• Bicep – Bicep

    September 13, 2017 - By 

    As well known in recent years for their 4/4 bangers as their spacey, off-kilter musical segues from the dance floor to the chill-out room, it’s not entirely surprising that Belfast native, London-based duo Bicep have found a home for their eponymous debut LP on Ninja Tune. Historically, the label’s indie ethos has allowed those artists straddling experimental electronica and the left-field to develop a cult following before propelling them into the greater public depth-of-field. What’s interesting here is that Bicep, having already garnered such an intensely outspoken following on home soil in a relatively short space of time (all things considered),…

  • Mogwai – Every Country’s Sun

    September 11, 2017 - By 

    With Mogwai’s soundtrack career ever-burgeoning and winning them new plaudits 20 years after the release of their debut, Young Team, you’d forgive them for taking a break from regular studio albums for a while. This soundtrack work has given them a new sense of purpose, and while 2014’s Rave Tapes was their highest charting album to date, it also earned them some of their most lukewarm reviews, the band themselves even conceding that it was somewhat underdeveloped. Not only that, but their 20th anniversary celebrations – consisting of a career spanning retrospective compilation and some of their most truly triumphant live shows ever…

  • Mount Kimbie – Love What Survives

    September 8, 2017 - By 

    It would be a hard push to find an electronic act in 2017 as dynamic and ever changing as Mount Kimbie. The London duo came to prominence through their perfecting of the highly popularised post-dubstep sound on their 2010 debut Crooks & Lovers. Further acclaim came then with their sophomore effort Cold Spring Fault Less Youth. Having teased listeners with collaborative singles featuring James Blake and King Krule over the last few months, album number three Love What Survives lands with now with a considerable hype wrapped around it, leaving us itching to discover whether the pair have succeeded in evolving with the indie-electronic…

  • The National – Sleep Well Beast

    September 8, 2017 - By 

    After a four year period rich in collaborations, side-projects and production work, the build-up to this, The National‘s seventh album was a carefully crafted and ubiquitous one. Teaser clips hinted the release of its first single, ‘The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness’ and a blue-coloured, minimal take on the album’s cover art popped up in different cities across the globe. What is interesting is how this bold, outward looking campaign stands in a sharp contrast to the songs themselves. Here we find album that at its core is an intimate reflection on failing relationships both personal and universal, one that confronts…

  • Susanne Sundfør – Music for People in Trouble

    September 6, 2017 - By 

    Not to be that guy, but *ahem* as Confucius once said: Real knowledge is to learn the extent of one’s ignorance. Now, without trying to send readers running for the hills with a review rife with personal enlightenment and pretentious philosophical opening statements, it’d be hard to deny that Susanne Sundfør’s latest album, Music for People in Trouble initially appealed as a sitting duck for my worrisome self and an overhanging £5.20 library fine for a book I never once picked up. This review was drafted to open with a breezy, whimsical quip about Sundfør’s medicinal and spirit-cleansing qualities and the…

  • Hercules & Love Affair – Omnion

    September 4, 2017 - By 

      In 2008, when Andy Butler formed Hercules & Love Affair and released breakthrough single ‘Blind’ –featuring Anohni – into the world there was a fear from DFA Records that the track had the potential to be a one-hit wonder of sorts. Quite the contrary, the critically acclaimed track shone a light on Butler’s project which has now, nearly ten years later, released its fourth studio outing Omnion. Since its inception, Hercules & Love Affair has grown to be a more collaborative effort, combining the intensity and and elegance of Butler’s production with a word-class cast of featured artists, including…

  • LCD Soundsystem – American Dream

    September 4, 2017 - By 

    After putting a metaphorical bullet in the project’s jaded head five years ago, James Murphy found himself with plenty of time to kill in a post-LCD Soundsystem world. He went back to producing music, and found he was still good at that. He became something of a wine and coffee connoisseur, and found he was good at that too. But like many retirees he began to feel a void. And so an awkwardness was born — not unusual for Murphy — which left him with something of a conundrum: do you reform the band you supposedly buried forever and risk…

  • The War on Drugs – A Deeper Understanding

    September 2, 2017 - By 

    Sun Kil Moon miserabilist Mark Kazolek famously dismissed the The War on Drugs “beer commercial lead guitar shit” shortly after the release of 2014’s instant-classic third LP Lost In The Dream. Despite being desperately unfair to the Philadelphia outfit – effectively a vehicle for frontman Adam Granduciel since the departures of founding members Kurt Vile and Steve Gunn – it does tap into the band’s own internal paradox: their music is undoubtedly rooted in the stadium-filling giants of 80s rock, from Granduciel’s Dylanesque purrs and Mark Knopfler-style lead guitar, while ambient flourishes recall U2’s Eno lead pre-Joshua Tree experimentalism. The…

  • Arvo Party – Arvo Party

    September 1, 2017 - By 

    There’s been something of a LaFaro-shaped hole in Belfast’s music scene since their dissolution a couple of years ago. In a city that’s had no shortage of post-hardcore-leaning bands over the years, LaFaro stood far in front, assisted by a rawness and lack of pretence, not to mention frontman Jonny Black’s vocals that swapped the usual throaty screams and Americanised emoting with a sarcastic snarl handed down from Steve Albini and mclusky’s Andy Falkous. After going on to join Cahir O’Doherty’s Goons – a band who were similarly riffy but lacked that same LaFaro spark and never really got going…

  • The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – The Echo of Pleasure

    September 1, 2017 - By 

    On their fourth full length release, The Echo of Pleasure, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart have taken a sharp stab at the all consuming 80s aesthetic that has engulfed the world over recent months. It wraps itself around the guts of frontman Kip Burman’s thoughts as he patiently waits to become a father, exploring ideas of love, longing and the human experience. Waiting to become a father is a peculiar state of limbo to be in. While you count down the days, you are already living in the altered existence that comes with having a child. On this…