Vicious Charm Recordings Vinyl & CDs

Review: Vicious Charm Recordings makes its vinyl bow with a collection of cuts from the mighty Crooked Man, AKA sometime Sweet Exorcist and All Seeing I man Richard 'Parrot' Barratt. A-side 'Love & Resistance' is one of Barratt's most magical and otherworldly workouts yet - a long and crooked chunk of off-kilter deep house soul featuring vocals by Carmen Squire that's as emotionally impactful as it as magical and melancholic. Over on the flip, Barratt offers up more mind-mangling mid-tempo sleaze via the echoing vocal samples, clanking industrial machine beats and frankly filthy TB-303 bass of 'Nemesis'. He ruffs that track up further on 'Nemesister', reaching for bouncy, dancehall-influenced house beats, reverb-laden stabbing bass and trippy electronic riffs. Like much of Barratt's work, it's effortlessly excellent.

Review: Jim (James Baron) is a UK producer making his brand of Balearic, folk and rock music. Generally, pushing the boundaries of Balearic, this double pack compilation houses remixes of tracks from his most debut album 'Love Makes Magic'. The lineup of producers lending their talents to this double pack is quite impressive. Uk house music legends X-press and Chris Coco just to mention two. This release encompasses a wide array of styles including downtempo, dub as well as house music all keeping the folk and Balearic soul of the originals. A true remix packet that brings these originals to different heights.

Review: Jim Baron is a well-known DJ, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who co-founded Crazy P and who assumed new alias Jim for solo work back in 2021. His debut album Love Makes Magic is a superb mix of lush harmonic vocals, with funky back beats and a mix of organic brass and electronic synth sounds. It is music based around the work of the guitar but with plenty of sunny but eyed soul and subtle beach vibes that make it a gorgeous listen, especially as the days get longer and the sun that bit warmer.

Review: A new bedroom pop outfit, Mystery Time (Ayman Rostom aka. The Maghreban) paints a neatly outlaid sound-picture of quotidian lifestyles and humdrum joys, perhaps specifically those which are used to tape over the harder but more pronely repressible realities of grief and mourning. From the off of 'Thank You Deeply', we're told of "salad days in Archway" and being "on the phone in doorways", suggesting an attitude of listlessness and naivete as key to surviving the otherwise often excruciating experience of living in London. Its self-description as "maudlin" serves it just as well; the record wafts off a kind of haunted contradiction, describable only as the impossible mixture of post-punk and floral chintz, of wallpapering over the ability to feel fully and holistically with yet another lifestyle, pattern, habit, prescription. In Rostom's own words, "The title speaks for itself. Maudlin means emotionally sentimental. Tales, these songs are stories to me, about different times. Grief - there is much sadness and darkness in it, and Love - there is some light there too, a bit of joy, to frame the shadow." Rostom's vocals are just as listless and blinkered, tunnel-sung so as to express emotions through a drab medium.