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The Farewell State - Dial Everything

Once you reach a certain age, time becomes…strange. We are taught ad infinitum that time goes on our independent variable axis, and its scale remains equidistant. But again, after you hit forty, it becomes more like one of those orange and white logarithmic paper situations. Dial Everything is The Farewell State newest album. It’s a long in the making album, as in, fourteen bloody years from…

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Live review: Pitchfork Music Festival, Chicago

Day one An empty Union Park under the unforgiving scorching sun. A chorus of cicadas, as loud as vuvuzelas in a world cup match. Random guitar notes start to gel together and it’s Black Duck, offering relief to the few that arrived early. Chill improvisational experimental music that offers a groove, but not for long. Like short bursts of lucid dreams, indescribable. Easy start to the day. Then…

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Listen to: Echodrone - Tranquility / This is when

The fantastic, ethereal Echodrone are back with two new tracks from their upcoming album, The Curvature of Sound. ‘Tranquility’ is a mesmerising reflective track, with shushed vocals enveloped on an intimate mix of roomy notes. The gorgeous vid, posted below for your viewing pleasure, dovetails perfectly. Contrasting the sunnier disposition of ‘Tranquility’, ‘This is when’ is full of beautiful…

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Listen to: New Ghost - Over

“How many thingsAre you running fromA weight on your chestThe wolf at your door” Trepidation takes over you. Worrisome thoughts drag you down as you walk down an dimly-lit endless hallway. Is there a way out after the next corner? Perhaps, but the corner never comes. It’s all hopeless, but at least there was good music. New Ghost‘s brand new track, Over, further explores the band’s…

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Review: The Dramatic Lovers - Hiatus EP

The new The Dramatic Lovers Hiatus EP veers from Post Punk sensibilities to ambient lamentations. Check it out for some cool Autumnal moods.

It’s often said that burnout can be an unavoidable calamity for creative endeavours. Burnout is perpetual motionless machine, frustration feeds an unmovable pen, which feeds procrastination, which exacerbates frustration. Blank pages beget a drought of thoughts. Milwaukee’s The Dramatic Lovers pierce through that gray desolation with the Hiatus EP, led by Billy Seidel’s haunting but soothing…

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Wake up to Vast Robot Armies - Like a bug

Wake up to Vast Robot Armies - Like a bug #newmusic

The fierce bass line. A very The Kinks – like keyboard groove. Then an inevitable comedown. Like a bug, Vast Robot Armies brand new single, swarms your emotions, creating an almost sensurround atmosphere that intertwines longing with resignment. Acquiesce through past experiences, embrace the pop nature deep in our alveoli, and with each exhale, enjoy that all steps lead somewhere. Perhaps it’s…

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Review: Mock Tudors - I am Bozo

Review: Mock Tudors - I am Bozo. #newmusic

I have a recurring dream. A clown wearing a teal scarf chases me through dark ginnels. The half-rotten leaves covering the ground offer no footing at all and the clown eventually catches me. Then it starts playing a bass solo. That’s all well and good, but outside of the clown-motif, it has nothing to do with Mock Tudors’ debut EP, I am Bozo. A flirty collection of songs recovered from the…

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Wake up to... New Ghost - The Wolf of Allendale

Listen to the a gorgeous track by New Ghost!

What was the last thing you dreamed? The one I had yesterday left me confused. I was in a strange hotel/casino, supposedly in Paris. My plane was due to leave in 8 hours, so my mother said I should look around the place and kill some time. The casino had a water slide running everywhere, with drops, rises, loop the loops, and neon light everywhere. I jumped without hesitation and people could…

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Wake up to ... Electric Tape Recorder - Repeater.

The long trek Electric Tape Recorder saunters upon finds a new path to dark territories. The former duo, now a four piece, encounters the unnerving ‘Repeater’, released this past July in the midst of torrential rains and overcast days. Shoegazey in spirit, Psychedelic by nature, ‘Repeater’ smoulders deep through the terrain, with its peaty aftertaste lingering long after it’s over. If you fancy…

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Review: Junkbond - Spring the locks

Review: @junkbond12 - Spring the locks

One of the strangest things you learn as you get older is that no idea is a bad idea, it just needs to simmer for a longer time. Maybe a draft you left in a musty drawer is now ready to find its voice. Perhaps the half finished Locrian scale ditty that’s been swirling on your head is ready to be put on tape. And perhaps you have to stop hiding in the back of open mic night and read that…

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The oddity of self-indulgence

The oddity of self-indulgence

I’ve acquired a love-hate relationship with “best of” lists. It just feels there’s a tendency to get them out of the way as soon as possible, carefully pleasing a few PR people, and hanging on to the choices, good or bad, that the first couple of reviewers anointed a couple of days (weeks? months? years?) before you. At the same time, it feels odd not to make a list, of any size or extent, to…

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Playlist - A short breath

Is it really writer's block if the well is overspilling and there are no buckets left?

Ten years ago, I was pretty much writing reviews for this Shithole of a Website (TM) every day. Any genre, any musician, signed or unsigned. It was a rough patch and writing was pulling me through, sometimes with excellent results, but most of the time, the reviews landed like a thud. I tried food reviewing, speed dating reviewing, art exhibitions, theatre, you name it. I thought I could put…

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Cold nights at Chapultepec's rollercoaster.

Cold nights at Chapultepec’s rollercoaster.

A twitter contact mentioned the other day that she had a recurring dream: she was leisurely strolling at a fun fair, apparently not a nice one, and the owner locks her in, just a moment before lights out and once the crowds are gone, perhaps through the gift shop for last minute trinkets. She wanders in the pitch black darkness, with only the stale popcorn smell as company. The wind caresses…

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A roadtrip they never took

Can’t remember where I read that decluttering is a healthy activity. Let the past go, wash away those aspirations of selling a battered Kenner Millenium Falcon on Ebay. You had too many fun times at the park with it and now it resembles Harrison Ford’s hip. Earlier today, before that heavy sleet made it impossible to drive anywhere, I took two boxes of NFL Digest, a bunch of old newspapers, soda…

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New music: Gilmore Trail - Nocturne

"A solemn reflection over frozen ponds and eerie quiet days in cities where uncertainty is now the new norm." New music: @GilmoreTrail - Nocture.

Winter’s apricity sun never brings that warmth we crave. Sure, a serving of UV rays gets the Vitamin D machine running -take that, sun lamp!- but still, 3°C at noon? Surely this is a mistake and I will send my severest remonstrace to the manager, with a copy to his remora-like underlings. Anyways, where was I? Gilmore Trail, a fantastic post rock band from Sheffield is just but a mere days from…

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Come again?

In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary....Come Again? A playlist.

He was right, you know. Source: Fox. “Well, at one time, you’ve got it, and then you lose it, and it’s gone forever.“- Sick Boy, Trainspotting. It’s hard to keep an open mind to new art. I can’t quite pinpoint when or how our brains stop accepting fresh stuff and delve into times long gone, but when it happens, it happens, and it’s all downhill from there. I was rewatching Homerpaloosa, an old…

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Playlist - Janvier

Playlist – Janvier

It’s the new year and reason would dictate that we must leave the past behind. Shed that extra weight, loose the millstone in your neck dragging you down, and swim away to warmer climates. But emotions do not follow reason. Past memories of old hotel lobbies, the cafeteria your grandparents used to take you, maybe a false memory here and there, it’s foolish to ignore the music we heard as we…