Joining a growing pack of young experimental and occasionally psychedelic folksters and crust-makers that includes the magnificent Thirty Pounds Of Bone and The R.G Morrison (as well as mining a rich, canonical seam that features fellow Scot’s like Arab Strab, The Delgados and Mogmai as well as widescreen specialists like The Triffids) Glasgow’s accordion playing, tom-thumping, The Twilight Sad develop on the promise of last year’s critically acclaimed US-only EP by offering up the fiery, feisty and utterly compelling ‘Fourteen Continue Reading

There’s nothing wrong with a touch of nostalgia – hell, we don’t know where we’re going unless we know where we’ve been. Or some such. So go visit those old haunts, pull on that old t-shirt that really must have been less ripped-stretch-fit at some point, by all means, if it makes you feel better about yourself. Do what they do on the telly and call that girl who gave you her number 23 years ago. She’s happy and married Continue Reading

There’s an awful lot of noise being made around this album’s release about a return to form. We’re not so sure about that. A return perhaps to life before acoustic breakdowns (2005’s ‘Howl’, a not too unsuccessful foray off track into desert-baked Dylanisms), to club-sized riffs, tension, groaning, lump beats, sounding a little like the Jesus and Mary Chain from time to time and to the sense that leather-jackets are worn like uniform at all times, zipped at least the Continue Reading

A very interesting young man. An interesting young man with a thoroughly uninteresting fanfare by way of introduction but a fairly probing record in a genre dogged by a lack of exploration and true pioneering spirits. Born and raised in Toronto but ‘confirmed’ in New York City, this highly coveted producer has already worked with some fairly respected artists: The Bott Camp Click and Masta Ace to namecheck just a few. Port Authority though, is the Canadian’s first debut proper, Continue Reading

Savagely minimal stuff from the rephrasing, repitching, redrafting and realigning hands of Matt Edwards aka Radio Slave. Not the first Misch Masch collection, of course, first we had a bunch of stuff reheated by Tiefschwarz and then we had something reserved by the Freeform Five. Oh, and DJ Hell got in on the act too. But strangely enough, this might just be the most eclectic and surprising mixcake of them all. First coming to prominence for his unpredictable and absorbing Continue Reading

Blond Redhead’s previous form has been that they have had no discernable form. Physical form, that is. Their wonderful and highly acclaimed last record, their 4AD debut and starting point for many ‘Misery Is A Butterfly’, was an ethereal drift, select flashes of sound caught in a net, an endless forging of soft textures. You couldn’t tell where one shape necessarily ended and another began. And yet without you really noticing, like the gradual aging of a face, masses formed, Continue Reading

A heatwave wouldn’t be a heatwave without a brand new Beach Boys collection, and there’s certainly no signs of a drought on that front. And yet it would take a real cynic to be anything less than chuffed about it coming as this one does with no shortage of curios, new stereo mixes and a beautiful selection of songs from the criminally overlooked ‘Surf’s Up’ album including Don’t Go Near The Water, ‘Til I Die, Feel Flows (appearing on Jarvis Continue Reading

2006 saw Made Records attempt their second major assault on the dance and club worlds with a slew of eager releases that included iio and Jimmy James (not he of the Bitish Soul band, the Vagabonds but the chap who dresses up as Marilyn Monroe and Cher and came up with the decidedly chintzy ‘Jamestown’ record sometime last year – a bit like Joe Longthorn, only more unsettling). And what you have here is a kind of sampler album. It’s Continue Reading

Much is made of Emil Svanängen’s lo-fi credentials, and rightly so. Before he was Loney, Dear he was just Emil in his Stockholm bedroom or parent’s basement, and Just Emil In His Bedroom had a multi-track recorder and a thousand and one songs in his head. And these songs slowly made their way onto CDRs which entered thousands of people’s possession through sales made by the boy himself at train stations and the like, apparently, long before first UK indie Continue Reading