Category: Recorded music
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What punk is for
A lot of the time, I listen to contemporary punk records, and I wonder where the anger’s coming from. I mean, obviously there’s still as much to be angry about as there was in 1977, in terms of inequality and injustice, but sometimes it all feels a bit forced. Much…
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Presence
There are no cum shots in Black Oni. There are long builds, ecstatic crescendi, contemplative soundfields, thunderous riffs, all the appurtenances of narrative, without any lazy concessions to closure. If you want fan service fuck off and listen to Dream Theater. Like the protagonist of a W.G. Sebald novel, the…
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Being themselves
I reviewed this album in 2013 when it came out, but I didn’t spend a huge amount of time with it then. I dug it out more recently when I was looking for some hip-hop to throw into my heavy rotation pile—this was the fourth album I tried on for…
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Staying true
There’s a sense that musicians (and other artists) are supposed to keep innovating, to follow an endless quest for the holy grail of ‘originality’, but there’s also a competing imperative, particularly in cultures like those of punk and metal, to stay true to your roots. Especially for bands that have…
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A body speaks its truth
Having trained as an instrumentalist, and associated with other instrumentalists over many years, I’ve often found myself having to argue against the assumption that the only way to achieve musicianship is to study a traditional musical instrument. The music of the later twentieth century was immeasurably enriched by recording artists…
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Surprisingly coherent contempt
Public Image Limited was the band that John Lydon actually wanted to be in. I have no idea whether he would have ended up being involved in music professionally, if Malcolm McLaren hadn’t thought he looked right for The Sex Pistols, but as soon as he was in a band…
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Adversity included
‘Let’s be bold’, Hope and Social admonish their listeners in the song of that title, the third track of this vivid, broad-stroke album. They are very much preaching what they practise. It’s easy to describe them using terms like ‘relentlessly upbeat’ or ‘indefatigably positive’, because that’s certainly their vibe, but…
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Brash beauty
I knew nothing about Julian Lage before beginning to listen to this album, on the recommendation of James Beaudreau (an excellent but little-known musician whose music you should definitely seek out). In fact, I listened to Love Hurts a fair bit before I found out anything about its author, so…
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Luminous possibilities
Cwtch is a long-distance collaboration which concluded last year, between Paul Foster, a Welsh electronic music producer, and Marie Craven, an Australian singer and lyricist. Pixiegraf is the album which started it all, back in 2008. Originally conceived as a release under the rubric of Dementio 13 (Foster’s main project),…
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Worth digging
Funk Factory is something of a period piece. It comes from an era where the boundaries between jazz fusion and funk were widely blurred, and it combines complexities appropriate to the former with the kind of pop silliness associated with the latter—along with some stunning grooves, of course. Funk Factory…
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Lining up their ducks
The Clash were one of the first bands I got into as a teenager—late as usual, they broke up just before I started listening to them. I started with Combat Rock, then worked by way through the rest of their albums, learning the words and getting to know the recordings…
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A record to have and eat
If you read their website bio, Sanguine Hum have a convoluted creative background, balancing a wide range of interests and demands. A need to experiment, a commitment to accessible, melodic songwriting, an interest in ambient abstraction… somehow it all came together in time for their first full-length release in a…
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A public meditation
Charlie Cawood is going places. I mean, I certainly hope he is going places in his career, but that’s not what I mean. I mean I’m going places. When I listen to Cawood’s music on Blurring Into Motion, I go places. It’s an album of place and journey, of concrete…
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Saccharine artillery
My awareness of Squarepusher began at uni, where I studied the bass guitar. Unsurprisingly, an out-there electronic producer, who also happens to integrate a prodigious facility on bass guitar into his work, went down well among students on my course. This was relatively early in Tom Jenkinson’s career, and he…
Oliver Arditi 