#KICK DRUM BEATING * ANDY

[scotianostra]

The award winning Scottish screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin was born on February 15th 1932 on the Isle of Bute, his most famous film was The Italian Job with it's iconic line "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"

His father was an engineer and his mother a teacher. Moving frequently because of the second world war and his father's work, his was a talented and creative family. His younger brother, Ian, is also a scriptwriter who created The Sweeney and Juliet Bravo.

The family established themselves in north London, only to have the household income, never large, halved by the death of Troy's mother when he was 15. The Catholic church helped to keep them afloat, and Troy went to Finchley Catholic grammar school, followed by Trinity College Dublin.

After completing his National Service he wanted to move into the Foreign Office, but Troy, although having a toffee nosed name, did not speak with toffees in hi mouth and was rejected. He thought if he was a published writer this might be a route in so set about work on a short work of poetry of novel, his novel, Beat on a Damask Drum but it wasn't this that kick started his career on civvy street, but an article he wrote on boy soldiers in Cyprus the BBC picked it up and asked him to adapt it into a TV play. Based on his own experiences during national service as an officer with the Gordon Highlanders, this became the television play Incident at Echo 6, screened in 1958.

He delivered four further plays between 1959-61 before his first series, a six part anthology of original material and adaptations, Storyboard. He followed this with a gritty police drama, The Interrogator. which indirectly led to his next series Z Cars. Kennedy Martin created Z Cars as an antidote to the 'cosy-cop-on-the-corner' style TV police series, epitomised by Dixon of Dock Green Z Cars was revolutionary. For the first time the police were portrayed as real human beings, complete with flaws. Prejudiced, bad-tempered, shifty and sometimes even displaying traits (such as wife-beating) more commonly associated with criminals. The police were horrified at first, but eventually came round to regard the series with some affection.

Other selected TV work by Kennedy-Martin includes, Colditz, the brilliant Reilly, Ace of Spies, and Edge of Darkness. Apart from the Italian Job he wrote screenplays for TV Movies Bravo Two Zero, co-written with Andy McNab and Hostile Waters as well as The Sweeney 2 movie. He also wrote the original play and co-wrote the screenplay for the Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Belushi film Red Heat.

He died of liver cancer on 15th September 2009, aged 77

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 815: Nomeansno Sex Mad

My first introduction to Nomeansno was hearing Sex Mad's "Dad" on a punk rock radio show on Oahu's Radio Free Hawaii station sometime around 1991 or 1992. The song's straightforward fury and harrowing depiction of domestic abuse carried the musical power and lyrical urgency that was like a drug to my young teenage mind. But I wouldn't actually hear the rest of Sex Mad until my college buddy dropped this LP on my doorstep a decade later.

The first two tracks off Sex Mad---the title track and the aforementioned "Dad"---sound like classic early North American hardcore. But that one-two-punch opening sequence was a Trojan Horse. By track three we have "Obsessed," a twisted and puzzling instrumental song that's like a punk version of Rush's "YYZ" (side note: I wouldn't actually hear Rush until sometime around 1997, and I distinctly remember thinking "this sounds like an arena rock version of Nomeansno"). Then there's the a cappella shout-fest "No Fgcnuik." These aren't exactly the kinds of departures that your average liberty-spiked punk wants to hear. Side one wraps up with "Love Thang" and "Dead Bob," both of which deconstruct hardcore's rage with syncopated rhythms, jarring shifts in song structures, and a general musical aptitude that one could only imagine both intrigued and puzzled the punks back in 1986.

Things get even weirder (and WAY cooler) on Side 2. "Self Pity" is the kind of protracted, exploratory, slow-build jam that completely avoids the three-chord, top-speed formula of hardcore. Instead, a low, menacing bass riff and nimble drum pattern drive the song, with brief explosions of guitar hinting at some inevitable climax. We keep getting teased with a big pay-off, and there are a few moments of thrashy release, but you get the overall sense that the ultimate moment is just on the horizon. And then it arrives, and it's not some big mosh part or circle pit anthem. It's guitarist Andy Kerr sending a signal through some sort of delay effect and tweaking the knobs into a swirling storm of chaos. Thirteen years later, Botch would do something similar on "Transitions From Persona To Object" without ever having heard "Self Pity."

Side 2 continues on in its strange journey with "Long Days." This is another track that almost owes more to prog rock than punk. Rob Wright plays a dexterous bass line on an infinite loop while John Wright keeps teasing us with various fragmented drum patterns. Rob sings a mournful melody on top of all of it. Andy appears to have not shown up to the studio that day. There are a few moments where John finally locks into a four-on-the-floor drumbeat and it's completely gratifying, but the overall intention of the song seems to be all about depriving the audience of what they want.

That vibe continues on "Metronome." Another looping bass line. Another song where John spends more time hinting at a beat rather than playing the full kit. Andy is back from his coffee break to provide vocals, but when the song actually lays into the bass riff it's so satisfying that the band apparently decided to leave guitar out of the mix entirely. There's hardly any guitar on Side 2 until the closer "Revenge," where Rob ditches the bass. We get angular guitar riffs for the verses and triumphant chords for the chorus. It's big and epic, but hardly the kind of straightforward blitzkrieg that kicked off the album.

The punks must have been completely perplexed, but maybe the punks were actually bored by the old formulas at that point. After all, Sex Mad gave Nomeansno their first hint of success. The band got signed to Alternative Tentacles, providing massive exposure across North America, and the band was invited on their first tour of Europe, where they would close out the decade as one of the top drawing punk acts on the continent---just behind Fugazi and Bad Religion. By 1986, the first batch of North American hardcore bands were dying out or crossing over into metal territories. Up in British Columbia, Nomeansno were charting a path that would now qualify as "post-hardcore," taking the urgency and DIY spirit of hardcore but expanding its parameters with a broader emotional spectrum and a larger arsenal of musical influences under their belt.

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume Nine, Number Seven

Chuck Johnson

Is it hot where you are? Has it been raining a lot? Is there smoke in the air? It's been the weirdest, most disturbing summer, and you might think it would make music irrelevant. But no, this is Dusted, and we continue to listen and judge and write about records even at the end of times. So here's another Dust. Enjoy. We hope there will be one next month, too, but let's see what happens, eh?

Contributors include Jennifer Kelly, Bryon Hayes, Jonathan Shaw, Chris Liberato, Ian Mathers, Patrick Masterson, Jonathan Shaw, Andrew Forell and Tim Clarke.

Omar Ahmad — Inheritance (AKP)

Inheritance by Omar Ahmad

Omar Ahmad’s music follows dance pulses through thickets of memory. A glitchy beat sinks into slippery textures of synthesizer, piano, strings and field recordings; the music moves but in a haze of memory, as the sounds of women, children and running water flashes and subsides. Omar Ahmad is a Palestinian-American electronic artist and DJ currently based in Brooklyn and in this first full-length, he explores identity (ethnic and otherwise) through a scrim of memory. These glowing ambient compositions don’t hammer the point home—rather they gently suggest and evoke a dual western/Arabic identity. The baby in “Gesso” says “Daddy” in English but is answered in another language. The cut “usra” whose name translates as “home” or “family” incorporates a ululating non-western vocal alongside the pristine electronic modernity of synths. “Sham Oasis” has, perhaps, the most concentrated array of Middle Eastern sounds, a jangle of not-guitars, the thud of hand drums, a shaker, but it also twitches and glitters with space-age electronic sounds. The songs have lovely, idealized, luminous textures that don’t belong, exactly, to any single culture, yet they are warm and beautiful enough to make it feel like home anyway.

Jennifer Kelly

Animal Piss It’s Everywhere — S-T (Half a Million)

Animal Piss, It's Everywhere by Animal Piss, It's Everywhere

This loose and goofy country ramble obsesses over Jesus and intoxicants, sometimes but not always in the same songs. Indeed these bleary sing-alongs seem best suited for Sunday morning with the sun streaming in on the tail end of a one- or two-day bender. They’re exhausted but full of good feeling, played on muscle memory and love of the game. “Jesus Got Under My Skin,” for instance, ramps up the roadhouse boogie in a stunned and stoned narrative about finding one’s savior—and then trying to ditch him. “Naked” slouches and twangs in a righteous chorus of “Naked…ass…man…blues.” There’s considerable talent on hand, however casually it is deployed, from a confederation of Western Mass freak folk regulars. A guitar-heavy line-up features Anthony Pasquarosa, Clark Griffin (Weeping Bong Band, Pigeons), Shannon Ketch (Bunwinkies) and Andy Goulet on pedal steel (Winter Pills, Lonesome Brothers etc.). Rob Smith from Rhyton and Mouth Painter plays drums and Jim Bliss (of various Matt Valentine projects) sits in on bass. “I’ve found sucksess, sucking at success,” croons the singer, making a point; this band of miscreants achieve their aims without coming within a hundred miles of commercial palatability.

Jennifer Kelly

Aunty Rayzor — “Nina” (Nyege Nyege Tapes)

Perhaps the hardest song I heard over the last month opens with an almost demented pogoing and a video staring straight at the sun with an airplane’s corpse and a silhouette on the wing fixing her hair before she struts into your life and all over your ears. If you don’t already know Bisola Olungbenga aka Aunty Rayzor, Nyege Nyege Tapes has done a fine job ensuring you’ll want to hear everything the Nigerian has to say after one listen through of “Nina,” the lead single from September’s Viral Wreckage. Veering between red hair and blonde amid rusty MiG-21s, Rayzor takes the hard-nosed rhythm from Berlin-based beatmaker Debmaster — just listen to the way that kick rumbles on the low end — and matches it step for step to powerful effect. You don’t need Nyege Nyege’s effusive description of the forthcoming full-length to gather we have another formidable female rapper waiting in — or is it on? — the wings to embarrass the boys and prolong women’s global chokehold on the genre that little bit longer. Only a fool or an incel could complain.

Patrick Masterson

Aware — Requiem for a Dying Animal (Glacial Movements)

Requiem For A Dying Animal by AWARE

Alexander Glück, who records as Aware, specializes in producing a haunting tributary of ambient sound that aims to cause unease. His music is ghostly, chilling, and morose. It evokes loneliness yet, like most good stories, contains a faint trickle of hope. His compositions encompass vast swathes of tone peppered with microscopic flecks. These resemble large chunks of metamorphic rock that Glück has fused into rich, veiny patterns. These polychromatic constructions tell stories of isolationism and hardship interspersed with hopefulness and joy. They reflect our species’ interconnectedness with a natural world that simultaneously seeks to nurture and destroy us, as we in turn seek to exploit its bounties. With his music, Glück seeks to find an equilibrium, a stalemate between us and our environment. He will likely never solve this riddle, but Requiem for a Dying Animal is a fruitful step on the journey toward his goal.  

Bryon Hayes

Blight House — Blight the Way (Syrup Moose Records)

Blight the Way by Blight House

Blight House makes the kind of death metal-infused grindcore that aims for utter absurdity: absurdly heavy riffing; absurdly fast drum-machine blips, blats and thumps; absurdist, so-stupid-they’re clever semiotics. It’s hard not to laugh (or at least ruefully chuckle) at the puns in the band’s name and in the title of this new record. Song titles are even dumber and sometimes even more funny: “Dismembers Only,” “Bible Belt Baby Buffet,” “Walpurgis Date-Night.” And so on. But as is generally the case with records like this, it’s hard to know where the joke ends and the band begins. If it’s all done for laughs, then why is the music executed with such apparent seriousness (n.b., for a less overworked version of a grindy gag act, see this)? And if we’re supposed to hear at least some of Blight House’s stuff with a dash of gravid sincerity, then please, band, send instructions on how to pull off that bit of cognitive jiu-jitsu. Or on second thought, maybe don’t. It’s probably better for everyone involved if we just accept the low-brow yucks to be found in songs like “Acephalophilia III: Hopelessly Headless for You” for what they are, and take the tune at its word. If you think about this sort of edge-lord-adjacent, meme-driven cultural production too hard, you may end up in the writers’ room for Ron DeSantis’s next campaign commercial. Headless and heedless, thoughtless and feckless—blight the way into our collective, idiotic future, dudes.

Jonathan Shaw

Buffalo Nichols — The Fatalist (Fat Possum)

The Fatalist by Buffalo Nichols

Buffalo Nichols’ Carl Nichols has a fine gravelly voice, an unfussy skill with the pick and the slide and the swagger that turns songs of suffering into songs of defiance. In other words, he’s a bluesman of the first order and unusual, these days, in that he’s not 100 years old or a suburban white guy. Yes, Buffalo Nichols is on a mission to reclaim the blues for the folks who invented it—black people—and this very fine album makes a pretty good case for the rightness of his cause. How so? Well, to begin with The Fatalist is mostly acoustic, relying on the speed and accuracy of Nichols fingers rather than a floor sized pedal board; there are no endless wah wah’d solos, no feedback freakery. His vocal delivery matches up, too, quiet but intense, an on-pitch growl that pulls you in and holds you there. There’s a simplicity in the playing and arrangements that underlines the power of these song. Listen, for instance, to the eerie magic of slide, the elemental punch of kick drum on the Blind Willie Nelson cover, “You’re Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond.” Or the winding melancholy on “The Long Journey Home,” which frolics funereally in banjo and fiddle tones. He brings in the Philadelphia singer and songcatcher Samantha Rise on “This Moment” for a duet, her voice warm and resonant, his hoarse with emotion, a violin twining around the both of them in a dizzy mesh of sounds. A subtle album, but a good one.

