There are some things that land on your desk that you have no expectations of whatsoever. Usually this means that it’s likely to make as lasting impression as writing your name in the sand as the tide comes in and a fishing-trawler comes crashing right in over it with catch-load of erasers. Occasionally though, you’ll get something like this, a collection of sounds so fresh and so exotic that you can’t help spreading a full pack of salted butter on Continue Reading

Born to a studio veteran father and a mother who was rather fond of poetry, the Nashville bred Landon Pigg brings his own particular fondness for gently lyrical pop in the mould of Ed Harcourt, Rufus Wainwright and David Mead to an album of pleasant yet largely uninspiring hooks, homages and hopelessly eager choruses. Although Pigg also credits Led Zeppelin and the Beatles amongst his influences, it’s really his affection for the spine tingling, emotional rancour of Radiohead that defines Continue Reading

Chicago born DJ’s DJ, Mark Farina is in charge of today’s ‘Sessions’ – 40 or so tracks that follow fairly tidily (if predictably) in the wake of sessions by Josh Wink and Steve Angello. A  disk jockey and musician, known for his chicago house, acid jazz and downtempo works, Mark first cut his teeth in the now legendary Chicago/Detroit scene in the late eighties working with black roots DJs such as Derrick Carter, Kevin Saunderson and Chris Nazuka. In in Continue Reading

Finnish hip hop heads Recluse Crew and Minneapolis agitators Synoptic Pressure rope in and combine for a raw and sweet flowing 17-track album that melds some fractious reality raps with a steady dose of clipped, scuzzy beats, some slick turntablism, and some taut, heavy bass. Picked up on Finland’s uber cool hip hop label, Kool Kat Records, you’ll not only be surprised to hear how natural it all feels, but how fluently it segues.Whether they’re spitting righteous venom or scratching the hell Continue Reading

An album with the ability to divide not only the masses but also the two halves of my own brain. Whilst only a surly, narrow-minded cynic or a man without ears could fail to be won over by Captain’s cheerily overblown production values, the uncorked euphoria and the meteor shower arrangements of tracks like ‘Hazelville’, ‘Glorious’ and ‘Broke’, the sceptic in me writhes around in confusion, totally unable to come down one way or another on whether or not it Continue Reading

Not a bad life. Not a bad career. And on this nifty and outrageously colourful ‘Very Best Of’ release we have heaps of the cap-headed beatnik’s finest moments: ‘Sunshine Superman’, ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’, ‘Jennifer Juniper’, ‘Catch The Wind’, ‘Guinevere’, ‘Colours’. Unfortunately it’s for lyrics like these that we best remember Glasgow’s Donovan Philips Leitch: Electrical bananaIs gonna be a sudden craze.Electrical bananaIs bound to be the very next phase. But hat’s off the bloke, it was to be the very Continue Reading

Well, they certainly don’t get any worse. But this should surprise no one. Nashville, Tennessee’s inventive rolling orchestra of droll melancholy, led by the inimitably and charmingly authoritative Kurt Wagner, find themselves here on their eighth studio recording still upholding an enviably classic respect for one’s own standards. It’s a little old fashioned in a way, the attention to detail, like faithfully starching your collar for church on a Sunday, every Sunday, always, but it’s a characteristic full of virtue, Continue Reading

Personally I’ve been missing Malkmus and Albarn arsing around the lo-fi end of the quirky indie spectrum leafing through all manner of pasty hypochondriacs and eccentrics and telling us how it is with a bittersweet melody, a jangling raw guitar, a skewed dress code, a funny turn and bad posture. True, Blur 13 and Pavement are unlikely to sit as well with the style-over-substance subtext of our post-punk elite as they used to, and the Guided By Voices leaps of Continue Reading

If we were expecting anyone at all to out-Haines sullen English pop gentleman Luke Haines (The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof, Black Box Recorder), we fully expected it to be Luke Haines. The man has after all made a career out of out-Hainesing himself on a fairly regular basis. But with this second long-due long-player, Australia’s the Sleepy Jackson (now for all intents and purposes the solo project of the increasingly and purposely enigmatic Luke Steele) adopts that mantle with a competitive Continue Reading

Whatever the actual motivation for playing up to full blown solo aspirations in between the now stock-quality Manics albums – and James Dean Bradfield certainly doesn’t have the air of a man desperately in need of alternative creative avenues, another cup of cranberry juice maybe, or a trouser press – this debut release from the frontman in comfortable slacks can claim at least one unexpected triumph. It is proof, if some were needed, that he is no Nicky Wire. His Continue Reading