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.
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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…
The Philadelphia collective Untethered embraces what its drummer Grant Calvin Weston calls “spontaneous creative composition,” which is another way of saying that the music the quartet plays is fully improvised. You could say that the group is making music from thin air, but that discounts the years of experience its members have spent listening, growing, and inventing.
So the air is quite thick, actually, teeming with countless elements from which their groove-oriented music draws. Weston, of course, is a deeply seasoned marvel, a musician who at 17 became a member of Prime Time, the paradigm-shifting electric band of the legendary saxophonist, composer, and thinker Ornette Coleman. He has gone on to work with…
There is a specific kind of bravery required to be “post-cool.” In an industry obsessed with the frantic energy of the new or the polished artifice of the established, Bristol’s The Lovely Basement have opted for a third path: a relaxed, literate nonchalance that feels less like a performance and more like a conversation. Their 4th album, Lowlands, is a shimmering collection that suggests the band isn’t “too old to care,” but rather old enough to know exactly what is worth caring about.
Released through Precious Recordings of London, Lowlands is an album that demands a shift in the listener’s internal metronome. It has been described as an easygoing listen, but don’t mistake that for background music. This is music that lowers your blood pressure…
As opening statements go, you can’t get much more gloriously emphatic than ‘Diyanye Ko’ which kicks off the fourth album from California-based African psych-rockers Orchestra Gold.
The hypnotic Bambara vocals of Mariam Diakite soar dramatically, Erich Huffaker peels off cosmic guitar licks like a cross between Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen and Mali’s Lobi Traoré. The saxophones of Patrick Cress and Luis Andrade surge with an unquenchable funk and the rhythm section grooves like a steamy night in Bamako. There’s no let-up in the intensity on the other eight tracks, either, ranging from the trance-like rhythms of ‘Baye Ass N’Diaye’ and ‘Abarika Kanuna’ to the heavy psyched-up blues pounding of ‘Djama Ko’. Like Cheikh Lô, Diakite is…
More than 25 years after Bruce Haack became a cult favorite, there were still corners of his discography waiting for proper reissues. Plenty of attention has been given to works like Electric Lucifer, Electric Lucifer: Book 2, and the wildly eccentric Haackula, but aside from early collections like Listen Compute Rock Home and Hush Little Robot, his music for children has often been overlooked. Shimmy Disc rectifies this matter with their reissue of 1975’s This Old Man, which was remastered by Kramer and released on vinyl for the first time in 50 years. This Old Man is something of a mirror twin to its predecessor, 1974’s Captain Entropy. Falling somewhere between the activity songs of the Dance, Sing, and Listen series and the lysergic visions of Electric Lucifer, both…
And so continues the Californian quartet’s mythic two-part journey. Horizons/West – the twelfth studio album from Thrice – might not have arrived quite as hot-on-the-heels of first parter ‘Horizons/East’ as some might have liked, but better late than never eh? Where 2021’s ‘Horizons/East’ opens with the soft glow of possibility, though, its counterpart crashes in with the aftermath. Less a sunrise, a warming haze of hope, and more the moment the sun disappears, the long shadow cast by the doubts that came before. If ‘Horizons/East’ asks what it means to believe, ‘Horizons/West’ asks what remains after belief has been tested, cracked, and dragged through the murky waters.
Opening track ‘Blackout’ feels like the negative…
Richmond, Virginia-based singer-songwriter Kyle Davis crafts an emotively resonant sound across Jericho, his seventh studio album. A seamless rock and folk cohesion envelops within themes of personal loss and the perseverance needed to overcome.
“As I look back on making Jericho, I realize that creating records is a form of therapy for me,” Davis says. “Not every song is entirely first-person, but the themes of grief, resilience and reflection are universal. I hope these songs help listeners feel a connection to their own journeys.” Davis is also joined by a very talented cast of musicians, re-uniting the team from his 1999 Sony debut, Raising Heroes.
