• R51 – No Chill

    September 16, 2016 - By 

    That steamrolling wall of sound which smashes through the mix and opens R51’s No Chill EP is a pretty undeniable statement of intent: the Belfast five-piece is bringing their already exceptionally high game to a new tier. Expanding on the palette set out on last year’s  the group delve deeper into shoegaze territory, as the emphasis on this outing is focused on the swirls of textured guitars and soaring vocals. It’s noisy and chaotic, yet intricate and finely honed. ‘Elephant’, the EP’s first song, is a clear testament to this as the seismic opening contrasts with Melyssa Shannon’s delicate, yet…

  • Inbound: Girlfriend

    August 31, 2016 - By 

    There is an overriding sense of darkness and foreboding surrounding Dublin’s lo-fi punks Girlfriend. With song titles like ‘kill them all (your feelings)’ and ‘the stuff you think about late at night and never tell anyone about’ which adorn their debut EP 3AM rituals, it’s clear that on the surface anyway, this band have shrouded themselves in this veil of death and misery through which no light can pierce. As the four-piece say, their music is to be consumed “at 3AM while sitting in a circle of salt surrounded by black candles casting spells on enemies/friends/local fiends/lovers”. Tongues are firmly…

  • A Grave With No Name – Wooden Mask

    August 15, 2016 - By 

    When the first guitar strum on ‘Sword’, the opening track on A Grave With No Name’s latest LP Wooden Mask, cuts through the atmospheric clinking and clattering, it’s clear that we’re in Phil Elverum territory. Alexander Shields, the man behind the Grave moniker, has his sights firmly set on picking up from where The Microphones’ The Gloaming, Part 2 left off. Shields’ output is based on these eerie slices of folk music infused with ambient whispers and these twinges of aggressive, electric and electronic instruments creeping around the edges of the aural plain. Although it never manages to invigorate or…

  • Russian Circles – Guidance

    August 5, 2016 - By 

    In many ways, post-rock is an easy genre. Get a guitar, bass, and drums, load them with enough pedals to make Kevin Shields gasp and repeat a single musical phrase for the guts of seventy minutes and, voilà, you’re the next Explosions In The Sky, This Will Destroy or The Album Leaf. Freebasers will line up far and wide to catch a glimpse of what you’re doing, tv shows will contact you to write the score for their uplifting emotional scene and you’ll write variants of an identical theme for about decade, replacing members faster than an 80’s hair metal…

  • Ben Chatwin – Heat and Entropy

    August 2, 2016 - By 

    It’s nice when an LP’s cover so succinctly summarises what the album holds. Heat and Entropy, the latest LP from experimental Scottish composer Ben Chatwin, has one of those images. The picture in question is of the underside of a squid against a purely black backdrop. It’s crisp, detailed and leaves to the imagination as the mouth, suction cups and moisture of the cephalopod’s underside are prominently visible. It’s a striking and almost hideous vision of the natural world that because of the void-like darkness that surrounds it; it looks as though it would torment you were you in a…

  • Biffy Clyro – Ellipsis

    July 19, 2016 - By 

    There is that Morrissey line that seems rather pertinent when discussing the latter part of Biffy Clyro’s career: we hate it when our friends become successful. Witnessing one of the UK’s most beloved cult acts completely dominate the charts was always going to be true sight to behold. On their journey to the top however, the group lost what made them so fascinating in the first place; their ridiculous tonal shifts sidelined in favour of more straightforward pop-oriented direction. Their previous album – the bloated, underwhelming double album Opposites – was a testament to this fact as none of its twenty…

  • The Avalanches – Wildflower

    July 8, 2016 - By 

    Like Guns N’ Roses, Dr. Dre and My Bloody Valentine, The Avalanches have been a cautionary punchline for much of the last decade. Having fired out the gate with an album as alarmingly magnificent as Since I Left You, the band had the world waiting with bated breath for the long gestated follow up. But the months turned into years and the years to a decade and anticipation faded into abandon. The group’s style, plunderphonics, is a found art approach to music wherein everything from lost classics to tv jingles and soundbites are stripped apart and reassembled into something new…

  • King Kong Company – King Kong Company

    June 27, 2016 - By 

    There’s no denying that sometimes all you need in the day is an unapologetically block rocking beat. Simply put there are points where you have to leave the introspection and self-loathing of LCD Soundsystem at the door and let your body and soul go nuts to the sounds of Soulwax, The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy. Music for those times where you need to dance yourself clean of every ounce of restraint and self-consciousness. If such a hankering should ever strike, then Waterford’s The King Kong Company have got the perfect remedy: their eponymous LP. What’s instantly apparent  is that…

  • Minor Victories – Minor Victories

    June 21, 2016 - By 

    Just because some things seem like they could go together, doesn’t mean they should. Everyone can agree that roller coasters are fun, as is coitus, however, if you were to meld them though you’d probably end up as the subject of one of those Snopes verified urban legends. An album such as Minor Victories, the eponymous debut from a new supergroup featuring the Editors’ Justin Lockey, Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, and Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, is the aural equivalent of the aforementioned Alton Towers copulation. Take every individual component on offer and you’ve got a recipe special; A record which might potentially…

  • PAWS – No Grace

    June 15, 2016 - By 

    It’s the summer months and you all know what that means: it’s time for the latest slew of pop-punk records to stretch out their heavily tattooed arms and release their latest diatribe on the pains of being misunderstood just in time for the Summer festival season. Bring on the Warped Tour, yo! So amongst this crop which includes the likes of Modern Baseball, The Hotelier and White Lung, where does Scotland’s PAWS’ latest LP, No Grace, fit into this new crop of punkers? Well, it’s a record that seems to believe that the best way to go forward is to…