Review: After a two-year hiatus, New York's finest purveyors of flash-fried power pop and disco-punk return with their sixth full-length. Despite being 18 years into their career, there are few signs of tiredness on the predictably vibrant As If. While potential sing-along moments are plentiful, it's the looseness of their grooves and the incessant funkiness of tracks such as "All U Writers", "Ooo", and the thrillingly low-slung "All The Way" - in which the Brookyln-based outfit brilliantly fuse springy dub-disco grooves, wild synths and classic house riffs - that catches the ear. Interestingly, the strongest influences this time round appear to be Prince and early Red Hot Chili Peppers, giving the album a particularly kaleidoscopic aural hue.
Review: It's nearly three years since we last heard from !!!, owners of the strangest name in dance music (it is, of course, pronounced !!!). In that time, the now veteran band's members have pursued a variety of intriguing solo projects, with Justin Van Der Volgen making his mark as a DJ and producer of seriously good disco edits. The brilliantly named Thr!!!er (see what they did etc.) is undeniably looser and groovier than previous efforts, with their trademark low-slung, punk-funk bass being used to good effect on tracks that range from LCD Soundsystem-ish house-influenced anthems ("Slyd") and Prince-influenced disco (the delightfully summery "One Girl/One Boy"), to West Coast stoner funk-rock ("Californiyeah") and Rick James style hustlin' disco-funk ("Except Death").
Review: Passing fashions for jerky post-punk and effervescent dance-pop have elevated this confusingly monikered outfit to hot topic status over the years, but !!! have maintained their own identity throughout. Tapping into a lineage of New York party music that touches on Ze records and Studio 54 whilst also embuing their sound with a punk rock vim and vigour straight from CBGBs, 'Shake The Shudder' might be the most timeless collection of suss, sway and swagger these freaks have put together in their 21 (!) years of filling dancefloors. Chk (chk chk) it out.
I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It (6:25)
The Sound (4:11)
This Must Be My Dream (4:11)
Paris (4:53)
Nana (4:00)
She Lays Down (3:38)
Review: That title is an eyebrow-raiser, yet still more surprising about this second album are the chances that cocky, controversial 1975 frontman Matt Healey has been prepared to take with the sound that his band rode to enormous success on via their debut. Certainly this album may largely sound custom-designed for radio airplay, yet within this framework Healey has moved from the guitar band swagger of yore to a more emotionally charged reinvention that throws '80s-style hooks, innovative production trickery and his mixture of chutzpah and charm into the fray to create a vibrant and unexpected art-pop melange.
Review: There's certainly plenty to talk about here. British chart-topping and stadium-filling enigmas The 1975 return to prove you really can't predict what the troupe will do next, delivering what would be their most divisive and explorative album if it weren't for the fact they command so much loyalty from fans you could be forgiven for thinking dark forces were at play. 'Notes On A Conditional Form' is easily the furthest we've wandered from the formative years of a band that cut teeth doing teen-punk covers, and it's hard not to notice the subtle theme here. From 'Having No Head', which rides on a sharp house groove, through the garage breaks of 'Yeah I Know', low slung dub of 'Shiny Collarbone' and the shoegaze of 'Streaming', it plays out like a celebration of the breadth and diversity of UK pop culture.
Review: This New York City based duo comprises Che Chen and Rick Brown, largely on guitar and drums respectively, and their inspiringly unclassifiable sound, influenced by Indian music and Mauritanian guitar work alongside the likes of The Velvet Underground and Bert Jansch, weaves a mantric tapestry that's as minimal as it is expansively majestic. These four lengthy excursions whir the listener into a drone-fuelled and raga-infused frenzy that's as likely to appeal to fans of Sun City Girls and Tony Conrad, packing an elemental charge that's as richly invigorating as any summer soundtrack you care to mention.
Review: A Certain Ratio's core trio of drummer Donald Johnson, bassist/vocalist Jez Kerr, and multi-instrumentalist Martin Moscrop make ACR Loco a perfectly fluid and funk album. In fact, on this, their first album in more than ten years, the Manchester post-punk outfit are as funky as they have ever been. Their tried and tested sound gets nicely updated with modern beat driven sounds and plenty of redefines to today's political strife in the lyrics. There are plenty of smooth and cool synth led grooves like 'Get A Grip' and messages of unity on 'Family' that we can all relate to.
