• Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly

    March 24, 2015 - By 

    Precursor: the hype was justified. The long awaited “good kid, m.A.A.d city 2.0” is here, and well, it’s not that. It’s something else. It’s somehow bigger, darker, catchier and more socially significant all at once. Kendrick Lamar’s third studio release To Pimp a Butterfly is all of those things, and nothing like what we expected. Opener ‘Wesley’s Theory’ – featuring George Clinton, produced by Flying Lotus, sampling Boris Gardiner and a voice clip of Dr Dre – is an eye-opening funk monster to end all preconceptions. Aside from the immediately clear difference in instrumentals – good kid’s slick trap beats…

  • Bee Mick See – The Belfast Yank

    March 18, 2015 - By 

    Does belonging to a location make an album better? Is Springsteen as interesting if you remove New Jersey or Nebraska? What about NWAand Compton? If this is the case, then rapper Bee Mick See’s debut Belfast Yank deserves some serious credit. The album is entirely engulfed in Belfast. Its language, culture and people are the subjects of various tracks ranging from loving portraits (‘Belfast Slang’) to lacerating polemics (‘Natural Scents’). Even his flow, which owes an obvious debt to Slug from Atmosphere, is heavily accented; it could only belong to this city. In spite of its overproduced beats, which bares a welcome resemblance to Malibu Shark Attack, it’s a strangely emotionally honest album. BeeMickSee is surprisingly…

  • Modest Mouse – Strangers To Ourselves

    March 17, 2015 - By 

    Given their track record, the announcement of a new Modest Mouse record should be cause for excitement; lest we forget Lonesome Crowded West and The Moon and Antarctica. While their 2007 effort, We Were Dead Before This Ship Even Sank, was somewhat lacking, the group have such a unique sound and energy that this could be written off as an unfortunate blip in an stellar track record. Sadly, while Strangers to Ourselves does have many excellent tracks it, fundamentally, is a messy and disappointing album. Beginning with a solid one-two of ‘Strangers to Ourselves’ and ‘Lampshades on Fire’, the album…

  • Two Gallants – We Are Undone

    March 16, 2015 - By 

    Despite the fact that they’ve been playing music together since they were both twelve years old, and have performed under the Two Gallants name since 2002, not too long ago it seemed like we might never hear another album from folk rock duo Adam Stephens and Tyson Vogel. Following their 2004 debut and an incredibly productive period between 2006 and 2007 where they released two fine follow up albums an EP in between, it took a whole five years for them to return with The Bloom & The Blight in 2012. While they may not have regained their earlier rate…

  • Lightning Bolt – Fantasy Empire

    March 4, 2015 - By 

    You need to be careful when choosing an album opener. The track needs to be the clearly defined mission statement of the album, but also needs to be what you’re willing to hang your hat on if all else fails. First impressions only come once. So it’s odd that, for their latest LP, Fantasy Empire, the noisy, experimental duo known as Lightning Bolt would choose to begin with something as standard as the album opener, ‘The Metal East’. The track is by no means bad. It’s loud and exciting with enough twists and jagged edges to poke your eyes out…

  • Charlie XCX – Sucker

    March 3, 2015 - By 

    Charlie XCX has quickly grown from the ‘featuring’ artist of other artists’ hits to a main attraction. Charlie (Charlotte Atchinson) wrote the hit ‘I Love It’ and let the Swedish pop duo Icona Pop record it. Last summer she featured on Iggy Azalea‘s Fancy. Now, finally, she gets to keep the spotlight on herself. As an album, Sucker is a bit repetitive. Each track would work well on any commercial radio playlist but played one after the other, the songs blend together. ‘Boom Clap’ is a great single – and it is easy to imagine any track from Sucker being…

  • Levon Vincent – Levon Vincent LP

    February 18, 2015 - By 

    Considering it’s a debut record, there’s a lot of interest in Levon Vincent’s self-titled album. Levon Vincent isn’t your regular LP debutant, though. A steady release of a couple of 12”s and singles as well as occasional mixes and a relentless global touring schedule means that Vincent is now one of the most recognisable names in techno and house. Vincent’s music also has an ethos – the title of the first track we heard from the record Anti-Corporate Music should give you a fairly rough idea what that would be. There’s been rumours that Vincent has been leaking his own…

  • No Monster Club – People Are Weird

    February 10, 2015 - By 

    No Monster Club is a cacophonous creature that can’t be categorized. Styled by Dublin’s own Bobby Aherne, this musical act is a creation born of many genres, many trials, many errors, and many years in production, with latest release People Are Weird proving no exception to this theme. In fact, this eighth album represents a lot of Aherne’s transformation as an artist these past eight years. Dipping his hands and his listeners’ ears into various pots of sound across the set, Aherne flees from being pinned to one classification, weaving an opus which draws on the influence of past artists…

  • Viet Cong – Viet Cong

    February 10, 2015 - By 

    Viet Cong really know how to make an entrance. The first moments of their self titled debut LP contain those drums; they’re almost tribal with intensity but they’ve been distorted and muffled to the stage where they achieve this kind of industrial vibe, evoking the likes of the Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Intense Humming of Evil’ and Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Mr. Self Destruct’. It’s this kind of deeply unsettling atmosphere that the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten just revelled in and gives the band a clear mission statement: for these Canadians, it’s still the mid 80s, and Joy Division, Echo and The…

  • John Carpenter – Lost Themes

    February 2, 2015 - By 

    Within seconds of hitting play on director John Carpenter’s first ‘real’ album, pictures start to form in your head. Kurt Russell, chewing on a cigarette, sullenly peeking out with his one eye, stubble so rugged you could grate cheese on it, and a fashion sense that is questionable, at best. There might never be another Snake Plissken movie, but when John Carpenter is behind the synth, suddenly there doesn’t need to be.In some part due to necessity, Carpenter composed the soundtracks to the vast majority of his films, working quickly and cheaply, utilising basic rock band instrumentation and heavy, primitive…