Jennifer Kelly

Cyberplasm — First Emanation (Iron Lung)

First Emanation (LUNGS-262) by CYBERPLASM

Electro-punk dissonance melds and mixes it up with anarcho-freak industrial noise on this new EP from Olympia-based Cyberplasm. The band doesn’t seek to exorcize the ghost in the machine so much as conjure it, feed it with nerve impulses harvested from your frontal lobes and then unleash it on our various political and informational systems. Chaos ensues. Maybe it’s liberatory, maybe it just wants to raze all signs of institutional power. Too damn bad if your sense of security or self-worth gets in the way — and in any case, the music is perversely enjoyable. Check out the d-beat scree of “Spit from Fluid” or the foreboding, crust-infused “Second Mind.” The EP’s ten minutes flash by in a series of burned-out synapses and frying amplifiers. Cyberplasm makes underground music that captures the grit and weirdness of lawless subterranean spaces, virtual and material. It’s exciting stuff. It feels dangerous. Punk’s not dead.

Jonathan Shaw

Decoherence — Order (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Order by DECOHERENCE

If you have been following Decoherence’s coruscating, cosmic circuit through the 21st century, you won’t find much to be surprised by on Order, the band’s new LP. It’s 40+ minutes of pounding, pyrotechnic industrial metal, thoroughly blackened and shot through with enough harsh noise to burn off your eyebrows. The pace is a little slower, vocalist Derek Jacobsen (who appears on Decoherence releases as Tahazu, an anglicized version of the ancient Sumerian word for battle) sounds like another layer of gristle is occluding his vocal cords, and the compositions of musicians Stroda and Prior are marginally less engaged by melody than many of those on the band’s previous LP, Unitary (2020). If you’re into this sort of thing, none of those small changes is a bad thing. But while Unitary represented a profound development when contrasted with the band’s first several releases, Order feels like a consolidation — a band summing its aesthetics and refining its songwriting sensibility. Which suggests an interesting question: How much order do we want in metal music? This reviewer likes it when Decoherence embraces the chaos denoted by its band name. Check out “An Unconfined System” on this new record. Play it very, very loud. Order? Not so much.

Jonathan Shaw

Drekka—The Water of Life (Orb Tapes)

The Water of Life by Drekka

Michael Anderson, the artist who records as Drekka, made these four long-form meditations for a live performance in Indianapolis in 2015, loosely basing his mix of primitive and electronic sounds on the sci fi classic Dune. All four cuts evolve slowly out of hiss and static (the first one is even called “Stasis and Static”), a buzz like live power wires in the foreground, the faint ghosts of bells, altered choral voices rising up occasionally to mysterious ends. You could, of course, construct an imaginary Dune world out of these sounds, its vast deserts and obliterating sandstorms, its mystic addiction to spice, but it would take some active listening and imagining on your part. The title track assists, somewhat, submerging drips of liquid in the rumble of wind flapping through sails, and the nearly human chants that rise as if from a distance out of the noise. There’s a lot of activity here, a scramble to rattle bits against each other, the click and ching of various percussive elements. And through it comes the hum of dawning revelation, just hovering notes rising, but seeming to reach some inscrutable insight out of the noisy scrum.

Jennifer Kelly

The Finks — Birthdays at Solo Pasta (Milk!)

Birthdays at Solo Pasta by The Finks

Courtney Barnett’s recent announcement that her label Milk! Records will be closing down at the end of the year means that The Finks’ Birthdays at Solo Pasta will be one of the label’s final releases. This feels fitting for a label that has quietly released some understated gems over the years from artists such as Tiny Ruins and Mess Esque. The Finks, led by Oliver Mestitz, create the kind of intimate, loosely woven songs that thrive on the obvious ease between the players, as if you’re listening in to a front-room jam session in which everyone is warmed up and starting to develop their instrumental parts into a lively, organic whole. Mestitz leads the way with his quiet, congested voice, as if he’s perpetually getting over a head-cold, often accompanied by the complementary vocals of Sarah Farquharson. The rhythm section, piano and guitar are wonderfully restrained, the woodwinds muted and sinuous, with everything unfolding patiently. At their best, such as on “Marco Polo” and the instrumental “Ego Slump,” The Finks tap into something truly gorgeous and radiant.

Tim Clarke

Frode Gjerstad / Kalle Moberg / Paal Nilssen-Love — Time Sound Shape (PNL)

Time Sound Shape by Gjerstad / Moberg / Nilssen-Love

If you’ve been tracking Scandinavian free music for the past few decades, you might think you know what record sounds like when you hear that Frode Gjerstad and Paal Nilssen-Love are on it. After all, they’ve been playing together since the latter was a teen and the former was trying to lure promising players into the out-jazz life, and they’ve made a fair number of steaming recordings in that time. But they haven’t made anything quite like Time Sound Shape. Recorded at the Gamle Aker Kirke, Oslo’s oldest edifice, in 2021, it may be completely improvised, but it takes its cues from circumstance, space and opportunity, and those cues point the music in a very different direction. The old stone church’s resonance amplifies Nilssen-Love’s all-gongs set up into a massive sonic presence, and accordionist Kalle Moberg conspires with the percussionist to create a solemnly orchestral breadth of sound. Gjerstad, alternating between alto sax, alto flute and Bb clarinet, sharpens the action with short, anguished cries. This is the biggest sound that three guys can make without the assistance of electricity.

Bill Meyer

Gerrit Hatcher — Solo Five (Kettle Hole)

Solo Five by Gerrit Hatcher

Gerrit Hatcher’s learned well. Instead of waiting for fortune, the Chicago-based tenor saxophonist makes things happen. He plays in town quite often, tours econo and self-releases music on his own label, Kettle Hole Records. The title of this album (a real, glass-mastered CD, unlike the blue-faced disappointments so often sold under that name on Bandcamp these days) attests to his devotion to solo performance. It takes practice as well as physical prowess to command the quivering presence and driving force of his tone, which might remind some of Dave Rempis. Each of the album’s seven tracks makes an assertive statement, but not always a big, loud one; windy textures can be as compelling as rippling notes.

Bill Meyer

James Howard — Peek-a-Boo (Faith and Industry)

Peek-a-Boo by James Howard

James Howard’s debut is all stardust and stopped time. For some reason, I’m reminded of that scene in Buffalo ‘66 where Ben Gazzara, in surreal Sinatra-in-a-tee-shirt mode, croons his father-in-law-y feelings to an entranced, doe-eyed Christina Ricci. Except that Howard’s voice is closer to the dreamy, chill side of Roger Waters (see “St. Tropez'' and “Wots… The Deal”). And his songs are about things like meeting up with your drug dealer on the scenic outskirts of town and raising your children to fear nuclear annihilation. The high point of Peek-a-Boo might be “The Reckoning,” where Howard’s fingers tiptoe up the fretboard like a kid on Christmas Eve on his way to peek at his presents, and cymbals splash like someone on tranquilizers falling into a pool. But really the whole record is a gem and feels like one big, wonderful, floaty, pill-powered dream.

Chris Liberato

Chuck Johnson — Music from Burden of Proof (All Saints)

Music From Burden Of Proof by Chuck Johnson

Chuck Johnson has long been a master of eerie pedal steel atmospherics, building shadowy cloudscapes out of shifting, resonating guitar tone. Here he turns his grasp of sonic mystery to cinematic ends, composing music both guitar-based and not for the HBO series Burden of Proof. If you’re familiar with Johnson’s solo work, the opening “Burden of Proof” will catch you up short with its Bach organ cantata ominous-ness, its densely arranged chamber strings. It sounds not at all like the silvery dream narratives of Balsams or The Cinder Grove; it gathers up in stirring crescendos of emotional turmoil. “The Night of the Disappearance” fits more neatly with what you might have heard before from Johnson. It floats lingering traces of bending guitar sound over a slow lattice of electric keyboard. But setting aside expectations of what Chuck Johnson should or shouldn’t sound like, there is quite a lot to appreciate here: the glittering rhythms and bare-bones bass plunk of “Interrogation,” the swelling synth tones of “Ruth Ann,” the bright cerebral keyboard cadences of “The Note.” Not having seen the show, I can’t tell you how the music works (or doesn’t) to support mood or plot points, but here on the record, it’s subtle and varied, and occasionally, as on “More Surreal” has the slow moving contemplative grace that distinguishes Johnson’s best work. He’s making art and likely getting well paid. Good for him.

Jennifer Kelly

Héctor Lavoe — La Voz (Craft Latino)

After arriving in New York as a teenager, Puerto Rican singer Héctor Lavoe became a key figure in the popularization of salsa during the 1960s and 1970s. As part of the Fania label roster that included Willie Cólon, Rubén Blades and Celia Cruz, Lavoe released nine albums beginning with his 1975 debut, the aptly named La Voz. Produced and arranged by Cólon, the album foregoes much of the instrumental pyrotechnics of his contemporaries’ records to focus on Lavoe’s voice and improvisational talents. Opener “El Todopoderosa” (The Almighty) features frenetic percussion, piano vamps and blasts of brass which, good as they are, have no chance distracting from Lavoe’s caramel smooth tone and timbre. The clarity of his voice carries the emotional weight of “Un Amor de la Calle” even as the horns weep behind him. On the joyful, faster numbers his call and response with backing vocalists Cólon, Blades and Willie Garcia drive the songs forward but there’s plenty in the background to grab the ears. Witness the off-kilter piano and trumpet solo in “Rompe Saragüey” or the percussion and horn breakdown in “Mi Gente.” Whether you’re a salsa fan or not, this is an opportunity to hear one of the great vocalists in his prime with a killer band and irresistible songs. What’s not to love.

Andrew Forell

Natalie Rose LeBrecht — Holy Prana Open Game (American Dreams)

Holy Prana Open Game by Natalie Rose LeBrecht

It would not be accurate to describe Natalie Rose LeBrecht’s new record as a mix between La Monte Young/Marian Zazeela’s (who she’s studied with and assisted) cosmic minimalism and the Dirty Three’s more spacey, searching efforts (that trio’s Mick Turner and Jim White both play on Holy Prana Open Game), but even in its inadequacy the comparison points towards the kind of rarified air the record is floating amidst. It’s kind of wild to remember that “Amok” here is a radically transformed (one might even say, ahem, improved) cover of the Atoms For Peace song, it’s so of a piece with the other five pieces that make up the album. Whether it’s the more open excursions of “Open” and “Prana” or the gentle lilt of the opening “Home,” this suite soars into inner space immediately and rests there contentedly.

Ian Mathers

Gabe ‘Nandez — “Louis XIV” (POW Recordings)

Anyone paying attention to Jeff Weiss’ POW Recordings has been able to surmise how enthusiastic the label head has been about the hushed husk of New Yorker Gabe ‘Nandez, and Gabe’s returned the favor in kind with polyglot explorations of the inter- and intrapersonal alike, most recently on April’s Pangea, plus a feature alongside fellow East Coast tome spitter Billy Woods on last year’s Aethiopes. The one-off “Louis XIV” finds Gabe talking kingly killings and heartbreak over a sublimely paired beat from Tel Aviv producer Argov (he of “Venus in Mercury” that preceded this) and kitted in a Burberry coat amid London’s Abney Park cemetery. A low-slung, high-intensity performance, “Louis XIV” is self-evident, a perfect portrait of what makes ‘Nandez so lethal (and appealing) as a rapper. Anyone with an affinity for bars ought to appreciate it.

Patrick Masterson

Jim O’Rourke — Hands That Bind OST (Drag City)

Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Jim O'Rourke

Any word of a new Jim O’Rourke release is justifiably greeted with excitement, especially when that release is via Drag City. However, Hands That Bind isn’t a continuation of the glorious singer-songwriter fare O’Rourke has perfected on albums such as Eureka, Insignificance and Simple Songs, but rather the soundtrack to a new film by director Kyle Armstrong. The instrumental atmosphere is aligned with many of O’Rourke’s Steamroom explorations, which he’s made available in a steady stream via Bandcamp: slow, sparse, mostly abstract synthesizer soundscapes. The difference here, given O’Rourke is responding to a visual medium, is deeper grounding in the creation of an immediate evocative mood. Shimmering synth textures evoke the chittering of crickets and wide-open expanses of countryside, punctuated by percussion and the reassuring thrum of upright bass. Then, suddenly, a detuned piano or dulcimer will cut through the mix, raising an eyebrow of concern, as if uncertainty is looming on the horizon. The drama of this simple juxtaposition creates an addictive tension that sustains this elegant suite’s runtime.

Tim Clarke

Rat Heart — “Flashing Lights Freestyle” (Shotta Tapes)

Rat Heart - Flashing Lights Freestyle by Shotta Tapes

One of Kanye’s most indelible beats is herewith given a kind of Jai Paul-like treatment via Mancunian Tom Boogizm, who runs the Shotta Tapes label that’s known best for the free-for-all experiments of his increasingly visible Rat Heart alias. We’re a far cry from Northern Luv Songs 4 Wen Ur Life's a Mess, obviously, which threw all manner of spaced-out, instrumental guitar hypnotics at the wall only to see it all stick in a manner most Dusted faithful would find familiar — but this isn’t a total left turn for Tom given we’ve also seen stuff like the Actress-esque 'A Blues' come out in the last year. If you don’t know where to start with him, this serves as a good point of entry for his more beat-driven material, the vocals submerged just that little bit too much beneath the fluorescent, once-ubiquitous backing beat of the Graduation staple. Nobody’s asking for a return to 2007 (that I know of, anyway), but it’s enough for a moment to remember the music once outshone the hubris of its creator. Some of us might call that moment simpler.

