• Jungle – Jungle

    August 11, 2014 - By 

    If the early years of the second decade of the 21st Century are looked back on by culture historians and future mars-dwelling anthropologists, then the most striking thing that hopefully hits them isn’t just our society’s over-reliance on dance bangers and international rappers but also the grey period that alternative music went through. Alt-J, Metronomy and to a lesser extent Future Islands are helping build up a series of strong copyright cases by releasing each other’s songs; weak bladdered knock-offs of LCD Soundsystem which although not terrible, aren’t anything special. Into the fray step Jungle. Jungle starts off promisingly enough.…

  • King Creosote – From Scotland With Love

    August 7, 2014 - By 

    From Scotland With Love is the first long player of previously unreleased material from King Creosote since the stunning 2011 Jon Hopkins collaboration Diamond Mine and picks up the baton after two decades and over forty records of almost ceaseless prolific productivity. As the Commonwealth Games come to Glasgow, is Kenny ‘King Creosote’ Anderson a contender or has his race been run? This is more than just a record. Specifically written to accompany a silent movie production of the same name, the film is a gritty black and white look through archive footage from Scotland’s past showing the love, the…

  • Adebisi Shank – The Third Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank

    August 6, 2014 - By 

    Let’s cut to a very important chase, straight away. This Is The Third Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank Is Not This Is The Second Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank. The Second Album... was an event in Irish music. Not just a major release, or critically acclaimed, but a happening, a seismic shift in expectations for others to follow, and a step up for Irish independent music, so much so it attracted the attention of Sargent House and the world. It was important, a concentrated blast of everything that was right with the world. Opinion on teaser…

  • Judas Priest – Redeemer of Souls

    July 24, 2014 - By 

    Judas Priest have always had a ‘balls to the wall’ sound, largely courtesy of guitarists KK Downing and Glenn Tipton. So when Downing decided to abandon ship in 2011, it was the musical equivalent of Priest losing a bollock. Kicking off their seventh album, ‘Dragonaut’ positively tears out of the speakers, leaving you in no doubt that if this is Priest on one bollock, it’s still better than most other things. Redeemer of Souls is very much Judas Priest being ‘Judas Priest’, delivering molten slabs of classic heavy metal, stories of warriors, machines, and beasts. And by adhering to the…

  • OOIOO – Gamel

    July 14, 2014 - By 

    Today’s word of the day is metallophones. This group of musical instruments is the key to the Gamelan musical traditions of Indonesia that provide the bedrock for Gamel. Basically, any tuned metal you can hit with a mallet is covered by the term, and since most Westerners are only likely to have come across a glockenspiel and maybe a vibraphone it becomes a useful umbrella term covering an embarrassment of ignorance. It is within Gamelan that OOIOO have perhaps discovered their musical home. Six albums and nearly twenty years of experimental improvisation by Yoshimi and her cohorts have led them…

  • Manic Street Preachers – Futurology

    July 16, 2014 - By 

    Twenty-five years is a long time to be doing anything, especially making music. One of the biggest problems facing a group lasting this long is that of progression. Where do you go? It comes down to a simple choice: keep pushing forward or stagnate and reiterate. There are pros and cons for both. If you keep advancing you could discover new styles and sounds and be a modern 1970s Bowie but you could also look ridiculous and fail spectacularly like 1990s Bowie. With repetition you end up tying your hands behind your back and locking yourself into a single inescapable…

  • Taylor McFerrin – Early Riser

    July 9, 2014 - By 

    As the oldest son of legendary vocalist and composer Bobby ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ McFerrin, Taylor McFerrin has presumably had ample time to soak up as much of the unorthodox, richly diverse musicianship that the family crest must surely represent. Taylor, following in the footsteps of his father, puts on the captain’s hat for Early Riser, his debut LP courtesy of Flying Lotus’s and Ninjatune’s off-shoot label, Brainfeeder, and as a consequence, helms the production, instrumental and compositional responsibilities. Considering also that the album has been around five years in the making, it suggests that the multi-talented McFerrin – in…

  • Ultramantis Black – S/T

    June 24, 2014 - By 

    Pro wrestling isn’t necessarily the first port of call in terms of informed and conscientious political and social commentary, with non-jingoistic fans for years putting up with dated “evil foreigner” gimmicks, gang-like groups repping colours and flipping hand signs, and myriad other misrepresentations of a reality from which the artform was originally supposed to provide escape. Call it a fucking huge surprise then, when UltraMantis Black, masked wrestler and staple of leading American independent company CHIKARA, broke his silence to yowl in a political straight-edge hardcore band, out of character, yet within mask, in a surreal clash of the king…

  • Fucked Up – Glass Boys

    June 18, 2014 - By 

    Fucked Up are a band living in the shadow of some powerful things. In 2008, the band released their second record, Chemistry of Common Life, an immensely satisfying and exhilarating album that challenges the very essence of hardcore and distills it into something new and exciting. In 2011, they followed it up with David Come To Life, an ambitious, grandiose concept album which explores love, betrayal and metatextual analysis in Thatcher’s Britain over its seventy-eight minute run time. These records can be mentioned in the same breath as Refused’s Shape of Punk To Come or Husker Du’s Zen Arcade as vital punk albums…

  • Lone – Reality Testing

    June 12, 2014 - By 

    Nottingham’s most colourful son, Lone, AKA Matt Cutler, has returned to inject our dreary, overcast days with some lush, strobing shades of fluorescence; as has historically been the case since his Kids in Tracksuits days. Reality Testing,Cutler’s – latest full-length effort courtesy of R&S records – is quite frankly a testament to the LPs that have preceded it. No mean feat, but Cutler has had ample time to hone his production skills that bend and shake the boundaries of house, hip hop and electro (with a pinch of jazz for good measure, of course), culminating in a sound which is so rich and…