The ninth month of the year two thousand and three AD must clearly be remembered as the best, most monumental and indeed important 30 days for British rock since the sun began its first creeping cycle between doom-laden clouds over a freshly erected Stonehenge back in the day. Muse finally release an album that makes perfect sense of its own ridiculousness, The Cooper Temple Clause release a sophomore effort that actually stands up unaided (look, no hands!), and Oceansize penetrate Continue Reading

Phil Oakey may not have been the most versatile singer in the world, he may not have been the most versatile dancer, in fact his every move both vocally and physically seemed as rigid and robotic as the analogue synths and clockwork beats that drove the sound. What he had though was an almost totally accidental gift for crafting perfect pop from the flex of wire and steel he found at hand. You may cringe at the crazy, lopping haircuts, Continue Reading

You have to admit, that if you believed everything you read about Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, you’d be under the impression that it was one of the most prodigious and pioneering events in the last twenty years. And whilst everyone may be waxing lyrical about the swelling, intergalactic, lush and pastoral 4/4 beats – when we do calm down we may begin to notice that for all its interplanetary, most extraordinary craft – it’s a fairly arduous Continue Reading

“ The look – the visual creation and expression of an identity – is part of the very essence of rock & roll.” Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone said this in 1995. And for Dexys Midnight Runners it was nothing short of vital. Not that the band needed it at all, or as one might first suspect. With the insurmountable swagger of a thumping horn section, the lingering swell and burn of a Hammond stab and the vociferous and athletic soul address Continue Reading

That IMA Robot recently opened up for US America label mates Blur somehow manages to explain the band and this record more than words ever could. Wrapped up and served in the same punky and pseudo-anarchic cellophane of tracks like Blur’s ‘Song 2’ and the disastrous ‘Crazy Beat’, ‘Ima Robot’ satisfies any kind of appetite whetted for off-kilter new wave and random, explosive energy. First exploding onto the US rock scene with debut single ‘Dynomite’, the band have already had Continue Reading

There are many fine lines in this life. Between dangerously funny and offensive, between The Stereophonics and inhumane Geneva Convention contravening torment, and between shambling peculiarity and curious genius. Scout Niblett falls quite certainly into the latter category, as anyone who’s experienced her live irregularity will surely attest. Shoddily played drums, rudimentary strummed guitar (only occasionally experienced simultaneously) and wavering, unrestrained, verging on hysterical vocals from a woman who sounds like she’s very much in-between places. It’s hardly pop music, Continue Reading

Singer-Songwriter, Darren Berry (aka Mankato) is a canny master of the press, is he not? Name dropping everyone from Afrobeat icon Femi Kuti to Brooklyn hip-hop pioneer Roxanne Shante, Carlos Castenada to none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Flaming Lips, Mr Berry strives to create an air of enviable credibility and complexity. The reality is far less interesting, as debut album ‘Safe As Houses’ reveals. Quoting the sublime achievements of marked, visceral talents like Wayne Coyne and Femi Continue Reading

An album of revelation both musically and personally. That’s what it says on the tin, but as we all know from the packers at Netto, when you buy a tin of beans, beans are not always what you get. That architects of new musical success, the NME tip the album to knock Coldplay from their carefully crafted pedestal is even more remarkable. Far from being the unscheduled flight into fresh territories, ‘Silence Is Easy’ is pretty much more of the Continue Reading

There are two sides to the damning indictment of music criticism that ensues whenever someone raises the inevitable spectre of Spinal Tap. The first in the perfectly legitimate claim that any critic brandishing a tired and worn out ‘amp turned up to 11’ quote lacks any imagination and has failed to judge to the album on it’s own merits. In their defence though, this is the failure of semiotics, the science of signs. Take one iconic moment in time that Continue Reading