• Sea Pinks – Rockpool Blue

    October 9, 2018 - By 

    With the difficulty of making a proper living from music these days, it’s not uncommon to see the release schedules of bands on the more DIY end of the spectrum slow right down as they’re increasingly forced to balance music with work commitments and other general life admin. And yet, with the release of their seventh album a mere eight years on from their debut, Belfast’s Sea Pinks may surely by now have overtaken even Dublin’s No Monster Club for the title of Ireland’s most prolific band, and while one could be forgiven for assuming a case of quantity over…

  • Sleaford Mods – Sleaford Mods EP

    October 8, 2018 - By 

    When it comes to Sleaford Mods, there are two very distinct types of people in the world. Those of us who find ourselves instinctively drawn to the visceral fury and elusive musicality of the band’s butt ugly beats and those who struggle to separate the band’s sound from that of a Dragon Soup fuelled brawl out the back of an east Midlands lock-in. The duo’s excellent new EP is unlikely to challenge either camp’s perception… But this seething carnival of misplaced rage, artful profanity and darkly comic tales of divey bars and twitter feuds combines to create a vibrant rebuttal…

  • Exploded View – Obey

    October 3, 2018 - By 

    Exploded View are a band on a steady ascent. Formed a few years ago in Mexico City by Welsh-born, Berlin-based Anika in order to perform songs from her 2010 solo covers album on a tour of the country, the new group’s natural chemistry lead to 2016’s eponymous debut, an album of stellar original material influenced by “Can, dub and political revolution” on the ever reliable Sacred Bones label.  Coming seemingly from  out of nowhere, the album flew a little under the radar at first, but last year’s EP Summer Came Early, with its unusually catchy, breezy title track – albeit…

  • Wild Nothing – Indigo

    October 2, 2018 - By 

    It’s difficult to listen to a Wild Nothing record and not think of Gemini, Jack Tatum’s 2010 debut. Not simply for nostalgia-induced reasoning, though the record’s dreamy ambience may lead one in that direction. Rather, Tatum himself won’t let us forget Gemini. While there’s nothing wrong with self reference and a narrative of progression throughout an artist’s lifetime, Indigo and the previous two Wild Nothing releases – Nocturne and Life of Pause – are overshadowed by that charming debut and Tatum does himself no favours in trying, quite half heartedly, to move on. When Gemini was released to the world,…

  • Max Cooper – One Hundred Billion Sparks

    October 1, 2018 - By 

      There are few artists who occupy the middle ground between music, science, art and technology quite like Max Cooper. The Belfast-born producer’s repertoire often portrays complex scientific theory through the medium of sonically beautiful shapeshifting electronica. Shaped by his studies in computational biology and genetics, One Hundred Billion Sparks is his first full length album since Emergence in 2016, and documents Cooper’s search for artistry amongst the mechanisms, emotions and constructs which yield identity and experience. Crudely put, individuals are distinguished from one another by their differing combinations of one hundred billion neurons, each of them capable of creating…

  • Low – Double Negative

    September 29, 2018 - By 

    In a world that loves labels, being unclassifiable can be a heavy cross to bear… Long lumbered with reductive and largely meaningless tags like “Slowcore” (or worse still “Sadcore”), Low’s elegant sound has all too frequently been banished to the realms of what Jack Black’s character in High Fidelity might have dubbed “Old, sad bastard music”.   Such curt dismissal though, does a great disservice to Low’s intricate and deceptively chameleonic songs which, over the course of 15 albums, have run the gamut from chilly post-rock and spectral folk to buoyant indie pop, throwing in the odd The Smiths cover…

  • Christine and the Queens – Chris

    September 29, 2018 - By 

    Taking control over identity and self expression is a trait we saw so vividly when Héloïse Letissier initially broke onto the scene in 2016 as Christine and the Queens. Her androgynous fashion, tell-all lyrics and gusto along with her seamless flitting between singing in French and English made her the divergent pop star of the year. Where she boldly claimed ‘I’m a man now’ on Chaleur Humaine’s ‘iT’, the French performer continues to tackle gender binaries on her second album by taking on the identity of ‘Chris’. It’s an obvious forward step away from her debut with more funk and…

  • Mothers – Render Another Ugly Method

    September 24, 2018 - By 

    “Hard to focus and efforts fruitless…” So sings Mothers’ frontwoman and creative nucleus Kristine Leschper on the jagged ‘MUTUAL AGREEMENT’, crystallising the looming themes of dread and futility that permeate the band’s woozy second album. Sadly, the quote also serves as a succinct review of this imperfect and ultimately exhausting release. Downcast opener, ‘BEAUTY ROUTINE’ comes tentatively into focus with shivering fronds of detuned guitar and the first of many keening but gloomy vocal performances. The track drifts idly along as if bobbing underwater, seemingly reliant on tidal micro currents to sluggishly propel itself to the end of each verse. Leschper…

  • Menace Beach – Black Rainbow Sound

    September 22, 2018 - By 

    Over the last few years, Leeds has been quietly asserting its place as one of the UK’s most reliable cities for guitar music. Bands like Alt-J, Pulled Apart By Horses and Sky Larkin have consistently been putting out material that can’t help but restore people’s faith in the classic format. Within this scene, one group who’ve been etching out a serious name for themselves is Menace Beach. The punk five-piece have been dropping excellent releases without much fuss over the last six years. Their most recent releases, 2015’s Ratworld and 2017’s Lemon Memory, are excellent examples of what this group…

  • David Kitt – Like Lightning

    September 21, 2018 - By 

    David Kitt rounded off the first quarter of 2018 with Yous, a welcomed return to the sound he’s cultivated over the last two decades. The Dublin-based musician greets the autumn with Like Lightning, a six track EP led by the title-track which was originally featured on the quietly acclaimed album that preceded it. Like Lightning offers fans of Kitt’s varied repertoire of records under his own name an introduction to his more immediately electronic New Jackson material. On the surface, this EP could be construed as a compilation of B-sides and offcuts from the Yous recording sessions. These five songs…