• At The Drive In – in•ter a•li•a

    May 9, 2017 - By 

    For a long time, it was hard to envision any kind of world where El Paso’s At The Drive-In could amicably sit silently in a room with one another, let alone make music together. Not that there weren’t calamitous appeals from legions of devotees. These five men crafted the most indispensable punk music of the 1990s. Along with Refused and Jawbreaker, they earned a level of adoration and obsession that few can only dream. As time rolled on and lucrative reunion tour deals reared their ugly heads, these fantasies began veering alarmingly close to reality. Now, Refused are fucking undead,…

  • Big Walnuts Yonder – Big Walnuts Yonder

    May 10, 2017 - By 

    A lifelong self-professed student of the bass, Mike Watt has tirelessly explored the instrument’s intricacies since his teenage forays into punk rock with D. Boon in Minutemen. Watt’s subsequent four-decade career has seen him play with a slew of bands and collaborators, influencing countless players along the way. Through his tenure with fIREHOSE, Dos, and in later years The Stooges and current freeform trio Il Sogno Del Marinaio, Watt has bounced between genres, musicians and continents playing his trade; mastering his instrument. It was in Japan that the genesis for Big Walnuts Yonder began, from a conversation between Watt and…

  • Actress – AZD

    May 9, 2017 - By 

    Experimental music is supposed to try and expand the boundaries of the possible. It’s always something of a gamble, but a thrilling one at that. Actress, AKA London-based experimental techno artist Darren Cunningham, has thus far managed to carve a niche for himself in an area that’s generally quite difficult to stand out in. Spend enough time among his soundscapes and you can begin to easily identify an Actress track – there’s a distinctiveness to his work that Cunningham has characterised as “almost like extreme patenting”. AZD (pronounced “azid”) is his fifth album under this moniker, one that arrived with…

  • Little Dragon – Season High

    May 8, 2017 - By 

    Little Dragon are a band that have bumped along quietly since they first appeared with their self-titled debut album in 2007. While they’ve never troubled the top of the charts, they’ve trodden their own path, making solid synth-pop albums while also collaborating with various acts in the hip-hop/R’n’B firmament, with singer Yukimi Nagano lending her vocals to tracks by Big Boi, Mac Miller and Kaytranada among others. After ten years, four albums and numerous EPs they’re on to their fifth full-length effort, ‘Season High’. The album, much like their previous efforts, is a mix of styles with multiple genres being…

  • Thurston Moore – Rock N Roll Consciousness

    May 8, 2017 - By 

    There is barely a facet of modern rock and indie that doesn’t have at least some minor degree of separation from Thurston Moore. During and since his time with Sonic Youth, Moore has collaborated with a formidable raft of musicians, be it via stage or studio, not to mention giving Ian McKaye a run for his money in the talking head department when it comes to music documentaries. His presence in modern music is ubiquitous, so it seems almost slack that Rock n Roll Consciousness is only his fifth solo release. Give him a break, though. Moore is a busy…

  • The Journey

    May 5, 2017 - By 

    With the opening credits of The Journey stating that you are about to watch an imagined depiction of what happened between Ian Paisley (Timothy Spall) and Martin McGuinness (Colm Meaney) during a key moment in the Northern Ireland peace process, you can hopefully brace yourself for the ludicrously ill-conceived film that screenwriter and novelist Colin Bateman and director Nick Hamm (Godsend) have decided to bestow upon the public. Set in 2007, when the sworn enemies were at loggerheads over how they could cut a deal and set up a power-sharing government between Paisley’s DUP and McGuinness’ Sinn Fein, the two…

  • Ciaran Lavery – A King at Night: The Songs of Bonnie Prince Billy

    May 5, 2017 - By 

    Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, releases his new album Best Troubadour this month, a collection of covers of songs by Merle Haggard , who Oldham describes as his “forever hero”. Yet the prolific Oldham is something of a hero himself to many, name-checked in songs by Half Man Half Biscuit and Jeffrey Lewis, cited as a primary formative influence on a young Arab Strap and covered by the likes of The Frames, Mark Kozelek and even Johnny Cash, yet he remains firmly in the “cult favourite” bracket, where in a more fair and just world he’d surely be subject to the…

  • Perfume Genius – No Shape

    May 5, 2017 - By 

    With No Shape, Mike Hadreas AKA Perfume Genius has produced one the strongest releases of the year so far; simultaneously one of the bravest and most vulnerable. A step away from the more commercial vibes of Too Bright in 2014, the sound here is more akin to the Perfume Genius of Put Your Back In 2 It – an introspective, soul-searching struggle with the self, and with the universal concepts of loss, and love. When No Shape was announced Hadreas spoke about how the sound of this release is about “unpacking little morsels, magnifying my discomfort, wading through buried harm,…

  • Lady Macbeth

    May 4, 2017 - By 

    Like a tightly wound corset ready to explode, Lady Macbeth is masterfully controlled period piece with a rebellious, cruel heart. Based on Nikolai Leslov’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk, which imagined Shakespeare’s play from the perspective of the Scottish king’s much-maligned wife and cheerleader, the film applies its own interpretative reorientation to 19th-century England’s landed gentry, a social world the English imagination clings to in dusty, wistful, National Heritage nostalgic, a cosy image of class harmony imminently worthy of subversion (the film has been called an ‘anti-Downton Abbey‘). Lady Macbeth is a bold and confident debut work from screenwriter Alice Birch…

  • Mac DeMarco – This Old Dog

    May 4, 2017 - By 

    “Mellow” is a word that, quite obviously, always sprung to mind whenever Mac DeMarco breezes into conversation. And indeed, no other word could be more fitting for This Old Dog, his third full-length release and the eagerly anticipated follow-up to his 2015 EP, Another One. The self-proclaimed king of “jizz-jazz”, loved for his goofball sense of humour as well as his chill lo-fi sound has carved a niche for himself since his 2012 debut 2, always decorating his music with a hint of melancholia and a tongue in cheek self-awareness. DeMarco seems nothing if not comfortable in his own sonic world. Comfortable though,…