If someone like Nick Cave best typifies the dark, sweeping and majestic end point of the western blues derived musical experiment; Gongkreeper is the flipside of that coin. Joe Cherry, the man driving this creative vehicle, makes music which comes from a younger, angst ridden and intense place, one that has evolved out of the possibilities afforded by more recent technologies and more likely to tip its hat to Krautrock pioneers and New Romantic non-conformists than the more traditional canon.
Sonnets x Sketches is an intriguing sonic package, wandering from smooth, ambient and almost soulful sounds to warped sonic claustrophobia, from a sort of computer brained ethereality to a broken industrial onslaught. And somehow the two ends of the chosen musical spectrum seem to blend remarkably seamlessly.
There is something of the city and the night inherent in the music, it evokes shadowed back streets, rain lashed buildings, neon gaudiness and aged and decaying architecture. Its myriad musical blends of the modern via hip-hop beats and synth wastelands and the more traditional musical structures perfectly reflecting the juxtapositions of the urban sprawl.
But more than anything these five sonic sonnets and skittering sketches paint pictures, not necessarily those intended by the author but music is at its best when it engages and evokes. This dark suite, which sits between cinematic soundtrack and down beat alt-pop, does all of that and more. Now all you the listener have to do is make the film that it suggests.
I always knew that there was something a bit special about Rhett Repko. If 
The last time Leah Capelle crossed my path she was giving the music world a lesson in just how to match rock muscle with pop infectiousness to build the perfect pop-rock sound via the song 
After achieving a pretty high profile status for the band in their native South Africa, Saints of Bliss have taken the end of their 5 year record deal, which garnered 2 albums and a number of heavily rotated singles, to begin a new chapter, one which sees them pursuing their musical dreams across Europe and North America. And why not? It is easy to see where their brand of slick and chilled indie fits into those markets. Its perfectly balanced blend of maturity and commerciality will see them fit into both the pop market and tick more than enough adult orientated boxes.
The ability to produce a suite of five songs which simultaneously seem part of totally different musical genres yet somehow sonically sit perfectly side by side is a great, and indeed brave, trick in this often musically narrow-minded world. It is probably because the driving force behind it, Ashkan Maleyeri approaches his music as a writer of scores, rather than someone interested in taking the more obvious route of song writing for a popularist market.
I love the fact that I have lived long enough to witness the word Lynchian become a recognised label, one that can be applied to art and creativity across a wide range of spectrums. In the visual aspect it is synonymous with delving beyond the ordinary surface to find the dark and unsettling underbelly of modern society, to turn the familiar into the something elusive, uncertain and eventually horrific. 68 Creep seem to be the perfect band to take such an attitude and render it into the perfect soundtrack.
As the central hub around which the musically intricate world of 
Music and alcohol have always been in a relationship; from the inspiring to the fatal they are both connected in an on going dance. Music has long celebrated and cursed the liquid in equal measure and here Willodean take a more reflective approach to the subject. This modern take on the barroom serenade is refreshingly honest and accepting of the inevitable, a Tom Waits ballad but with a more accessible and commercially viable vibe.
The fact that Beto Hale discovered the Beatles at a young and impressionable age is indelibly woven into the heart of this album. Whilst not always obviously Beatle-esque, the album seems to often think in similar ways and certainly Orbs of Light has a late 60’s charm and slightly nostalgic pop attitude about it. Nostalgic not so much in that it feels as if it trying to re-capture or pastiche those formative pop years but more that it echoes a similar classic feel, a deft and clean limbed approach to song-writing which seems to have been overshadowed by the march of studio technology and a lowering of musical expectation in recent years.
If in the past I have described 