Patrick Masterson

La Sécurité — Stay Safe! (Mothland)

Montreal quintet La Sécurité combine insouciant new wave and funk driven post punk on their debut album Stay Safe! It’s a lane that’s been driven before by bands like Romeo Void and Au Pairs, but they bring an infectious energy to bear. Singing in French and English, lead vocalist Éliane Viens-Synnott moves from the ironic detachment of Debora Lyall to indignant recrimination, shaping her voice to inhabit each song.  Atop Kenneth Smith’s propulsive drums and Félix Bélisle’s elastic bass lines, guitarists Melissa Di Menna and Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné add chunky chords and sibilant solos. Although you can spend time picking the influences, the songs are uniformly good. The dispassionate sprechgesang of “Le Kick” with its motorik drums and Au Pairs guitar licks, the mocking tone of the Devo like “Waiting For Kenny,” the groove of “Serpent” which sounds like an amalgam of “Snakes Crawl” and “Too Many Creeps.” The rhythms are tight, the guitars slash and chime in equal measure, the quintet all contribute synths, percussion and backing vocals to their stories of toxic men, relationship ups and downs and daily grind of existence.

Andrew Forell

Jumping Back Slash, Būjin — “Order of Change” (Future Bounce Ltd.)

Would you believe this started as a piano-based folk ballad? Maybe not if you only heard the first half of the first single from a promised forthcoming album due in November. But what originated as a song with a “folklike Kate Bush flavor to it” morphed into a Janus-faced split of a dancefloor-filling first half that runs Brit-turned-South African Jumping Back Slash’s bass-heavy club deconstruction right through Cape Town native Būjin’s delicate but firm vocal before turning into a lush, orchestral outro much closer in spirit to the original idea. The balance works both ways for Būjin, who tightropes across the transition clear to the other side. What else this LP has in store remains to be seen, but it’s a promising first dispatch for those who err on the side of futuristic pop sounds.

Patrick Masterson

Whose Rules — Hasler (777 Rules)

Hasler by Whose Rules

If you’ve got any sort of weakness for airy, breathless, pristine indie pop, may I suggest Whose Rules, the solo endeavor from a busy Norwegian producer named Marius Elfstedt. This first album, Hasler, touches ever so lightly on sonic territories staked out by Elliott Smith: a wistful tenor warble wrapped around softly inevitable tunes. You might even catch a whiff of the Sea and Cake’s breezy artfulness. Yet while the songs aren’t weighted down, they’re not exactly scrubbed bare either. Elfstedt’s producer background shows through in shifting, transparencies of overlaid sound: guitars, synths, percussion frame delicate melodies but don’t overwhelm them. The music wafts by in a flavored cloud, but there’s a good deal of nourishment in its ethereal mix. I like “Stone” with its scrabbly guitars, its rainy/sunny moods, its sudden swells of synth that could easily be horn lines. There’s a bigger, brassier song in here somewhere, but for now it’s hiding shyly, reticently in a private corner of Elfstedt’s imagination.

Jennifer Kelly

[purposefully-lost]

Alex knocked but didn't wait for an answer before he was pushing open the door. He'd spent far too much time in hospitals to want this to be anything other than brief. He found the man inside either having just sat down or in the process of getting up, settled on the side of the bed with his hands braced on either side of him. He almost seemed to relax at the sound of someone else slipping into the room, then stiffened again when he glanced up and saw who it was. Surprise, confusion, and something almost like fear all ran across Andy's face, pervaded by a deep sort of exhaustion.

"..Prescott," he said. His voice was sort of soft, more tired than anything. Alex raised his eyebrows in response.

"Campbell."

"What are you doing here?"

The honest answer was: he didn't know. Alex gave him half of a shrug, letting the door shut behind him as he wandered a little closer. The time since the trial, which had been when they'd last spoken, really, hadn't been kind to him. He'd heard through Rabbit or the grapevine one about his injury, about being outed, and now about the overdose. It was a lot to endure a short frame of time, but that was something he and Rabbit were all too familiar with. Maybe that's what it was. Maybe he and Andy were finally something like on the same page.

..No, it wasn't that. But the pages were ever so slightly more adjacent now. "Just checking in," Alex finally said. He pushed his hands into his pockets, standing just a few feet away to watch Andy. "How are you feeling?"

A long beat. Then Andy shrugged. "About the same," he said honestly. Alex decided that he wasn't quite sure he wanted to figure out that meant. Instead he nodded, searching the other man's gaze. He knew Rabbit had already been by, offering time and companionship Alex wouldn't have dared to. That was the thing about Rabbit, though. He was a good man. "What do you want?" Andy asked finally.

"I was trying to figure out if I should apologize," Alex answered, a frown drawing at the corners of his lips. "Y'know, for, uh, some of the shit I've said to you."

Andy put on a bitter smile, so far and away from the kind of grins he'd worn on the front page of the papers or in his baseball interviews that he seemed like an entirely different person. "Like wishing I was dead?"

"That's one of the big ones, yeah."

"Have you made a decision?"

Alex kicked a little at the tile floor. "No, not really." The problem was that he didn't really regret it. He'd meant it, all of it, when he'd said it, and it'd convinced Andy to give a shit about Rabbit again, even if it'd been kind of cruel. He'd wanted the world at large to just leave Rabbit alone, let him recover and live his life, and Andy had been a prime target to represent all the people Alex had hated. Being the last of his little group of friends, he still kind of was. "I still kind of hate you, honestly. But--"

Glancing up, he could tell that Andy had been about to speak. He paused when Alex did, looking for all the world like he was waiting for a blow to fall. Like a scared shelter dog hiding in the corner of it's kennel. Alex sighed. "I really don't think you're the worst person in the world."

"Thanks," Andy said dryly. His fingers sort of drummed against the bed. "I'll keep that in mind."

"I mean it." Holding his gaze, Alex shrugged again. "Listen, man, it- its not that complicated. I hate you, but you're still.. I- I don't know, allowed to exist. No use in hating you if you're dead."

That drew an almost-laugh from the man that made Alex wonder if maybe that had been his goal. He still wasn't sure. "You want me alive to hate me. Gotta say, Prescott, not really a compelling reason."

"Still a reason," Alex offered. Andy let out a quiet, defeated huff.

"Still a reason," he agreed.

[anosci]

(181-196 albums etc that I’ve listened to this year, copied from twitter) (now with art. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14])

names and thoughts below cut

181/ (all mono211/monotonik releases, 1999) saddened that "End of an Era LP" (source of the album art im using) is primarily colored by dnb, even if its high quality. otherwise, a million singles. standouts mostly mp3: "gobblad" feeling that turn of the century chill style "702" fascinatingly rephlex "benedict" ok some dnb is fun actually "Shadowfighter" what rebelious energy! standout!!

---

182/ (all Tokyo Dawn Records releases, 2000) mixed bag etc etc. best at hip hop. "killer of the zodiac" dnb yes, but. this guy is weaponizing his mp3 encoder. love it "reckoning" brandishing lofi "limits" as central assets? ace. "surnaturel forme" ace trip hop turntable timbre

---

183/ VA - supermariountwirled ep (2000) get dunked on ocr emix we're sampling the chiptunes for our technos in the y of 2k!!! …oh. it's not great :( yeah sadly this is filled with poor execution, even when the ideas are fun. only "flying mario (xllv remix)" is worth keeping imo

---

184/ (all mono211 non-albums, 2000) mono y2k KICKING ASS. herein lies the good stuff! ex: "we're like air.." EXACTLY the made at home optimistic post-y2k electronica i adore holy shit "Timecrunch EP" gorgeous!! cant get over how good this is!!!!!!!! "woozy dog" homemade y2k! homemade y2k! homemade y2k!

---

185/ (all mute releases i found on an ftp, mostly y2k) a very bedroom idm romp. sadly i didnt particularly vibe with this selection. it feels very focused, but on smth not quite for me. favs? hmm. proswell had a nice little EP. the unsearchable "insta" by sin is a standout too

---

186/ subi - The Rave-O-Lution Has Been Terrorised (2000) it's a throwback to the sounds of 10 years ago… from 23 years ago. kinda mixed bag of "resonating with me" but still pretty fun. prodigal rave stuff. favs? "var 4rom earf" ez

---

187/ binary - binatone (2000) a little meandery. a little idk. not particularly "bright" but it feels right somehow. lazy afternoon vibes i guess? standout: "ivor commodore part 3" i think. also enjoying "formel 2" and "ballad of pam and tommy part 5" for quite different reasons

---

188/ Andy Stott - Faith In Strangers (2014) slowly unfolds into heavy soundscapes. less "fog" or "smoke" and more like humid air that's too hot to breathe. and then sometimes its just slappy beats. highlights? "Violence" perhaps. "How It Was" is also massive

---

189/ Kink - For The People (2023) 3 nonstop slappers but i PARTICULARLY vibe with "Kazan". sadly, 1 slap stopper at the end (i do not vibe with that vocal sample in "Vacation")

---

190/ L.A.M. - Balance of Terror (1992) I heard "Nuclear Facelift" was a common track in early AFX sets and yeah i hear why. i love the synthwork overall, really fun stuff, and its ontop of a very early sounding drum soundscape. really cool era encapsulation going on.

---

191/ Cylob - Lobster Tunes (1999) I guess i missed this rephlex release somehow? nonstop DELIGHTFUL sound design grooving in 99 "Wanking Off On Other People's Misery" srsly the groove! "Smash Up The Pram" !!! that weird meter in "Stomping FM"!!!!!

---

192/ KNOWER - KNOWER FOREVER (2023) listening to this like "its ok" then the piano kicks in and im rockin "Real Nice Moment" real into it. "Nightmare" grooooove "It Will Get Real" finally showing its real in the second half. not my fav knower romp but overall ok.

---

193/ Mr. Carmack - Drugs (2014) me saying "kinda bangs actually" repeatedly. it kinda feels like a collection of sketches, which is how it's presented tbf. standouts "insanity and this music industry" holy shit "Dark Hadou (Remix)" retrofuturebanger "lonelyfuckingsamurai"!!!!

---

194/ (Tokyo Dawn Records & Sparks, 2001) plesantly suprised at the shift from dnb to chill br8ks. very ninjatune esque. a few highlights: "buenas" the exact oldschool timbre i crave "night light" oh hell yeah!!! tight! also, much love for michael victory's deep style

---

195a/ VA - FF8: SeeDs of Pandora (disc 1) (2023) a very pretty, artisanal opening. feels like stunningly beautiful arrangements of music that im not too familiar with, except for "Longing for the Horizon" which is a standout to me. oh, and "The Jellyfish" for similar reasons.

195b/ VA - FF8: SeeDs of Pandora (disc 2) (2023) two of five. driving up that nrg. im surprised at the super good psytrance chops here! "Downtown Run" is super good i was suspicious of the vocals in "Filthy Lies / Wasted Virtue" but they work so so nicely!

195c/ VA - FF8: SeeDs of Pandora (disc 3) (2023) three of five. imediately opening with the WILD vibes of "Even Ill Omens Need a Break" "Swagger de Chocobo"!!! koan influence!! making making me love chocobo again! "Willing Sacrifice" rly fun spooky turned beat beats. MkVaff! "A Scar to Match" this brings an absurd energy that i cant help but appreciate "OH!! DEKA-DE-JAZZ-DE-CHOCOBO ~ Dirty Contacts Mix" yooooooooo this is a fun experimental piece that's also just. fun! "Into the Singularity" oh hell that's MASSIVE "A Wounded Spy" everything falls into place. i rly didnt expect to like this but yet. i do

195d/ VA - FF8: SeeDs of Pandora (disc 4) (2023) four of five. insanely massive opening with "Voces Maledictionis et Spei: Children Fated to Lead" very very happy to see the "massive collab to cover a FF boss theme" resulting in ABSURDLY BANGER tunes trend continue. "Heavy Residents" laughing that ppl are citing random songs that i specifically adore and saying "im referencing that" and then they all rock. "SeeDs of Pandora" title track? it packs the heat.

195e/ VA - FF8: SeeDs of Pandora (disc 5) (2023) five of five. not at all what I expected, in that I thought it was going to be literally goofy throwaway nonsense and it's far from that lol "Song of the Desperado" is a TREAT. "As One Closes, Another Opens" chipper thing that ends up as somehow nostalgic "The Definition of Insanity" is 100% THE standout tho! absolutely wild fun!

195/ VA - FF8: SeeDs of Pandora (2023) i ended up dividing my thoughts into one tweet per disc (see above) but overall: i have no attachement to this game. that doesn't stop me from being in awe at the BANGERS here. FF collabs seem to bring out the beast in ppl. also: the shocking quantity of beautiful live stuff!!

