Category: Recorded music
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Fit And The Conniptions – Sweet Sister Starlight (blues rock/ folk rock/ singer-songwriter)
Although I have written elsewhere about the singularity of the song as an artistic form, and the fallacy of regarding it as merely a fusion of music and poetry, it can be observed that most singer-songwriters focus their efforts more on one aspect of their craft than another. Some are…
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VK Lynne – Whiskey Or Water (blues rock/ singer-songwriter)
VK Lynne plays to the mythical archetype of the strong but vulnerable, hard drinking rock chick: how much of that is VK Lynne the narrator of this sequence of songs, and how much of it is VK Lynne the writer and woman is above my pay grade to speculate, but…
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Hope and Social – Sleep Sound (alternative rock)
I remember at school my art teacher exhorting the class to stop drawing tiny pictures in the corner and to cover the page with bold strokes, to step out and give voice to whatever it was we wanted to express. Well, there are no bushels on top of Hope and…
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Fresh Like Dexie – Step In The Sun (funk rock)
Fresh Like Dexie are funky. Very funky. I’ve been a fan of funk since I first heard Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters and the Parliafunkadelicment Thang in my late teens, and I devoted a lot of time after that to studying the music, so I have some idea whereof I speak.Funk can…
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Alun Vaughan – The Kindness Of Strangers (solo bass)
The long standing association between the solo bass release and a meaningless display of rippling technical muscularity is thankfully receding into history. It’s reasonable that it should have come about: to play something that is more agile and melodic than the traditional low thump of a bassline requires rather more…
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Big Block 454 – Bells & Proclamations (folk-funk/ psychedelic rock)
Big Block 454, named for a 1970 Chevrolet engine, are one of the oddest bands I’ve encountered in a while. They are creatively out there, full of weird sounds and transgressive stylistic collisions, and yet they are, to me at least, accessible, pleasing, and decidedly danceable. Apparently they’ve been around…
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Knifeworld – Dear Lord, No Deal (psychedelic rock)
Kavus Torabi, Cardiacs guitarist, among many other things, originally pursued Knifeworld as a solo endeavour, but this EP marks the beginning of the project’s recorded life as a six piece band with a permanent membership. The initial release, Buried Alone: Tales of Crushing Defeat, had a particular sound, and a…
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Archangel – Project Rave (8-bit/ IDM/ techno)
It’s unclear how much of this album might have been created using the genuinely simple digital resources it seems to utilise, and how much use was made of rather more sophisticated plugins standing in for them, but either way, there’s a lot more processing than would be permissible on purist…
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Marley Butler – Procras The Sample (ambient/ electronica)
Marley Butler had something to do; but, he also had a new software sampler he’d downloaded for free. The something didn’t get done: but he did record this EP, which strikes me as some pretty darn constructive procrastination. Each tune was written, recorded and mixed in a single evening, and…
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Cutleri – Let Me Show You My Sweater (folk/ Americana)
Production standards for self released music have become so generically polished and exact, that it has almost ceased to be meaningful or valuable to release a well recorded album. I’m being facetious, obviously, and of course I like to hear music I like sounding good, but sometimes the slickness of…
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Steve Lawson – 11 Reasons Why 3 Is Greater Than Everything (ambient)
The pieces on this album are indeed highly atmospheric, but don’t let this lead you to believe that ambience is all, or even principally, what the music is about. The principal quality of these tunes, their defining feature, and the central locus of Lawson’s creative effort, is melody.
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The Fierce And The Dead – If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe (post-rock)
This album contains, but does not start with, the follow up to TFATD’s initial release, Part 1, an EP consisting of a single eighteen minute track called ‘Part 1’. ‘Part 2’ is only a little over five minutes in length, but it does cram a remarkable amount of dramatic incident…
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Yonks – Yonks Marluk (electronica/ ambient)
This is the second release from Yonks, hence the name. What do you mean you don’t know what marluk means? It means ‘two’ in no less than three languages. Admittedly they’re only spoken in Greenland, but still. The guitar plus electronics duo continue to plough their distinctive and highly listenable…
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Pirate & Cobie – Pirate & Cobie (indie-rock)
Bass, guitar, drums, singing; these are well used ingredients, so for a band to stand out it needs to use them with a bit of imagination. Pirate & Cobie are in indie-rock territory, and that shapes their approach to a degree, but they give the impression of being there because…
Oliver Arditi 