‘It is simply the reflection of an era in continual mutation, where a number of ‘initiates’ have decided that the time has finally come awaken consciousness’. Bollocks, more like. I would be letting you down if I was to describe this release as anything other than a monstrous cash-in on Dan Brown’s equally spurious and ill-conceived book “The Da Vinci Code“ (now a full-on blockbuster Hollywood epic starring the affable Tom Hanks) and I would be disappointing you still if Continue Reading

The Futureheads’ 2004 debut was packed with pop gems. Racked to the rafters with the bloody things which shot by at thundering pace, in formation, like zippy chimney-chipping low level flypasts by the Red Arrows. Four rough-round-the-edges lads from the North East brandishing guitars and corrugated iron voice-boxes, made glorious noise, left vapour trails. Yet it took a novelty cover to get anyone to pay them any serious notice. Still, it was one of the great modern pop re-interpretations, and Continue Reading

Every so often, all you really need is some solid, honest-to-goodness, lip-smacking power-pop. And just to satisfy our craving God occasionally casts down the likes of Bob Mould and Sugar, the Teenage Fanclub, the Lemonheads, Foo Fighters and the Boo Radleys, planting a big fat buzzing chorus atop of a Velcro hook, some big, bright jangling guitars, some impossible, reckless optimism and the kind of nutmeging, dummying lyrical runs they could quite easily qualify for a place in the Brazilian Continue Reading

The success or failure of this record depends on two things; if the record is intended to bring a diverse collection of world sounds and artists together in one place then it hardly compares to the jitterbugging, cross-continental bloom of eclectica raffled by the likes of David Byrne’s Luaka Bop. If on the otherhand it’s only objective was to compile a record of perfectly affable and palatable lightly electronic pop music from a score of odds and ends and misfits Continue Reading

If we had a pound for every album we reviewed by a ‘DJ at the top of their game’, we’d have £37.50; that’s £30 pounds for actually being ‘at the top of their game’ and £7.50 for any additional benefits we accrue from them being ‘one of the world’s leading DJs and producers’ on top of it.  Just how many leading DJs and producers can ye have for heaven’s sake? That’s a bit like having all 338 teams in your Continue Reading

Long before K.D Lang became the ranch-hopping poster-girl for lesbian chic, the Costa Rican born singer, Chavela Vargas was dressing as a man, smoking cigars, drinking heavily, carrying a gun and seducing female audiences with throaty-voiced Mexican Rancheras – lusty, ribald tales about heartbreak and experience traditionally sung by men – allegedly gaining her trademark limp from jumping out of a window because a woman disappointed her in love. Sounds like the kind of thing you’ve seen every week in Continue Reading

Shoegaze never really died, it just set sail to the Netherlands and, like the social leper it was, failed to make eye-contact. Last year the Radio Dept carried its torch with a new geek-chic and luscious frost-kissed efficiency; a reliable glow to oppose the impending cold. And just as the nights draw in again, how’s this for a toxic burst of renewed warmth, like a showering under a welter of sparks? Norway’s Serena Maneesh (they’re a filthy band of blokes, Continue Reading

North London’s five-piece geek-core future-rock eclectic car-crash of zeroes, ones and bile, Twentysixfeet, have shown promise on every occasion Crud has witnessed them on a stage. They’ve been a hectic pneumatic-crusher full of progressive rock and computer chips, that’s for sure. There’s been an air of the geeks rising to inherit the earth, a Matrix style conspiracy, which is exciting, empowering, certainly. But for that same reason things felt just too meticulous at points and rather than becoming the sum Continue Reading

This album really isn’t as bad as you think it will be. It is still quite bad, granted, but you thought it was going to be really awful didn’t you. Which might be a rather closed statement to start a review with, but it’s the truth. There are aspects of harmless redemption – mostly located on the first half of the album, which would have been very useful if we still bought music on cassette tape. A group of session Continue Reading

Ten years on and I’m still beating myself up about Fatboy Slim. I desperately want to draw attention to the shockingly proletarian, cymbal-shaking, bone-rattling, party-mixing joyful ordinariness of our Norm’, but the bastard gets in there before me with his disarming and self-reflexive ‘I May Be Shit: But Why Try Harder?’ catchphrases, his doleful air of inconsequence, his shameless surprise at his own success and his now rock-solid marriage to Miss Ordinary-Lass-On-The Street, Zoe Ball. Dissing a man when he’s Continue Reading