---

next page

[daggerzine]

Wishy- Triple Seven (WINSPEAR)

Welcome to the debut album of Wishy. Hot off the heels of two great EPs, high school friends Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites are the main songwriters out of Bloomington, Indiana. Been a fan of Kevin’s over the years, but Nina adds a nice touch of dream pop-inspired tunes. Dimitri Morris on guitar and vocals, Mitch Collins on bass, and Conner Host on drums fill in the rest of the band. The album was produced by Ben Lumsdaine (another Bloomington alum) and Kevin Krauter; mixed by Ben Lumsdaine; and mastered by Greg Orbis at another Midwest studio, Chicago Mastering. “Sick Sweet” kicks things off with a blast of guitars and synths. Kevin takes on the lead vocals here. Check out the video:

Nina takes over on the title track, “Triple Seven,” a swirl of sound that you just don’t want to end. Beautiful angelic backup vocals fade into this dream pop gem. Watch here:   

”Persuasion” is another slam of bombarding guitars. Beautiful vocals interplay between the two. Imagine New York’s Ivy on speed and you’ll get the idea. Next up, “Game,” is another distorted guitar blast with cool harmonic interplay between the two singers. “Love On The Outside” features Kevin singing again over a warped acoustic guitar sound until the rest of the band kicks in. Here’s the video:

“Little While” begins as a twittering orchestra and then settles into a dream pop beauty with Nina’s chilling vocals. Up next, “Busted,” is a straight-up indie rocker from Kevin with a mash-up of guitars. “Just Like Sunday” slows things down a bit, but with nice beats and jangle guitar. Catch the video:  

“Honey” brings things back up to speed with Kevin singing and power chords galore. The album ends with “Spit,” another song filled with harmonic bliss between the two, only this time it’s a sludge-filled blast of guitars and a pounding rhythm section. (And watch out for the guitar solos near the end.) Recorded the same time as the Paradise EP, (apparently, there are still a few more songs available), there’s no stopping Kevin and Nina’s Wishy. They’ve been popping up on many “bands to watch” lists and you need to join the hype. Very disappointed I missed them at the Logan Square Arts Festival in July. Luckily, there are some upcoming shows I hope to catch. Care to join me?   ERIC EGGLESON

TOUR DATES:

Sep 5 Thu Hopscotch Music Festival 2024 @ 12:00am

Raleigh, NC, United States

Sep 28 Sat Thalia Hall @ 8:00pm

w/American Football

Chicago, IL, United States

(Off to Europe)

Nov 18 Mon Club Cafe @ 8:00pm

Pittsburgh, PA, United States

Nov 20 Wed Baby's All Right @ 8:00pm

Brooklyn, NY, United States

Nov 21 Thu PhilaMOCA @ 8:00pm

Philadelphia, PA, United States

Nov 22 Fri Songbyrd Music House @ 8:00pm

Washington, DC, United States

Nov 23 Sat Purgatory at The Masquerade @ 8:00pm

Atlanta, GA, United States

Nov 25 Mon DRKMTTR @ 8:00pm

Nashville, TN, United States

Nov 26 Tue Hi-Fi @ 8:00pm

Indianapolis, IN, United States

Dec 5 Thu Schuba’s Tavern @ 8:00pm

Chicago, IL, United States

Dec 6 Fri X-Ray Arcade @ 8:00pm

West Milwaukee, WI, United States

Dec 10 Tue Barboza @ 8:00pm

Seattle, WA, United States

Dec 11 Wed Polaris Hall @ 8:00pm

Portland, OR, United States

Dec 13 Fri Bottom Of the Hill @ 8:00pm

San Francisco, CA, United States

Dec 14 Sat The Echo @ 8:00pm

Los Angeles, CA, United States

Dec 15 Sun Valley Bar @ 8:00pm

Phoenix, AZ, United States

Dec 17 Tue Mohawk (Indoors) @ 8:00pm

Austin, TX, United States

Dec 18 Wed Andy's Bar & Grill @ 8:00pm

Denton, TX, United States

(Photo: Alexa Viscius)

https://winspear.biz/

[whatsonmedia]

Thursday Thrill: Weekend of Music, Entertainment, Impact!

This weekend offers an enticing fusion of music, entertainment, and global impact, catering to a diverse range of interests. From nostalgic dance anthems to thought-provoking climate discussions, embark on a journey of immersive experiences and let the weekend's energy captivate you. Pete Tong Presents Ibiza Classics 30 Nov Having taken Ibiza Classics on what has become a massive sell-out tour that never ends, this week one of the most famous revered DJ, broadcaster and global dance music legend Pete Tong brings his Essential Orchestra and his decks to host Ibiza classic tour at the Utilita Arena Birmingham. It will be a night where the lovers of dance music can get to have their best night reliving the classics from the dance transformed in to something that’s so exceptional.  Playing the finest dance floor fillers from the decades featuring the Essential Orchestra plus guest vocalists MNEK, John Martin, Jem Cooke & Jazzy.   This is a night that won’t disappoint and should definitely be on your dance music bucket list for brighten up your weekend. Tickets & More Info www.utilitaarenabham.co.uk Hidden Festival 1 Dec Returning this weekend to the UK's winter festival season to Milton Keynes, iconic big capacity festival destination The Point.  The venue has been transformed in full festival regalia to host a top two-day indoor electronic music festival to shake off the winter blues. Kicking off at 2pm expect the temperature setting to boiling point for the ultimate dance off for the drum and bass massive. Hidden Festival promoters have nailed it from transforming unique & quirky dance music spaces into a place where its festival goers enter a world like no other bringing the venue to life.  Expect Hidden festival winter series to host a huge headline act this weekend with a magnificent DJ set from the mighty Pendulum. Supported by Friction Harriet Jaxxon, Katalyst b2b Exile & Darius Syrossian, Fleur Shore, Max Chapman, Paige Tomlinson, and a special guest performance by Shermalogy many more spread across the two-day festival. If you fancy having a two-dance music frenzy, get your skates on, the tickets are extremely limited and is sure to sell out quickly! Tickets & More Info hiddenfestival.co.uk Hedkandi Present The Winter Disco Ball 2 Dec Hedkandi, one of the most renowned house and disco music brands, is hosting its annual Winter Disco Ball at Bush Hall, West London. Prepare for an evening filled with classic house anthems, stunning production, and the finest company of fellow disco enthusiasts. Dress to impress in your best Snow White and Silver Frost attire, adhering to the exclusive dress code synonymous with Hedkandi nights. Elevate your experience with a VIP ticket, granting access to exclusive Hedkandi goodies. Warm up with mulled wine and winter anthems on the terrace before immersing yourself in the main room's pulsating beats. This is a night to celebrate the timeless allure of disco and let the music transport you to a realm of pure dancefloor bliss. Dance to the rhythm of Hedkandi's elite DJs, including Mark Doyle, Mike Van Loon, Andy Norman, John Jones, Marc Rowell, Mark Ireland, Lil' Joey, CJ Cooper, Muzz Khan, and Mark Damon. Experience captivating live PAs from Suki Soul and Erire, and immerse yourself in the energy of Lippy and Miles Havana on percussion, Vicky and Abi Rose on sax, Phoenix Rose, and the mesmerizing Hedkandi Dancers. This electrifying party awaits you at an exceptional venue equipped with the finest L Acoustics sound system, promising an unforgettable Hedkandi experience. Tickets are limited, so secure yours promptly to witness one of the hottest clubbing events of the weekend. Tickets & More Info www.hedkandi.com COP 28 30 Nov – 12 Dec The annual conference addressing Climate Change begins today.  This year it’s the 28th meeting of COP (Conference of the Parties).  Ironically the event is being hosted in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, which is one of the major oil producers on the globe, although the country has begun to diversify the treaty came into force in 1994, holding annual events across the world.  World governments meet to discuss and initiate the major issue around climate change and its impact on the planet to ensure a global transformation climate action finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally for an objective outcome. More Infowww.cop28.com Read the full article

[newmusicweekly]

Alpine Universe Release New EP Akoustik Vol. II

Alpine Universe, distinguished composer Andy Favre – the multi-instrumentalist behind the electronic-orchestral project – has released his six-track EP, Akoustik Vol. II. Renowned for his prowess in blending heavy atmospheric music with a seamless fusion of orchestral and organic elements, on the new collection of songs, Alpine Universe uses echoing beats to evoke imagery of warrior drums resonating across distant Nordic landscapes, perfectly harmonizing with an ethereal blend of electronic and raw syncopated beats. The songs capture the essence of emotional confinement, the relentless pursuit of freedom, and the powerful battle cries of the ancient Viking tapestry of sounds.  Akoustik Vol II. is a unique, rhythmic experience designed to take listeners on a vivid journey. Alpine Universe’s Andy Favre says, “This EP is the second opus of my Akoustik series. The original songs feature extensive production and orchestration but this EP is a way for me to revisit the compositions by rearranging them into their most basic form: simply vocals and sometimes a kick drum or an acoustic guitar. The goal is to keep it raw and personal.” As the solo vocalist on the track Favre states, “The challenge is to keep the cinematic feel of the original, despite being performed by only one person. I want to take the listener on a journey to an "ancient-future". Read the full article

[greensparty]

Concert Review: Andy Summers

Fri. July 22, 2023 @ The Cabot (Beverly, MA)

marquee at The Cabot

Bursting out of the London rock scene in the late 70s, The Police set the world on fire. They were truly bigger than the sum of their parts. While it’s true that Sting was the main songwriter, singer and bassist, the entire trio were top-of-their-game musicians: drummer Stewart Copeland was incredible (just try to not air-drum to��“Next to You”) and their guitarist Andy Summers was a secret weapon in the band. For a group that incorporated various genres including punk, reggae, pop, new wave, jazz, and rock it takes a certain level of musicianship to rise to that sound and Summers certainly did. The band only put out 5 albums in less than 10 years before calling it quits. I’m kind of kicking myself for not seeing their 2007 reunion tour. But since The Police’s heyday, Summers has been keeping busy: composing film scores, being the bandleader for the short-lived The Dennis Miller Show in 1992, numerous solo albums and photography. Currently on a solo tour, I caught Mr. Summers doing the first night of his current tour in the North Shore.

Mr. Summers playing with his multimedia photography projected behind him

Summers came out, just him no backing band or anything, and put on a guitar. His tech played some backing tracks of keyboards to back him up, while there was multimedia projections of Summers’ photography. It was just him playing and telling a few anecdotes in between the songs. There were some instrumental original tracks, but the highlights for me were when he did some Police songs, i.e. “Message in a Bottle”, “Roxanne”, “Tea in the Sahara”, “Spirits in the Material World” and “Bring on the Night”. Now it needs to be said that he addressed the giant elephant in the room, which is how does he perform these Police songs without Sting singing? Does he form a band and a guest singer sings? Does Summers himself sing? The answer is neither - but the best way possible for him to go: he had the lyrics appearing on the screen with his multimedia while he played guitar. But even if it wasn’t seeing The Police on a stadium tour during the Synchronicity Tour, it was quite a sight to behold of this guitar legend flexing his incredible technique. For a musician who is now 80, he didn’t miss a beat! 

For info on Andy Summers: https://andysummers.com/

[meat-wentz]

the only motherfucker in control of the beat of my heart is andy hurley

[ratt-fried-this-pasta]

I AM LOSING MY MIND OVER A SONIC ROCK BAND AU SO IMMA MAKE A BUNCH OF HEADCANONS BECAUSE I CANNOT CONTAIN THIS

this is what happens when you mix an emo punk rock fan with the sonic universe-

Sonic - Lead singer / guitar (kinda like Billie Joe Armstrong or Dexter Holland) Shadow - guitar / backing vocals (Frank Iero. NEED I SAY MORE) Tails - keyboardist / synth / DJ (it's giving Cumulus from Ghost or Sid from Slipknot) Silver - bass guitar (maybe even like the Geddy Lee pedal set up too) Knuckles - drummer (with the Neil Peart drum set up and CC from BVB vibes)

Sonic: pop punk vibe!!

probably shreads too fast on the guitar and loses his guitar picks every goddamn minute so he has his entire mic stand covered with those guitar pick holders

does the thing that Freddy Mercury does where he picks up the mic stand and walks around while singing

definitely crowd surfs and tells the mosh pit to go wild

*kicks over amp* AAAAAAAA

has random stickers over EVERYTHING, guitar case, guitar, you name it

reads all of the signs in the audience and sometimes replies to them

stops the show in the middle and starts ranting about literally whatever

*trips over every wire possible* IM OKAY!!

comes up with lyrics with Shadow. sonic's better at delivering than composing

mini list of songs he would FUCK UP /pos

Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) by The Offspring

The Zoo by Scorpions (him and Shadow are probably obsessed with the Scorpions bc theyre a good band with rock ballads)

Fist Bump from Sonic Forces (i hc that he sings this as a duet with Shadow. i feel like their voices would go well together)

MeMe from Miligram (i also hc that Sonic knows Japanese if it isnt canon)

In Too Deep by Sum 41

Shadow: classic rock, hard rock, rock ballads, heavy metal and EMO

he either stays in one place the whole show or runs around

Frank Iero chaotic energy i wanna see him go wild

contrasting to his introverted personality, on stage since the audience is all dark and he cant see the MASSIVE crowd the band has, he feels like he can let loose and stuff

he probably has had his fingers start bleeding during a live but didnt notice until Silver started freaking out

has probably broke down and cried on stage once but everyone comforted him and he finished the show EPICALLY

always makes sure that the crowd is staying safe. probably did that one thing that Andy Biersack did when he jumped into the crowd to personally fight this one guy

oh yeah he will also get pissed if you diss the band at their show or if you're just being an asshole and will deal with you personally

will beat you up if you assault someone in the pit

WALL OF DEATH WALL OF DEATH WALL OF DEATH

definitely a perfectionist and probably studied classical music theory. definitely a JS Bach fan and played the piano once

comes up with lyrics and melody line

mini list of songs he would do amazing on:

Mobius by HiiragiKirai cover by Meychan

The Show Must Go On by Queen (HES SUCH A QUEEN FAN ISTG)

Dragula by Rob Zombie

Infected by Bad Religion

Gone Away by The Offspring (he's def thinking abt Maria for this one) gone away lyrics yeah ouch-

Tails: also classic rock fan but he also likes vocaloid!!

