Author: Sean Keenan

Sean Keenan used to write. Now he edits, and gets very annoyed about the word ‘ethereal’. Likely to bite anyone using the form ‘I’m loving….’. Don’t start him on the misuse of three-dot ellipses. Divides his time between mid-Spain and South-West France, like one of those bucktoothed, fur-clad minor-aristocracy ogresses you see in Hello magazine, only without the naff chandeliers. Twitter: @seaninspain

DJ Food: The Search Engine

This is the land, where nothing changes, the land of red buses & blue blooded babies, This is the place, where pensioners are raped, And the hearts are being cut, from the welfare state, Let the...

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Islet: Illuminated People

Islet's Illumiminated People is awash with the self-indulgence of a band who have little to fear from the ignominy of failure. That's the official line at any rate. Famous now for not being...

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Oliveray: Wonders

Geezer Alert! This review contains nostalgic revisionism. The under-thirties – oh ye of predictive texting and sleepful nights unbroken by groggy visits to the loo – will be baffled by...

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Sly and Reggie: Middle Class Dub (Vol.2)

Pity the middle classes. Despised and reviled most vehemently by themselves, condemned by popular opinion to the dull political and personal flabbiness of the middle – in class, in attitude, in...

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I was always closer to rock´n roll (Nils Frahm)

Interview with Nils Frahm 2011...

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Peter Broderick: Music for Confluence

The somewhat fantastical world of Erased Tapes record making continues with Peter Broderick's Music for Confluence. After the happy accident in which Nils Frahm's efforts not to wake the...

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The Kinks in Mono – Retrospective

Ten albums' worth, in mono. Is a Kinks retrospective more to do with to expiry dates on 1960s publishing contracts than with rediscovering lost classics? Because nobody needs to rediscover The...

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Orienteers – Album Review

Sometimes simplicity is bliss. Orienteers are the heavy-lidded lords of a sweet, sleepy land of achingly pretty melodies, peaceful reflection and fuzzy warmth. They seem to need very little to create...

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Charlene Soraia – Moonchild

Charlene Soraia's ability to split her voice into ultra-shrill harmonics is a talent. There was a chap a few years ago with an act entitled 'The Puppetry of the Penis' who was able to...

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Jimmy Gnecco – The Heart (X Edition)

Any album by a band's vocalist going solo needs to justify its existence by revealing some sort of personal vision, some characteristic that wouldn't be found on work by the band. Searching...

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Jimmy Gnecco – The Heart: X Edition

Any album by a band's vocalst going solo needs to justify its existence by revealing some sort of personal vision, some characteristic that wouldn't be found on work by the band. Searching...

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King Midas Sound – Without You

King Midas Sound's Without You bathes in beefy bass. Dark, off-kilter bass music. Hyperdub Records are justifiably famous for it. Steve Goodman's London label has been dropping achingly edgy...

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Yann Novak – Presence

Electronic music is now more ubiquitous than schoolboy garage rock bands ever were. And where schoolboy garage bands once plagued their classmates into spending Saturday evenings at church halls and...

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Kid Koala – Space Cadet

Typical. You wait all year for an album playing on the sound of the internal mechanisms of the piano, and then two turn up within a fortnight.  On first impressions, Kid Koala's Space Cadet...

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DJ Food. Magpies, Maps and Moons EP & Live Review

DJ Food – Magpies, Maps and Moons EP If nothing else, DJ Food provides NinjaTune with continuity. By now verging on the status of a legacy act, the item has been around as long as the label...

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Moodymanc Vs Jamie Finlay – People Circulate

Development Music make much of their artists' Manchester provenance in the promotional literature accompanying this release. Even the artist's name really wants to be sure you know where he...

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Maguett – Twilight EP

Brace yourselves, Moscow-based musical technician Maguett has been tricking about with a PowerMac between lectures and is about to unleash 'a brand new monument called IBM : Intelligent...

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Nils Frahm – Felt

Pianists's fingers knurl and bulge with the same blunt mutantcy as freshly-dug jerusalem artichokes. Easy as it is to imagine the rigours on the hands of Prokofiev's yard-long keyboard...

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Real Estate – Days

Real Estate. Even the name is dull. Recently signed to Domino records, Real Estate's second album – Days – is something of an anomaly in a label roster which boasts the freeform...

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Paul Catten – Themes and Variations for Strings and Electronics

Paul Catten - Themes and Variations for Strings and Electronics...

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Macks Faulkron – Friends EP

As much as sixties psychedelia has been artlessly plundered by last month's media darlings, Best Coast, it seems only logical that the 90s re-visioning of that movement be picked over in the...

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Stateless – I’m on Fire EP

Symphonic electronica and beguiling voices – 'I'm on Fire' feeds the spirit. There really is a lot of range on this five-track EP. Hell, there's more range in each one of the...

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Jono McCleery – There Is

Jono McCleery delivers a classic album in There Is. SBTRKT, Jamie Woon, hell, even Radiohead. The fan of beguiling male vocals set against beats is suddenly well-catered for. Jono McCleery's...

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Dalston Riot: DELS (featuring Roots Manuva) – Capsize

As this review is being written, Tweetdeck's pop-up window appears repeatedly to comment on the Tottenham, now Dalston, and seemingly soon-to-be Hackney riots. The tweets range in their tone from...

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Sabi/Kiyo – 71:36

Sabi and Kiyo add yet more megabytes to the IDM glut. Force Intel is a sublabel of Mille Plateaux, the latter's management choosing to found a new imprint as a release platform for the music they...

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The Passing of the Amy Winehouse Object 1983-2011

Remembering Winehouse as either the tabloid-splashed mental wreck or as the misunderstood musical genius archetype the press is already constructing, is unfair and ultimately disrespectful....

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Emika – Pretend/Professional Loving

After her interpretation of Amon Tobin's 'Surge', Emika's Pretend' comes as something of an uneasy shock. The track is taken from her forthcoming album, entitled simply...

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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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