Let’s keep this short and sour: not only the most aptly-titled album of a generation but easily one of the most soul-crushingly tedious, cack-handed things you’ll ever have the utter displeasure of sitting through. Origin of Symmetry is now such an inconceivably long distance away it verges on the positively mirage-like. Zero stars. Brian Coney
Holly Herndon makes avant-garde electronic music veering between ambient techno and musique concrète. Her sound incorporates sampled and processed vocals as well as acoustic and found sounds. Individual tracks tend to adopt little structure and offer even less in the way of hook or identifiable tune to grab the listener’s attention. That said, absolute attention is demanded by Platform. This is a busy record, an uneasy listen, but an undeniably accomplished experiment, with much reward for those up to the challenge. Like new label-mate Grimes (this is Herndon’s 1st LP for 4AD) the experience is presented in cascades of sonic…
As a band alleged to have formed at anger management classes, Joanna Gruesome are a surprisingly jovial, albeit dark-humoured group when interviewed. The band’s guitarist/singer Owen Williams summed this up describing the album when, he said: “This is our second record. It is about 20 minutes long and aims to expose the radical possibilities of peanut butter.” This tongue-in-cheek adolescence also runs through the core of the music, which displays glimpses of emotional depth but quickly resorts to bursts of noise, redolent of a teenage temper tantrum. Debut album Weird Sister was a mixed bag that threw up the occasional odd-ball…
Only a fool writes off The Fall, a band that have had more returns to form than most bands have had records. With the current lineup now being their longest serving as a complete unit (aside from the recent addition of second drummer Daren Garratt), some have accused them of getting too comfortable and being in need of another shake-up like the days of old, since 2011’s sloppy Ersatz GB, a surprising misstep after the back-to-back excellence of Imperial Wax Solvent and Your Future Our Clutter before it. 2013’s Re-Mit then failed to fully compensate, being a mish-mash of greatness…
As an NI Soul Troop mainstay, Donal Scullion is more than familiar with the nuances of jazz, funk and, of course, soul, not to mention the work that goes into arranging tracks that bear those generic attributes. This is what contributes to Scullion’s grasp of composition and style on his debut solo offering Superpowers; an album that is full of all the tropes of big-band splendour but tows the line quite sweetly between the singer/songwriter and pop-soloist milieus. In theory, that’s a tall order and not without its pitfalls, but Scullion has obviously approacehed Superpowers with enthusiasm and vigour, and…
For fans of Belfast trio Not Squares it’s been a long wait for a follow up to 2010’s Yeah OK, one of the finest Irish debuts of recent years. With drummer/primary vocalist Keith Winter moving to London in 2012, new material has largely had to be crafted long distance, and so we’ve only been treated to a handful of singles to tide us over in the intervening period. These singles make up almost half of the new album, and other tracks like ‘Can Opener’ will be well familiar to anyone who has caught their sporadic live shows over the last…
While people will continue to argue tirelessly about whether the internet has been a good or a bad thing for music, here comes another argument for ‘good’. Derry minimal electronic musician Ryan Vail and Aghagallon alt-folkster Ciaran Lavery first became friends online before finally meeting up at a festival they were both appearing at and decided to collaborate on this mini-album. Regardless of whether or not you think streaming music is as bad as killing elephants like Tom DeLonge claims, the sense of community that the internet affords to bring together musicians from different musical backgrounds to try out collaborations…
Villagers has always been something of a vehicle for Conor O’Briens creative vision. Early on as a band it enabled him to explore the rich soundscapes we heard on Becoming A Jackal; the arrangements were complex, brooding and gave more than a tip of the cap to Nick Drake’s darkest days and recordings, but was most certainly foregrounded with O’Brien’s soloist vernacular. {Awayland} had a different, but no less focused modus operandi, with O’Brien and co. expanding a sound that ultimately felt like a more colourful, collaborative experience. Now on album number three, Villagers’ Darling Arithmetic goes beyond a back…
Dublin’s The Mighty Stef went for nailed-on quality with the production of The Year Of The Horse, traveling to California to splash out on Arctic Monkeys and QOTSA studio legend Alain Johannes. It’s a solid tactic, and sees the rocker’s tight, clean yet snarling stomp polished to a complex gem of a guitar album. It’s been a long road at a full eight year since Stefan Murphy released his debut, entitled The Sins Of Sainte Catherine. Perhaps that heady sense of an album slimmed down and refined over an extended period is a product of the wait; the outcome of…
Up until this record, the first since 2011’s Bad Vibes, Shlohmo existed in that murky area of electronica that throws up morpheme collisions like glitchhop, witchtrap and future-garage. His particular brand of emotive electronica had, on his solo releases, hovered just a few notches over the ambient dissonance line and on his collaborations he exhibited a chameleon like ability that let him lend his talents over the genre boundary without stretching too far out of shape. Just look at last year’s collaboration with Jeremih that saw the LA based producer slip seamlessly into RnB like a seasoned pro. While that…