"accidentally" G notes the crowd (emos)

*plays a rick roll sample randomly*

during the parts where he doesn't have anything to do he just starts flying and tossing signed photo cards or some kind of merch into the crowd

probably manages some part of their social media as well

literally live tweeting the performance

is the supplier of Sonic's extra guitar pics and sometimes makes custom ones for him that are a bit more grippy? (idk how guitar pics work im a violinist)

honestly the most wholesome person there, everyone loves him, he goes apeshit sometimes but we love him

multi-instrumentalist and sometimes even makes his own instruments!

he plays the Theramin and nobody knows what it is but it sounds cool

makes up tracks on the spot during solos sometimes

CHORDS GO BRR

is the one that does the mixing and stuff for their songs

personal favs he would love:

Jump by Van Halen (everyone likes this song, if you dont then ur wrong /lh)

Kingslayer by BMTH & BABYMETAL

Lost Valley from Sonic Forces (I LOVE THIS SONG SM)

Silver: goth, heavy metal, Ghost specifically

owns a Mikey Fucking Way t-shirt

probably can play the upright bass or cello as well

people from the audience give him gifts and it makes him very happy

also has a lot of stickers on his bass and it's case but the stickers are color coded and organized vs sonics random bullshit GO

i like to think that he wears fingerless gloves

is the one that stops Shadow from jumping into the crowd when someone disses the band

always makes sure that everyone in the band has like a solo area where they can just go wild because he thinks it's more fun that way

probably can do improv on the spot

gets excited when they have an acoustic live show

helps come up with album cover ideas and all of the depth in their album / song lore

Last Train To London by ELO (hes probably a big ELO fan)

Detroit Rock City by KISS (this is my dad's fav so it's mine too)

The Legacy by Black Veil Brides

Knuckles: thrash metal Slayer fan TM

can do the thing where the drumset go upside down

similar to Sonic, he throws his drumsticks bc he loves playing so much so he has a bunch of extra sticks

ties back his hair during recording bc it gets in his face

HEADBANGING WOOOOO

has A BUNCH of song cover suggestions for the band

probably plays the drums randomly while sonic is ranting and sometimes does a duet with tails

sings along to the songs but nobody can hear him bc his drums are too damn loud

accidentally stabbed his snare drum once and started panicking

he definitely gives a name to all of his different drum parts (his favorite is the crash symbol and bass drum)

everyone thinks he was a former band kid but he keeps denying it

sometimes people think the band is using a drum machine but they're not

SONG HCS

Raining Blood by Slayer

1000 Memories by Bad Religion

Eyeless by Slipknot (RIP JOEY JORDINSON I WILL CRY)

You Give Love A Bad Name by Bon Jovi

ok and now for some random headcanons!!

Rouge is the agent or like manager for the group and helps pick out outfits for them and does stage design

ik i put in a lot of classic rock songs in my song headcanons but i feel like the band would be like a Smashing Pumpkins, early BVB, The Offspring and Sum 41 kinda vibe. and ofc MCR and Blink-182

everyone is a fan favorite, but they all dont know how to interact with fans except for Tails and Sonic

Silver and Tails sitting alone in the recording studio in the middle of the night writing a song aaaaa

sonic and shadow doing those song battles

they all play guitar hero, it's the law

they actually freaked out when MCR dropped the new single out of NOWHERE

sometimes their punk songs is just dissing G.U.N.

they have a fanart / fangift wall where they put all of the stuff their fans give them

the tour bus is like sectioned off and everyone decorates their space differently so it looks like 5 different aesthetics in one place

IM SORRY THIS IS SO LONG BUT IM SO PASSIONATE ABOUT THIS I DISREGARDED ALL OF MY HOMEWORK TO WRITE THIS OKAY BYE

[concertcrack]

GUEST POST: A Typical Memorable Gig by Stormin Norman

Stormin Norman and Suzy Band were booked at Andy's by the Sea, Horseneck Beach just down the road from Fall River, MA It was a glorious dump, the kind of place they were right at home in; moldy, beer-soaked wood, beer ads from 25 years back, a pitted dance floor; neon lights over the bar that zipped on and off. But this like every night was major combat; to win the audience over and make them love the band. There was always that chronic reshuffling of the set list to insure that the flow would work - Norm gets up to the piano, pipe clenched in teeth, and bangs and bangs, head shaking crazily while Tommy bangs and bangs on drums and Bobo slides wildly up and down his fretless bass and Dave shrieks and squeaks through his alto saxophone. And then - the grand diva takes the stage!! Before the gig Norman walked out along the jetty to a rough, churning sea. As he often did these days, he meditated on his simple goal; get to New York City, make a big stir, get a record deal. Something about the beauty and wonder of the scene made him compose a song in his head, “Queen of the Rosebuds.” There was an early moon rising and a bracing cool breeze over Buzzard's Bay. The club was already filling up with scruffy but lovable characters when he returned. As usual the dressing room was a littered storage space behind the bar, and Suzy was perched on a pile of six-pack cases, busy pinching her cheeks then smearing lipstick on them to insure that ripe apple northern California farm girl look, fluffing her scarlet boa, and fussing with the set list. A fight was sure to ensue, as Norman always sought to pack the set with blues covers and their own selection of home made rockers; Suzy always insisted, to the contrary, that Norman show his "artistic" side. Artistic? To this bunch of already sloshed bikers? It was always best to do exactly what Suzy ordered. But once on the bandstand Norman would respond to the shifting vibes of the crowd, and change stuff around - instead of “Green,"with its dreamy arpeggios, "Every Day I Have the Blues" in its place. The honest fact was that they were succeeding in holding their mangy barroom circuit by treading a well-worn path of blues covers; “Every Day I Have the Blues, “ “ Hey Bartender,” “Sissy Strut,” plus some kicked-up Bessie Smith covers - from the start Suzy had been channeling Bessy, and could do this like nobody's business, “ Tain't Nobody's Business. “ But back to the start; that moment of expectation when Norm mounts the stage --- playing an old beaten upright that sounded like it had fallen in the bay a few times.. One never knew exactly whether the reaction would be indifferent, amicable indifferent, though hopefully not hostile. The point was to grab them…. and this Suzy never failed to do, stomping, kicking, strutting, begging, caressing, bawling with that huge voice of hers The first tunes had a number of the onlookers hopping merrily . In mid-set they would do one or two of their routines - the one about the train, where Norm intoned the names of 20 Massachusetts towns concurrently imitating the sound of a train chugging slowly into rhythm, faster and faster, until the point where the Tommy would grab the beat and the band would kick into the changes of “WrongSide Boogie.” Suzy was having a good time, ordering a steady supply of southern comfort - her recent drink. Problems set in, as they always did. She began to slur words, forget verses; and what had been carefully rehearsed monologues slid into drunken monologues; for a time amusing to the crowd, but driving Norm crazy, as cues were missed. Predictably at one point the edge of the stage was missed, and Suzy spilled overboard into a bunch of happy drunks, who good-naturedly picked her up and handed her yet another drink. And this was just the start of the first set. Back in the dressing room Suzy was livid with rage. How come he had changed the setlist without confirming it with her? She began throwing punches at him - not dainty, but real solid

haymakers at his head and shoulders. “Why did you change the set list?” Norm tried to hold his ground -- no way “Green” would have worked there, hey we killed so what the big freakin deal? This merely elicited more rage, and she began to kick as well as punch. Beer cases began tog tumble and the bartender wandered in to check on the fuss behind his bar. “Nothing going onl" Norm said- as he always said; "we're just having a discussion.” “Sounds like boxing match to me; ” mumbled Butch the bartender and returned to his station.

This was pretty much how every night was working out at this time. One good way to deal with it Norm found was to start drinking himself. At this time - 29 or so, solid physical condition, he was a pretty good drinker himself, and could down a series of Jack doubles without too much discernible damage, toddling back into the back room to check the new list that Suzy had promulgated. Each list- lovingly handed to the band members, was personalized with a sketch of her trademark cuckoo bird and a lipstick kiss.

At these times the other musicians had learned to keep their distance; musically tight from playing 6 gigs a week in 3 different states; also human-relations tight from working 6 nights with Suzy and Norman. Norm toddled to the bandstand, drink in hand, to begin his customary boogie boogie intro. He could see Suzy at the bar, cozying up to a hunk who was obligingly plying her with more southern comfort - a sneaky and insidious drink. After the huge intro of” I was born to sing,” Suzy staggered up on the stage, smashed her tin “pursolator” (coffee pot she used as a purse for shows) onto the piano, and raged into a savage medley, leaping, time and again courting disaster at the edge of the stage (a cunning drunk, she was turning this into a stunt to the great delight of the crowd). Then as he began the intro to one of their songs Suzy abruptly ordered the band to stop playing (Norman, who valued smooth segues, was always bugged when she did this) and launched into an exceptionally long drunken monologue about something or other. The monologue seemed to go on forever. He tried several times to introduce the chords to the next song in the hope of shutting her up, but no luck. She abruptly turned to the band to yell "I don't want to sing this now, do you want to play it?" The musicians were smart to the flow, and energetically agreed with her, offering several alternatives, all of which she rejected. The crowd started growing a bit restless. Norm hopefully began the chords of another up-tempo rocker, but instead she insisted on one of their most artsy and (to a drunken biker crowd) seemingly incomprehensible ballads, about the sea, sky, wild birds, full of wild starts ,stops, lyrical arpeggios and interesting changes . . .Norm went along of course. And the strange thing is that the sodden, tattooed crowd took it in and loved it, and loved her ….. "See" she yelled at Norm afterwards,, "I was right." Fortunately she was willing to end the set with a customary crowd pleaser - BlackEye at the RedEye,” that boogie song he'd composed in Portland Maine years back, basically a dialogue between a couple that urgently want to have sex, with the chromatic refrain: "telling you how I feel .. ;laying it down for real." Everything ended up excellently, on a sublime, toasted, rocking vibe; there had been passion, drama, good time beat, even art! Good feelings all around, the cash register jingling constantly behind the bar, and more losers swarming in before last call. The two stars embraced at the bar, basking in a moment of musical triumph, and had a drink.

Three months later they were in Carnegie Hall, doing a double bill with Manhattan Transfer. Four months later they signed with Polydor.

Connect with Norman online:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1cV7aWzcoeFUKKfEuAk62z?si=PPhBJ_kyRG6IiSC0fMOwzQ&nd=1

https://www.instagram.com/normanzamcheck/

https://www.facebook.com/zamcheck

[totallytrucked]

Hello everyone I am here to tell you about the Mexico production of spring awakening

Ok first of all it’s on YouTube! And it’s a proshot!here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFS4RmmGzxE

ok so they have a smaller set than a lot of sa productions but i think it's used really well. it kind of looks like the inside of a church? anyways mama who bore me is very pretty and the girl who plays wendla is melissa barrera, and she's really good. the adult women's dress in this is really good, it's very fun to look at. it's all stripey.

mama who bore me reprise is iconic incredible. the girls are wearing their victorian combination underwear things i love it. during the end part, ilse is just going off during the "mama who bore me" low parts it's amazing jdhjf hnngh.

anyways the boys are all wearing little green pants for their uniform. very cute. i love this moritz (pepe navarrete) he reminds me a lot of vienna moritz (wolfgang turks) like a very cute moritz. the lighting during all that's known? iconic. tbol slaps in this. so good. iker madrid is one of my fave hanschens and that might be due to his riff on "khakis" <3

then the adults come out and they actually hold picture frames whenever they're playing school people which i think is really cool.

the girls come out for my junk and they have such cute costumes and the my junk staging is really good and martha and anna dance together hhnnng gay rights! also martha has such a good voice in this production. ivonne garza your hand in marriage

next is touch me and it's so good in this version and it slaps. the lighting? incredible. the singing? amazing. ernst's solo? (this is a pun because they are saying 'solo' in the song) but anyways ernst's solo is amazing. (arturo valdemar iconic.) ugh it's so good. moritz sock excellence.

anyways i really love this wendla so much she's so great <3 and this melchior (mauricio romero) is also really good. but i mean it's word of your body. it sounds very pretty in spanish though.

anyways here comes moritz to tell them he passed it's very sweet they hug. when hanschen says "the middle terms" either otto or georg hits him with a book which is very funny. and the melchritz hug is so cute jdhgjhd like moritz jumps into melchior's arms like he's a koala and i do not envy melchior having to hold him the entire scene but.

the girls come on and they actually have the medicine ball and thea sits on it i love them. anyways during the dark i know well martha's mother holds a smaller picture frame when talking to her and then the other girls sleep on the medicine ball it's really cool and interesting. martha's voice is very unique in this production, it's very deep. ilse's voice is also really pretty it sounds so good.

and then there were none also slaps in this. moritz </3 :(

once again i come to appreciate the lighting its wonderful. and during the part where moritz goes "they're not my home, not anymore" and the boys start singing in the background, they move from further upstage to further downstage. and the blocking during the part where all the boys join in so good ikfghkjd and the energy? they're like jumping and headbanging hnng lighting!!

ugh it's good.

they use the swing in mirror blue night too it's really cool. and moritz wanders off the stage and it sounds so good ksdjghksj and the cello/bass really came in during this part it's good

the weird mirror blue night choreo is somewhat better because it's faster and melchior looks less confused when he's doing it. i believe also sounds really good. everything in this production sounds really good watch it!

ok act 2

the guilty ones, as customary in this production, slaps. and the choreography is really good.

moritz's hair is thankfully not bad in act 2 (phew) also he has more of metal voice (?) like there's more of a rasp on some notes, esp. the high notes in don't do sadness. it's very good. moritz sock excellence again. and he's headbanging and the energy! yes! dds is faster than it usually is but it's so good.

also ilse (roxana puente) is just so good. and i like her costume. she just sounds so sad and i want to give her a hug. :( and the flowers are really pretty.

and when the two songs overlap it's jisdhfus uhhghghhg watch it! i can't describe it ugh it's so good.

also the audience claps after every song where there's a break and they're so enthusiastic and it makes me really happy

moritz dies and it's sad. he's like crying i can't

also shoutout to whoever arranged the music it's really good there's a lot of strings going on.

left behind as well. and ilse just breaks down crying at moritz's grave and god. :'(

the high notes as well? impeccable. melchior is so good.

