Reviews

Collaborating with Faun Fables sweetheart, Dawn McCarthy, Will Oldham’s latest project under his ‘Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’ moniker may prompt you to recall the bittersweet partnership offered by Emmylou Harris and Gram Parson on the latter’s ‘Grievous Angel’ LP. But then again, it may prompt nothing of the sort; it depends on whether you’ve heard of any of them – which is indeed less likely than we’d care to admit. Why haven’t we heard of them? Well probably for the same Continue Reading

Known to some as ‘Joey Brains’, to others as Brando Flux, ‘Braintax’ is the moniker of Leeds-born, London-lived Joseph Christie, thoughtful, peace-loving rapper Joseph Christie who appeared on the scene with 1992’s ‘Fat Head’ EP. So what else have we to learn? Well today, we’re going to be learning about illegal wars in the Middle East, the loss of freedom, text messages, the media, Bush and his evil claws, Blair and his smugness, Kuwait, Korea, the Falklands, the BNP, refugees, Continue Reading

Although I’ve never been entirely sold on ‘Live’ albums (why buy pasty approximations of things you already own on record?) occasionally, just occasionally, there’s one comes out that grips you in a way that the original album doesn’t. Sometimes this is down to something as simple as an alternative running order, sometimes it’s having songs extended beyond their natural running time, sometimes it’s because the band totally reworks them; sometimes its simply because you were there. With ‘Ononokos’ it’s none Continue Reading

Where do you actually begin with excess? Do you start with the 18 million albums sold with your second album proper? The mountains of cocaine? The Lear Jets? The pandemic of gossip and rumours spreading out from a spring of broken-hearts? Or do you start somewhere in-between all that, in the moments you catch yourself looking in the mirror first thing in the morning, when you’ve barely been able to tear yourself out of bed for fear that another day Continue Reading

I know one thing; one listen to Nneka’s ‘Victim Of Truth’ and before long your fumbling for your soap-box, your packet of extra long Rizla and the AK-47 you imagine to be lurking somewhere beneath your Letta Mbulu and your Natty Rebel Army records, preparing yourself a speech that addresses everything from Apartheid, the struggle for independence on the Ivory Coast and the coming of the Rastafari messiah. It’s a record that makes you feel black, regardless of how shockingly Continue Reading

Jeez. Where do you start with this one? Subtle is one of those loose, ad-hoc, scrambled, brainteaser collectives you tend to get in hip-hop circles with the added confusion of having a nasally, high-pitched, polyrhythmic, white rapping beat-poet by way of leader, called Doseone (real name Adam Drucker) who pulls together all manner of re-sampled, de-sampled beat psychedelia and high-end improvisation into a densely layered, multi-faceted, Wayne Coyne-meets-Danger Mouse collage of queer urban narratives and Alice In Wonderland horseplay that Continue Reading

I honestly thought I was going to detest this record like an itch I just couldn’t reach. Part of me deep down probably still does (I mean, come on. The stinking Caleigh Libertines? It would never get past the panel on Dragon’s Den). In spite of some fairly sweet singles, which showed willing and flowering potential, fleeting attendance at gigs of theirs saw little more than shapeless stabs at moving targets. They were a lurking anarchic act not realised, a Continue Reading

Is this really the ninth in the series? Why, it seems like only yesterday. Whether they’re names you’ve heard of, or whether they’re not, the Ministry series continues to subject me, you and the world to does after dose of thumping, twisted beats and quirky, swinging vocals, this time from the two sides of Curtis Jones – the Chicago born electronic and house singer, songwriter, producer and all round groovy religious ass shaker. Launched during the Chicago house renaissance of Continue Reading

Fresh from his tours of duty with the likes of NSM, TY and Gum Drop, Randolph Matthews wraps his butter smooth tonsils around the sample led beats and breaks of trip-hoppy soul numbers like ‘Foolin’, ‘Mystery Rose’ and ‘Waves’. Very downtempo, gentle and as laid-back as palm trees in the breeze, ‘Strangers To The Ordinary’ isn’t a must-have record by any stretch of imagination, but it does have a sound that washes over you in the same silky way a Continue Reading

Little K.T Tunstall, eh? In her sexy little knee high boots and her thigh-flashing cowgirl dress and her songs about love, longing and trying to find an umbrella. She’s lovely isn’t she? Her cheeky little, pixie face and her big fat, wiggly guitar and all those happy New Years spent rubbing shoulders with Joolz Holland and his Hootiliscious Jazz Band? And what’s more she got tonsils of steel t’boot. But what’s this? ‘Parental Advisory’? ‘Explicit Content’? I mean, we knew Continue Reading