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

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

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

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

Last I heard of Cass McCombs was ‘Crick in My Neck’. Here was the perennially enigmatic and hard-to-nail Californian throbbing away like a persistent headache or the proverbial thorn in one’s side. It was a thrashing celebration of couldn’t-give-a-fuck vocals, swooning guitars and slippery organ fondling. Classy and upbeat miserablism that gave Morrisey and Leonard Cohen a run for their money. And if all you hear is the bruised gothic melancholy of  ‘Buried Alive’ and ‘Saturday Song’ with lines like Continue Reading

Whether he’s doing crazy cat things with his wife, Laura Darlington as The Long Lost or unfurling his mighty muttonchops out from under some terrific Victoria notch-collar jacket, Daedelus is always interesting. Challenging, yes, eccentric certainly, but never dull. And that’s how it should be. As soon as a musician finds his hands wandering to the preset button his precious Bontempi keyboard, you know his creativity is as good as dead, which is a philosophy he extends to ‘Bespoke’ – Continue Reading

I was actually listening to Poly’s new album, ‘Generation Indigo’ when news came through that she’d lost her battle to cancer (or won her battle to go on to higher places – you decide). It wasn’t an entire surprise by any means in a life that was often ruled by surprises but it was no less galling to be honest – not when you have what amounts to her finest collection of material to date sitting there looking at you. Continue Reading