Category: Sound

Without music, life would be a mistake. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Klive – Sweaty Psalms

Nothing if not ambitious, the scope of Klive's debut album overwhelms. Originally self-released in 2008, Klive's Sweaty Psalms is now enjoying a European release via Mille Plateaux, offering...

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Raffertie – Visual Acuity EP

Raffertie’s compositional ambitions happen on a grand scale – at times his basslines have at the warping boom of pedal-timpany; at other times they use pitch-bend to underpin the melodies...

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Crystal Antlers – Two-Way Mirror

Crystal Antlers find liberation in music's current chaos. Adaptation to the realities of the music market in 2011 is something of a Darwinian exercise. Freetards lurking in the comment feeds of...

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Brilliant Colours – Again and Again

Brilliant Colours teeter on the edge of the indie landfill. Knowing where homage ends and derivative starts is the responsibility of the band – in this case it would be very generous to give...

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Cults – Cults

Christ on a bike, this takes me back a bit. The inexplicable thing is, though, it takes me back to something I’ve never experienced. Weird, no? I’m not trying to instigate a protracted...

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Godflesh, D.R.I., and Goatsnake – HMV Forum

Three bands, over 100 years of combined musical history, one night. Godflesh, D.R.I. and Goatsnake deliver.  "Who the fuck are Goatsnake?" Screams a pot bellied Swiss chemist at the...

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Morta Skuld – Through the Eyes of Death – The Early Demos

Morta Skuld's demos are a time capsule to a musical history which never happened. Difficult though it is for filesharing apologists to countenance, the pre-Napster period of the 1990s was a...

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Shifted – Control EP

It would be easy to dismiss the tracks on this EP as uninspired minimal techno, droning morosely along, amassing texture by layering beats at nodal points and squirting atmospheric keyboard chords...

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Into the Unknown: Jamie XX – Far Nearer

I tried to avoid it again this month, the semi big name, the rising star that everyone’s watching, but sometimes the masses are right. There’s been rumblings that he’s ripping off...

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Wiley – 100% Publishing

'East London grime credibility or West Coast glamour, who cares? Just PICK ONE and get on with it!' ...

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Emptyset feat. Corneileus Harris – All Together Lost Remixes EP

Emptyset live up to their name with the sparse minimalism of 'All Together Lost' 'All Together Lost' is innocuous and inoffensive trancey, minimal house music, but what else is there...

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The Black Dahlia Murder – Ritual

For their fifth studio album, Detroit heavy weights The Black Dahlia Murder have remained true to what they do best. Namely blasting out high energy, heavy and powerful melodic death metal. The album...

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Plant Plants – Plant Plants EP

First growth bears sweet fruit… Skimming through titles, you might suspect that ‘Plant Plants’ indicated gardening instructions for absolute beginners. Though their name is...

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Wolf People – Steeple

Is originality everything? I only ask because, throughout contemporary music history, there is very little that has been created without some sort of precedent. This is not to say that the quality of...

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Savage Nomads, Don’t Wait Animate, White Powder Gold – Live

The constant hybridisation of music is the fuel that drives innovation. The problem is that decontextualising sounds and themes from other genres can make them meaningless or seem weakly pastiche,...

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Master Musicians of Bukkake – Totem 3

The Pacific Northwest meets the rest of the world… strange things happen… Before I commence, I feel I ought to issue an important warning – be VERY careful if trying to Google...

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Amon Tobin – Surge EP

Amon Tobin simultaneously alienates and intrigues....

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David J Roch – Skin and Bone

Colliding the wonderment of tragedy and the bewildering virtue of romantic love, these songs are not lullabies. They are raw emotions straight from your nerve endings. Every so often an album comes...

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Rival Consoles – Kid Velo

Rival Consoles' Kid Velo has the beats and builds of anthemic house, but it's more Paul Hardcastle than Paul Oakenfold. Now that GaGa has got her hands on sidechain compression and synth...

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Ukkonen – Erriapo (EP)

Erriapo's icy but intimate techno-chillout is understated, elegant, but never simple. Unhurried development: the tightrope walk of the electronic musician's art. How many bars can you...

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SubMachena – Sta Luego Dub

Dub maybe a niche concern but SubMachena give us enough to warrant a fresh look at the genre. Robin Taylor-Firth and Rawle Bruce may be better known as Olive (See You’re Not Alone) when they...

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Claire Nicolson – The Wheelbarrow

In the hip but friendly atmosphere of Camden’s Wheelbarrow, UK singer/songwriter Claire Nicolson emerges with a chunky acoustic guitar strapped to her frame. She’s effortlessly confident...

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Ofelia Dorme – All Harm Ends Here

Sumptuously restrained album by a little known Italian band that have enough originality to move an audience into sweet oblivion. It’s rare to hear an album as well produced as this. Everything...

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Wet Paint – Woe

Life, like wet paint, is messy. It's painful, it's colourful too. Sometimes it comes in one colour. Sometimes it's black. We all have our ups and downs. It seems Wet Paint have had a...

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Pleq – Ballet Mechanic

Echoes, textures and the subtle hint of melody; the ambient music formula is rarely relevant. With 'Ballet Mechanic' Pleq wins against the odds. Contemporary ambient music has no place in a...

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Kindest Lines – Covered in Dust

Not quite the Dirty South… Kindest Lines are from New Orleans. This, in itself, is totally irrelevant. In spite of the Big Easy’s fine traditions of blues, jazz and southern rock, they...

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Mental D-struction – Extrapolation of Human Perspectives

Swapping guitars and drums for VSTs and sequencers, Mental D-Struction makes the tricky jump to electronica and almost pulls it off. Having high artistic ideals, and creating material which follows...

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Sixth June – Back for A Day 12”EP

Party like it’s 1982… It’s good to be reminded of how young you are sometimes. To any more mature readers of this article, I assure you this isn’t meant as a smug gloating...

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Inevitable End – The Oculus

One of the first words one might use to describe the second album from Sweden’s Inevitable End is schizophrenic.  However this is the wrong word. For something to be called schizophrenic...

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Anna Calvi, Grouplove, and Big Deal, ride with the NME

A mixed bag of sugar and saccharine, the NME Emerge tour closed on a high.  The NME Emerge tour is about bringing rising stars to new audiences. The cult of the Next Big Thing is alive and well...

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