From the fervent hand-claps and miss-hit chord at the very beginning of ‘Kissing the Lipless’ to the plucked, petering daydream guitar at the close of ‘Those To Come’, The Shins’ second album is pristine to the point of textbook near-perfection. The tradition they set themselves with their revered debut, ‘Oh, Inverted World’, remains – namely that the most concentrated melodies are intoxicating, and best served gently. This is sparkling West Coast pop of the vintage kind, but it’s adept enough Continue Reading

From the cover, a black and white  shot of a hut in woodland, you would be forgiven for thinking that “A Parade.“ was a Grandaddy-esque slice of alt country whimsy – the hut however, turns out to be ‘Angel Fetus’ studios and the music, produced by U.S. experimentalists ‘Random Touch’, emerges as a stretch of abstract electronica. The tracks are oblique, like a series of digitally remastered Bowie outtakes from Hansa studios. The album is a grower – minimalist, expansive, Continue Reading

Championed by John Peel on its first release in 2003 and more than well acquainted with the odd comparison to Air and Zero 7, Noonakai are about as close to European as you’re likely to get this side of the English Channel. Not that I’m setting us Brits apart, or anything, but as master pie eaters, pudding fanatics and dumpling daredoers, you could hardly credit us with being broad-based promoters of subtlety and finesse. ‘All My Journeys’ and its pulsing Continue Reading

Talk of power in records – true power, the sort whose immediate effects require a medical diagnosis – comes oh so flippantly on a day to day basis. The truth in the vast majority of cases is that the power referred to is in fact just volume, or distortion, things administered artificially to disguise a much less extraordinary reality. And the sad fact of the matter is that in an age when we have noises and entwined propaganda beamed at Continue Reading

The fact that it was recently paired with Damien Rice’s ‘O’ on Amazon says it all really. Teitur’s ‘Poetry and Aeroplanes’ is the kind of gauzy melancholia and dimly lit exposition of the heart that made Rice’s record so surprisingly assertive and unputdownable, the difference this time round is that whearas Rice refused to compromise his intense and weary sadness with flights of adult-oriented joy and frivolous production values, Teitur drifts into occasional mediocrity with scores and arrangements not unlike Continue Reading

They’re butchers I tell you, butchers! Taking our clean, pretty music and tucking, tweaking and hacking it into their glorified noise.  The Cooper Temple Clause just don’t seem to do conventionality and if they do, it’s got so much spin to it, Tony Blair would be proud.  ‘Kick Up The Fire…’ bounces from tinkering electronica to well erm, tinkering electronica.  Lambasted for their indecisive, lack of cohesion style, ‘Kick Up The Fire..’ is surprisingly non dimensional for a band so Continue Reading

I have to confess, I was not wholly familiar with Throbbing Gristle until EMI included the track ‘United’ on their recent Death Disco compilation. And very sorry I am too for my ignorance, if only for the fact that it’s such a bloody fantastic name for a band. Whether or not Mute are trying their damndest to rewrite the history of dance music with this reappraisal of the band though, is very much by the by, as it’s quite often Continue Reading

Fans of Pole are likely to be pleased, but fans of Warp Records are likely to be left bemoaning the absence of all the usual high-concepts associated with Post-Rock and its albatross carrying anti-heroes. But who cares? The Cambridge-based Ascoltare is the new project dreamt up by ex-Gwei Lo man Dave Henson and its also the first album to be launched on Tripel Records, a label that intends to bring us the very best of grooveless, oddball, spaceage electronica. One thing Continue Reading

There’s a problem with Placebo. You know that. The problem is that they offer little to distract you from Brian Molko’s desperate vanity and creepy weasel-esque anti-grace, sending most reasonable people scrambling for the shower, tub of Ajax and scouring pad in hand. Their effectiveness has waned over the years, repetition and lifeless precision increasingly replacing the reactionary abrasiveness and burgeoning sexuality of their classic debut. They always had the capacity to grate, but they give you too much to Continue Reading

A decade or so before the likes of Aswad, Musical Youth and UB40 ran a smooth but ultimately disastrous coating of syrup down it, reggae was, can you believe, quite fashionable in the United Kingdom. In fact, in the late 1970s everyone from The Clash to the Police reconciled their own tart phlegm of anarchy and resistance with the spiritual drive and roar of reggae music and it’s sweet and tangible gods: Bob Marley, U-Roy and Sly Dunbar. If you Continue Reading