the adults come on with their picture frames. mauricio romero reminds me of aneurin barnard in totally fucked, he has similar energy. totally fucked is just so good in this production. the choreography, the lights, the energy, the singing, wonderful. during the second chorus they all do this choreography and it's really good. also hanschen does a riff during his solo and the energy is so good. sfkhjdfkj and stuff flashes on the walls watch it please! people are saying hey and i just dkfjghdjg and the guitar i'm going insane

anyways totally fucked ends. oh hey vineyard scene. ernst is shorter than hanschen in this production which is pretty cute and they're just relaxing on the stage it's really sweet. and the audience isn't laughing too much. which is nice. anyways iker madrid is a more andy mientus-esque hanschen and it works. and the lighting there are like little stars that spin around i just yes! they kiss and it's just very cute. this entire vineyard scene is just very sweet and cute and dkfhglkdjfg hanschen slowly leans in and like caresses ernst's face shhhhskrgjhsj gay rights dkfhdlk

the vineyard scene is very cute. then wendla is pregnant blah blah blah. whispering is super pretty in this one, and i have great respect for wendla because she's sitting down the entire song and it's very hard to sing sitting down. also there's this very pretty violin going along the melody line (or something) and it's *moritz voice* so haunting. and the acting from the adults when they discuss sending melchior to a reformatory is very sad. the boys look like newsies in the reformatory scene it's so funny. always wonderful to see melchy get his ass beat.

when wendla and frau bergmann go to see the abortionist they're wearing these sick cloaks and when wendla screams "mama" it's just heartbreaking :'(

and they pronounce ilse "il-say" which i love.

the fog machine comes out during those you've known which i feel like is a requirement for any sa production at this point. and moritz just comes onstage from the audience and he's sort of bent over it's good! also the lights look really good in this scene which is really cool. and moritz is facing away from the audience when he first comes on and wendla sings to moritz a bit and i just sdkjfghskjdfh!! the drums snap in those you've known it's good anyways

the emotion! moritz leans against melchior i'm going to cry jfkhdjfkh

ilse comes on for the song of purple summer and it's very pretty and i just emotions! hnnfgdk and the stage lights up and moritz and melchior and wendla are still holding on to each other and it's just aaaaahhhhh!!!! moritz and ilse like interact and i'm everyone is like talking to each other and it's so bitter sweet and the harmonies!!

*sobbing* and the last chorus kicks in and i. ok. that was a musical. the audience gives them a well deserved standing ovation that's iconic. everyone go watch spring awakening mexico now.

and they have a totally fucked encore during the bows i'm going crazy. i love this.

tl;dr: sa mexico uses lighting, a great set, and just impeccable performances to create a beautiful and moving experience. it may not be too polished, but you can see the heart in the production.

[rigginsstreet]

can you explain those characters because I only get yall

ok so for me we have kat stratford:

truly one of the top tier formative characters of my childhood i would not be who i am today without her. just your standard sarcastic 90s alt girl. marching to the beat of her own drum, puts on a tough exterior but she has layers baby! its all a defense mechanism she too just wants to be loved and appreciated and have a good time. but she can and will kick your ass

julia as ferris bueller... i mean i cant explain why she personally loves him so much thats her business ask her why she relates to him but as far as what his characters like he is a teenage boy who kinda just... gets away with everything because hes so beloved and its easy for him to pull one over on people but its not malicious hes just looking for a good time

alexa as elle woods.... blonde and going law school. thats it thats why i said it lmao and legally blonde is all about fighting stereotypes and its a very feminist movie depicted in a way that feminism isnt really often shown (ie with hyper femininity) and its all girl power and about how you shouldnt judge a book by its cover

kims is tricky because she had no opinions about her character its entirely me just going off vibes but samantha in sixteen candles is just trying to celebrate her birthday while her family is going crazy around her prepping for her sisters wedding and sams just chilling... shes not chilling shes being ignored and is annoyed about it but like... it be like that sometimes lmao

and then andie in pretty in pink.... i truly do not remember her specific character lmfao its just vibes man idk but like shes the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks and she starts dating the rich popular guy at school im not saying any of this relates to kim lmao but andie... julia said it was the “fuck these ugly bitches im going to that dance” vibes for her so we’ll go with that explanation 

[pulp-diction]

The thing about immortals is that their central conflict has a relatability problem. For everything from Tuck Everlasting to Interview with a Vampire to The Good Place season 4, their driving ennui—that immortality has a downside of severe emotional lethargy—is one that while we can never understand has to somehow be addressed in the narrative. 

This is the discussion that The Old Guard circles back around to over and over, with somewhat mixed results: Here is a crew of “immortals,” led by Andy (Charlize Theron), whom we’re led to believe is very, very old. She commands Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), Nicky (Luca Marinelli), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), and new-arrival Nile (Kiki Layne), as they work to secretly right the wrongs and avoid mysterious powers who target them for their power. 

Old Guard is based on a comic book of the same name, but—unlike the studio tentpoles these days—they are not weighed down by the baggage of the property. That leaves director Gina Prince-Bythwood a whole lot of leeway to create something softer, more introspective. The fight is never that far for Andy’s crew, but the movie lets the stunt work be informed by the patient character work happening in between, allowing action to feel more like it punctuates these people’s lives than the other way around. As they sit and contemplate what they’ve done and who they’ve lost, the camera sits close, lingering on the loss that spills over their face. In the end, we are just as delighted to see Andy source a baklava by taste as we are to see her wipe out nameless SWAT members sent to abduct her. 

Theron’s ability to kick ass is, by now, well-known. Old Guard has her much more in 1,000-yard-stare, Furiosa mode than zany, Longshot “having it all” frustration. It could be tedious, but she is always balanced in the story—whether by Nile’s outsider perspective, or Nicky and Joe’s florid confession of love for one another. 

The crew, like the film, functions like clockwork, always aware of where they have to be even if they can’t quite get there. Their stunt choreography is graphic and well-done (if that’s not too gauche to say in conjunction with each other): we never lose track of who is where, meaning a single falter can speak volumes about a character’s ability. There’s sharp cuts from editor Terilyn A. Shropshire, which alternates the scope between wider action and the intimate drama undergirding the whole thing. With such artful construction, there’s no bloated feeling after so many showdowns; each fight brings new stakes, and never loses steam for the story. 

What’s so valuable about the film is how it does all this with a some-what doddering emotional core of immortality. Again, it’s just a hard drum to keep beating in a meaningful way, and the audience is likely to tire of it much faster than they would of actual immortality. But Prince-Bythwood’s direction, married to Greg Rucka’s script allows for a natural rhythm to form, an inhale-exhale of mundanity of their plight mixed with a resolve to do something about it. 

There’s not much that will throw you in The Old Guard plotwise, but as art isn’t a puzzle to be solved, who cares if you can see a twist coming a mile away? The important thing is that the motivation feels always earned, that the stakes feel vital to informing the character themselves. It’s a skill that Old Guard never leaves far from its heart or its mind, and so when their credit teaser comes you’ll find yourself wishing that Netflix could just roll you right into the next one.

[1albumaday]

2020

2020

The Chats - The Clap

Easy-peasy punk rock album 

Loving - If I am only my thoughts

Charming sun-dappled folk-pop, clean, gentle melodies

Steve Spacek - Houses 

iPhone/iPad recorded, latino and jazz accented dance/house beats

Ghali - DNA 

Total Flop and failed expectations. Mishmash of bland and frivolous lyrics and arrangements.

King Krule - Man Alive!

Alienating, violent, romantic, anguishing, doomed, noir / jazz, post-punk, soul, dubstep, electronic, garage rock, hip-hop

Justin Bieber - Changes

Disappointing comeback - boring r&b with zero sex appeal and cheesy lyrics and all-the-same songs

Guided by voices - Surrender your poppy field

Unusual time signatures, song lengths, and baroque-prog structures - mature rock and sometimes pixie / 80s dreamy

Corrections - Simply Activities

80s new wave and post punk nostalgia - cheesy vocals at times - first half more solid than second

Swim Mountain- If

A lovely mix of indie and funktronica, synth pop, r&b

Caribou - Suddenly

Sly and sofishticated sound design flits between uk garage disco and more - some tracks way less strong than others

Grimes - Miss Anthropocene 

Mix “Ethereal nu metal”, ambient, dance, electronic, drum’n’bass, country - is violent and dark but sexy, delicate and dreamy

Porridge Radio - Every Bad 

A dissonant lush indie rock sometimes dreamy sometimes dark and ironic with mantra-litany dusky lyrics from peaceful to desperate

Four Tet - Sixteen oceans

Wind instruments, synths and drum patterns gradually fade to calming ambient sounds, intense and meditative but also danceable and powerful

Kamaiyah - Got it made

Short, stripped-down, bubbling keyboards and drum-machine handclaps. NO current rap trends. windows-down bass-rattle record of one person’s confidence in her own sound and charisma

Poolside - Low season

Funk percussions, retro synths, pop and disco influences + indie vocals

Morioh Sonder - Is this psychedelia?

Surf pop and psych rock, dreamy post punk influences, danceable and whimsical 

KEYAH/BLU - Sorry, I forgot you were coming 

Perfect blend of rap, rnb, experimental pop, dark rhythms textured electronics, intimate tales 

TOPS - I feel alive

Pop, radiant and 80s romantic with a contemporary experimental palette

The Chats - High risk behaviour 

Classic old-school pure punk / cheerily undemanding fun

NIN - Ghosts V: Together

Buzzy ambient, melodic hooks, emotional palette of sounds 

NIN - Ghosts VI: Locusts

Together’s opposite, anxiety-inducing, despairing horns, breathing and devouring sounds.

Roger and Brian Eno - Mixing Colours

Feels like a balm for these anxious times

Fiona Apple - Fetch the bolt cutters

Handclaps, chants, makeshift percussion, echoes, whispers, screams, breathing, jokes, dog barks, rattling blues. Contains no conventional pop forms. freeing and powerful. 

The Weeknd - After Hours

Satisfying collision of new wave, dream pop, R&B, synth-pop nostalgia

BC Camplight - Shortly After Takeoff 

Jazzy eighties rock with some icy funk and electronic pop, painfully personal and uneasy but so self-deprecating it speaks like your best friend

Rone - Room with a view 

Deft splicing of beats-based electronics and dance music with classical influences. 21st century baroque chords, snatches of conversations, speeches, children’s voices

Other Lives - For their love

Bluesy acid-rock, dreamy meditation sounds, eerie string-crescendos, music for the afterlife

Lil Uzi Vert - Eternal Atake 

Drill-influenced rapping, melodic crooning, trends-aware hip-hop beats, untouchable pop sound production

Squarepusher - Be up a hello

Frantic breakbeats littered with echoes of classic jungle, hardcore, and drum’n’bass, ’90s drill’n’bass, glitchy 8-bit chaos

The Orielles - Disco Volador

Cosmic, playful, funky dreamy indie pop, shuffling organs, woozy guitar, shimmy-shimmy hand percussion

Portico Quartet - We welcome tomorrow

Perfect dreamy sequel of ‘Memory streams’

Charlie XCX - how i’m feeling now

Quarantine creation / 2020 romance manifesto of club-pop, trap, k-pop, video game sounds, fuzzy synths and crackling bass

Holy Fuck - Deleter

Trippy, psychedelic tapestry of euphoric escapism, ‘90s dance, glitchy beats, airy vocals, experimental electronics 

Luge - Luge

Energetic and playful avant-garde and quirky math rock, zolo? 

Good With Parents, Triple Stephens - Comments & Reflection

Playful indietronica synth pop + classical instruments 

Wishing - None of this was your fault 

Lo-fi indie, ambient, slowcore w/ fragile lyrics 

Bibio - Sleep on the wing 

Indie folk treated like ambient / a gorgeous soundscape of strings, guitars and flutes, feelings of loss, hope and escape. Perfect picture of tranquil countryside memories

Piotr Kurek - A Sacrifice Shall Be Made / All The Wicked Scenes

Electroacoustic experimental, meditative-ritualistic atmospheric music / conceived for theatrical performances 

Military Genius - Deep Web

Meditative ambient, retro-futurist soundscapes / hypnagogic pop, dark, abstract and mysterious / early ‘70s folk interjecting jazz-brass sections 

Jockstrap - Wicked City

Melancholy waltz and winsome ballads, fluttering strings, soft piano glissandi mixed with gnarly and distorted hip-hop beats, buzzing guitars and synths / cherubic vocals, pcmusic-style manipulated at times

Georgia - String Token 

Experimental ambient electronic, minimal, melodic, futuristic, hypnotic and grim

EVOL - Madball Manners

Lingering experimental rave electronic, hardcore, techno 

Upsammy - Zoom

Playful, sampling, abstract IDM, ambient techno, melodic and rhythmic, surreal, futuristic, sparkling synths and billowing pads

Tomasz Kunicki - Muzyka dla Świątyń

Playful and abstract IDM, glittering synths, obscure pads, glitchy and bleepy

Tomasz Kunicki - The sound is gone, where did it go, I have no idea

Very bassy and very dubby IDM, atmospheric ambient and loopy electronics

Kate NV - Room for the moon

80s new wave, progressive electronic, synth pop, cornucopia of melodies and genres. Wriggling synths, chirping flutes, warm baselines, jazzy sax, woodwinds, marimba. Russian girly vocals cartoon theme-song-like.

Khruangbin - Mordechai 

Psychedelic / funk rock with some soul, dub, lounge, poolside disco - exotic and atmospheric 

Dalai Lama - Inner world

Chanted mantras rhythmically woven into wafting new-age flutes, chimes, strings and free-form guitar picking. 

