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 […]
Category: Album review
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 […]
Techno logic: Surgeon – Fabric 53
Why did it take so long for Fabric to snare Surgeon for a mix CD? Well after nearly a decade and over 100 releases, the go-to label for bleeps has finally secured techno innovator Anthony […]
Can’t get no sleep: The Black Dog – Music for Real Airports
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 […]
A day in the life: Matthew Herbert – One One
Sifting through Matthew Herbert‘s website you’ll find writings on critical theory, his self-imposed manifesto, a free stream of his 15-year discography and this claim: “I don’t want music to be dismembered from the body it […]
You can always turn around: Gil Scott-Heron – I’m New Here
The opening two minutes of I’m New Here will stop you dead in your tracks. The intro ‘On Coming from a Broken Home’ glides in on a rip of Kanye West’s ‘Flashing Lights’ before Gil […]
Dub with my head man: Martyn – Fabric 50
The mix CD seems a bit quaint these days. Without the forced retro kudos of an underground ‘mixtape’, most record label mixes get buried in HMV CD racks beneath the industry detritus from Hed Kandi […]
Quality control: Vitalic – Flashmob
Signalling the arrival of your new album using an online day-hour-minute-second rolling countdown is a bit conceited, but we can forgive Vitalic. Flashmob is another genre-defying record from the French electro trendsetter, and the chattering […]
