I honestly thought I was going to detest this record like an itch I just couldn’t reach. Part of me deep down probably still does (I mean, come on. The stinking Caleigh Libertines? It would never get past the panel on Dragon’s Den). In spite of some fairly sweet singles, which showed willing and flowering potential, fleeting attendance at gigs of theirs saw little more than shapeless stabs at moving targets. They were a lurking anarchic act not realised, a Continue Reading

Jeez. Where do you start with this one? Subtle is one of those loose, ad-hoc, scrambled, brainteaser collectives you tend to get in hip-hop circles with the added confusion of having a nasally, high-pitched, polyrhythmic, white rapping beat-poet by way of leader, called Doseone (real name Adam Drucker) who pulls together all manner of re-sampled, de-sampled beat psychedelia and high-end improvisation into a densely layered, multi-faceted, Wayne Coyne-meets-Danger Mouse collage of queer urban narratives and Alice In Wonderland horseplay that Continue Reading

I know one thing; one listen to Nneka’s ‘Victim Of Truth’ and before long your fumbling for your soap-box, your packet of extra long Rizla and the AK-47 you imagine to be lurking somewhere beneath your Letta Mbulu and your Natty Rebel Army records, preparing yourself a speech that addresses everything from Apartheid, the struggle for independence on the Ivory Coast and the coming of the Rastafari messiah. It’s a record that makes you feel black, regardless of how shockingly Continue Reading

Is this really the ninth in the series? Why, it seems like only yesterday. Whether they’re names you’ve heard of, or whether they’re not, the Ministry series continues to subject me, you and the world to does after dose of thumping, twisted beats and quirky, swinging vocals, this time from the two sides of Curtis Jones – the Chicago born electronic and house singer, songwriter, producer and all round groovy religious ass shaker. Launched during the Chicago house renaissance of Continue Reading

Fresh from his tours of duty with the likes of NSM, TY and Gum Drop, Randolph Matthews wraps his butter smooth tonsils around the sample led beats and breaks of trip-hoppy soul numbers like ‘Foolin’, ‘Mystery Rose’ and ‘Waves’. Very downtempo, gentle and as laid-back as palm trees in the breeze, ‘Strangers To The Ordinary’ isn’t a must-have record by any stretch of imagination, but it does have a sound that washes over you in the same silky way a Continue Reading

The Devastations are a velvety-blue 3-piece from Melbourne, Australia, the bar band in the after-hours hovel of regret and confusion at the back of your mind. They have, without a shadow of a doubt, ingested more Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds than you have had take away dinners, you wasters. In fact, frontman Conrad Standish looks like the bastard progeny of Mr Cave and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner, all pale chiselled features and aloof posture. And Karen Continue Reading

For all those who care Rocky, Diesel and Ashley Beedle are back. There might not be any David Byrne or ‘Lazy’ by way of shattering chart announcement but there is whimsical, wako-psycho in the making Tim DeLaughter of the Polyphonic Spree here to redraft Harpers Bizarre’s flower-waving ‘Witchi Tai To’ as a stomping, bell-tinkling psychedelic club anthem (bit like ‘Hole In My Shoe’ on uppers) and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner to add his own brand of hoarse gospel grammar to ‘interesting’ Continue Reading

Little K.T Tunstall, eh? In her sexy little knee high boots and her thigh-flashing cowgirl dress and her songs about love, longing and trying to find an umbrella. She’s lovely isn’t she? Her cheeky little, pixie face and her big fat, wiggly guitar and all those happy New Years spent rubbing shoulders with Joolz Holland and his Hootiliscious Jazz Band? And what’s more she got tonsils of steel t’boot. But what’s this? ‘Parental Advisory’? ‘Explicit Content’? I mean, we knew Continue Reading

There are three reasons why I don’t like ‘Nazi Girls’ by Poppy and the Jezebels (whose band members, the press release gleefully tells us, are all 14-15 years old). (i) I’m a humourless git with little appreciation of post-modern irony (ii) I can smell a third rate publicity campaign a mile off (iii) I actually remember too well the Nazi salutes I faced as a kid to be impressed by a bunch of pretentious wannabes trying on the whole fascist Continue Reading

When I walked into town and went to cross a road last Saturday, I half-expected to be knocked down by a car it was so busy. Then something extraordinary happened: I wasn’t. No car came and knocked me over, no one was speeding, no one came careering onto the curb smashed out on booze and drugs. You see, even though I expected it to happen, it didn’t. Same thing with the lottery that day. I was all smiled-up and certain Continue Reading