Reviews

‘The golden phosphorus of nostalgia.” Bill Nelson’s words, not mine, but they do sum up our faintly warm and glittery reaction to selection of recordings made nearly thirty years ago when Bill Nelson was the highly literate, sci-fi chewing axe-man/frontman to the belligerent art/prog rock ensemble that was Be Bop Deluxe. That EMI have chosen to release this bright and cheerful introduction to Wakefield’s finest off the back of the David Bowie and Brian Eno re-releases seems entirely unremarkable given Continue Reading

Fans of Queen are looking forward to this release principally for the ‘fast’ version of ‘We Will Rock You’. I’m similarly looking forward to it, but not for the same reason. I’m keen to listen any version of the song that brings it to a speedier conclusion than the turgid, air-thumping original. Let’s face it, ‘We Will Rock You’ has to rank as one of the world’s most lumbering, self-aggrandising rock anthems ever. In fact, Queen have to be one of Continue Reading

This is, believe it or not, the fifth album from cult US slacker rockers Cake. Of course you will know them best (only?) for 1996’s one-off chart hit ‘The Distance’ (you know, “reluctantly crouched at the starting line, engines pumping and thumping in time, the green light flashes, the flags go up… we’re going the distance, we’re going for speed, etc. etc.”) back in an almost forgotten time when TFI Friday was a cultural barometer for post-Britpop UK tastes. Naturally Continue Reading

His eighth full-length release and intended as a non-linear, non-uniform and non-conventional tribute to the traditional music of Krush’s homeland, Japan,  ‘Jaku’ finds the prickly, stubborn and generously experimental producer doffing his cap to both Eastern and Western music logic. Ominous, dark but glowing with flickering, musky embers this is as far removed from hip-hop per sae, as sushi is from sausages. Not world-music exactly, not rap music exactly but nor is it the desperately percussive raincloud of ethnic rocktronica Continue Reading

It started in the late nineties with James Murphy; punk rock drummer with a yen for listening to punk music with a dancey element to it. Cue The Gang Of Four, Can and an emphatic indebtedness to the ‘no-wave’ of 70s New York. A meet up with Tim Goldsworthy in Murphy’s studio being used by none other than David Holmes and before you know it they’re heading off to back to America for apple-pie and E’s with Murphy’s mother. Legendary Continue Reading

Presently touring with Clinic, Autoflux are rumoured to be one of the sharpest recent finds on the LA music scene and have already notched up performances with a dizzying array of music radicals: The White Stripes, the Breeders, Tortoise, Broadcast, and Blonde Redhead. Not that the band is as pasty and fresh-faced as you might imagine, all three members having cut their teeth on a fine old oddment of art and experimental projects in the last 10 years. Vocalist and Continue Reading

Difficult one this, piece of history and all that, but judged on its own merit this collection of raw (no, very raw) demos for early Pixie’s songs like ‘The Holiday Song’, ‘Caribou’ and ‘Subbacultha’ is a fairly testing 40 or so minutes for any listener. I don’t want to say ‘for fans only’ but it’s very difficult not to, amounting as it does to very little more than audio notes for the band’s recording of ‘Come On Pilgrim’ in 1987 Continue Reading

A collective endeavour between erstwhile Los Angeles MCs Aceyalone and Mikah 9 (of the Freestyle Fellowship) and Abstract Rude (of Abstract Tribe Unique), Haiku D’Etat are together again for ‘Coup De Theatre’, released on the 16th October on the New York City Decon label. With guest slots from Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, Lateef, and Bus Driver and production from Fat Jack, Chief XL, Spacek, Kenny Segal, PMG, and DJ Drez ‘Coup De Theatre’ provides a cool, loungey and improvisational theatre of Continue Reading

Coming off a totally different conveyor belt to that of the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs was never going to be easy.  Showing the darker side of NYC, even harder.  Whilst neatly sidestepping the converse and suit jacket chic and heading straight for the suits, Interpol have always been somewhat unfashionable musically in comparison to many of their Big Apple contemporaries.  They could easily have by passed the radar, but after the hopelessness of ‘Turn on the Bright lights’, Continue Reading

It’s an album that has already instigated a pedantic and infuriating game of Orwellian ‘double think’ over at magazines like the NME in Britain; are we to say it’s good and risk being ripped apart by the street savvy youth with his I-Pod and his copy of The Steet’s ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’ or do we say it’s bad and risk missing the kitsch-retro post-modernist boat altogether? Or is this what folks are expecting? We’ll sit on the Continue Reading