rescuing musical virtue in distress.
With F I S H B O W L / T E R R E S T R I A L about to land in the public marketplace, I sat down with the artist behind Alienbaby Collective, Liu Mottes to find out how this new musical path came about, what are its drives and inspirations... Continue Reading →
Titles can tell you a lot about music. Not so much what that music might sound like but it does suggest something about the way the artist behind it thinks. Anyone who capitalises their title and introduces unnecessary spacing, writes track names in lowercasewithnospacing, removes vowels from a ttl or uses one title to reference... Continue Reading →
The first time I saw Flour Babies play live I blubbed like a ludicrous 57 year old giant bald baby. This is reaction that is not unfamiliar to me or my despairing and tutting wife but in my defence my blub threshold is set pretty damn high. To put this in perspective my blub to... Continue Reading →
This album opens with a track that's driven along by pounding tribal drums offering a feel of marching to an unknown destination and an unknown conflict. A new sense of urgency is evident as a vocal line spits out a message that feels like it can no longer be suppressed. These guys have clearly been... Continue Reading →
I probably made this point the last time I wrote about Sky Orchid but there is a real art to using space effectively in music. I shall probably keep making the point when I write about them in the future. It’s just that they seem to be the perfect example of how well it can... Continue Reading →
Every so often an album comes along that stands a few inches taller than the others. You spend a few months trawling through the new releases, the rehashes, the debuts and the bands daring to challenge the norm by going in a slightly different direction until suddenly an album appears in your cd player that... Continue Reading →
I often look down a band's list of influences and think, those might be the bands which you would like to sound like, but I bet you don’t come close. I’m normally right, that’s not to say that the bands are not worth a listen, it’s just that they seem to lull you into a... Continue Reading →
In a world were people seem content to follow the rules, where they want to find the fastest and most obvious route from A to B, where comfort zones are the order of the day and people are happy to stick with the tried and tested, the brilliantly named Alienbaby Collective is all about breaking... Continue Reading →
I think by now we should have discovered a new word to cover music which resonates with the spirit of post-punk. After all, that scene's first stirrings lay more than a lifetime ago but I guess as a useful shorthand for a certain set of sounds and styles, for atmospheric soundscapes which would soon fracture... Continue Reading →
One of the great things about listening to a band over a long period of time is watching it grow. Since I started writing about Love Ghost back in 2018, things have certainly evolved, sonically and otherwise, and the music you find coming out of there corner today is certainly a more mature, more thoughtful,... Continue Reading →
I guess it is quite easy to spot where Sonomaris’ influences lie, nothing wrong with that, they know what they like and they want to make music in that vein. Million certainly oozes with the sound of the Pacific Northwest in the early nineties, even with the song driven by an acoustic guitar it is... Continue Reading →
With German maestros of doom-laden classic rock meets dark wave Mono Inc. releasing their 11th album, it felt like the perfect time to catch up with frontman Martin Engler to find out about the twenty year journey of the band, how such music is perceived in the current musical climate and where the band are... Continue Reading →
I did it again! I took one look at the band name, the artwork, the track's title and jumped to conclusions. Everything suggested that what lay beyond would be some sort of strange electro music, digital dalliances made up of synth textures and angular, programmed off-beats. Well, you know what they say about judging books... Continue Reading →
Labels are rubbish, genres even more so. I read the words “indie” and “rock” used as a handle and I immediately think of 5-piece rockers who have polished their sound off sufficiently to have a crack at the charts. I think of predictability, lack of integrity and of tried and tested formulas. I certainly don’t... Continue Reading →
Fathom, the single, was an unexpected pleasure, so much so that it made me keen to hear what else this musically astute duo had up their sleeves. With the arrival of a four-track e.p. of the same name the question is answered and alongside the title track we are offered up three more slices of... Continue Reading →
