Anti Vinyl & CDs

Review: Fleet Foxes & Resistance Revival Chorus performed 'Can I Believe You' on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert before this two-track release made its way to us. If that sounds like a pretty cheap way to record a single fear not, the pre-recorded footage juxtaposed the band's frontman, Robin Pecknold, singing alone with the clips of him and full band, joined by the Chorus, in St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church, Brooklyn, New York. And it's the latter segments that have made their way onto this release.

As you can imagine, then, there's a very full sound at play here, with the title number growing into a grand piece of rolling, anthem folk indie. By comparison, 'Wading In Waist-High Water' brings the focus onto the Chorus rather than the group and removes the traditional chart structure, leaving us with a beautiful choir piece that's the strongest of the pair here.

Review: Experimental jazz outfit High Pulp have picked dup plenty of fans from day one. Most of them have been waiting around eagerly for a debut album and finally it has arrived. Pursuit of Ends arrives via Los Angeles's ANTI- Records and finds this group of self-proclaimed outsiders in fine form as they brig their own unique, rule breaking approach to jazz. It is a record of freeness and rawness with defiant sounds, liberating grooves and elements of everything from punk to electronic music, hip hop to shoe gaze and rock. It is well versed in traditional jazz but very much has its eyes set on a future sound, Sublime.

Review: If you thought Moor Mother's 2021 album Black Encyclopaedia of the Air was good - and it was a genuine triumph - wait until you hear this follow-up. In summary, Jazz Codes takes her impossible-to-pigeonhole personal style - a mixture of smoky trip-hop beats, heady ambient sounds, jazz instrumentation, thickset aural textures, crackly samples, soul vocals, spoken word monologues and trippy effects aplenty - and takes it to the next level. While the album features a dizzying array of guest vocalists and musicians (a complete list of which would run to several pages of A4), it never sounds like anything other than a Moor Mother album. It's her widescreen Afro-futurist vision, executed to perfection. Don't sleep!

Review: Camae Ayewa AKA Moor Mother has long talked about wanting to work with an orchestra, applying her verbal Afro-futurism and free-jazz experimentation to the classical domain. She recently did just that, delivering a grandiose live interpretation of her ninth album, The Great Bailout, alongside the London Contemporary Orchestra. It makes perfect sense: while the album itself is not fully orchestrated, it's a conceptual work dissecting the British slave trade, slavery and colonialism. Musically, there are two central focal points: her spoken word vocals and the beautiful singing of Lonnie Haley. These two vital voices weave in and out of sound worlds rooted in dark ambient, lo-fi hip-hop beats, free jazz instrumentation, out-there samples and clandestine aural textures. It's naturally raw, moody and weighty, but more importantly it's also a genuine masterpiece that deserves your attention.

Review: Tom Waits's Closing Time turns a hard-to-believe 50 years old in 2023 and as such gets the usual special reissue treatment. This indie-only clear vinyl version comes half-speed mastered for extra loudness and clarity so is the best possible way to listen to the landmark album. It is one that for the first time shows a real blend of the jazz, blues, and folk styles that Waits would eventually become so well known for. It also includes his famous cover of 'Ol' 55', singles like the heartbreaking 'Martha' and delightful acoustic folk of 'I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You.' This is the first time this album has been reissued as a double, so do not sleep.

Review: Waxahatchee is emerging, butterfly like, from a cocoon that has kept her safe for most of her career. There was nothing ugly or hidden about Katie Crutchfield's older output. But it was intimate, quiet, thoughtful, vulnerable and, at times, almost a little nervous. At least some of those adjectives became irrelevant with the last LP, Saint Cloud, and now she follows up that ten-foot-tall 2020 triumph with Tigers Blood, continuing in a similar vein. Having significantly increased the size of her audience with the preceding, infinitely rousing record, Crutchfield simultaneously looks to please those newcomers and win even more over here. The tracks are similarly open armed, proud and accessible, but the razor sharp songwriting - dealing with everything from trying to stay still without being bored, to self doubt - has lost none of its impact, and the instrumental arrangements have arguably never been stronger.