• Beyond the Wizards Sleeve – The Soft Bounce

    July 13, 2016 - By 

    Erol Alkan’s hugely influential club nights at London’s Trash seamlessly blended dance beats and guitar rock, bearing witness to “I was there” type early live performances from LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Bloc Party before it’s closure in 2007. Over the past decade Alkan has collaborated with acid-house pioneer Richard Norris (also half of 90s techno duo The Grid) as Beyond The Wizards Sleeve, combining their shared love of psychedelic pop to deliver critically acclaimed ‘re-animated’ edits of tracks by the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Interpol and The Chemical Brothers. Debut album The Soft Bounce sees the duo exploring their 1966-meets- 2016 sound over a…

  • Blood Orange – Freetown Sound

    July 13, 2016 - By 

    There are few contemporary artists who have gone through such pronounced changes as Mr. Devonte Hynes. From his musical start in the synth-disco- punk outfit Test Icicles through his part in the indie-folk revival with Light Speed Champion and now, probably his most celebrated incarnation, as the eighties revivalist Blood Orange. As if that CV isn’t impressive enough he’s also amassed a veritable pile of song writing credits with artists as diverse as Sky Ferreira, Carly Rae Jepsen (one of the many ladies making an impactful appearance here), Solange and Heems. His chameleon nature and expansive ability obviously calls to mind luminaries like Bowie and…

  • 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…

  • Variant Sea – Fable

    July 8, 2016 - By 

    Having formed less than a year ago, Dublin based neo-classical project Variant Sea have been quick to lure listeners into the realm of their delicate, cinematic compositions. Their debut EP Seasons of the Mist was an impressive introduction with plenty of Ludovico Einaudi inspired piano motifs and guitar backdrops a lá This Will Destroy You‘s Tunnel Blanket. Now, only nine months after their debut, the duo comprised of pianist Luke Duffy and guitarist Shell Dooley have returned with Fable, an EP that shows us musicians engaging in gradual growth. While the format of the music has remained the same, the impact of influences and the individual confidence presented…

  • Deerhoof – The Magic

    June 30, 2016 - By 

    Spots of the Deerhoof discography can be as mad as a box of psychoactive toads, there’s no doubt about it – though it’s hard to imagine anyone experiencing anything but a journey of enlightenment through the San Francisco quartet’s two decades of aural experimentation. Recorded over seven days (their previous outing, La Isla Bonita, was recorded in ten – swift action clearly suits them) The Magic is in many ways one of their more accessible records, a bounty of joyous freakbeat and wrecking ball riffs; discordant delights and mellifluous genre-hopping that seems even more spiritually aligned with The Ramones than La Isla Bonita was. Three…

  • 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…

  • Wye Oak – Tween

    June 21, 2016 - By 

    It’s been two years since the release of the critically acclaimed Shriek and the members of Baltimore’s Wye Oak have been quietly busy – Andy Stack has been the touring drummer for EL VY and Jenn Wasner has been touring her solo project, Flock of Dimes. So, the surprise release of Tween – alongside the statement that this is a collection of songs written and subsequently scrapped between the 2011 release Civilian and the aforementioned Shriek ­– makes this album a treat but one that is hard to place in the Wye Oak catalogue. Is it an album? A collection…

  • Plaid – The Digging Remedy

    June 15, 2016 - By 

    Since 1991, Plaid, the duo of of Andy Turner and Ed Handley, haven’t so much straddled the line between experimental and straightforward electronica as used it as their skipping rope. At times, they’ve been wholly unrecognisable in their wildly experimental sonic threshes (‘Cold’), they’ve made dark and demented electro anthems (‘Itsu’), and created some of the most accessible, yet weirdly unsettling music out there (‘Eyen’ ). It would be an understatement to profess that over their 25 years, Plaid have made some of the most exquisitely composed, highly-listenable electronica ever committed to wax, but in latest full-length The Digging Remedy, the former Black Dog founding fathers seem…

  • 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…