A lot can happen in 15 years. In 1991 we knew nothing about Blair, we only had one Bush to contend with, we’d had only one Gulf War, Brucie’s ‘Generation Game’ was as close as it got to ‘Reality TV’, 911 was little more than a twinkle in the neo-conservative eye, Brit-Pop hadn’t arrived and Freddie Mercury (until October at least) could still be found curling and waxing his moustache astride the torso of a young boy. Weird, eh? 1991. Continue Reading
Not a Manchester lad at all, but born in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, t’other side of the lakes, DJ and producer, Andy Turner was discovered by Mark Rae and initially signed to Grand Central Records, home to Rae & Christian, Niko, Only Child, The Nudge, Broadway Project, Kate Rodgers and Tony D. But all that’s changed and as of May 2007, Grand Central is no longer trading as a label. In its place comes Atic Records who have pretty much mopped up Continue Reading
Tom Middleton’s new AMBA project should provide a pretty fair indication of the route we’re taking; ambient music featuring orchestral, choral and electro acoustic arrangements. And here’s the drafts, pulled from current ITune playlists that include Beautiful Music, Sextrax, Early 90’s Hip Hop+Breakbeats, Ambient-Prog, Soundtracks Without Films, Obscuriosities, 70’s TV Nostalgia, and Future Folk. Known for his recordings as Cosmos, Global Communication and The Jedi Knights (alongside Mark Pritchard) Middleton’s productions, remixes and DJ Sets have seen the former classical Continue Reading
You’d think ringing endorsements from Gilles Peterson and The Thievery Corporation (who did a remix of the track ‘Quicksand’ – the second single from this album) would somehow make null and void any decision yours truly could arrive it, but if enough people add their own twopenneth, pretty soon you’ll have lots and lots of pennies. Enough for something, gold perhaps, even enough for something platinum. And if the penny hasn’t dropped already, then let me make this patently clear; Continue Reading
There are some things that come along that you don’t know how to best quantify. Is it Latin, is it Rock, is it Folk, is it Jazz? See? I’ve gotten nowhere. But that’s good isn’t it? When you have no idea what it is, you have none of those nasty expectations to go and ruin the experience – and whilst the core of it is ostensibly ‘Latin-flavoured’ or ‘Flamenco’, there’s something more solid, more deliberate and more blues-based than any Continue Reading
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, but what exactly is all this sister chitter chatter about? Yes, yes, so we acknowledge that two thirds of the Rogers Sisters are in fact sisters, with a shared family name, Rogers. That’s Laura and Jennifer, drums and guitar (and vocals both) respectively. And yes, writing credits, lead voices and chiming, humming guitars clatter noisily across the record making reasonable claims for at least partial ownership, not to mention putting into Continue Reading
Look, there are some things you just can’t blag, and there’s not a way in hell that I’m likely to convince you that I know Jack about Grime. And why should I? I’m in my early thirties, I have a young family, I have a nice house, I live in the remote wilderness of the Scottish Highlands and I’ve spent about as much time on the street as a paraplegic hooker. It’s not in my soul and it’s not ‘where Continue Reading
After exploding into life nine years ago, making an impact with DIY single, ‘IPC Sub Editors Dictate Our Youth’ the esoteric and prickly Liverpool four-piece, ‘Clinic’ build on the gothic malevolence and screaming, spooky voodoo of their Domino debut, ‘Internal Wrangler’ (2000) and albums like ‘Circle of Fifths’ (2004) with a similarly creepy and intimidating web of experimental spine-tinglers that includes the hall-of-mirror harmonies of ‘Animal/Human’, the charming, teeth-clenched grotesque of ‘Sunshine Superman’ doppelganger ‘Gideon’ and the Wicker Man horror of Continue Reading
It’s not that we ever saw faults in her, because we saw none, but we never really expected to experience the kind of expanding, open-ended consistency that Kathryn Williams has gone on to lay claim to with such natural grace as the years pass by. Her paeans of hushed folk prettiness were, back in the beginning, so tender, so delicate, so genuine, that we didn’t give a thought to that being upheld with any significance. To be consistent is one Continue Reading
To be honest, finding myself in possession of a copy of The Bluetones new album was a little like finding an old, sherbert-lemon in the inside pocket of a jacket I hadn’t worn since Brit-pop began its terminal slide into the archives during the back-end of ’96. A bit sticky, not unpleasant, sweet even, yet try though I might, I was still not quite able to put my finger on how it had come to be there or whether I Continue Reading