New York-based shoegazers Asobi Seksu (Japanese for ‘casual sex’) have released a thing of tremulous beauty with their latest album recorded live at Olympic Studios, London, in November 2008. Made up of acoustic versions of songs previously released on their albums plus some covers it is a quietly striking session that shimmers and glows. If ‘empty’ was ever a compliment to be paid it’s now with this album which has emptied out so much effect and arrangement from previous releases Continue Reading

Ninja Tune, one of the most influential dance labels in the UK have set up a rock subsidiary and released a pay-no-more-than-£2.99 compilation album. Intrigued? My first thought was that it would be some kind of fusion, like when Martin Gore got his guitar out for Depeche’s Personal Jesus. In fact, what we actually get is a gloriously retro-feel to the collection, as if it were a history of imagined bands from the 70’s NYC punk scene and beyond. Rock Continue Reading

Hand-picked by Brakes partly from a hometown (Brighton, UK) show in August 2008, and partly from a May 2009 show in Cologne, Germany, this combination of tracks includes choice cuts and singles from their back catalogue – the tracklisting closely resembles a ‘best-of’ compilation, but the owners are quick to point out that this record is far more than a simple ‘hits’ collection (not least because they haven’t had any). As Crud knows only too well, ‘hits’ are necessarily the Continue Reading

It’s been a prolific ride – eight albums recorded with the cult Green and Red, nine solo studio albums, and tours with the likes of Lucinda Williams, Aimee Mann, Cake and Jonathon Richman. Chuck Prophet’s  latest album Let Freedom Ring! was written one summer in San Francisco and recorded in eight days in Estudio 19, Mexico, amidst an earthquake and a swine flu epidemic. There is, almost inevitably then, a grizzled swagger to proceedings, which is becoming the hallmark of Continue Reading

Young, eager and with the kind of sweeping, handsome fringe that would give Vernon Kay a run for his money, singer-songwriter Greg Holden wraps his frothy, Lancastrian tonsils around a collection of tunes that furrow a comfortable plot within that Damien Rice/Teitur Lassen field of fragile troubadours travelling light and turning out their pockets along the avenues and alleyways of life’s unforgiving (and poorly lit) neighbourhoods. It’s a self-released affair, buoyed-up by his success on Youtube and with a scruffy, Continue Reading

Birdseye loved a dash of Levi so much they added him to their Chicken Chargrills and Sainsburys have him sitting alongside such luminaries as Daddies, Paul Newman and Linda McCartney. Yes, sauces make strange bedfellows of us all and there’s none stranger or more exotic than one-time James Brown and Maxi Priest cohort, Levi Roots who has enlisted some of the UK and Jamaica’s most treasured possessions to help him out with spicy new album, ‘Red Hot’. Co-producers and rhythm Continue Reading

Warm, mellow, melancholy sounds rarely hit it off with the kids on the street with the exception of things like Bossa, and even then their interest rarely extends beyond the dreamy kitsch samba of Getz and Gilberto’s ‘Girl From Ipanema’. For British tastes at least, anything that so much threatens to level off those unruly mid-to-high frequencies, gets consigned to the AOR bin. And just to prove it, let’s time travel back to 1977 and ask spotty, spikey-haired teenager, Henri Continue Reading

I so wanted to begin this with something along the lines of ‘Her out of Ash in No-Prop Pop Shock’ or ‘Pouting Pop Princess Pulls No Punches in Punchy Rights of Passage Release’ but I thought I would leave that to the tabloids, who instead of opening doors on emerging complex talents like Ms H, are the first hands grappling for the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ on scary, aging reptiles like Whitney Houston. So in its place, you’ll just have to settle Continue Reading

He’s starred on national television (well, a fruit pastilles advert), penned a track for FIFA, and brought the world of beatboxing down on unsuspecting indie fans heads for the best part of a decade. And staggeringly, ‘Amplified’ marks his 9th studio release as Killa, aka Lee Potter, has marketed himself as much more than a man with a particularly adept mouth. In the same way a DMC champion might transcend the technicality of turntablism and turn party DJ, Killa Kela Continue Reading