Even though countless similarities in style can be heard between this debut solo effort and releases from his band that doesn’t mean to say that Fyfe Dangerfield is just carting out a catalogue of tracks deemed not worthy of the next Guillemots album. Instead of the sporadically charged movements that you might expect from his band, ‘Fly Yellow Moon’ takes a more mature, melodic stroll. Recorded in only 5 days the album is not the ramshackle collection of half baked indie-folk Continue Reading

On the evidence of this who cares whether it’s a nanny, tranny or even fanny in Manhattan as New York Hip producer and all round sonic activist, Tony Simon does what al queda failed to do: he knocks it down, he builds it up and adds layers of sweeping horns, orchestras and multiple beats to create something that whilst not ‘grabbing you by the heart’ as some critics suggest does engage you in an epic cerebral challenge; more a Scrabble Continue Reading

Brooklyn DJs Rupture and Matt Shadetek have hooked up for new collaborative effort after a European tour revealed something of a mutual appreciation thing going on between the pair and a soft spot for mad gully beats. Their spacey reef adventures features a good few blasts of tropical heat, some Top 40 bounce, some gruelling drum and bass, some hot and sweaty dance hall and some richly grimey dubstep. The liner notes of the full-length reference a strange, Waterworld-like future, Continue Reading

That Thavius Beck – he has a right mouth on him, always cussin’ and the like. And just how does he manage to squeeze all those words into such a small window of time? It’s like he’s working at 405 RPM – 405 revelations per minute. In fact there are likely to be broadband speeds in Japan unable to cope with this level of speed and bandwidth. In fact you need fibre optic ears to even begin to appreciate the Continue Reading

Rather than kickstart some rambling and disparaging assessment of the Coldplay-stroke-Snow Patrol-stroke-Stadium Rock conundrum that follows Athlete around like some deeply unpleasant odour, let’s start by saying that Black Swan’s rousing and gently chipper collection of sweeping, grandiose, widescreen space tunes must rank as one of the most honest and unpretentious releases of the year. Not for Athlete the gallant baroque of the Shadow Puppet’s ‘Age of Understatement’ or the belligerent dysphasia of the Lip’s ‘Embryonic’ – just chiming and Continue Reading

Not since DFA 1979 bludgeoned their way through, dripping in testosterone and fuelled by damaged male pride, have we really had a band prepared to ditch the acoustic guitars and piano, and play it straight. There might not be anything much sadder than a broken heart, and much like the Canadian duo before them, Japandroids are channelling the primal through a no bullshit/bed-shaped filter. Sure, it pays to quietly lament (sometimes) but they aren’t prepared to hide behind misty-eyed, insipid Continue Reading

American bands have a hard time raging. Just look at Tom Morello, on the one hand screaming into some loudspeaker at some Rights rally or other and on the other participating in some cleverly concocted corporate mission to bag the Number One and Number Two slot on behalf of Sony Epic. When people like Morello cut the words ‘4 Real’ into their arm they do it using sterilized surgical instruments and a local anaesthetic. And when US bands say ‘Kill Continue Reading

Not sure I’m really comfortable with the recurring anti-folk moniker as I fail to see how any of this either subverts or challenges the usual celebration of all that’s trivial and rubbish in life as experienced by isolated loners and folks who are pathologically verbose or bookish in some way, as this is exactly how listens. I’m also a little perturbed by Brink’s unfathomable rewriting of Dylan’s legendary ‘I Shall Be Released’ during ‘Keep Your Head High’. And not even Continue Reading

Whilst this spunky Cheshire band is not quite as difficult to pin down as some would have us believe (somewhere between McFly and any one of the US bands crashing out of Drive Thru Records over the years), there’s a breezy and eager flush of excitement about them all the same. Sure the parallels drawn between songs like, ‘When I Break A Promise It Shatters’ with its tumultuous chorus breaking hearts everywhere from Widnes to Wilmslow and anything recorded by Continue Reading

Bleak, wailing walls of guitar melodies that harrow and sink and wallow, buried deep inside groundswells of resignation and despondence – it’s not a happy world The Twilight Sad inhabit. With shades of Editors’ grey monotony, James Graham’s dour vocals steeps ‘Forget the Night Ahead’ in a heavy storm of mournfulness.  It’s an album created in black and white; Graham’s sorrow and wistful reminiscence lashing against swathes of sonic melancholy in ‘Reflection In The Television’, bucking against coruscating eruptions in Continue Reading