Mad for it Manchester duo and big beat Northern soulsters, Martin Brew and Martin Desai make up the meat and one vege of J-Walk and though this album from the pair shows them as canny sample selectors and able tunesters, there’s a lack of any obvious or consistent character to last the generous length of the album. Commanding a range of styles and approaches that folks like Rae and Christian and Mr Scruff would be proud of the collection sometimes Continue Reading

Produced by Blink 182 and Jimmy Eat World collaborator, Mark Trombino, What It Is To Burn might just about fulfil the raucous punk/metal dream of the increasingly estimable, Drive Thru Records – home to teen sensations Something Corporate, Midtown, New Found Glory and The Bejamins amoungst others. Harder, grittier and far far noisier than many of their label brethren, the Californian quintet deliver a pretty exceptional punk-metal record that may provide a suitable competitor to the likes of At The Drive In Continue Reading

It might have been four years in the making but the cool, cult karma-ranger and stand-up philosopher, Lewis Parker follows up 1998’s Melankolic’s release, Masquerades and Silhouettes EP with a Jedi-powered punch of a record. Light-sabre aloft and with a teeth-a-grinding Parker delivers his own gritty, idiosyncratic take on the world at large. Taking us on a tour of the British capital, with name checks of everything from Mr Kipling, Microsoft Windows to McDonalds, Parker squares up to all da Continue Reading

Bedroom songwriters. A breed loaded with connotations both endearing and all at the same time sneering and vile. That trapped image of the pale-faced adolescent outcast, greasy complexion, matted hair, narrow eyes and a volume of take-out menus that we are all prone to become at one point in our lives, given about any instrument and the correct balance of imagined disillusionment, is a little too much to suppress. Best Friend Records is a new Philadelphia label driven by the Continue Reading

First off, Joy Zipper is an actual person and whilst she’s not in the band, she does lend her rather comely moniker to album covers and press shots with and without baby daughter in arms. From Long Island, New York, Joy Zipper parade another fine lo-fi, pant swinging vehicle to herald the release of the album, American Whip in January of 2003. With vocals and production alike steeped heaps of glorious honey and sticky sunshine, ‘Christmas Song’ recalls the fey Continue Reading

This doesn’t need to be here, they didn’t need to do it, we don’t really want it. That much is given. So why then? For Reni’s benefit, to guarantee him bed, board and a meal a day up till Christmas? It’s not like the others haven’t seen themselves alright, with varying levels of artistic credibility (naturally we’re talking Squire’s downward spiral here – you expect him to get off scot free, even in this setting?). The blame is likely to Continue Reading