When Brian Eno released Ambient 1: Music For Airports in 1978, flying was still a relative luxury and airports were gateways to holiday destinations that didn’t involve candy floss and sandcastles. Eno’s four-track suite of […]
Category: Album review
Suchi Selects — the sound of the Indian electro underground
New Delhi independent radio station and label Boxout FM has just started a new series of DJ compilations that “give listeners a taste of the current soundscape in India”. The first collection is curated by […]
Brontis and the sci-fi invasion – Take Me Seriously
Brontis’s new album opens with a track called ‘Sparse Audience’, which isn’t some resigned comment on the last year without live music, but there’s a story behind it. A big story too — it’s a […]
Let’s get grindcore done: Midrift Guillotine – Dig Up Thatcher and Burn Her Bones EP
If you really fuckin hate the Tories, a self-satisfied Owen Jones column just won’t cut it. Have this eight-track petrol bomb of seditionist splatter grindcore instead.
Hybrasil still keeping it very techno on new album ten
It’s tough releasing a techno album right now, when there’s a distinct lack of sweaty basements and jacked-up sound rigs to test it out live — but Irish producer Will Kinsella aka Hybrasil hasn’t held […]
It’s all just a game, I hope: Karel Fialka – Hey Matthew (1987)
In 1987, my Ma bought me the double cassette of Now That’s What I call Music Vol 10 as a Christmas present. I had my favourites – M/A/A/R/S, Billy Idol, ABC, Pet Shop Boys, Jan […]
A Scottish hello: The Vegan Leather – Poor Girls / Broken Boys
The final track on The Vegan Leather’s debut album is called ‘Zeitgeist’ — but Poor Girls / Broken Boys is no trend-chasing scenester cash-in record. Unlike, say Two Door Cinema Club who traded in their polite […]
‘Life’s decay takes hold’: Vile Sermon – The Despair Regime
“HARSH NOISE, INDUSTRIAL, POWER ELECTRONICS, ETC… NEW RELEASE EVERY MONDAY,” screams the all-caps Bandcamp bio of Ohio cassette label Deathbed Tapes. If you start your week with this stuff you’ll be squinting a little harder […]
Shrimp-scuttling ambience on Jana Winderen – The Noisiest Guys on the Planet
If you live in Ireland, you get fairly used to waking up to the sound of raindrops on glass, then pulling the blinds to let a few shades of grey ooze in. And if it’s […]
A lost treasure of cosmic Americana: Jim Sullivan – UFO (1969)
I never cease to be amazed at the breadth of incredible music from the past that’s out there to be discovered. The rarities that get excavated by musical archaeologists like Light in the Attic, Numero, […]
Colossal rave mutations on Varya Karpova & Vanya Koreya – Extrapolation
Dutch label New York Haunted released a free download compilation last week called In Debt To the Preset, a warm-hearted tribute to famous synth presets, warning: “This is not some ironic hipster joke, this is […]
Perforated Cerebral Party and a new wave of Russian “ghettopsychedelic futuristic music”
Russian duo Perforated Cerebral Party had the recent honour of being the very final act at Estonia’s showcase festival Tallinn Music Week, closing the techno venue HALL on the outskirts of the city. They were […]
Outro Tempo II: sounds from the early Brazilian electronic underground
A few months ago, Jack Carolan laid out a Brazilian music primer based on record-hunting in São Paulo, the third biggest city on Earth. He described the ear- and eye-melting task of trying to navigate […]
Gleaming psych-synth gems on The KVB – Only Now Forever
At the impeccably-curated La Route du Rock festival in France at the tail-end of the summer, The KVB headlined the opening party – held in the Nouvelle Vague club rather than the outdoor ruins of […]
Real metal machine music: Author & Punisher – Beastland
The term industrial music evokes plenty of gut reactions, from the avant-garde nihilism of Throbbing Gristle to the crossover thrash headbutts of Psalm 69-era Ministry. But in the wrong hands it’s vaguely goth metal with […]
Moo Kid 