• Ex Hex – Rips

    October 30, 2014 - By 

    Rips is as explanatory as album titles come. Ex Hex hail from Washington D.C., a long-time hardcore stronghold; not that the scene’s legacy is the one that leaves its mark on the power trio of Mary Timony, Betty White, and Laura Harris. Timony, last seen singing and slinging in Wild Flag, a band made up of ex-members of Sleater-Kinney and The Minders, has said that she and her current cohorts “all wanted to write songs that could be on the radio in the early ‘80s.” Rips does just what it says: twelve slices of instant garage sweeping by with the…

  • Kindness – Otherness

    October 22, 2014 - By 

    The solo project of British musician Adam Bainbridge, Kindness emerged in 2012 with World, You Need a Change of Mind, an album that synthesised diffuse influences into a svelte whole, co-produced by Philippe Zdar. On its follow-up, Otherness, Bainbridge moves away from glossy surfaces in pursuit of a more tactile sound, with a new emphasis placed on collaboration and live musicianship. Bainbridge describes Otherness as “another choice”, a self-styled alternative to what he calls “direct contemporary-sounding pop music”. That’s an intriguing endeavour, of course, but it’s also one that defines the music primarily by what it is not, rather than…

  • Thom Yorke – Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes

    October 20, 2014 - By 

    Listen Thom­­, we need to talk. It’s not me, it’s you.  You’ve decided to release your new record, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes via Bittorrent. Conceptually, it’s neat wee idea, using the model which the industry has railed against for the last 15 years. It’s cheeky and somewhat clever, but a bit ‘too little too late’ considering the success of services like Bandcamp. The album’s release model is also stuck with being compared, quite fairly, to the ‘Pay what you want’ model of 2007’s In Rainbows. The thing is, that album legitimately challenged how we experience and release music in the modern…

  • Caribou – Our Love

    October 17, 2014 - By 

    Most adults have, at one stage or another, suffered from a broken heart. A thoroughly miserable life experience, the majority of us deal with it by ingesting copious amounts of chocolate, moping around the place feeling sorry for ourselves and – if you’re The Thin Air, at least – drinking ourselves into pointless oblivion in pubs. Dan Snaith clearly does things a bit differently, channelling what has been – if the lyrics are anything to go by – a period of considerable emotional turmoil into the ten songs that make up his fourth LP under the Caribou moniker (after two…

  • Flying Lotus – You’re Dead!

    October 15, 2014 - By 

    L.A.’s Flying Lotus (Steven Ellison) has had a somewhat circuitous musical journey since releasing his debut LP in 2006. Taking its title from his birth year, 1983 saw the beginning of a series of full-length releases that harked back to concepts and ideas – memories even of life and place – that were intrinsic to the beatsmith’s musical identity. These sonic origins, as heard on 1983 and Los Angeles, compounded the variety of deep and melodic hip hop instrumentals that J Dilla and Madlib had long been well known for, but Ellison’s interpretation of the mix-tape style was unique. It…

  • Shellac – Dude Incredible

    October 14, 2014 - By 

    Shellac don’t operate like a normal band. Releasing albums every seven years in between Steve Albini and Bob Weston’s day jobs as recording engineers; no fanfare, no previews or singles; no accompanying tour. One thing they can be relied on for, however, is their consistency. You could essentially arrange Shellac’s discography into any order and it would be difficult for a newcomer to work out the correct sequence. This is no bad thing – no one wants to hear a Shellac album that doesn’t sound like Shellac – it’s a testament to how consistently strong they’ve been over the last…

  • Perfume Genius – Too Bright

    October 9, 2014 - By 

    Mike Hadreas’ third Perfume Genius album marks a sea change for the Seattle-based singer-songwriter. The grungy outfits, introverted lyrics and subdued piano confessionals with which he made his name are consigned to history; in their place struts a shiny androgyny and a corresponding confidence in the power his words and appearance invoke. His music reflects this new-found sense of empowerment, employing an impressive level of sonic and vocal variation across these eleven songs. Hadreas leads us gently into this brave new world via the album’s most familiar-sounding track. Brief, aching and piano-centric, ‘I Decline’ cleverly summons uplifting clichés before unceremoniously…

  • Alt-J – This Is All Yours

    October 8, 2014 - By 

    Alt-J rose to success in 2012 having already been together for five years. All this time meant that their first album was the result of five years of hard work; the best tracks to come out of long hours spent in the studio. Arriving just two years later, people might not have thought that This Is All Yours would be able to satisfy the fans. The good news is that it does not disappoint. Despite the departure of Gwil Sainsbury (bassist and vocalist), the band’s new album equals the sound of artistic harmony and chemistry that fans fell in love with…

  • Avi Buffalo – At Best Cuckold

    October 7, 2014 - By 

    In this day and age a four year gap between album releases can be viewed as a lifetime for any young band, such is the way music is consumed (more often than not, spat back out the very same week). It’s just as easy for a new group to garner positive column inches or be thrown into the world of magazine photo-shoots as fresh cannon fodder following a critically-lauded debut album, as it is for them to implode, or find themselves lost amidst the immediate and frenzied media response. In Avi Buffalo’s instance they seemed to have it all going…

  • Aphex Twin – Syro

    October 3, 2014 - By 

    To give Richard D James an introduction seems redundant. Anyone uninformed of his past work has almost certainly listened to other artists inspired by it; such was the impact of many of his staple albums throughout the 90s. His reach within electronic music has oft been referred to as game changing, immeasurable, and essential. So when his unmistakable emblem began appearing on blimps, tagged across multiple European capitals and even within the darkest reaches of the deep web accompanied by a stark ‘2014’, the electronic music producer from Cornwall sent music lovers worldwide into a state of frenzy. The hype…