• Idles – Joy As An Act Of Resistance

    September 3, 2018 - By 

    Urgent. Vital. Important. Essential. Interchangeable words that are denoted to music or artists that are deemed to be definite of the mood of the times. Albums and previously unseen and untold stories that break boundaries down, songs that transcend their form, artists whose messages become immortalised. Punk music and its offshoots have their fair share of such acts, but these words’ meanings have become denatured over time. Now, anything even vaguely resembling depth or that is tangentially outspoken is commonly misconstrued as politically charged or timely (sorry, not sorry, Macklemore, Justin Timberlake). Idles, a five-piece Bristol band who navigate the furious simplicity…

  • Laurel Halo – Raw Silk Uncut Wood

    July 18, 2018 - By 

    Somewhere in Apple Music headquarters, an employee, perhaps under the instruction of watchful label publicists, or not, input “techno” as the genre tag for Laurel Halo’s latest project, Raw Silk Uncut Wood. The Berlin-based experimental producer has spent the past eight years pivoting from frenetic, full-bodied techno and unconventional club electronics to dense, sentient ambient-pop, and back. Admittedly then, it is difficult to keep track. Her breakout album, Quarantine, released in 2012, was disembodied pop simmering beneath an off-kilter electronic surface—spearheaded by her drifting voice. It was, above all else, her ability to synthesise anxiety into quivering, twitching soundscapes that gave…

  • Let’s Eat Grandma – I’m All Ears

    July 5, 2018 - By 

    Those who find themselves in their orbit have been quick to describe Let’s Eat Grandma’s rawness and genre-agnosticism as otherworldly. This is probably a fair assessment: Their experiments are, on the surface, unrelentingly other, as much as they are worldly. Up until now though, this is a space that these childhood friends have constructed and conjured for themselves. The beatific mini-universe that first emerged on their 2016 debut, I, Gemini, flooded with vibrancy, uninhibited imaginations and shared experiences — It was the kind of world energised by sugar-rushes and spurred on by way of red-eyes glued to early-morning cartoons. A…