• Destroyer – Have We Met

    February 21, 2020 - By 

    Over the course of his 25 year career, Dan Bejar, the driving force behind Destroyer, has carved a reputation for bombastic stylistic shifts. Stemming from an overarching philosophy that is actively against forging personal connections with his devoted following, Bejar has consistently given with one hand and taken away with the other. Whether it’s playing shows with his back to an unacknowledged crowd, or lurching from a commercial peak to an avant-garde experiment, Bejar has built one of the most interesting and expansive indie-rock projects with one simple rule: don’t even dare try and guess our next step.  Have We…

  • Andras – Joyful

    February 19, 2020 - By 

    What happens when the rave has to end? Ideas of nostalgia have been a frequent presence in the zeitgeist of recent dance music; from the endless-party revivalism of Jamie XX’s In Colour, to the lost futures that critic Mark Fisher identified from Burial’s debut. Those albums are arguably positioned on the extremes of nostalgia, however; for a more tender, bittersweet exploration of these ideas, Australian producer Andras presents his latest album, Joyful. Andras himself describes Joyful as “cutting a path through an overgrowth of nostalgia around 70s acid folk and 90s acid house”, which on first listen is an intriguing…

  • Wire – Mind Hive

    February 17, 2020 - By 

    Though Wire were always renowned for their musical transformation over three short years in the late ’70s – from the art school punk vignettes of 1977’s Pink Flag through to the icy, doomed post-punk of 154, stopping off at the transitional Chairs Missing in between – it’s no great surprise that 40 years into their career they don’t always possess this same level of invention. It’s not necessarily a bad thing though – while their last outing, 2017’s Silver/Lead could be possibly be described as samey, it was also their most solid and consistent work in a while. At once…

  • Green Day – Father Of All…

    February 13, 2020 - By 

    In 2004, Green Day irrevocably altered how the public perceived them. After their 1994 platinum smash, Dookie, the general consensus was that this was a band of juvenile so-cal boys who liked smoking weed, shamelessly ripping off the Clash and had very little to say. Basically, punk music for mallrats and frat boys. After a decade of not reaching the same commercial highs as their early career, they had to go big or close up shop. They opted for the former and essentially blew up their playbook and legacy.  With the release of American Idiot, gone were the group whose…

  • ShitKid – Duo Limbo/”Mellan Himmel å Helvete”

    February 13, 2020 - By 

    With a name as unashamedly playful and juvenile as ShitKid, Åsa Söderqvist knows exactly what her audience wants. Under this moniker, she offers up some delightful stoner pop nuggets with more than a dash of irony and ire. The strings are fuzzy, the drums are heavy and the melodies are sweet treats shoved through the grime of old school punk. There’s a decidedly scrappy, almost DIY, nature to everything she’s doing here. Her sound is lo-fi and has the atmosphere of being recorded quickly at a friend’s house using Garageband. Even in the visuals, this mindset is present as the…

  • Aoife Nessa Frances – Land of No Junction

    February 10, 2020 - By 

    In certain strands of philosophy, opposing forces are just another cog in the machine that keeps the world working. Full resolutions to a problem are unobtainable, a pipe dream, given that the universe is in a constant flux. Instead, contradiction is to be embraced in order to achieve balance, rather than trying to reach a final resolution. For many, this is a sweat-inducing prospect. For Dublin’s Aoife Nessa Frances, however, this theory binds together her sensational debut album, Land Of No Junction. Frances’ solo debut is a far cry from the raw shoegaze of former band Princess, and instead is…

  • Andy Shauf – The Neon Skyline

    February 6, 2020 - By 

    Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf invites listeners into a whimsical narrative with his latest album The Neon Skyline. This is Shauf’s sixth album, following his hugely successful 2016 outing, The Party. In similar style, The Neon Skyline incorporates casual conversation with friends into the lyrics, and with many of the songs we find him as a quiet observer in deep contemplation. The stories that are told throughout the tracklist all take place over the course one evening in the Skyline restaurant, after which the album is named, and loosely mirror the events in Shauf’s life in the aftermath a breakup. The title…

  • Gareth Davis & Merzbow – Broken Landscapes

    January 30, 2020 - By 

    To be rich in friends is to be poor in nothing, or so the saying goes. Given how barely anyone who dedicates their life to experimental music ends up rich, perhaps the success of such musicians should be measured by their influence and the connections they create. Of course, such an idea cannot be measured quantitatively, but if one were to do that, collaborations could be a handy metric. And by that standard, Masami Akita, or Merzbow to you and I, would take some beating. An exhaustive rundown of his collaborations would be too exhausting to list, but in the…

  • Algiers – There Is No Year

    January 30, 2020 - By 

    One thing that you can’t fault Algiers on is the fact that they know how to start all guns blazing. The title track and album opener for their latest LP, There Is No Year, grabs you by the lobes in the first few seconds and does not let go. It’s pulsating and bumping and filled will an anxious, impassioned cry over a world that is too far gone to save. Franklin James Fisher’s vocals oscillate between a soulful croon and desperate warble over a rip-roaring death march. Your blood begins bumping, things begin to coalesce and the feeling that your…

  • Duster – Duster

    January 25, 2020 - By 

    It somehow seems fitting that San Jose slowcore outfit, Duster, would come back from the dead to release an album on the penultimate day of the decade. Nearly 20 years since their last LP, it’s a move that reflects the same elusive and distant feeling their music evokes. Like Duster’s two previous albums, Stratosphere and Contemporary Movement, the tonal theme of outer space is heavily present and with the opening track ‘Copernicus Crater’, that theme is picked right back up. Setting out the cosmic manifesto early on with a driving  bassline and a gloom laden guitar that really makes you feel like you exploring an other worldly geographical feature. Tracks like ‘Hoya…