Reviews

Furrowing the major label ground of gargantuan stadium-sized rock ploughs California-based AudioVent. Inspired by a rather strange variety of rock music both old and nü, Audiovent are purported to delve full force into the art of songwriting and sound experimentation. A bit like Stereolab, then? Well no – not really. With their burly blood relationship to Incubus’s Brandon Boyd and Mike Einziger, AudioVent songwriting nucleus, Jason Boyd  Ben Einziger turn out a record that whilst palatable enough for your average Continue Reading

Sometimes the sun shines. Sometimes it might just make you smile. And even if it doesn’t the rain might hold off till you’re on the bus. Sometimes your toast will land butter side up. Sometimes you’ll be kissed and linger in it for a while. Sometimes your day isn’t such a scattered trail of strife, financial discord and regret – but even if it is sometimes a laugh will make it all feel better, for a while. Think about it. Continue Reading

10 years in the making and an introspective, quieter sub-text to 1992’s dirt digging US album, UP is a return to the private porthole of Gabriel’s often remarkable imagination. And without hogweed to spoil proceedings – giant or otherwise – the album is a chiming declaration of positive intent. Gabriel describes the album as ‘more vertical than horizontal’ a ‘bookend record’ looking at the beginning and the end of a life as opposed to the middle, reflecting on the life Continue Reading

Just released on the marvellously independent TOAST label, Munkster’s debut EP ‘A Thousand’ energetically prefigures their scheduled show at the soon to be reopened (and legendary) Marquee Club on October 10th. Championed by the likes of Clare Sturgess and all at XFM and with swathes of sultry atmospherics and open-heart surgery vocals, Munkster offer a slightly off-kilter, skewed take on similarly spectral bands like Coldplay and Starsailor. Gutsier and heavier than either of these bands, though and with swelling prog Continue Reading

KMFDM, Einstürzende Neubauten, and Laibach all set the stage for the onslaught of German Industrial bands in the early 80’s.  Bands such as Rammstein and Pigface continued to carry the torch through the 90’s with as much vitality as their predecessors.  Another group of industrial minded musicians from Germany, Das Ich, take a similar approach to creating a mechanized and vile sound while continuing to remain independent from the confines of the industrial formula on their latest release, Anti’ Christ. Continue Reading

It makes you wonder, how much stuff actually matters. Time and place stuff, the alignment of the planets, random courses crossing, ley lines, manifestations of energy, all that bollocks. Because wherever he was 13 years ago (even 7 to be fair) along with his 3 supposed spiritual musketeers, he isn’t anymore. And it would appear that the once iconic Stone Rose has also tossed aside any chance of redeeming himself from the late Brit-pop cash cow that was The Seahorses, Continue Reading

Two years on from the surprise Mercury Music Prize nomination, Little Black Numbers and feisty yet tender songbird, Kathryn Williams releases ‘Old Low Light’ – a delicately profound and moody exploration of modern living – a kind of Bridget Jones in the country with her wellies on. As twisty-turny as an autumn leaf – Crud rates the album as one of the best of 2002 . It’s sparse, it’s pastoral and it’s often wickedly amusing – not unlike a boiled Continue Reading

Smarter than the average head-banging bear, Montreal’s Pulse Ultra crank up the paranoia and tricky time-signatures to make a credible (if slightly unremarkable) stab at the really rather ripe pop-metal market. Largely compacted into 3 minute punches, tracks like ‘Acceptance (Phase 1 )’ and ‘Void’ capture all the gothic sorcery needed to heave a metal band into the brutal sonic equivalent of a Lord of The Rings style quest for enlightenment. Lyrically coming perilously close to the interstellar conscience of Continue Reading

Belonging to that same ‘I’m not going to open my mouth too much for fear of something ordinary falling out’ bronkin’ band of brothers as Mike Nesmith and Beck Hansen – Jay Farrar spits and drawls his way through a gritty 5 tracks of visceral alterna-country; inebriate but tuneful, incisive but happy. Pitched somewhere between Neil Young and Bob Dylan, a deliriously psychedelic Mike Nesmith and with the awkward tenderness of a young Michael Stipe, ‘ThirdShiftGrottoSlack’ is four tracks of Continue Reading

Previously referred to as “the heaviest band in rock”, one might (erroneously) predict that the guitars opening “Diamond”, are playing tangled barre chords with raging dual kick drums, grinding bass, and a singer imitating Tom Waits, or his uncle with the scissors down his throat.Here is a band that easily disproves the concept that “weighty” or “big” is ever really down to the amount of distorted guitar tracks on a single number, and shows, again, the overall sensation of the Continue Reading