In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry In The Tradition Of Passing)
Crushin'
MTLOV (Minor Keys)
The Things They Do To Me
Boys Turn Into Girls (Initiation Rites)
Never Nothing (It's Alright (It's OK))
Double Dutch
The Body, It Bends
Oh, I'm A Wrecker (What To Say To Crazy People)
Golden Waves
Review: Balancing out shoe gazing radiance and expansive melancholia in elegant style, A Sunny Day In Glasgow hit on a rich seam of dream pop on this fourth album proper. Whilst the songs here are catchy enough to grace the end credits of a blockbuster, the band always maintain an undertow of abrasive noise and are experts in the creation of blissful soundscapes that summon a beguiling narcotic haze. Taken as a whole, the eleven track Sea When Absent is liable to delight and satiate fans of bands such as School Of Seven Bells, Blonde Redhead and The Naked And Famous.
Review: RECOMMENDED
It's the sixth studio album by English rock greats the Alan Parsons Project, with both the eponymous man and his partner in crime Eric Woolfson are on particularly fine form. Originally released in 1982, the fact it was nominated for Best Engineered Album at the GRAMMY Awards a year on, and then won the GRAMMY for Best Immersive Audio Album in 2019 tells you everything there is to know about how well produced this is.
Nevertheless, critics at the time weren't so quick to laud praise on the record, with one Philadelphia Inquirer write-up labelling the release "hopelessly banal", and likening the instrumentation to Paul Mccartney as a manic depressive. Skip forward a few years, though, and it was heralded as a soft pop triumph, combining artistic lyricism with immediate chart accessibility.
Review: Fiercely righteous, intensely passionate and politically driven, the Atlanta-birthed Algiers are carving out a unique niche for themselves with a brand of gospel-punk that is as experimental as it in incandescent. Noiserock shapes, electro grooves share space with startlingly rich and powerful vocals from Franklin James Fisher. Emotionally charged ditties like 'Blood' and 'Black Eunuch are as influenced by Nina Simone as industrial hip-hop troupe dalek, and the resulting record makes Algiers a powerful argument against anyone who claims that modern music is apolitical and the art of the protest song is dead.
The Cycle/The Spiral: Time To Go Down Slowly (5:41)
Review: Anyone bemoaning the lack of ire-igniting political invective and potent protest records amidst the tension and uncertainty of 2017 should look no further than Algiers, whose follow-up to their blue-touchpaper igniting debut is a thing of floor-shaking intensity and cerebrally stimulating potency. A electrifying and diverse musical palette that extends from post-punk and gritty Gun Club-esque rock 'n' roll to soul, hip hop and even John Carpenter style soundtrack stylings acts as a backdrop to the feverish diatribes against oppression and injustice of vocalist Franklin James Fisher. Defying expectation to stand proud as a genre-elusive and fiercely uncompromising call to arms, 'The Underside Of Power' is a forward-thinking work of maverick malevolence and thrilling intensity.
Review: Second time around for eccentric Sheffield trio The All Seeing I's sole full-length excursion, 1999's Pickled Eggs & Sherbert, which here lands on vinyl for the first time.The album, a celebration of Steel City creativity featuring cameos from Cocker, Tony Christie, Babybird and the Human League's Phil Oakey, is best remembered for hit singles 'The Beat Goes On', 'Walk Like a Panther' - lyrics reportedly penned by Jarvis Cocker - and 'The First Man in Space', but there are plenty more highlights amongst the unique blends of fractured dancehall rhythms, redlined electronica, oddball easy listening references, experimental d&b rhythms and genuine leftfield pop nous. For proof, check out blissful acapella number 'No Return' (where Lisa Millett plays a starring role), the breathless, bass-heavy house of 'Sweet Music', the weighty madness of 'I Walk' and the exotica-goes-big beat flex of 'Happy Birthday Nicola'.
Review: Pulsar saw Gianluca Salvadori and Leonardo Ceccanti return to Claremont 56 with a second LP of sanguine and psychedelic dub disco under the Almunia name. Arriving roughly two years after Salvadori and Ceccanti served up the sublime Almunia debut long player New Moon, this new album sees the pair of tracks released as singles (the excellent title track and 'The Magician') complemented by six all new productions. From the heavenly acoustic strumming of opening track 'The Awakening' Almunia remain locked in a mood where refined instrumentation is balanced perfectly with a chugging soft edged disco sensibility with the buoyant 'Views From A Blue Train' a particular highlight.
