Back catalogue: Coldwave/Synth

Review: Sean Bowie is back with another ode to the tortured, damned, and damned good. The Florida-born enfant terrible of US alt-rock can barely put a foot wrong in our eyes, whether that's the post-chillwave of Teams, the moniker he was recording under in the early-2010s, or the Tumor releases. This is the place where Death In Vegas fans come to be reassured it's not quite over yet.

The Asymptotical World, not to be confused with The Asymptomatic World, is a case in point. This is punk, if punk decided to dive into bed with electroclash and they had a baby that wasn't really what anyone expected. It's sludgy, scummy, guitar-driven chaotic noise that occasionally dissipates into white mayhem, all the while maintaining not just its sense of self, but an underlying feeling you're two seconds from a rave while in the moshpit.

Review: Music On Vinyl are our new best friends. With a wide range of music being reissued as of late, Yello's 1987 One Second is just spoiling us. Never being fully acclaimed when it was originally released, this is one album which really spans the full circle in terms of artistic ideas sonic experimentations. While being tagged primarily as a pop work, it's really more of a lesson in synth manipulations and nutty beat-making. "The Rhythm Divine" has to be out top track but do check the whole thing, it's magnificent...

Review: The second studio album from Yello was added to the pantheons of weirdo electronic pop some time ago. In fact, some 31 years ago to be exact. While not by any stretch the outfit's most famous effort, that belongs to fourth album, Stella, and in particular the 1980s movie anthem 'Oh Yeah', in many ways that track doesn't encapsulate the spirit of the band anything like the tunes here.

At times low slung ('Ballet Mecanique') and occupying a space somewhere between roots and fairground, in other moments tragically epic and approaching New Romanticism ('Quad El Habib'), while the music itself is wildly varied and unarguably original, the overall magic is still found in how much fun it sounds like they were having, and how much fun we have hearing it.

Review: Is it rock? Is it metal? Is it synth pop? How about art noise? Someone, somewhere, is trying to pen a thesis on how you define the mighty and mysterious Yves Tumor. Best leave it to them, then. Wonder aside, the Knoxville, Tennessee outsider has finally delivered the follow up to Heaven To A Tortured Mind and it's every bit another masterpiece that grabs listeners by the jugular and challenges them, while delivering exactly what they didn't realise they wanted to hear.
While it's difficult to find much genuinely surprising in music today, the sheer breadth of Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume (Or Simply Hot Between Worlds) is in itself a shock. Over the course of 12 tracks, we hit grinding electroclash ('God Is A Circle'), seductive operatic pop ('Lovely Sewer'), main stage heavy rock ('Parody'), distorted and pained metal ('Meteora Blues'), and high-paced, rousing indie ('In Spite of War'), among other styles, all realised via a unique musical identity some would kill to possess.

Review: Sean Bowie's fifth full-length as Yves Tumor arrives with an epic title (the academically minded will be debating its meaning for years to come), a grandiose electro-rock/post-punk goes-electroclash sound, and a bagful of valedictory reviews. It's basically an extension of Bowie's previous work with a few twists, but that's no bad thing; after all, the artist's distinctive sound and strong songs have always been an impressive calling card. Highlights are plentiful, from the fizzing, 21st century punk-funk of 'Lovely Sewer', and the Prince-does-Nine Inch Nails-flex of 'Parody', to the alternately jangling and sleazy 'Operator', and the post-ESG dancefloor heaviness of 'Fear Evil Like Fire'.