It’s probably a testament to the input of the then virtually unknown singer, Martina Topley Bird that the belligerent and handsomely wayward Tricky has had to employ the services of not one replacement but five for his eagerly-awaited follow-up to 1995’s, ‘Maxinquaye’ album. Yeah, I know it’s not a follow-up in the strictest sense of the word. There was the interesting, but vaguely short-changing collection of demos that made-up the ‘Nearly God’ album in 1996 (more notable for its collaborations Continue Reading

Regularly taking place at roof-top, terrace locations like Canvas in London, this well loved club event may no longer be the closely guarded secret it was, but it’s still a fiercely independent and innovative night packed to the beams with all manner of crazy and obstreperous techno and house heads. No not the kind of floor filling, club friendly crap you’re likely to find down your end of pier discos, but the more sparse, adventurous, trans-international fare traditionally dished up Continue Reading

He arrived in our imaginations a posturing glam-punk hybrid, high on amphetamines and squeezed into a pair of leopard skin trousers – and that’s kind of where he stays. The misty-eyed affection for Marc Bolan and John Lennon are patently still there in heaps, not least in the glittery kick-beats of unruly album opener, ‘Wannamama’, the faux electric orchestra of ‘You Don’t Gonna Run’ and the shameless sugar melt of ‘Semi-Babe’ and ‘Fountain of Lies’ but replacing the bluesy, rock Continue Reading

It seems it is the burden of every acoustic carrying youth to have their strumming hand branded with a hot-iron inscribed with the two most inevitable words in the English musical lexicon: Nick Drake. Of course, the name has long since carried any direct resonance or weight of its own, to the extent of now representing anything ‘not plugged in’. The name has become a byword for ‘folky, an epithet for introversion and a convenient sandwich ‘wrap’ for anything remotely Continue Reading

You can’t pronounce her name properly and, aptly, neither does her music trip off the tongue in any kind of conventional sense. Well, not your tongue. It lilts off hers, but then she, like her music, is a mystery, an enchanting whip of fantasy and fleeting reality, petite, dainty, unobtrusive. While Swedish chanteuse Lykke Li Zachrisson has her roots variously in glistening folk music, ambient electronica and cloud-hopping vocal pop, this is not an album that cries out to be Continue Reading

Asleep at heaven’s gate? That’s funny, because this sounds anything but snoozy to us. The heaven bit we get, there’s more than enough abounding gracefully in colourful stereo here to drown Rogue Wave in adjectives like ethereal, chimingly-angelic, halo-shaking and the like. And if we visualise them there’s an overwhelming white light gleaming out from behind them, that sort of thing, you know. Are they the wrong side of said gates? Possibly. Rattling their chains, scaling them perhaps, breaking into Continue Reading

Location, location, location. Location is key, everything in its right place and all that. From one of the most obvious examples – Sigur Ros’ affinity with the lunar landscapes of their Icelandic homeland – through to The Strokes’ allegiance with New York and The Libertines to London and, perhaps most appropriate in this instance, Brightblack Morning Light’s tipi-dwelling, wilderness psychedelia. Bands that have no sense of setting or context tend to lack identity and thus reason, with a few notable Continue Reading

If you ask me the perfect antidote to modern life and all of its complications is unlikely to be provided by of a couple of Massive Attack fans from Bristol, in much the same way that the answer to the Cluster Munitions Treaty agreed in Dublin is unlikely to have been resolved by the traditional Irish dancers laid on as entertainment, as impressive as their rigid upper bodies and precise foot movements clearly were to onlookers. And much the same Continue Reading

Turkish-Anglo chap and former Fridge man, Adem Ilhan does what his former band member refuses to do and compiles arguably his most assessable and straightforward album to date. That’s not to say that his last album, ‘Love and Other Planets’ wasn’t accessible, just that you needed a fairly complex route map to negotiate your way around its occasionally circuitous nu-folk tangents. This time it’s different. This time we get a glimpse of the man behind the blindingly complex arrangements and Continue Reading