Month: August 2003

Whether you like it because it’s swatched in big glittery clouds of kitsch nostalgia and post-modernized up to the nines by actually being on Norman Cook’s increasingly vital Southern Fried Records – or whether you like it simply becasue it’s simply a very good song, Elton’s Johns 1977 ‘Are You Ready For Love?’ looks set to be a stunning hit for the old git regardless. Originally recorded with Thom Bell at the legendary Philadelphia International Studios (famous for the OJs Continue Reading

With a punchy puppet-driven video directed by Alex Moulton of EyeballNYC and Thomas Sontag, Skint release Tiga’s ‘Hot In Herre’ – already having done the rounds as a fairly successful limited edition 12“ Studio !K7 release. So who the hell is he? Montreal’s Tiga sold over 200,000 copies of his remake of Corey Hart’s ’80s cornball classic, “Sunglasses At Night,“ is owner of Turbo Records and has remixed everyone from Bran Van 3000 to Cabaret Voltaire and Felix Da Housecat Continue Reading

Things always seem to ring so very true with Elbow, like their life story’s already worn down the nib of the pen from bolding and underlining every word. You talk of struggles for recognition, that decade-long slog against adversity leading to the overdue release of their sterling debut ‘Asleep In The Back’ has already been well documented. You regularly talk of Second Album Syndrome, having your whole life to collect your thoughts for your first and then being surreptitiously dumped Continue Reading

“This album is a beginning, says Third Eye Blind’s Stephan Jenkins, of Out Of The Vein, the San Francisco quartet’s first new album in over three years. There’s been enough of a break that it isn’t a continuation. We’ve spent some time soul-searching, getting back to the nitty gritty.“ And when he says the ‘nitty gritty’, he really means the ‘nitty gritty’. According to Third Eye Blind writer and producer Stephan Jenkins, ‘Out Of The Vein’ album sessions mark the Continue Reading

Phil Kieran. He Aint Heavy. He’s Ginger. Collaborations with Belfast based Product Deluxe, Slide and BASIC and Kieran’s own club night Sector One (now gone) have seen the mighty ginger swinger played regularly alongside such notables as Richie Hawtin, Umek and Justin Roberston. Still only 25 and he’s released records on everything from Electrix, Mob and Eukabreaks, PIAS, Bugged Out, Turtle Trax and now Skint. So what’s the  Irish ‘beat freak’ up to now? Well he’s just released ‘The Bomb’ – Continue Reading

Part of the fun culture fall-out, Freq Nasty is the kind of guy who can lop out his lap top and let spill a killer roll of shattering breaks and beats in the time it takes most others to say ‘it’s bangin’. A limited EP featuring 4 tracks from Freq Nasty’s forthcoming album, Bring Me The Head Of Freq Nasty (due to be released on Skint Records on 15 September 2003) this is a sampler that alone outstrips by a Continue Reading

The first single from the soon to be released ‘Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts’ on Groom Disques, Run Into Flowers sees dusky French duo Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau run headlong into moving, fuzzy techno. Sparse, minimalist and with only the faintest whisper of a vocal melody, the single combines european style and grace with dry as ice noize music. Backed by some cooky, ambient remixes by Jackson and some frankly noisy ones by KG, the single just goes Continue Reading

Whereas Norah Jones’ voice is the sound of half-light, dusky and seductive,former labelmate Rachel Loshak is a brighter, less original but nevertheless charming addition to the gentle wave of acoustic based chamber-pop currently washing over the airwaves. English-born, New York-based Loshak’s new album ‘Mint’ combines a sense of intimacy, with arrangements and production that pull it away from jazz toward a slightly more US college radio based sound, so that tracks such as ‘Rain’ ‘The Dreamer’ and ‘I Know I Continue Reading

This album might be out of time, but it’s certainly not out of place. That’s to say that it is still relevant, with its blood-stained bilious tirades against the ongoing evils of the world how could it not be, but that its fires were lit a long time ago. Again, that’s not to say they burn any less fiercely now, just that some things never change. There’s an almost archaic sense to everything here, the raw materials were certainly harvested Continue Reading