K-Lone - Cape Cira

Tropical ambient house, warm, lush, soft. Zen yet bouncy rhythms. Digital and analogue recordings, at times feels like you’re underwater. 

Arca - KiCk i

Experimental industrial club rhythms with reggaeton and folk influences

The Beths - Jump Rope Gazers

Sleek and personal indie rock, romantic ballads, more sentimental and slow than the previous album

J Lloyd - Kosmos

Tasteful soul and funk pop in 25 tiny tracks, charming low-key, rich textures, good vibes

Julek Polsk - Tesco

Dissonant, ominous, dense, post industrial ambient, noise, sound collage, deconstructed club music

Taylor Swift - folklore

Folk/chamber pop, indie folk, bittersweet, mellow, melancholic ballads

Bill Callahan - Gold Record 

Contemporary folk, warm and deep vocals, pastoral, peaceful and melancholic 

Mura Masa - R.Y.C. 

Indietronica, post-punk revival, catchy indie/synth pop, early 2000 EMO, lots of hip collabs

Fontaines D.C. - A Hero's Death 

Post-punk, indie rock, art punk, gothic rock, raw deadpan male vocals, darkish and melodic

RAMzi - cocon 

Tribal House, ambient dub, balearic beats, downtempo, hypnotic and tropical 

Auguste - Indust 

Experimental ambient electronic + field recordings, glistening and splintered sounds 

Paul Blackford - Betamax

Dreamy and hypnotic trip hop, downtempo, synth wave

A.G.Cook - 7G

49-track archival collection of sketches, cover versions, volatile lab experiments, divided into 7 discs. a glimpse at the whirring cogs beneath hyperpop’s pristine casing.

Clap clap - Liquid Portraits 

Experimental musical tapestry and collage / high-energy concoction of unpredictable and wavy rhythms, exotic vocals and heavy, relentless bass and drums / UK Bass, ambient dub, footwork + far-flung field recordings

E.M.M.A. - Indigo Dream 

Progressive electronic, ambient house / 80s melodic atmospheres, goosebump-inducing synths, whimsical melodies and classical leanings

Leif - Music for screen tests 

Performed live @ Barbican as a 54min session ambient / drone film soundtrack (Andy Warhol's Screen Tests)

Crack Cloud - Pain Olympics

Post/art/dance punk, experimental rock - energetic, anxious, apocalyptic, dark, male vocals

Document - A Camera Wanders All Night 

Post-punk, noise rock, past-hardcore, distorted and raw male vocals

Keisuke Matsuda - Clumsily Back Up

Experimental electronic with playful hummed vocals, lo-fi beats, melodic, youthful, dreamlike

Coi Leray - Now or Never

Gen-Z superstar, melodic flows, bouncy trap, energetic killer lyrics 

The Ophelias - For Luck

Artful, string-laden indie-pop EP, grungy dream-pop, a quarantine remake and a Joni Mitchell cover

Romare - Home

Deep house, UK Bass, groovy and detailed sonic palette + soul and funk influences - dancefloor highs and after party wind-downs

Mulatu Astatke, Black Jesus Experience - To Know Without Knowing 

Ethio-Jazz, Cuban, funk, reggae workout + rapid-fire rap or Afrobeat drums 

Good Doom - Spider Temple Valley

Experimental psych-wave, gentle and peaceful lo-fi, dreamy and oozy with flute, sax and field recordings

Ralph Kinsella - Abstraction

Dark ambient experimental / instrumental electronic

IDLES - Ultra Mono

Post-punk, garage punk, hardcore, noise rock, raw male vocals, dense, energetic, angry, political

Mild Orange - Mild Orange 

Alternative, Indie rock, dream pop, 

Skinshape - Umoja

Experimental psychedelic rock - afro beats - afroswinig - funky - world music

Vulfpeck - The Joy of Music, The Job of Real Estate

Mixed bag of funk, jazz, soul, self-indulgent? classical reworks, progressive electronic, melodic and uplifting, groovy drums and bass lines 

OPN - Magic OPN 

Manipulated and sequenced archive radio and sounds collages as interludes, uncanny processed voices, poppish trope ballads, art pop, sentimental and surreal, dense, progressive hypnagogic electronic and more

Pa Salieu - Send them to coventry

Combined dancehall, Afrobeats, hip-hop and grime. Scattered drums, stop-start energy, handpicked words and rhymes. skips from trap trills to baile breakdowns.

Mama Ode - Tales & Patterns of the Maroons

Classic hip-hop album with jazz, funk, blues and reggae influences. Creole Sega Rap Roots music, afro-drum patterns and grooves

Tony Allen, Hugh Masekela - Rejoice

Live sessions of unique fusion of afrobeat and swing-jazz with lyrics in English, Yoruba and Zulu 

Miley Cyrus - Plastic Hearts

Pop rock, 80s synth-rock, grit and freewheeling sense of fun, rough-hewn panache of vocal performance, bittersweet eclectic and sentimental / collabs with rock idols

2019 

LCD Soundsystem - Electric lady sessions 

Live recording with some new wavy covers 

Harry Styles - Fine line 

Not catchy / mediocre pop 

Boothe - 8 or 9 Walled Room

10 minutes of playful electronic and soft vocals

Good with parents - Good with parents 

Clever indietronica synth pop, fun + ironic + millennial + sax 

Taylor Skye - Kode fine & sons 

Synth, beats and pop vocals 

Famous - England 

Wonky pop punk mixed to electronic sounds and raw spoken vocals

Orville Peck - Pony 

Simple pop rock Johnny Cash style ballads and 80s

Sassy 009 - Kill Sassy 009

Distorted electro pop with strong vocals + post-punk notes

J-Walk - Mediterranean Winds 

Jazzy electronica with glassy synth pads cheesy and chilled out

Mattiel - Satis Factory 

Punky garage rock strong female vocals

Ross Backenkeller - Come Around

Country dreamy and melancholy guitar and vocals 

Legss - Writing Comedy 

Art rock and a dark underbelly of post-punk + topnotch spoken track and electronic sounds

BEA1991 - The Lost Demo EP

Trip-hop with Bjork-style vocals

BEA1991 - Brand New Adult 

Chamber folk and yacht rock meld with R&B and trip-hop

Matt Maltese - Krystal

Lo-fi flowy bedroom pop breakup album

Faye Webster - Atlanta Millionaires Club

Folk-pop, mellow and melancholy soul with an r&b tinge

Infinite Bisous- Period 

Soothing and warm bedroom night album 

Achille Lauro - 1969

Trap changed into rock with romanticised lyrics 

Jerkcurb - Air Con Eden 

Indie-psych and retro Americana, atmospheric, sensitive, wobbly

Octo Octa - Resonant Body

Breakbeats and house bangers

ALASKALASKA - The Dots 

Jazz fusion, disco rhythms and high-gloss art rock

Orphan - Yijoda

Glitchy and sharp electronics + ambient-atmospheric sounds

Honeymoan - Body

Avant-garde pop tapestry of beats and synths with playful vocal

U-Bahn - U-Bahn

Traditional new wave DEVO-moulded, Hypnagogic pop, art-punk, some vaporwave synth sounds

Hail Conjurer - Erotic Hell

Obscure and raw Finnish black metal 

Ride for revenge - Chapter of alchemy 

Quality black metal with long and short tracks pretty smooth 

Boys Age - Neverchanging, Neverending 

Lo-fi, slow-tempo, soul, r&b, mellow tracks with sad very low vocals

MorMor - Some place else 

Indie-pop with sweet synths and delicate vocals 

Felicita - hej!

Overproduced pop dance hits broken down into harsh and jarring staccato melodies, hissing ambient and screams

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Ghosteen

Endlessly giving and complex meditation on mortality and our collective grief, scored by synths, pianos, and electronics

Portico Quartet - Memory Streams

Ethereal keyboards, hypnotic grooves, layered post-rock textures mixed with electronic, ambient and magnetic jazz build-ups

Charles Rumback + Ryley Walker - Little common twist 

Mellow and pastoral folksy guitar melodies and soft drums + ambient tones, drone electronic

Shadowax - Nikolai Reptile

Effervescent techno and mutant bass jams

The Rhythm Method - How do you know I was lonely?

Ostensibly witty and warm pop songs from hip hop to indie and electronic about romance and millennial youth

Martin Dupont - Accident of Stars

80s kinda goth new wave full of electronics, guitars synths and clarinets

Raime - Planted

Latin American and Chicago footwork influences merged with alien sounds, half-heard voices, dark and rhythmic bass and percussions

Sunn 0))) - Pyroclasts

Sunn 0))) - Life Metal

Slow-motion drone feels like a religious ritual / pipe organ and cello, guitars webbing together the space between notes

Special Request - Vortex 

Breakbeat barnstormers and house epics, with room for bleep, electro and gabber

Caterina Barbieri - Ecstatic Computation

Oscillating sequencers, rhythmic pulsations, cascades of synthesiser melodies echoing dance music/new age

Battles - Juice B Crypts 

Playful electronic wizardry, dense array of beats, bleeps and squelches, loopy keyboards and guitars, ecstatic vocals

Haruomi Hosono - HOCHONO HOUSE

Home-recorded aesthetic, funk shaped into minimalist space-age lounge music 

Florist - Emily Alone 

Thoughtful, calming and melancholic, full of hushed, enveloping guitar sounds and gentle vocals

Spencer Radcliffe - Hot Spring 

Alt-country, indie falk americana, very relaxed,pastoral and wry poetics

Ciamkam - Play-doh Dog 

Noise ambient / screeching, dissonant, surreal, ominous 

Equiknoxx - Eternal Children 

UK soundsystem style, reggae groundings, earthy dancehall with a vast range of puzzling vocalists

Eh hahah - Fissure

Experimental deconstructed electronic, sound collage, glitches and post-club music

Upsammy - Wild Chamber 

Lucid shades of IDM, bleep techno, perky synths and frazzling hi-hats, polyrhythmic drum patterns

Otik - Blasphemy

Fresh, vibrant, dark experimental club music, techno + dance + electronic 

Shanti Celeste - Tangerine

Tech / ambient / deep house, breakbeat, rhythmic and mechanical yet dreamy 

Bez - Banki Mydlane

Dream pop, shoegaze, noise pop, space rock, reverberated female vocals + spoken word

Yu Su - Roll with the punches 

Ambient dub, downtempo, tribal ambient, sampling, mellow, atmospheric with female vocals

Drive45 - Dried up 

Bitpop, Artpop, indietronica, quirky and playful, androgynous vocals 

Lala &ce - Le son d’apres 

French hip hop, trap, cloud rap, alternative b&b, dancehall / sparse dark and ominous, warm female vocals

Leif - Loom Dream

Tribal ambient / ambient techno + field recordings / pastoral, ethereal, atmospheric 

deathcrash - Sundown (a collection of home recordings)

Slowcore, drone ambient, post-punk, fragile male vocals

FEET - What’s inside is more than just ham

Post-punk, indie-rock, dance-punk, sarcastic, playful, technical, male vocals

Coi Leray - EC2

Trap, hyphy, pop rap

Ariwo- Quasi 

Dub techno, afro-cuban jazz, ambient techno, chants, programmed beats, pulsating relentless rhythms and percussions, loud sax

Floating Points - Crush

Strikingly melodic and elegant, cinematic, frantic and distorted rhythms, shuddered synths, vibrant breakbeats, sampling, UK garage nodding

Jacques Greene - Dawn Chorus

Bittersweet, sad but triumphant, mix of experimental electronic and lightweight techno + field recordings, hazy sampled textures, distorted drones + disco house + percussions + spoken word

Men I Trust - Oncle Jazz

Indie electronic, minimal, chillout downtempo, dreamy female vocals, jazzy

Raveena - Lucid 

R&B, soul, experimental, pop, groovy, jazzy and dreamy, with some field and spoken words recordings

2018

Shit and Shine - Very high 

Lazy hippie funk with slowed rnb vocals 

Saloli - The deep end

New Age-inspired delicate only-synth music 

Adrianne Lenker - abysskis 

Guitar and sweet and warm vocals 

Ever ending kicks - Ideas relayed 

Sweet lo-fi similar to the previous two 

Negative Gemini - Bad Baby 

Solid synth pop with dreamy intimate vocals

Okay Kaya - Both

melancholy bedroom-pop sarcastic and harsh lyrics

Trust Fund - Bringing the Backline

Witty yet melancholy self-aware pop-rock

Jockstrap - Love is the key to the city 

A fusion of Bossa Nova, 1930s Disney-esque orchestra, and coarse electronica

Noah Cyrus - Good Cry

Pop and rnb debut album with a bit of gospel and melancholy

Carla dal Forno - Top of the pops

Alternative indie electronic, subtle instrumental backdrops with plaintive vocals

Lala Lala - The lamb 

Alternative/Indie rock with grunge tones and personal and warm vocals

Diamond Thug - Apastron

Progressive but dreamy pop, graceful vocals

Denh Izen - Storage Solutions 

Dark and charming sounds with warm and distorted vocals, desperate but calm

Imperial Triumphant - Vile Luxury 

New York Jazz mixed with top-notch black metal great for a sci-fi dystopian movie - especially Cosmopolis

Oliver Coates - Shelley’s on Zenn-La

Beat-oriented electronic music, sublime cello and synths

Dylan Carlson - Conquistador

drone-metal imaginary Western mostly solo electric guitar

Project Pablo - Come to Canada you will like it 

Dozy laid back deep house with  jazzy chords and subtly swinging drums

Ryley Walker - The Lillywhite Sessions 

Dave Matthews Band tribute with proggy folk, primitive guitar, free improv, Chicago jazz-rock on darker tones 

Grouper - Grid of Points

Empty room, piano and voice slip through your fingers like water

Kali malone - Cast of Mind

Glacial synth tones mapped to acoustic woodwind and brass 

Likes - New Pedal

Short tracks of fun glitch / hypnagogic pop

Jake Tobin - Fifth Thought

Fun and whimsical take on classical sax sounds and guitars

Jake Tobin - 135

Avant-prog / jazz fusion / romanticism / off-kilter melodies / psychedelic chords with the emotion and aesthetic of bedroom pop

Twig Twig - Darkworld Gleaming

Experimental pop, whimsical instrumentation, lo-fi uplift, beats and loops

George Clanton - Slide

Cult 2020s electronic born from vaporware influences mixed with whispery chillwave and downtempo R&B, feels like a 90s rave in an open field, no irony

Good Doom - Mood Life

Unique, very chill, dreamy sound, incorporates world music, trip hop beats, lo fi bedroom pop, krautrock and noise

Ex:Re - Ex:Re

Husky and mellow ambient pop, dream pop? Lethargic and melancholic 

Zaumne - Emo Dub

Minimalistic ominous and repetitive ambient house with ASMR-like spoken words

Ehh hahah - And the weather so breezy, man, why can’t life always be this easy?

