• Half Japanese – Hear The Lions Roar

    January 13, 2017 - By 

    You know when you’re at a party, enjoying a group conversation and a member of your gaggle makes a private joke, the meaning behind you’re not privy to? It creates this terribly awkward and uncomfortable feeling as you’re left wondering what is so funny. From context and reaction, you can infer that something enjoyable, or at the very least interesting has occurred, but you’re completely at a loss as to what that is or what it even could be. Half Japanese is the musical equivalent of that sensation. Within their repertoire, you can hear the stylistic hints from the likes…

  • David Bowie – No Plan

    January 11, 2017 - By 

    She held out her trembling hand to K. and had him sit down beside her, she spoke with great difficulty, it was difficult to understand her, but what she said Final Sentence of Franz Kafka’s The Castle History is littered with the infinite possibilities teased at within the unfinished work of great artists who died before their time. Think of Elliott Smith’s From A Basement On A Hill, David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King or George Sluizer’s Dark Blood; all released in an awkwardly assembled form, stitched together from whatever fragments the artist had left behind. While they vary wildly…

  • Gone Is Gone – Echolocation

    January 6, 2017 - By 

    There are three Ts at the heart of Gone Is Gone: Tony Hajjar, Troy Van Leeuwen, and Troy Sanders. For the uninitiated, that roughly translates to At The Drive-In, Queens Of The Stone Age and Mastodon occupying the same aural space. That’s the kind of lineup that makes a certain type of music fan’s eyes bulge out like a Looney Toons Character. It’s the stuff that dark, metal-inflected dreams are made of. Add to this trio multi-instrumentalist Mike Zarin and you’ve got the recipe for dark magic. Unfortunately, while their debut LP, Echolocation, has this threads and whispered hints of…

  • Nine Inch Nails – Not The Actual Events

    January 3, 2017 - By 

    It’s not unlike Nine Inch Nails to blindside you. The release structure for albums like The Slip and the Ghosts series have been very much an ad hoc affair and their latest, Not The Actual Events, is no different. The record, announced with the introduction of new full-time member Atticus Ross, owes a great deal to NIN’s past as well as Reznor and Ross’s soundtrack work over the last decade. While the EP isn’t groundbreaking, it’s been a welcome Christmas treat or long time fans. Proceedings blast off with the incendiary ‘Branches/Bones’ and it’s as though the last ten years…

  • Gross Net – Quantitative Easing

    December 16, 2016 - By 

    The issue of building your persona around darkness is that after a certain point it becomes ridiculous. An overwhelming sense of nihilism, an abhorrence of any kind of salvation and an unwavering fascination with misery can be profound, for a while. Those who can sustain careers built around gloom, the likes of Sun Kil Moon, Scott Walker and Nick Cave, know that you have to allow some light in. Because if you don’t and you’re unwilling to go the extreme, á la Ian Curtis or Richey Edwards, then all you doing is insincere posturing which will inevitably slide into unintentional…

  • Martha Wainright – Goodnight City

    December 5, 2016 - By 

    At the core of Martha Wainwright’s identity there exists a conflict between the scabrous and nakedly honest confessional singer-songwriter and a mercurial musical translator, plucking various influences and sources and remolding them into something almost unrecognizable. The latter produces work like her soundtrack to the French Canadian TV series Trauma or the collection of lullabies she produced with her sister. The former is responsible for tracks like the furiously candid “Bloody Motherfucking Asshole”. With Goodnight City, Wainwright tries to walk hand in hand with these two, distinct, personas, rotating the spotlight between them and showcasing the breadth and scope of…

  • Honeyblood – Babes Never Die

    November 30, 2016 - By 

    Unambiguously unashamed, hook-riddled pop music and the simple, immediate pleasures that come with it are exactly what the doctor ordered at times. Listening to Scott Walker warbling about punching a donkey on the streets of Galway is all well and good, but there are some times where you need six strings and some oversized melodies to cleanse the sonic palette. Like a fine of lemon sorbet, Scottish fuzz pop duoHoneyblood strip away everything else in your purview with their infectious brand of sharp, yet sweet garage rock. Babes Never Die, the group’s second LP and the first since losing Shona…

  • Arborist – Home Burial

    November 28, 2016 - By 

    If there is a unifying and constant sensation which runs throughout Arborist‘s Home Burial like some arterial chord it is that of gloom. A cursory glance at the cover art paints a startlingly accurate depiction of what the next 40 odd minutes entails: a gothic, rustic farmhouse sits against a grey, unsettled sky with an impending destructive force looming on the horizon. While it looks like the sort of place Robert Smith might spend a Summer holiday, it does set the stage perfectly. This is not an album of joy, redemption, and salvation, it’s forlorn expedition through the emotional wilderness as our…

  • The Japanese House – Swim Against the Tide

    November 23, 2016 - By 

    If there is one figure which looms large over every moment of Swim Against The Tide, the new EP by pop songstress The Japanese House, it is that of Imogen Heap. With its glitchy beats, emphasis on textured electronics and distinct English twang running through a vocoder, the spectre of the former Frou-Frou vocalist is consistent and undeniable. While the disc never actually manages to escape from Heap’s shadow, it’s still a surprisingly solid slice of ambient dreamy music. Japanese House frontwoman Amber Bain has described her output as “a sad little puppy listening to Beyoncé to cheer itself up”…

  • Hannah Peel – Awake But Always Dreaming

    September 23, 2016 - By 

    Every second we’re alive we move closer to our conclusion. We hope for ourselves there will be some dignity and grace in our final moments and that we might finish the whole existence thing with our minds intact, painlessly drifting into the great unknown. Sadly, though, that probably won’t be the case. Estimates from Genio state that by 2046, 150000 people in Ireland will suffer from dementia with two-thirds of those being women. Neurodegenerative diseases, such as dementia, are becoming the shadow which defines the latter section of so many lives. Yet in spite of the looming nature of this…