‘Remnin Park’ – a fictional love story about two people whose two worlds will forever keep them apart, a story of separation that might well have described the 25 year musical divisions within the Toronto band itself. Michael, Margo and chums were never your standard ranch stash; too much weary ethereal melancholy for that, two-parts dusty Americana to three-parts gothic with bucketloads of creepy psychedelia thrown in for good measure. It was band pulling in two directions: the familiar and Continue Reading

To be honest I have really no idea what ‘glitch’ is. I have a vague understanding of what dubstep is (with some prompting), but to my reckoning this about as remote from traditional R’n’B as the Seychelles Islands are from Morecambe. When I think of R’n’B I think of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and even, god forgive me, the likes of Beyonce Knowles shaking her booty and busting her lungs about lurrve. It’s about enormously virile black men with tongues Continue Reading

I grew up listening to indie music and now if I were to listen to, say, the guitar part of an indie song I could probably fill in the kind of bass and synth that would be accompanying it, and the same applies to just hearing the synth part etc. African guitar pop, however, is a different kettle of fish. I am almost always smitten by the conflagrations of rhythm and at how each instrument tries to break away from Continue Reading

The longevity of any decade tends to be determined by two things: as few gorky fashion disasters as humanly possible and a non-negotiable preset of just 10 years. Anything after 10 years is another decade entirely. The 90s were not the 80s plus a few years extra, in the same way the 1960s were not the 1950s 12” extended play. Not that Bearcraft seems to have noticed. For Bearcraft, the world is still driving around in red Audi Quattros, boffins Continue Reading

Breakout single ‘Opening Doors’ was a pretty little spider’s web of tinkling, pizzicato synth sequences, soft, spongy bass dabs and layers of dewdrop honey vocals. It was hopeful, eager, bright and unfathomably breezy – the sound of someone leaping out of bed, ripping open the curtains and joining a jostling throng of merry woodland creatures in a chorus of eternal sunshine. But even those enjoying the fruits of fairytale endings seldom have the excuse of being this happy, much less Continue Reading

If your own trumpet is lying around then why not blow it, that’s what I say? For Ninja Tune that trumpet time is now. Not content with releasing the mammoth, the marvellous and the mighty 4 CD Box Set ’20 Years of Beats and Pieces’ last month, the label that has the edgiest, elegant roster in Britain today serves up another celebration, this time re-visited, re-whittled, re-vised and re-served by King Cannibal, aka Dylan Richards. 74 minutes of all the Continue Reading

There’s an icy and squally haar that descends on the thoroughly downbeat sea-town, Hull every winter; usually after Christmas when everything there was ever to look forward to has jumped on a ferry to Zeebrugge and the last of the post offices in Hessle has been robbed. The south is not only beautiful, it’s a darn sight warmer too, which is likely to be why Heaton, always cruelly torn away from one Northern sea-port or another, took the least injured Continue Reading

Here’s a perky enough proposition: born in Oklahoma, raised in New Orleans and currently making a home in the City of Angels (that’s a really cool way of describing Los Angeles, between you and me). Let’s face it, most folks are unlikely to have heard of the band but ‘Future Sons and Daughters’ is their third album and what’s on offer is this: a sultry, wandering, roadworthy collection of tunes as soft and engaging as a lover’s whisper and as Continue Reading