Progressive experimental electronic, deconstructed club music, EDM, bubblegum bass, playful yet dark

Kate NV - для FOR

Progressive electronic, ambient, new age, minimalist, surreal, otherworldly and playful. wet, fleshy bleeps; bubbly, liquid noise

Leon Chang - re:treat

Mellow lo-fi hip hop, downtempo, electronic, future bass, sampling 

Coi Leray - Everythingcoz

Pop rap, trap, hyphy tunes, powerful + well produced 

Domenique Dumont - Miniatures de auto rhythm 

Sophist-pop, balearic beat, chillwave, dreampopish, soft female vocals, lush, summery and rhythmic

Big Joanie - Sistahs 

Pretty standard textbook indie-rock, post-punk with female vocals 

Darto - Fundamental Slime 

Haunting and spacious, deep male vocals, intriguing eerie melodies, dream state lullabies + sax and spoken word bit

Old Maybe - Piggity Pink 

Chaotic post-punk, unusual time signatures, strong shouted female vocals

Brad Mehldau Trio - Seymour Reads the Constitution! 

Elegant and melodic modal jazz - post-bop album, fragmented but coherent, ever changing time signature and tempo

2017

Ross Backenkeller - Bardo

Folk indie guitar melodies with honest and gentle vocals

Maruego - Tra Zenith e Nadir

Italian trap with disillusioned and ironic lyrics + cool collabs

Nervous Condition - Untitled 

Forceful drums, wails of sax and commanding vocals - mix of experimental rock, post-punk, no wave, jazz

Powerplant - Dogs Sees Ghosts

Synth punk, garage punk fast and fun

Wool & The Pants - Wool & The Pants

Experimental r&b / soul / hiphop vibez pretty smooth and lo-fi

TOPS - Sugar at the gate 

Soft rock tunes, vintage atmosphere, fuzzy, honey-dipped songs 

Slothrust - Show me how you want it to be 

Covers album with grungy sounds and good arrangements 

Rone - Mirapolis

Misty synths and heavy bass lines, dreary and melancholic industrial electronics, packed with doomed vocals of all sorts of guests. 

Ada Babar & Kasra Kurt - Nino Tomorrow

Weird pop and experimental DIY with MIDI keyboards and guitar, playful lyrics, video game menu music

Good Doom - New Shapes for you

Evocative, dreamy and atmospheric melodies, warm at times, chilly, spooky, grungy, dark at others, synth buzzes, glitchy drums

Phoebe Bridgers - Stranger in the alps

Atmospheric ballads for sad times, deeply personal stories of heartbreak and loss 

Florist - If Blue Could Be Happiness

Indie folk, soft and atmospheric, pure gentle quiet and soft female vocals about understanding light and darkness. Swooping guitar, dots of piano notes, gentle beats that recall Simon and Garfunkel

Wishing - Heat Death 

Ambient pop, lo-fi indie beats w/ soft vocals that make you feel things you haven’t felt in a while

Martyn Heyne - Electric Intervals

Ambient in the broadest sense, calm instrumental downtempo guitar-centric with electronic flourishes

Equiknoxx - Colón Man

Vivid and tactile masterful sound design, syncopated loops, wonky and scintillating rhythms 

American Pleasure Club - I blew a dandelion and the whole world disappeared 

Lo-fi acoustic guitar with raw male vocals

Andrea Laszlo De Simone - Uomo Donna 

Progressive pop, baroque/psychedelic pop + field recordings / bittersweet and pastoral 

Drive45 - Have you seen me? 

Bitpop indietronic, glitch pop, sequencer, dance pop

Drive45 - System Format

Bitpop indietronic, playful video game sounds

Leon Chang - bird world 

Bitpop electronic, sequencer, videogame music, future bass / uplifting mellow and playful 

dynastic - SPACE/SUMMER 

Glitch hop, electronic bubblegum, kawaii future bass, mellow and uptempo, cheesy sax, chaotic sounds + dance floor dnb

Darto - Human Giving 

Spacey experimental electronic mixed with post-punk, warm tones, 80s synths, soft melodic vocals + spoken bits

Pregnant - Duct Tape

Indie/art/soft rock, electronic, brilliant pop tunes, dreamy yet rhythmic

2016

Ever Ending Kicks - Music World

DIY colourful dreamy hazy songs 

Mild Eye Club - Skiptracing 

Low-key folk dreamy with 60s 70s vintage links

Loving - Loving 

Easy and dreamy pop melodies, wavy, warm and mellow

Lala Lala- Sleepyhead 

Alternative/Indie rock with grunge tones and personal and warm vocals

Gruff Rhys - Set fire to the stars

Soundtrack to the homonym 2014 film set in the 50s - soft romance rock, jazz-inspired, elegant and familiar

Oliver Coates - Upstepping

Deep house, techno, footwork blended with sharp and experimental classical strings 

Garden Center - Garden Center

Erratic pop music, fun and playful electronic sounds, silly vocals

Raime - Tooth

Ominus and gloomy sound of dub, electronic and post-rock / stripped down to the flesh 

Amiina - Fantomas 

Violin, cello, drums, percussion, metallophone, harp, ukulele and electronics fused in a contemporary classical post-rock gentle melody-focused experimentation

Jake Tobin - Sorta Upset

Short tracks of experimental rock, avant-prog - eclectic and dissonant, technical and manic

Jake Tobin - Accidentally on Purpose

Post-modern experimental pop, jazz influenced sounds, off-kilter saxophone, silly humour 

Vanishing Twin - Choose your own adventure

Swathes of percussion, exotic drum beats and funky guitars merge into a cosmic blend of reverberating bleeps with jazz skits / heady voyage across sound influences

Good Doom - Hug

Good Doom - Naps

Both off-beat lo-fi with a rock twists, spacey, fuzzy, grainy sounds

Zeal & Ardor - Devil is fine

Top notch black metal merges African-American spiritual slave music and some electronic beats and sounds

Shield Patterns - Mirror Breathing

Haunting vocals and sensual cello, clarinet and piano, all wrapped up in ethereal synths

Ashley Henry - Ashley Henry’s 5ive

Complex and uplifting post-bop jazz, imaginative flare, delicate and soothing piano

Florist - The Birds Outside Sang 

Lo-fi indie, ambient-dream pop,sparse, minimalist keyboard leads bordering on chilly drones + intimate and personal songwriting

CBMC - OOR

Acustic lo-fi bedroom pop with an airy tone and somber feel but still feels fresh and lighthearted 

Told Slant - Going By

Slowcore indie pop/folksy emo, ‘intimate spaces in which small town kids write memories of touch, togetherness, loss, love, depersonalisation’

Kate NV - Binasu

Art pop, progressive electronic, sequencer, joyful grooves but also atmospheric and ethereal sounds, eclectic and dense, melodic female vocals

Zaumne - Przezycia

Minimal ambient techno with a couple of spoken word bits 

Mauno - Rough Master

Enticingly and eclectic indie rock, smooth vocals, strings and moody guitars, delicate piano, powerful drums

Susso - Keira

Tribal house, tribal ambient, folktronica, Mande music, rhythmic and powerful chants

Phern - Cool Coma  

Psychedelic pop, lo-fi, mellow and playful 

Hellier Ulysses - Ulysses Hellier 

Experimental rock, math rock, jangle pop mixed with post-punk, technical, lo-fi, uncommon time signatures

Brad Mehldau Trio - Blues and Ballads 

Deceptively sweet-sounding jazz album, songs are played with variations and every phrase is a cliffhanger - gracefully executed + bonus of my fav song <3

2015

Adeodat Warfield - Pacific, Missouri 

Synth pop with electronic beats, vaporware notes

Ross Backenkeller - Rare Please

Folk indie guitar melodies with honest and gentle vocals

Grimes - Art Angels

Immaculate and authentic, synthetic and unreal but also super pop, folk, and dance / POST-art pop?

Jake Tobin - Third and Fourth Thoughts

Short tracks of weird avant-prog where the vocals follow the melodies all the time

Florist - Holdly

Vocals move slowly and sweetly through gentle meditation sound and soft guitars

Starry Cat - Starry Cat

Indie pop, lo-fi indie, wavy and shaky, bitter-sweet and personal male vocals 

CBMC - FOOTWEAR

Acustic lo-fi bedroom pop with a somber feel but still feels fresh and lighthearted nearly asmr-like vocals 

Wishing - To Forget

Lo-fi indie slowcore, fuzzy synths + acoustic sounds mixed with short electronic tracks / lyrics are whispered and very intimate 

Oren Ambarchi - Live Knots 

Two very long live recorded tracks of propulsive drumming full of tensions and releases + droning notes, plucked strings and mournful guitar 

Juxta Phona - we will not be silence 

Ambient, electronic, minimal melodies over crisp, tactile beats

Khruangbin - The Universe Smiles Upon You

Psychedelic / Funk rock, rhythmic and jazzy, tropical warm and peaceful

Red Sea - In The Salon 

Indie experimental rock, psychedelic pop, math rock, melodic yet uncommon time signatures 

Eyeliner - Buy Now 

Synth-pop/funk - vaporwave / instrumental, melodic, uplifting, lush, futuristic / great bass lines! 

2014

Ricky Eat Acid - Three love songs

First half found sounds, experimental electronics, fuzzy piano loops. Second half IDM beats and keys, choir-like vocals / “might be the sound of music having a dream within a dream about music”

Jake Tobin - Torment 

Jake Tobin - Life as a Clerical Error

Weird dissonant mix of avant-prog, art punk and jazz fusion but in an amazing way

Richard Dawson - Nothing Important 

Brittle, crudely amplified nylon-string acoustic guitar, experimental drones, folk sketches, imitation field cries, and free jazz diversions

2013

Ever Ending Kicks - Weird priorities

Sentimental chill instrumental and colourful with gentle vocals

Gruff Rhys - American Interior

John Evans-themes concept album - witty folk oriented retro-futurist music 

Michael Andrews - Spilling a rainbow

Well-crafted pop tunes, nostalgic and lighthearted memories of folk rock with a dash of avant-garde electronic haze

Pill Friends - Blessed Suffering

Lo-fi indie/emo noisy and raw with existential and stark male vocals 

2012

Told Slant - Still Water

Lo-fi/bedroom-punk with folksy guitars and delicate vocals as if they could break down in tears at any moment

2010

Hype Williams - Find out what happens when people stop being polite and start gettin reel

Ypnagogic vortex of incredibly canny hard to pinpoint music with distorted spoken vocals

Zach Hill - FACE TAT

Constant restless drumming, squiggly melodic instrumental hooks, mosaics of disconnected noises, fuzzy sounds and vocals

2008

Amplifier Machine - her mouth is an outlaw

Half-improvised ambient - drone - experimental - electronic - post-rock

E. Bandel, Victory & Good Hunting - s/t

Classical, piano, folk, melancholic, haunting

2007

Seabear - The ghost that carried us away

Indie/folk multi-instrumental dynamic floating sound, warm melodies, calm and gentle vocals

HEALTH - HEALTH 

A masterful noise/experimental rock with elements of post-punk, drone and electronic - disorienting rhythms, tempo-shifting, noisy outbursts

2005

The Darkness - One way ticket to hell

Hard / glam rock ballads and pop tunes 

2004

The Emperor Machine - Aimee Tallulah is hypnotised 

Mix of electro euro disco, post-punk, krautrock, sci-fi scores, jazz-funk. Thick dance rhythms and mind-altering synths

2002

ESG - Step Off 

Sweet soul with a punk attitude, jazzy sassy vocals

Hella - Hold your horse is 

Non-stop, indie-audio assault / Nintendo music / midi and electronic beats / head-spinning leading drums, very fast guitars

1998

Eels - Electro-Shock Blues

elegantly sad grief and death themed album, deeply personal, yet brilliant pop tunes, post-grunge, jazzy arrangement, archive sounds, electronics

Duster - Stratosphere

Bashful slowcore lo-fi experimental space/indie rock

1975

Bobbi Humphrey- Fancy Dancer 

Funky jazz with forms of world music, soul, club music and pop

1973

Kevin Ayers - Bananamour

Progressive pop, art rock with mix of soul, r&b, reggae - choirs and country type ballads

1972

Kevin Ayers - Whatevershebringswesing

Experimental new age prog rock, semisweet tunes, lighthearted, skewed sounds

1970

Kevin Ayers - Shooting at the moon

Experimental, progressive, avant-garde, rock with jazz influences, sound recordings, excellent songwriting