• Album stream: Ginnels – A Country Life

    March 31, 2014 - By 

    Just over three years on from the release of his self-titled debut album, Grand Pocket Orchestra and No Monster Club guitarist/bassist Mark Chester AKA Ginnels has returned with his fourth album, A Country Life. Released via the wonderful Popical Island, the fourteen-track release was recorded, mixed and mastered by Chester at Rialto Cottages and The Pop Inn during the winter just passed. With the likes of ‘Car’s Parked’ and ‘God Botherers’ standing out on first listen, the record is seemingly a more fleshed-out and less (albeit wonderfully-woven) haphazard concoction of sounds, all propelled Chester’s instantly recognisable brand of restless, somewhat melancholic indie rock.…

  • Interview: Therapy?

    March 31, 2014 - By 

    Following on from Mike McGrath Bryan’s dotingly extensive Complete Guide To Therapy? over the last seven days, we’re happy to present our feature-length Q+A with the band’s boundlessly inimitable frontman, Andy Cairns. Featuring some superb photos by Liam Kielt, Brian Coney talked to Cairns about the brand new reissues of their albums Troublegum and Infernal Love, plans to tour the reissued material later in the year, how things are going with album number fifteen and much more besides. Hi Andy. First things first: it is, of course, two decades since the release of Troublegum. One suspects it doesn’t quite feel like…

  • Animals as Leaders – The Joy of Motion

    March 31, 2014 - By 

    As of 2014, Tosin Abasi is a name that has been ringing in the ears of both musicians and listeners within the metal scene for nearly five years. In that time, the 8-string guitar virtuoso and his band Animals as Leaders have attained an almost universal acclaim from critics, who often cite the consummate guitar skills and complex structures in which they write and perform. Having said that, both of their previous albums have been sullied with a lack of consistency – for all the moments of excellence that they have, their past full-lengths could be described as unreliable and…