Reviews

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. If you’ve never heard of Brooklyn-born one-man rap ensemble, Joe Driscoll then its likely you’ve never heard of live-looping either, but sure as eggs is eggs there’s even a damned festival in Cambridge and one in Sweden celebrating this one darn thing. And here’s how it’s done: you get some digital repetition of some sounds you make using your voice, your guitar, your harmonica or your didgeridoo with the help of your bog-standard, buy-off-the-shelf Line6 Delay Modeler Continue Reading

The problem with many mainstream singer-songwriters, those who brandish a voice and acoustic guitar as cosily recognisable, timeless tools of communication, is that they often set out their stall within two bars or so (not counting the inevitable predictability of the middle-eight). Beyond which nothing surprises and everything conforms. Familiarity is useful as a reference point, but to make you feel at home when that’s where you are already isn’t a particularly inspiring concept, and they probably know that – Continue Reading

Favourite Sons are, we’re led to believe, somewhat of a supergroup, comprised of members from underrated 90s psychedelic art-rock bands Rollerskate Skinny (in the case of frontman Ken Griffin) and Aspera (in the case of the rest). We mention this as it might be important to you; it’s just a fringe detail for us as, to the best of our knowledge, neither act ever garnered enough height to trouble Crud’s fussy lugholes. The story instead starts right here for us, Continue Reading

Now I do believe they’ve taken a wee bit of licence here. Whilst for most people what ‘Sounds Like Sex’ would mean the furtive grunts and groans, faintly amusing squelchy noises and leaky farts stirring from beneath the bedclothes before we switch on ‘Match Of The Day’, Paul and Price evidently have a romantic view of the whole ridiculous process; lush orchestration, soft focus electronica, sighing vocals, xylophones, flutes and some rumbling, fumbling bass grooves. Yes, its idealistic, yes it’s as far Continue Reading

Which of the following statements is true? A) Badly Drawn Boy made his fifth album with Smiths, Kaiser Chiefs and Blur producer Stephen Street. B) Badly Drawn Boy made his fifth studio album with wobbly, wobbly Lemon Jelly fruitster, Nick Fraglen. C) Badly Drawn Boy is still not sure  whether or not he has actually made his fifth studio album yet. With anybody. The answer, it seems, is all of these. Damon Gough ditched the 25 or so tracks completed Continue Reading

Up until very recently, most folks who had undertaken the gargantuan task of compressing a lifetime’s turn-ons and influences into twenty-or-so tracks on one mix-tape record often ran the risk of compromising themselves out of any meaningful plot by having to consider too many challenges: 1) You had to please the label. 2) You had to please the listener. 3) You had to jump through hoops just getting copyright clearance. 4) You had to avoid alienating your fans or embarrassing Continue Reading

My oh my, Annabella Lwin and Bow Wow Wow. How the memories come flooding back. Not ones I can share, naturally, but bearing in mind that most of boys in the eighties caught their first glimpse of this heavenly caramel creature on the cover of the band’s 1982 EP where she and her pitifully thin cohorts had recreated Manet’s ‘Déjeuner sur l’Herbe’ (and the 14 year old Annabella is pictured nude), you have to assume the worst, I’m afraid. And 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

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

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