ALBUM REVIEW: PLASTIC ANIMALS – PICTURES FROM THE BLACKOUT

Plastic Animals have been slaving over Pictures From The Blackout, their debut album, for two years now. It all starts very promisingly, ‘Ghosts’ is ‘Knives Out’-style Radiohead, all urgency and fuzzy chords and heading off down a woozy rabbit hole halfway through before blossoming into a noisy crescendo. It’s followed by a whisper of feedback […]
Remember last year when Bloc Party lost some of its original members, Gordon Moakes and Matt Tong? Well, according to lead singer Kele Okereke you can blame that on ‘someone doing cocaine and someone not being into it’.  But it doesn’t seem as though the 4- piece band are losing out with the new, yet […]

ALBUM REVIEW: BLOC PARTY – HYMNS

Album Review: Tindersticks – The Waiting Room

Tindersticks has been a reassuring presence on the British music scene for over two decades, exploring the landscape of human emotions in their own unique classically restrained chamber-pop style. The band led by the sophisticated rich baritone of Stuart Staples, now has a settled line-up after a number of personnel changes following the dissolution of the […]
December is a time of year when long-standing traditions are celebrated. A less heralded one, but a ritual that should be, is the annual release from Beans on Toast. The seventh album, Rolling Up the Hill, has continued the pattern of the first day of the month seeing a new album emerge. The significance of […]

Album Review: Beans on Toast – Rolling up the Hill

ALBUM REVIEW: RANCHO RELAXO – WHITE LIGHT FEVER

Wrong Way is a new independent record label specialising in psychedelia, shoegaze, spacerock, leftfield and krautrock emerging from the depths of Cornwall. This will be the labels first release and emerges into the world on 5th February 2016. Founded in 2003, Norway’s Rancho Relaxo are known for their talent to create compelling, absorbing sound that […]
The first time I picked up Lanterns on the Lake’s début full-lengther Gracious Tide, Take Me Home it was for embarrassingly superficial reasons – the band’s unusual, starry-eyed name, a cover designed like a battered old book – it all seemed to give off an independent, DIY impression I hoped would reflect in their sound. Thankfully […]

Album Review: Lanterns on the Lake – Beings

ALBUM REVIEW: Throw Down Bones – Throw Down Bones

Fuzz Club’s exploration of the psychedelic underground has yielded another stellar discovery in Italian coldwave duo Throw Down Bones. With live performances at Liverpool Psych Fest and the Fuzz Club Festival both being treated with great accolades, the debut album is eight tracks of instrumental electronica born from experimentation, and is the most played album […]
When the formation of EL VY was announced, I was particularly excited. A duo combining the giddy electronica of Menomena with the refined introspection of the national, seemed like something only dreams could be made of. When the lead single and the album’s opening track ‘Return to the moon’ hit the blogosphere, it was anything […]

Album Review: EL VY – Return to the Moon

Album Review: Deerhunter – Fading Frontier

Prior to the album release, Bradford Cox revealed Concept Map listing the influences of the album, which seems to have acted as a handy companion to any press release. Most reviews already posted seem to pick a circle of the map and use that as the premise for their review (see Ian Cohen of Pitchfork’s focus on […]
Tapestry’d Life is the brand new album from post-rock American quartet Pretend, released on October 9th. The group have been playing and writing together since 2004, and the time taken to mould their experimental sound and approach to music certainly shows, creating one of the most exciting albums I’ve listened to this year. A musical […]

Album Review: Pretend – Tapestry’d Life