Features

Death of David Bowie

So there we have it: the death of David Bowie, trending in its now customary fashion along the volatile cardiac graphs that characterise Social Media. It’ll probably reach a peak over the next few days when the waves on the Cultural ECG monitor practically shoot off the screens. It’s been a long time coming. 69 years to be precise but it arrived with no less shock and awe than Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust combined. Last night’s News 24 saw Continue Reading

Hail To The Thief ~ Radiohead
Reviews

Some tough questions still remain unanswered in mid-2003, with regards to the mainstream’s ultimate millennial band. Are we to scorn them for a continued disdainful neglect of their own stomping ground, the mainstream? Pity them for their incomplete excavation of the leftfield? Treat them like remedial children for not sticking to the plot, berate them for failing to replicate works so singular and definitive that they could and should never be repeated anyway, for the sake of themselves? Do we Continue Reading

The Private Press ~ DJ Shadow
Reviews

Six years since his debut ‘Endtroducing..’, here comes DJ Shadow with his second solo album proper. ‘The Private Press’ more than wears its heart on its sleeve – the title refers to those musicians who release their own music, regardless of commercial success, out of a belief in what they have created. DJ Shadow seems to be feeding off and paying homage to that spirit with this messy, idiosyncratic, wonderful album that appropriates generously then returns with interest a diverse Continue Reading

George Martin (1926-2016)
Features

In some ways it seems pretty apt that the death of Beatles producer, George Martin wasn’t accompanied by a burst of dramatic orchestration, a piccolo trumpet solo or a tumultuous crescendo of instruments followed by a dramatic final chord played on three different pianos. That’s because a really good producer is one you barely know is there. They sit quietly in the background as unassuming and supportive as the gentle whir of the tape as it purrs along to the Continue Reading

Peter Gabriel Aberdeen AECC, 09.12.14
Live

Pathfinder, popularizer and baldy Gabble-pioneer Peter Gabriel defies Scotland’s umpteenth weather-bomb for three-course run through the hits. The ‘So’ album played in it’s entirety from start to finish plus hits electric and quiet. Former Genesis frontman and fox-headed, chameleon flower-stomper Peter Gabriel put on a stunning show at the Exhibition Centre in Aberdeen on Monday night. In spite of initial appearances, it wasn’t a tough sell. The 3000 middle-aged fans who’d braved Scotland’s erratic  ‘weather-bomb’ remained in such an attentive Continue Reading

Reviews

Mazes, long popular on the DIY recording scene, have made their debut album in a ‘proper’ studio – the ‘proper’ studio in question being an old lightship moored on the Thames. Engineer, producer and owner of the lightship (cap’n?) Ben Phillips has, over ten days, helped the band create an album that has a cohesive sound yet retains Mazes’ rough edged energy. The band sound a bit Weezer, especially with Jack Cooper’s thin but game vocals thrown over fuzzy guitar; Continue Reading

Reviews

In his last album ‘Foreign Landscapes’, Volker Bertelman (aka Hauschka) went from avant-garde solo piano to a larger sound palette with his series of pleasingly left-field compositions for orchestra. And now, Bertleman’s musical journey has taken another dog-leg with his new release ‘Salon Des Amateurs’ in which mid-paced dance music (think Bent and Crazy P) combines with modern classical achieving a result that isn’t a naff and overblown slab of easy listening a lá James Last but a warm and Continue Reading

Reviews

What is swagger? Swagger is rough-edged charm, arrogance rescued by style. Remember the first time you saw ‘Trainspotting’ and Renton running to the sound of Iggy Pop’s loose skinned drums and Neanderthal bass? Remember the buzz, the absolute Yes of it? Well, ‘8mm’, the opening track on Underground Railroad’s new album, creates the same rush with similar sounds only at a much slower pace. In short, it has swagger. Underground Railroad, those Parisian exiles are running loose in London these Continue Reading

Reviews

I think a few things are becoming obvious as the band grapple with the nervous divide between fumbling pop youthfulness and the stodgy progressive flab of maturity; there’s a band the Artic Monkeys think they are, there’s a band the public think they are and there’s a band the Arctic Monkeys think they should be.  It’s a level of self-consciousness most people achieve by the age of fourteen when a lad’s sense of identity veers between gauche, compliant child and Continue Reading

Smother – Wild Beasts
Reviews

‘End Come Too Soon’? Something about the band reaching a ‘climax’ of sorts? All too easy I’m afraid, and to have pursued this line would have been thoroughly discourteous, given the dedication shown by the Wild Beasts themselves in thwarting our expectations and delivering an album as delicious as it is depraved, meticulous as it is monstrous and as lyrical as it is lugubrious (that’s ‘sad and melancholy’ for all those Facebook users out there). Unlike Crud though, ‘Smother’ does Continue Reading