With all the hype building around the release of Schoolboy Q’s major label debut, he couldn’t help but bow down to gangsta rap peer pressure. A year-and-a-half after his Black Hippy companion Kendrick Lamar’s socially […]
Category: Album review
New age not dead: Mark McGuire – Along the Way
Guitarist Mark McGuire’s first post-Emeralds solo album may take a few listens before you stop sniggering at the back. It’s an “odyssey through the vast, unknown regions of the mind”, according to the inner sleeve […]
Taking the edge off: !!! – Thr!!!er
After spending most of the last decade pogoing in and out of punk-funk/disco-punk circles, !!! (Chk Chk Chk) may have taken the edge off with their fifth album. The California crew’s raucous early records took […]
Hive mind: Autechre – Exai
If the copyright ever runs out on the term ‘heavy metal’, Autechre should claim it back from the guitar gods. The future-industrial clang on Exai has a greater metallic yield than any down-tuned Fender, and […]
The fear: Berberian Sound Studio soundtrack by Broadcast
The recording rooms in the movie Berberian Sound Studio could easily be Broadcast’s rehearsal space – a Formica-panelled Aladdin’s cave littered with hanging cables, whirring reel-to-reel tapes, valve oscillators and chunky dials. The studio looks like […]
Just for the fuck of it: Death Grips – No Love Deep Web
Just as the big dick on the cover can’t be unseen, you won’t be forgetting No Love Deep Web in a hurry. Death Grips’ third album staples itself to your inner ear, a hip-hop headbutt […]
Ethiopian jazz-hands: Debo Band
It’d be a hard sell for some: an 11-piece band from Boston, led by an ethnomusicologist, plundering the Ethiopian jazz, pop and folk vaults. It could’ve been so academic, so worthy, so deferent – musical […]
Brutal Truth: Death Grips – The Money Store
“Scary rhyming man, him scares me. Danger. Drummer man is beast monster too, hard hitting pummel thing, is scary and such. Danger.” Of all the thousands of words uttered about Death Grips in the past […]
Gang signs: Odd Future – OF Tape Vol 2
It’s been four years since pesky rap kids Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All recorded a batch of vicious cuts on a computer microphone and blew their load all over the internet with the […]
Timeless, incredible filth: Gonjazufi – MU.ZZ.LE
Gonjasufi is a PR wet dream – a perpetually stoned yoga teacher from the Mojave Desert signed to Warp Records, who’s got a voice that Flying Lotus calls “timeless, incredible filth”. Box-ticking aside, he claims […]
Another dimension: Space Dimension Controller – The Pathway to Tiraquon6
So is this an album? If we believe everything we read in the press notes, The Pathway To Tiraquon6 is a ‘prequel’ to Space Dimension Controller’s second album due next year – or the soundtrack […]
Vulgar display of power: Watch the Throne
Less than two minutes into Watch the Throne, Jay-Z has already name-dropped God, priests, kings, Plato and Socrates, and put himself and Kanye on a par with Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Stick the two […]
Verbal gonorrhoea: The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales
“You’re about to be ear-fucked,” warns Chilly Gonzales on his latest project – an all-orchestral rap album. He reckons it’s the world’s first and a quick Google search suggests he’s probably right, so we’ll run […]
Look to the Sea: Melodica Deathship – Doom Your Cities, Doom Your Towns
“We have truly embraced the darkness and the chaos of the seas,” hails MC Exile Eye halfway through Melodica Deathship’s voyage into deepest, darkest hip-hop waters. It’s fair to say the Dublin-based crew are in […]
‘It’s like they’ve got no bones’: Shangaan Electro
“When you see them dance you feel like they have got no bones,” beams Nozinja aka Dog, the producer behind the top acts emerging in Shangaan electro – a hyper frenetic style erupting in South […]
Moo Kid 