Review: With a momentum built initially by word-of-mouth alone and further abetted by a surprise Mercury win, Alt-J have built a formidable reputation for themselves as no less than a Radiohead-in-waiting, with a melodious sleight-of-hand allied to a questing and mischievously experimental side. This Is All Yours, despite seeing the band slimming down from a four-piece to a three-piece after the departure of bassist Gwil Sainsbury, sees their fresh and inventive approach showing no signs of abating, with vocal textures and rhythmic invention locking horns with samples and melancholic charm to create an arresting yet nuanced record with its gaze firmly set forward.
Review: You don't get to call your band Amyl & The Sniffers if the music is anything short of corrosive, in the best possible way. Launching at a serious pace from the off, this is punk at its modern best - a juggernaut of sweat, swearing and uncompromising songwriting that's only rival for your attention comes in the form of riffs and gritty chord instrumentation.
But the Melbourne, Australia band's second LP is far from a simple rehash of the first, which we could have also described in similar terms to those you just read above. This time round things feel more thoughtful, perhaps even patient in certain moments. Of course they still wear 'weirdos' on their sleeves, tongues often firmly placed in cheeks. But there's a depth here to the songwriting, a retro and introspective feeling that reveals far more than the debut album let us hear.
Cameron Allen & Graham Bidstrup - "Bikini Atoll" (3:40)
Foot & Mouth - "I Want My Mummy" (4:15)
Review: An intriguing confection put together by two Antipodean crate-diggers with an ear for the eccentricities and heroic creative travails of a generation of yore, 'Midnight Spares' chronicles a predominantly '80s era in which bedroom musicians took a post-punk DIY sensibility to create work that still rings out with originality and ingenuity decades on. Collected from manifold unusual sources, this compendium takes in early synth-pop, menacing lo-fi soundtrack work, a stray emigre member of The Flying Pickets, and even an early foray into recording from the members of legendary Ozpunk scamps God. Lurking somewhere between the spirit of John Peel and the world of outsider art, the resulting assemblage is a must-have for chroniclers of the weird and wonderful.
Review: RECOMMENDED
There's certainly a LOT happening on this exceptionally individualistic album from Berlin-based artiste Anika. A former journalist who auditioned for Geoff Barrow's acclaimed experimental outfit BEAK> in 2010, only to then have her self-titled debut album recorded by the group, while we've been following her movements ever since in many ways this is the real beginning now - the first full length album she has recorded comprising all her own original songs.
And what songs they are. At times you could almost be listening to Nico, or perhaps some latter day rock 'n' roll femme fatale, such as Cate le Bon. It refuses to adhere to genre norms, dramatically introducing elements of opera and theatre to indie frameworks, invoking the spirit of Bat for Lashes, Kate Bush and many more. We're not sure about labels here, which is why hearing it is so damned essential.
Review: We're led to believe that the gestation period of this, Animal Collective's tenth album to date, was briefer than their earlier work - not that one would notice, given that 'Painting With' displays a band capable of cramming more ideas into one song than most manage in an album. Indeed, the band have scarcely sounded this poppy, upbeat or ebullient, revelling in a collision of polyrhythmic invention, Beach-Boys-on-Venus harmonies, kaleidoscopic sampladelia and sugar-rush intensity. Moreover, for all that their trademark sound has helped shape much of the psychedelia of this century, this foursome are not disposed to rest on their laurels, and this is the sound of them harnessing their creativity as if there were no tomorrow.
Review: Gibby Miller's Dais Records reissue Annie Anxiety's Soul Possession on vinyl for the first time in over 30 years. In the late 1970's, one woman named Annie Bandez thrust herself into the downtown scene with her punk ensemble Annie and the Asexuals, establishing her nom de plume Annie Anxiety. In the summer of 1983, with the help of legendary dub producer Adrian Sherwood, she began work on what would be her first full length which consolidated all of her creative assets at that time. Features members of Crass, Family Fodder and African Head Charge among others. A seminal dub/industrial masterpiece and featuring the original artwork by Eve Libertine. Limited to 500 copies (400 black vinyl / 100 brown vinyl).
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