Sound
The Homely Path through Chaotic Woods (Nostos)
A collection of musical pieces which disturb, wrongfoot, disorient and occasionally attack the listener, whilst still being peppered with the ghost of expected song structures (read more)
Articles by Sean Keenan
Sound
Crank Thy Humbuckers – Ratatat Release Magnifique
Mahoosive dynamics, the customary duelling guitar chops, and surf drums pulling everything together. Air guitar and dancefloor screwface, in one handy pack. Cribbens! (read more)
Sound
Rills, fills and dirty drum machines. Unravel (Bendejo)
Owes as much to the mechanics of dub as to the sequencing of techno, with dub’s technique of using a looped passage to overwrite the 4/4 time structure driving the low-end beats. (read more)
Sound
Cleaning ladies also experience the sublime (Aine O’Dwyer)
Where Scarlatti or Bach strove to elevate the consciousness with uplifting symmetrical counterpoint, O’Dwyer reaches into a slightly different church music tradition (read more)
Society
Death in the Afternoon : Political Slaughter in Spain
Personal charisma, rockstar presentation and the common touch may indeed be a successful formula for political power. (read more)
Sound
Parting the Veil of Sylvanian Fantasy [Crystal Bright & The Silver Hands]
Bright’s voice, if a touch brittle, is faultless in pitch, soaring in keening arabesques through what must (surely) be the entire range of anguish (read more)
Sound
Big bangs, pulsars, black holes and supernovas [Fujako]
Off-key gamelan clangs, swarming keyboards and pitch-slowed kickdrums hammer that recurring distopian atmosphere home (read more)
Sound
Integration and interrelation between the orchestral and the electronic [Michael Price]
As an exercise in demonstrating the possibilities of digital/orchestral enmeshment, Entanglement is at the top table. (read more)
Sound
Composing With Particle Interactions. How Does the Invisible Sound?
here is a lot going on in Q07, particularly for a record which qualifies wholeheartedly as ambient noodling. Thanks to the obliging folk at Farmacia901 the reviewed version of the album is a 24-Bit Flac (read more)
Sound
High Definition sonic adventures: Joe Snape in 24-Bit
aysayers love to make sweeping judgements about 24-bit sound reproduction. The physical capabilties of the human ear provide a favourite taunting point. What is the point of a technology which can reproduce sounds at a (read more)
Sound
Manns’ slightly plain voice is flawless, but uninspired.
There are some moderately engaging, essentially pleasant, songs on the album. Actually, they all are. (read more)
Sound
Fogh Depot [Album]
This is brooding jazz with an electronic twist or, if you prefer, brooding electronica with a jazz twist. (read more)
Society
Don’t Slap Her, She’s Pretty!
Girls who want to avoid being clobbered should aim to be tall, blonde and pretty. Does the ‘Slap Her!’ video send out the wrong message? (read more)
Sound
Music : Did We Even Like it Anyway?
Why is the music industry failing? Perhaps it’s just that most folk never really liked it much anyway. (read more)
Society
Scott Laudati : Hawaiian Shirts in the Electric Chair [Poetry]
Between the suburbs and the city, and all that they stand for in Laudati’s oeuvre, there is the ever-present fear not of age itself, but of fading away rather than burning out (read more)
Society
Trick or Treat! A Celebration of Samhain
It is the festival of Samhain from whence our contemporary experience of Hallowe’en stems (read more)
Art
Uneri : Fluvial Benevolence of Womanity
Art’s ever-disputed purpose chokes, regurgitates and, eventually, masticates the fabric of society to emulsified pap, thus palatable to the prolish hordes. (read more)
Sound
Monomyth : Further
Gusty keyboard swells, reel-like lead guitar figures and crescendo-borne power riffs building seemingly unstoppable momentum until they, well, stop. (read more)
Sound
Trioscapes : Digital Dream Sequence
Throbs with a primal, sweaty and utterly invigorating energy that transcends jazz, funk, metal or rock (read more)
Art
This is Not a Book About Gavin Turk
By expounding upon Turk’s themes, recurrences and symbolic obsessions, a profile develops which is, enchantingly, acres more telling than a full-frontal biographic assault (read more)
Sound
Taylor McFerrin : Early Riser
Wringing a sense of soul, warmth and jazz-like complexity out of sequencing, samples, sidechains and good old organic musicanship (read more)
Society
Summer Cooking : Mayonnaise
Onwards, to the savoury custard of kings. (read more)
Society
Geoff Thompson : The Caretaker
Were it not for occasional cultural references or linguistic signposts, The Caretaker could indeed be mistaken for an established liturgical text. (read more)
Sound
Kelis : Food
An album that keeps its powder dry, thrills and teases, and on vocal performances such as ‘Biscuits n’ Gravy’, enthrals. Kelis, Food. Review (read more)
Sound
Teebs : Estara
Mandowa stamps his musical signature onto the record, weaving a living, breathing album of songs with none of the icy clinical detachment that might be expected of a producer’s album. (read more)
Society
Mike Vallely : On Not Being Broken
Action-sports megacorporations duly demonized, Vallely takes to the appropriately bleak and inhuman streets of Berlin. (read more)
Society
An Emotive Wartime Journey. Yours for £2
That the Royal Mint Advisory Committee chose to commemorate that ’emotive wartime journey’ with the iconic image of Lord Kitchener should come as no surprise. (read more)
Society
Alan De Niro : Tyrannia
The value of De Niro’s writing is not in what is depicted but in tone, theme, and the disconcerting mood of the short pieces as they seed doubts and second-guesses in the reader.
(read more)
Sound
Peru Maravilloso [Album]
If the material is jaunty and lacking in nose-flutes it is because this is a reflection of Peruvian popular music in the 60s/70s, not some anthropological/musicological quest for an imposed indigenous authenticity (read more)
Sound
The Presence LDN : Interview
I won’t use a computer to make music ever again. Those things lead to a shiny but soulless place in the heart. (read more)