Album opener “The Last Line” melds soul…
Kim Wilde released her brilliant and critically acclaimed brand new album Closer on Cherry Red Records at the beginning of 2025. We conclude 2025 with this expanded, deluxe edition featuring the original album along with an exquisite selection of exclusive bonus recorded in relation to Closer throughout 2025.
‘Closer’ was the follow-up to Kim Wilde’s massively successful 1988 album ‘Close’. While it captures the spirit and style of her earlier work, Kim’s new album introduces a modern perspective, blending nostalgic elements with contemporary sounds. Kim Wilde’s signature mix of pop, new wave, and rock-known for its infectious hooks, powerful vocals, and anthemic choruses-remains at the heart of her music, ensuring ‘Closer’ resonates with both…
Nearly three decades since their debut, Good Charlotte return with Motel Du Cap, a raw, heartfelt revival that bridges nostalgic pop-punk spirit with seasoned emotional depth.
From the grind of Waldorf, Maryland, to selling over 11 million albums worldwide, Good Charlotte didn’t play by the rules; they smashed them. With fists-in-the-air bangers like ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’, ‘I Just Wanna Live’, and ‘The Anthem,’ they wore their hearts like battle scars and never backed down.
There’s something poetic about a band rediscovering its spark in a place as dreamlike as the south of France. For Good Charlotte, it was a private wedding gig at the illustrious Hotel du Cap in 2023 that reignited the flame.
Released in 1989, Def, Dumb & Blonde is Debbie Harry’s third, solo, studio album.
Although Debbie Harry‘s popularity had decreased by the late ’80s, 1989 wasn’t a bad year for her at all. That year, Blondie’s former lead vocalist successfully portrayed a struggling singer on the brilliant but underrated CBS crime drama Wiseguy, and demonstrated that she could still have considerable fun in the studio.
Under the direction of hit producer Mike Chapman – who had worked with Blondie, as well as with everyone from Sweet to Scandal – Harry delivers an eclectic CD that isn’t in a class with a Blondie treasure like Parallel Lines but nonetheless has a lot going for it. Much of this new wave-ish pop/rock and European-flavored dance music…
In 2011, the venerable Cuneiform label released Flashpoint: NDR Jazz Workshop April ’69, an audio and video document of John Surman‘s live ten-piece jazz orchestra delivering five hard original tracks that reveal his canny depth and diversity as a young composer, arranger, and bandleader. The saxophonist was busy throughout 1969: He’d just completed recording his second album, How Many Clouds Can You See (released in 1970) and played on 11 additional albums in 1969, including John McLaughlin’s Extrapolation.
2025’s Flashpoints and Undercurrents amounts to a historic document. It contains the five selections from the 2011 release — here, all are extended takes — and replaces the video with a second audio disc from the same sessions that…
Having earlier issued ‘t Geruis material on Lost Tribe Sound, LAAPS, Line, and Quiet Details, it was perhaps inevitable that Daniël Jolan would one day do the same on Home Normal. After all, Ian Hawgood’s imprint is a natural fit for the kind of lo-fi ambient the music producer from Belgium traffics in. It’s not the first time Jolan’s brand of dusty music has entered the world, but The Kindest Encounters finds him bringing the style to an advanced degree of artistry. As the album plays, it’s almost impossible not to draw a parallel between it and the nostalgic feeling that sets in when faded colour photographs are viewed. Much as in that case, one feels in listening to his music as if the world presented is both familiar yet at the same time impossibly out of reach.
The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man, It’s Bloody Heavy is Rise Above, founded by former Napalm Death and Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, this is not idle hubris.
Yeah Man, It’s Bloody Heavy collects 10 tracks which were not originally released. The first band heard are Birmingham’s Heavyboots. They are followed by Band Of Mental Breakdown (also known as B.O.M.B.), Macbeth Periscope, Agatha’s Moment, Jessica’s Theme, Greenfly, Clemen Pull, Living Dead, Crimson Earth and Zacariah.
Heavyboots’ “Who Knows, Who Cares,” which kicks-off Yeah Man…, is primitively recorded but packs so much punch it transcends any…