Reviews

How do you get back at your goose-stepping, trance-trekking fascist oppressors? By dragging your buzz-saw off it’s hook in the garage, coupling it up to a distortion pedal, feeding it through your synthesizer and assaulting the whole bally lot of them with beat after beat of throbbing hardcore ear gristle and some razor-sharp strikes to their ghastly mainstream glamour. It’s a violence you do with sound. Throw in some guitar, a little feedback, a little noise and some squealing oscillation. Continue Reading

Folk played with a firm hand is much like the regular sort, only so much more, you know, firm, sure of itself, the kind of folk that would lead in a handshake. Which might sound like little in the scheme of things – being stuck with a feather twice as hard is still just being struck with a feather after all – but it can make the world of difference. That the Cave Singers all come from more affirmative backgrounds Continue Reading

R N’BEDROOM is back. Only this time it’s prised open the door of the bedroom, kicked off its bedroom slippers, torn off its bathrobe, slipped downstairs and headed straight for the kitchen where it’s thrown open the door of the refrigerator and proceeded to stand stark-bollock-naked in front of a dazzling neon shower shaking its ass and flapping its scrotum back and forth to some kick-ass tune or other. In terms of where it stands in relation to Mercury Music Continue Reading

Not sure where to start with this one. Brooklyn based, Panamanian Irish jazz singer flies over to London, goes out clubbing and slips Gilles Peterson a copy of one of his demos. Peterson chap is dutifully bowled over and tickled pink by Panamanian man’s stunning vocal version of Trane’s classic ‘Equinox’ (not featured on this album) and immediately signs the scabby bastard to his thriving young indy label, Brownswood. Stir in some typically virile word of mouth marketing and internet Continue Reading

At time of writing I’m reminded me the line from ‘Eleanor Rigby’ (sung and rehashed for the sake of this album by souly Merseybeat combo, The Real Thing): ”Just Who Is It For?” And I sit here repeating it to myself in the hope the answer suddenly erupts in a shower of clarity, dispelling the mists of doubt in my mind about why, when and how this album ever got made in the first place. Is it a Beatles covers Continue Reading

Who’d have thought the demise of gonzo-noize punk band the Test Icicles would give rise to a black Ed Harcourt. Because that is exactly what you’ve got, minus the violent mutton-chops and Radio 2 flowing through his veins; Wogan would, afterall have his gentle Irish whimsy turning somersaults over the robust urban vernacular and the precarious mental stability of chief Champion fella, Dev Hynes – a fiery, uninhibited cauldron of neurotic energy, lyrical romance and knitted-sweaters. Recorded in Omaha by Continue Reading

So what is The Duke Spirit’s problem? As much praise as we lavish on them – as we did with their debut and as we yet will with this, the follow up – we can’t shake the assertion that they have one. Look at their constituent parts; technically they’re a remarkable renegade retro rock ‘n’ roll treasure trove – gold plated to fuck. And speaking of which, they’re certainly built with that in mind too. Sleazy, hip-commanding momentums arrive track Continue Reading

“Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma!?”. It’s the query on the tip of many a tongue right now. Actually, it really is, more so than you might think. Rather improbably, New York’s roulette wheel garage-indie kids (and then some), Vampire Weekend, have become a cause célèbre for 2008, going so far as to intrigue the curious end of the mainstream and become a pin badge for experimentalism. There is certainly an aspect of ‘well, it’s a harebrained illogical Continue Reading

You can pretty much gage from the fact that about 9 out of 10 Radiohead fans* don’t even know that the modern virtuoso guitar-hero with the awkward fringe, Jonny Greenwood, has a life outside the band, that what he does do must surely be credible to his own indulgences and counter to mainstream logic (even the mainstream that his own band belongs to), if nothing else. And you’d of course be right. His first solo release was the soundtrack to Continue Reading

It’s nice, at least, to hear her voice. Ever the contrary one, rather than properly following up ‘The Greatest’ and buoying her now slowly but steadily rising star, she chooses to put out her second full record of cover versions. This is not as a straight cop out as one might think though, rest assured we’re not even in the same hemisphere as that recent Radio 1 anniversary abomination; bands going through the motions, sapping life out of standards without Continue Reading