Month: October 2006

Is this really the ninth in the series? Why, it seems like only yesterday. Whether they’re names you’ve heard of, or whether they’re not, the Ministry series continues to subject me, you and the world to does after dose of thumping, twisted beats and quirky, swinging vocals, this time from the two sides of Curtis Jones – the Chicago born electronic and house singer, songwriter, producer and all round groovy religious ass shaker. Launched during the Chicago house renaissance of Continue Reading

Fresh from his tours of duty with the likes of NSM, TY and Gum Drop, Randolph Matthews wraps his butter smooth tonsils around the sample led beats and breaks of trip-hoppy soul numbers like ‘Foolin’, ‘Mystery Rose’ and ‘Waves’. Very downtempo, gentle and as laid-back as palm trees in the breeze, ‘Strangers To The Ordinary’ isn’t a must-have record by any stretch of imagination, but it does have a sound that washes over you in the same silky way a Continue Reading

The Devastations are a velvety-blue 3-piece from Melbourne, Australia, the bar band in the after-hours hovel of regret and confusion at the back of your mind. They have, without a shadow of a doubt, ingested more Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds than you have had take away dinners, you wasters. In fact, frontman Conrad Standish looks like the bastard progeny of Mr Cave and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner, all pale chiselled features and aloof posture. And Karen Continue Reading

For all those who care Rocky, Diesel and Ashley Beedle are back. There might not be any David Byrne or ‘Lazy’ by way of shattering chart announcement but there is whimsical, wako-psycho in the making Tim DeLaughter of the Polyphonic Spree here to redraft Harpers Bizarre’s flower-waving ‘Witchi Tai To’ as a stomping, bell-tinkling psychedelic club anthem (bit like ‘Hole In My Shoe’ on uppers) and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner to add his own brand of hoarse gospel grammar to ‘interesting’ Continue Reading

Little K.T Tunstall, eh? In her sexy little knee high boots and her thigh-flashing cowgirl dress and her songs about love, longing and trying to find an umbrella. She’s lovely isn’t she? Her cheeky little, pixie face and her big fat, wiggly guitar and all those happy New Years spent rubbing shoulders with Joolz Holland and his Hootiliscious Jazz Band? And what’s more she got tonsils of steel t’boot. But what’s this? ‘Parental Advisory’? ‘Explicit Content’? I mean, we knew Continue Reading

There are three reasons why I don’t like ‘Nazi Girls’ by Poppy and the Jezebels (whose band members, the press release gleefully tells us, are all 14-15 years old). (i) I’m a humourless git with little appreciation of post-modern irony (ii) I can smell a third rate publicity campaign a mile off (iii) I actually remember too well the Nazi salutes I faced as a kid to be impressed by a bunch of pretentious wannabes trying on the whole fascist Continue Reading

When I walked into town and went to cross a road last Saturday, I half-expected to be knocked down by a car it was so busy. Then something extraordinary happened: I wasn’t. No car came and knocked me over, no one was speeding, no one came careering onto the curb smashed out on booze and drugs. You see, even though I expected it to happen, it didn’t. Same thing with the lottery that day. I was all smiled-up and certain Continue Reading

No ‘Show Me Heaven’ or ‘If Love Is a Red Dress (Hang Me in Rags)’ and some frightfully uncomfortable moments in which Ms Mckee makes some none-too-successful attempts to warm and cajole a fairly square and unresponsive crowd. Not what you deserve. Not what she deserves. We do have a version of that sexy ‘Lone Justice’ number ‘Shelter’ but apart from this one fair-to-middling example, ‘ Acoustic Tour 2006 Live’ is by no means a ‘hits’ album. Not that it Continue Reading

Kieran Hebden’s trademark is cheekily crafting the kinds of skewed-jazzy beats you simply have no way of second-guessing or remembering. He also has a rather tidy knack for creating sparkling, web-like musical threads of such magical peculiarity you could easily mistake them for the work of beat-boxing pixies. So just how long has he been sprinkling his fairy-dust over wares other than his own? Well, too long to remember. In his various and varied roles as artist, musician, live performer, Continue Reading

It’s already been said that even the average Kool Keith album is peppered with bizarre, disjointed, delusional or disassociated themes, concepts, and references. So imagine an album where Keith Mathew Thornton is well and truly hyping up his hugely ironical claims of being a former mental patient of Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, where he was treated for depression. Multiple personalities doesn’t even come into it. Have you any idea how many alter-egos this man has had? Keith Turbo, Keith Torg, Dr. Continue Reading