New music
Album: bdrmm - MicrotonicWednesday, 26 February 2025
Microtonic comes into focus on its third track, “Infinity Peaking.” Album opener “Goit,” featuring a guest vocal by Working Men’s Club’s Syd Minsky-Sargeant, is doomy post-Balearic impressionism with spoken lyrics seemingly about the loss of self.... Read more... |
Rats on Rafts, The Victoria review - crepuscular Dutch quintet begins to see the lightTuesday, 25 February 2025
An album is one thing, a live show is another. A truism of course, but one which is inescapable during this London date by the Rotterdam-based Rats on Rafts at a shabby chic pub in Dalston, East London.Rats on Rafts’ measured new album, Deep Below... Read more... |
Bilk, O2 Academy 2, Birmingham review - Essex rock'n'rollers blast into the weekendMonday, 24 February 2025
Sol Abrahams, singer and guitarist for Essex rock’n’rollers Bilk, was suffering from a bit of guitar trouble in Birmingham on Friday evening. By the time the band was ready to power through “On It”, from new album Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll, he... Read more... |
Album: Artemis - ArboresqueMonday, 24 February 2025
Spare a thought – please – for Leipzig-born pianist Jutta Hipp (1925-2003). In 1956, she became the very first woman to record albums in her own name for the Blue Note label. Earlier this month was the centenary of her birth. It went by more or less... Read more... |
Hinds, St Lukes and the Winged Ox, Glasgow review - Spanish garage rockers surviving and thrivingSunday, 23 February 2025
Hinds don't believe in God. They declared this as they surveyed the converted church that is St Luke's, and given the past few years you can't blame them for lacking faith.The Spanish duo later admitted they weren't sure they'd ever be playing... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Diggin' For Gold Volume 14 - Norway's Sixties beat-group sceneSunday, 23 February 2025
In 1964, the Norwegian division of Philips Records began issuing singles labelled “Bergen Beat.” The picture sleeves of 45s by Davy Dean and the Swinging Ballades, Sverre Faaberg and the Young Ones, The Jokers, Rune Larsen and Teen Beats, The... Read more... |
Album: Heather Nova - Breath and AirSaturday, 22 February 2025
With her 13th studio album, Heather Nova delivers what you might expect from one of the 90s' most distinctive alternative voices – though longtime fans of London Rain will find she's meandering down a sandier path. Breath and Air finds the... Read more... |
Album: Panda Bear - Sinister GriftFriday, 21 February 2025
Sinister Grift is Panda Bear’s first album since his 2022 Reset collaboration with Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom. Anyone anticipating any lasting influence from working with Rugby’s premier psychedelic adventurer, however, is going to be sorely... Read more... |
Album: Sam Fender - People WatchingThursday, 20 February 2025
While discourse on many topics grows toxic and polarised, it’s the voices who speak plainly about the reality of everyday lives that provide some sanity and make us feel heard. Enter Sam Fender, whose straight talking and pride of his working-class... Read more... |
Album: Basia Bulat - Basia's PalaceWednesday, 19 February 2025
Canadian singer Basia Bulat has tried on various musical hats during her career but is most associated with singer-songwriterly folk-pop. Her last album was the melancholic, string-swathed The Garden but with Basia’s Palace, her seventh album, she... Read more... |
Josienne Clarke, Across the Evening Sky, Kings Place review - celebrating Sandy DennyTuesday, 18 February 2025
On the first date of a 17-concert tour that had its preview at Celtic Connections in January, Across the Evening Sky begins with the liminal, predatory dangers of associating in any way with the sly “Reynardine”, with Matt Robinson on piano and... Read more... |
Patrick Duff, The Mount Without, Bristol review - sacred music for the soulMonday, 17 February 2025
There is an atmosphere of otherworldly stillness within the stony womb of a large dilapidated church in Bristol, at the bottom of St Michael’s Hill, the winding road that climbs up to what used to be the favoured place of execution, where the city’s... Read more... |
