• The Fall – New Facts Emerge

    July 28, 2017 - By 

    Constant line-up changes are part and parcel of The Fall, to the point where Guardian journalist Dave Simpson almost drove himself mad trying to track down every ex-member for his book The Fallen. And yet, in the last decade they’ve been strangely stable, releasing an unprecedented four albums with an entirely unchanged line-up, and a fifth that merely added a second percussionist. Now, though, not only are they back to a single drummer, but they’ve also lost Elena Poulou, who’d been manning the keyboards since as far back as 2002, making her one of the band’s longest serving members ever,…

  • Tyler, The Creator – Flower Boy

    July 27, 2017 - By 

    Any artist that enjoys strong commercial success in their teens will, to a degree, grow up in public, and this is especially true for Tyler, the Creator. As the de-facto leader of the anarchic rap collective turned media empire Odd Future, he’s been baiting, and duly receiving worldwide media attention for the best part of a decade, both positively for his growing sophistication as a rapper and producer, and negatively for, well, just about everything. Odd Future were truly an exercise in controversy, and while their punk-inspired, stage-diving live shows may have had them banned from New Zealand, it was…

  • Avey Tare – Eucalyptus

    July 26, 2017 - By 

    Collaboration has typified Avey Tare’s output since the turn of the century – those proto-Animal Collective recordings of Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished and Danse Manatee, which saw the beginnings of that band’s gradual amalgamation; Pullhair Rubeye with múm’s Kría Brekkan; the more garage-tinged Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks project. Even Animal Collective, active now for the guts of two decades in some form or other, has always been a mutating thing from album to album, with various permutations of its members dipping in and out indiscriminately. Avey Tare – David Portner to his nearest and dearest – has been…

  • Waxahatchee – Out In The Storm

    July 25, 2017 - By 

    The buzz surrounding Waxahatchee is something else. Ever since 2015’s Ivy Tripp, the project has been generating a ludicrous level of hype. Now, two years later, they deliver Out In The Storm, an album which promises to be a fairly emotionally raw exploration of the dissolution of band leader Katie Crutchfield’s last relationship. On the surface there is a huge amount going for this album. It’s their first release on Superchunk’s Merge Records, a supportive, decently sized label which has given them room to breathe and explore. They’ve got John Agnello behind the desk. He’s a man who recorded and…

  • Cornelius – Mellow Waves

    July 24, 2017 - By 

    Keigo Oyamada (AKA Cornelius) could easily be described as a jack of all trades but certainly not as a master of none. In the 11 years since the release of his last studio album Sensuous, he has been involved in a wide range of projects from working with Yoko Ono and The Yellow Magic Orchestra to scoring music for 2010s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and the anime series Ghost in the Shell Arise. After a long departure from writing his own music, he was inspired to create something more personal, drawing on the loss of many of his childhood…

  • Boris – Dear

    July 21, 2017 - By 

    There is a delightful uncertainty associated with a new Boris album. The Japanese three piece have spent twenty-five years keep metal fans on their toes with aplomb. Every new release brings with it a myriad of questions of style, tone and content that makes the pre-release period surprisingly fun. This extends to the first few runs through the record. Each iteration uncovers unexpected turns, subtle slivers of sound folded deeply into the mix and new tapestries of noise that you somehow missed. The only real guarantee that the group offers is that things are going to get exceeding heavy at…

  • Gang – 925 ‘TIL I DIE

    July 20, 2017 - By 

    For some unknown reason, Britain’s Margate is becoming an unlikely hub of culture. Once famed for its Victorian pier, commodious bathing rooms and Dreamland amusement complex, Margate made for an ideal seaside getaway for middle-class Londoners. Usually, you can read between the lines and translate this to ‘small English coastal town decimated by the introduction of low-cost airlines and package holidays’. But that is not the case. Instead, Margate is one of very few English seaside resorts that has had been regenerated and actually cohabits in the 21st century. The Turner Contemporary Gallery can be found here, as can chic…

  • Wild Rocket – Dissociation Mechanics

    July 20, 2017 - By 

    Wild Rocket have been ploughing their own particular psych rock furrow for the past few years, standing out in the Irish metal scene as one of the slower, sludgier bands around. Their first album, Geomagnetic Hallucinations, was an assured debut, while their second, Dissociation Mechanics, toys further with the form, extending track lengths and burrowing further into their krautrock-meets-metal idiom. The album’s lead track, ‘Caught In Triangle Again’, is one that’s least representative of the whole album. It opens with a loping groove, guitars and bass doubling the riff, accented by synth and joined by vocals that come straight from…

  • Mura Masa – Mura Masa

    July 19, 2017 - By 

    On his self-titled debut Alex Crossan aka Mura Masa makes intelligent, sophisticated pop writing seem utterly effortless. He does this by seemingly always making the correct creative decisions whether that’s the choice of collaborator, the length of a song or the minutiae of layering across a bar, a chorus or an entire single. This talent or knack or aptitude or god given gift is present right from opener ‘Messy Love’ into the late stages of the album but is transcendent in conjunction with the immense talent of the contributors. Despite being her second best appearance on the album, ‘Nuggets’ featuring…

  • Sun Collective – Sun Collective

    July 18, 2017 - By 

    Over the course of its musical history, Ireland has had a symbiotic relationship with the art of folk music from stalwarts like Luke Kelly, The Clancy Brothers and Planxty to recent greats like Declan O’Rourke, Villagers, The Gloaming and Lisa Hannigan. As culture moves however, the prevalent ties to tradition that once permeated the country’s musical culture have been seen to fray ever-so-slightly. Mass-produced pop-rock dominates Irish ticket sales, festival main stages and radio airplay, shoving aside a genre so formative to parts of the Irish identity. In the midst of this it becomes crucial to find new ways of recontextualising…