Houndstooth Vinyl & CDs

Review: Katie Gately's second album "Loom" is a very different beast to its predecessor, 2016 debut full-length "Color". Deeply personal and recorded during her mother's ultimately unsuccessful battle against a rare form of cancer, it sees Gately reflect on grief and loss in a surprisingly confident and musically alluring manner. The assembled tracks make extensive use of both densely layered vocal textures and her own distinctive lead vocals, elements which she mixed with ear-catching melodies, woozy electronics and beats that were crafted in part from recordings she made of Californian earthquakes. You'd expect it to be tonally dark given the subject matter, but it's actually far more bold, beguiling and melodic, drawing just as much influence from more pastoral styles of music as Gately's usual experimental electronics and intricate sound design.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition***


Paul Woolford has spent a good chunk of his downtime over the last year or two making Special Request tracks in his pants. So much so, in fact, that he's created enough material to fill four albums, all of which will be released this year. "Vortex" is the first and is, in Woolford's own words, high on "bangers" and low on "conceptual guff". In practice, that means lots of gut-busting low-end frequencies, trippy analogue electronics, razor-sharp rave-style riffs and bustling rhythms that variously touch on electro, early '90s progressive house, breakbeat hardcore, slamming Joey Beltram style techno (see album highlight "Fahrenheit 451") and metallic, delightfully mangled drum and bass ("Fett", whose wonky electronic undulations hark back to early Woolford classic "Erotic Discourse").