Wandering well-trodden paths and staying within comfort zones is all very well but surely life is about seeing what is around the next corner, about trying new experiences and feeling new sensations. And that is as true for those making music as those listening to it. But sometimes that feeling of being too far from... Continue Reading →
Whenever I see the term “classic rock” alarm bells ring inside of me and the reviewing pen gets all jittery. Of course some great music was made under that moniker, they wouldn’t call it classic otherwise would they? But a lot of what gets labelled such in the modern age is quite derivative, happy to... Continue Reading →
Imagine if you wanted to work in the singer-songwriter sonic playground but not merely follow the cliche lines of the battered acoustic guitar troubadour. Imagine if you wanted to play with slightly psychedelic moods and spacious indie sounds but not let those musical brushstrokes over-power the songs themselves. Imagine if you actually had something interesting... Continue Reading →
When we think of alternative rock, it is often an image of leather clad, sub-metallers who seem more concern about sponsorships, synch deals and their complicated hair than any real love for the music they make. That’s what goes on in my head anyway. And that’s why stumbling across The Pink Dust feels like a... Continue Reading →
Another interview just posted to The Big Takeover, this time with Ray Lark of Crooked Ghost, purveyors of otherworldly music which thinks big enough to take in sharp edged, visceral sound and soothing, dreamlike sonic textures. Find out all about it here... http://bigtakeover.com/interviews/AquickconversationwithRayLarkfromCrookedGhost
Even when you are making quite extreme music, and Brasher certainly does that, melody is still king. It’s where metal bands always seem to get it wrong. It’s all very well being the heaviest, loudest, fastest, most technical but if there is no hook to draw the listener in then you might as well be... Continue Reading →
The Big Takeover have just posted my latest interview with Paul Furio of Watch Clark. To find out about what's going on in, on and around his latest album Couch and what the future holds for him have a read here. http://bigtakeover.com/interviews/AquickconversationwithWatchClark
The music of Cazimi is a cleverly pieced cocktail of grunge, rock, indie rock and metal. Sure there are bands like ‘Echo and The Bunnymen’, ‘The Stranglers’ and ‘Hawkwind’ listed as soundalikes, and they are pretty on the nail but it misses out the overall vibe of the music as being a bit shoe-gazey, a... Continue Reading →
I shouldn't be writing this. I shouldn’t need to. Anyone who reads this site, who agrees with my tastes or knows that the common denominator of of this place is that if it makes the cut its worth checking out, should just take on board the fact that Tombstones in Their Eyes has a new... Continue Reading →
They say that a man is known by the company he keeps. The same can be said for a band. So the fact that Audra have been found on the road in the company of the likes of Peter Murphy, The Mission, AFI, She Wants Revenge, Gene Loves Jezebel, New Model Army and Nitzer Ebb, speaks volumes... Continue Reading →
It was about half way through opening salvo Grinding My Teeth that two thoughts popped into my head. The first was that every now and then I catch a sonic whiff of REM. The second was that there was a certain amount of Midnight Oil going on too. Easy references this early on in a... Continue Reading →
West of Corey raise a very interesting point on their latest single. Can you be epic without being loud? Well, let’s see. Too many bands, especially of the rock persuasion equate loudness with effectiveness, as if the louder, more technical, more amped up, the more multi-tracked a band is, the more they will get noticed.... Continue Reading →
I always feel that if you get to have a platform, find yourself in a position where you have people’s attention, then not using that elevated status to say something worthwhile is a bit of a wasted opportunity. That was one of the things about punk back in the day. Having piqued curiosity and turned... Continue Reading →
Echoglass has always proved to be very chameleon-like when it comes to genres and musical styles, equally able to deliver spacious indie soundscapes as they are R.E.M. style alt-rock. Latest single Hard not only sits towards the latter end of that sonic spectrum but pushes even further into the boisterous and rocky territory beyond. Guitars... Continue Reading →
It's tough being a teenager. No, I really mean it. You don’t know what you want but you want it all now. You don’t know where you are going but you needed to be there yesterday. You want to be everywhere at once but you don’t know how to get there, or even where “there”... Continue Reading →
