• Japandroids – Near To The Wild Heart Of Life

    January 30, 2017 - By 

    After a three-year hiatus, Japandroids have had plenty of time to work on and develop their long-awaited third album, Near To The Wild Heart Of Life. The Canadian duo’s disappearance after releasing their critically acclaimed sophomore album, Celebration Rock, left many with high expectations. And although  the bar may have been set slightly too high back in 2012, their return is nonetheless a successful one. It is a strong comeback, with the band developing and maturing their sound and lyrics while still maintaining true to their roots. The pre-released title track is a strong introduction to the album, featuring an urgency not dissimilar to…

  • Split

    January 29, 2017 - By 

    Split lives up to its title in dividing my opinion right down the middle. I’m not sure whether it’s a load of gratuitous, pseudo psychology nonsense or an entertaining exploitation thriller/horror. Thankfully, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) has managed to break out of his disappointing – sometimes awful – run of films since the mid-2000s, by pulling an inspired performance out of James McAvoy (X-Men: First Class) and creating an intriguingly sinister story with a surprising bite in its finale. It may be generic at its core, containing a few too many plot holes, but Split is clearly…

  • Rebekka Karijord – Mother Tongue

    January 27, 2017 - By 

    The emotional transfiguration of becoming a mother is something that the majority of people take for granted. On her latest album Mother Tongue, Rebekka Karijord has documented that spectrum of emotion that permeates motherhood, from agonising torture to euphoria. Born in Sandnessjøen, just south of the Arctic Circle in Norway, Karijord moved to Sweden to train as an actor and has composed music for over 30 films, modern dance and theatre pieces, as well as writing plays and short stories. All of this reveals itself through repeated listens to the album as we delve further into her frame of mind. Based…

  • Cherry Glazerr – Apocalipstick

    January 27, 2017 - By 

    There is an old adage about judging books and the relative merits of their covers. While time and usage have rendered it a hackneyed cliche, there is a truth in it and an album like Cherry Glazerr Apocalipstick is living proof of that. The title and cover art make it appear as though we’re getting some sharp, nihilistic jubilance wrapped up in a playful exterior; a multicolored middle finger in the air to the end of the world and those who caused it. Now there are flickers of that promised sensibility, it’s lost in the haze of the bland and…

  • Bonobo – Migration

    January 24, 2017 - By 

    For over 16 years, Ninja Tune veteran Simon Green AKA Bonobo has been making the kind of music that seems to be able to frame every and any mood that a listener is capable of feeling. There was an invariable funkiness to Animal Magic; Dial ‘M’ for Monkey provided as much whimsy as it did downbeat introspection; Days to Come and follow-up Black Sands saw Green building upon his knack for constructing subtle yet arresting modal shifts; while The North Borders added guest vocalists and traditional leanings into the fray. Now, with Migration, his sixth studio LP, Green has taken his…

  • Brian Eno – Reflection

    January 24, 2017 - By 

    Brian Eno invented ambient. Did he? Maybe. Who knows? He’s done a lot over the years – insert chronology here, from Roxy Music to Music For Airports, producing Laraaji, teaming up with Bowie and then U2, film soundtracks, Windows 95, and finally releasing albums for Warp. The latter is why we’re talking about him here, as he kicked off 2017 with a beautiful piece of work called Reflection, which was released on January 1. It’s the latest in a series of works in a bracket he calls “thinking music”; works that are “generative”. He takes a series of sounds, sets…

  • Tycho – Epoch

    January 23, 2017 - By 

    Scott Hansen’s take on electronica is one rooted as much in aesthetics as it is sound. A musician with a strong sense of visual communication, Hansen’s compositions have typically found a balance not unlike the space on an artist’s pad – colourful, contextually informative, and direct in all the right places, while sparse and minimalistic in others. It’s this balance that has resulted in a canon undetermined by fad or the changing tastes of an audience; Hansen’s work is signature and conforms to little else than a singular vision. This thread of idiosyncrasy can be traced back to 2011’s Dive;…

  • xXx: The Return of Xander Cage

    January 23, 2017 - By 

    Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which starred, among others, Vin Diesel, opened with the hero of the film being put out by his enemies not knowing who he was. An inflated sense of ego. A similar feeling occurs while watching xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, directed by D.J. Caruso, except this time it’s the audience who are left wondering why should they know – or care – about the resurrection of a character who’s first cinematic outing was fifteen years ago. There were kids in my screening that weren’t even born fifteen years ago. The extreme sports angle of…

  • Foxygen – Hang

    January 23, 2017 - By 

    “And it all but seems my lifetime dreams have ended.” Not the most encouraging sentiment to begin a song with, but at least it’s honest. That is how ‘On Lankershim’, the current single by  Californian avant-garde duo Foxygen, commences. It strikes a searing contrast to a lyric from ‘Shuggie’ from their 2013 album, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic which proclaims, “If you believe in yourself you can free your soul”. Foxygen formed twelve years ago when high school pals Jonathan Rado and Sam France began experimenting with psychedelic arrangements. In more recent times, there have…

  • Chavez – Cockfighters

    January 19, 2017 - By 

    It’s been twenty years since New York’s Chavez have graced our ears with their angular, discordant interpretation of punk. Having never officially split, the promise of new material was alway on the cards, but the members’ other commitments with likes Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Zwan, Run The Jewels and Mike Judge made it substantially less tangible. But like their twisted, asymmetrical music would suggest, Chavez will always find a way to catch you off guard. That’s what their latest EP, Cockfighters, is, a trifle of a release designed to destroy any preemptive obituaries and to announce that they are alive and well…