Somewhat cruelly cast aside by the phenomenally successful XL Recordings in 2003 (one time home of Basement Jaxx, Lemon Jelly, White Stripes, Raconteurs, Prodigy, Tapes n Tapes et al), Dubai’s Christian Craig Robinson proves that the vast majority of ‘vital’ and ‘happening’ of things are not occurring in the most ‘vital’ and ‘happening’ of places. His third album release on his own ‘Faith and Industry’ records is a beautifully freaky jumble of shamelessly upbeat and effervescent electro-pop (‘Go Go Go’), Continue Reading

The whole idea of a ‘prepared piano’ sounds a bit preposterous, and not least a little pompous, but what do you expect of a man who has studied classical piano for ten years, played ‘rapturous’ support to Iceland’s off-kilter experimentalists, Múm and lives in one of those secluded and darkly animated forests more traditionally associated with Bjork videos and the Brothers Grimm. So what is ‘prepared piano music’? Well it’s not the kind of thing your average Blue Peter presenter Continue Reading

The shoegaze phenomenon has, if you could raise your retinas high enough to see, recently enjoyed somewhat of a re-birth, or at the very least a re-run, like a resident spirit still trudging the halls endlessly, gaze locked on his shackles – perhaps its actually just that we’ve all become perceptive mediums of late. Rising like an agoraphobic phoenix from the flames, started in the London club Sonic Cathedral and marked most recently by My Bloody Valentine’s reignited and victorious Continue Reading

You know when you’re up there, right up there, on the lip of elation? You daren’t think there could ever be a purer happiness, you’re like a dog with his head out the window of a pimped monster truck thundering down the north face of the Eiger, endorphins whistling through your whiskers like darts of pleasure. Thomas Tantrum look pitifully down on you and your stunted emotions. You make them sad. What are you, dead inside? This is a remarkably Continue Reading

On the basis of her classy debut album, ‘Words Came Back To Me’ we said the 15 year-old’s songs were of such precocious, able-bodied wisdom that she could qualify for a free bus-pass and help with her winter-fuel bills, and we haven’t changed our mind. Still only 16 and still rustling up note after note of silky, soft downtempo and feathery, astral jazz, ‘This Storm’ makes a marked, but not dramatic departure from the cosy sophistication and Starbucks froth of Continue Reading

Difficult to imagine that The Vines began their career in the dancey, fruity, stripey enclaves of cult rave independent, XL Recordings when their ‘Factory’ seven-incher became NME’s ‘Single of the Week’. Since then, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag, the band pioneering 2002’s garage-rock revival with the massively influential, ‘Highly Evolved’ and then shooting off into a slipstream of the press’s own relentless hype. Next was the band’s foray into psychedelic, Paisley pop – ‘Winning Days’ – a Continue Reading

Jennings is no Willy, Mason that is. The singer-songwriter oeuvre is rarely all that esoteric and fine though the proponents it offers up and celebrates every year or two may be, you tend to get the idea very quickly. A ripple in the flavouring and a couple of memorable choruses is really the best you can hope for and all they often aspire to. But Jennings, already well established in the US over 10 years of working his way up Continue Reading

It’s not an unremarkable history, I’ll say that. Born in Fife, Scotland and kickstarting his career in the late 60s under the pseudonym, John St Field, Leven staggered through the 70s and 80s, compromised by a heroin addiction, an inability to speak for two years, a protracted stint with a psychedelic/celtic punk band called Doll By Doll and a collaboration with Glen Matclock of the Sex Pistols. The years have however been kind and Leven has thus far released 12 Continue Reading