollesen and Stomu Takeishi, was a live performance…
kwaNTU feels less like an album and more like an encounter. It brings together Madala Kunene, a significant figure within the Zulu guitar tradition, and Sibusile Xaba, one of South Africa’s most visionary contemporary guitar voices, in a meeting shaped by trust, listening and shared history. There’s a quiet confidence to the music — unhurried, grounded and deeply attentive — as the two guitars speak to one another rather than compete. Kunene’s playing carries the weight of experience and lineage; Xaba responds with openness and warmth, and together they share a mutual sense of spiritual inquiry. The album breathes, allowing space for nuance, silences and gentle shifts in mood. True to its name, kwaNTU centres life force over spectacle.