In 1990 producer Daniel Lanois (Bob Dylan, U2, Peter Gabriel) helped set singer-songwriter Chris Whitley up with a deal with Columbia Records and produced his first album. Fifteen years on, with a new label (Cooking Vinyl) and a new producer (Malcolm Burn) Whitley has produced a set of rich, dark 21st Century blues songs that seem the embodiment of Lanois production values: raw sounding acoustic instruments that drive along over layers and layers of electronic studio effects. The album ‘Soft Continue Reading

Sometimes there’s just no getting away from the dirt, the discomfort, the filth. It’s under your skin, it’s in your hair, it’s stuck between your teeth. You’re a grubby smudge on the perfect white skin of all existence. Yes, we’re talking to you, Jackieo. Wipe the spittle from you chin! Here are a band that actively exhilarate you about your impurities, make your tainted hairs stand on end and throw you the spade to find the hidden depths you didn’t Continue Reading

That’s a bold choice of title for any sophomore album, full stop. So never mind that expectations will simmer at a consistently shrill pitch with no assistance whatsoever (give or take an omnipresent marketing campaign), let’s raise them a notch too. If there’s one thing you can be sure of though it’s that you were never going to have it any shoddier – you could call their rigorous attention to detail and form, their inherent and unblinking quality control, collateral Continue Reading

As the vocalist and main songwriter for American Music Club, Mark Eitzel was responsible for some of the most grainy and beautiful alt country epics of the 80’s. It’s a surprise then, to se another side of this artist revealed on ‘Candy Ass’, an album that flows from acoustic ballads to the type of ambient electronica more akin to Fourtet and Aphex Twin than the AMC. It begins with ‘My Pet Rat St. Michael’, a darkly humorous ballad on picked Continue Reading

Not a bad way to come in and probably not a bad way to go out. This is the first actual full blown album release from Damian Lazarus’s eccentric London-based label, Crowtown Rebels having previously plied their trade on a sharp range of 12” and mix session releases from such unlikely suspects as Matt Tolfrey & Craig Sylvester, Presslaboys,  Kiki & Silversurfer, Frankie Flowerz, and André Kraml – a bewildering conflation of minimal electro, techno dub, house and digital disco, Continue Reading

When a band like OK GO releases an album little do they know that they have often begotten twins. There’s an album for the Mighty-Joe-average record buying public and there’s an album for us critics. Is it a double-sided metaphor I’m using? You betcha. And what’s more I’m going to exercise my critical right to explain it. That’s how important I am. You are there to sit back and listen. Me? I’m above all that. Me and my kind are Continue Reading

Nick Franglen of Lemon Jelly produced the last album, Hobosapiens and what you got was a giddy slice of whimsical tomfoolery clearly inspired by all the pro-tool wizardry that was suddenly made available to the old fella. It was playful and occasionally inspired but it was a naturally placid release made all the more gentle by the departure of guitars and the arrival of Fraglen’s jelly world of computer software and spacehoppers. This time round Cale is assisted by Mickey Continue Reading

Whilst fans may lament the departure of bandmates, Johnny Quaid and Danny Cash, most of us wouldn’t notice a thing, and why would we? Few of us have actually heard of them thus far and the fact they have replaced like with like in the form of new members Carl Broemel (guitar) and Bo Koster (keys) suggests it was always likely to be more a physical departure than either a musical or conceptual one. So there you have it. Much Continue Reading

There were a number of things that struck us about Oceansize when they emerged from the figurative darkness, awkwardly, ginormously, magnificently over two years ago. They were loud, but never really oppressive, their sound was often omnipresent but also cautious, there was an exploratory nature to their performance. They could sound as big as a jumbo jet engine without just instinctively flattening their surroundings. There was a sense of wonder and from that, wide eyes and a set of vulnerable Continue Reading

My Dad died recently. It was a quick, senseless but ultimately inevitable event made all the more onerous by the fact that we were never really that religious. No choir of angels signalled his release from this life, just as no pearly-white gate marked his entry into some nebulous, cloudy expanse of heaven. Dad died and there was no clear way of getting in touch with him anymore, no place we could meet up, have a drink, a smoke, chat Continue Reading