rescuing musical virtue in distress.
Magazine Gap has always juggled a lot of sonic balls, so to speak. Previous songs have shown that they are no stranger to polished pop, soulful grooves, music with real feeling but now they add another important element to their musical arsenal. Space. Not that their songs have ever felt cluttered but whereas their previous... Continue Reading →
Four albums in and still sounding like the bastard sons of Steve Earl and Ryan Adams and like those two purveyors of alt-country, The Southern Sessions is brimming with songs that straddle the country/rock divide. Someone once told me that the difference between country music and Americana is the boots. The former sports shinny, Crome... Continue Reading →
Right from the off, you can hear that you are in the hands of an artist who knows what they are doing. The delicate yet dexterous guitar picking, the slow and gentle additions of additional musical lines, highlighting slide guitar cascades, drifting harmonies and hand claps, the considered vocals…its all there. But it is also... Continue Reading →
They say that you should never judge a book by a cover. Sound advice. Today I learnt that you should never try to second guess music based on titles and images. As I got ready to put digital pen to virtual paper I have to say that I expected to be audibly treated to some... Continue Reading →
There was a time, not so long ago, when music labelled progressive was seen as being decidedly uncool. Though what is uncool about playing with broad musical visions, weaving technically dexterous musical threads together and actually having something to say through your music, I will never know. But then things began to change. Bands such... Continue Reading →
Just because the vote doesn’t go your way doesn’t mean that you have to stop making the argument and at least the return of Boris Johnson, a resounding return at that, means that Cabinet of Millionaires will have no shortage of subject matter to work with. Not that they were ever stuck for things to... Continue Reading →
Whilst some bands may sound as if they are stealing from the past, The Orange Kyte sound like they live there. Or at least have occasional use of an apartment with commanding views of an acid-laced, psychedelic, musical time. Chronology may suggest that they are at the modern end of a time-line which runs back... Continue Reading →
This latest album from Noah Avery might be the perfect example of how to make music in the current age. As technology has widened the possibilities for the grassroots musician and attitudes towards the tribalism and generic labels of the past have changed, today’s music maker has a freedom that has possibly never existed before.... Continue Reading →
I’m never sure if Michael Ciravolo deftly steers his musical vehicle, Beauty in Chaos, into the sonic waters of the various guests he works with or if he instead trusts them to put their stamp on the music he is making. I suspect that the answer lays somewhere between both approaches but however he gets... Continue Reading →
I have always said that if you want to know the difference between punk and post-punk then just listen to The Membranes. Punk was the short sharp shock which was never going to last and what followed in the fringes was largely either called New Wave or Post-Punk…at least it has been in journalistic hindsight... Continue Reading →
There are many ways of writing music, from the rigid and formulaic to the abstract and fluid. It is at the latter end of the spectrum that you find Inkräktare, an occasional collaboration between Dean Garcia and Mark Wallbridge. It takes a brave man to jot down sonic ideas and musical creations in their most unstructured... Continue Reading →
It’s very easy to get this type of music wrong. This blend of classic rock drive and synth wave futurism, historical narratives and gothic drama has been done often but rarely well. For every 69 Eyes or Sabaton there are a dozen bands whose inspiration comes from Buffy The Vampire Slayer rather than Polidori’s Vampyre,... Continue Reading →
I don’t want to get all “old man sporting a 30-year old band t-shirt” but there was a time when we would have called songs which sounded like Feel It merely pop music and have done with it. Okay maybe New Pop or Alt-Pop but pop none the less. I mean it ticks all the... Continue Reading →
Like all artists worth bending your ear at in the pop market, it is Jimmy Laine’s desire to warp the format that keeps him ahead of the game. Bones, his latest in a run of recent stand alone singles, takes elements of pop, the bounce of the beat, the accessibility, and mixes it with a... Continue Reading →
Stay Lunar has to be one of the more interesting young bands straddling the indie-pop divide at the moment and I’m not saying that just because they probably know where I live and no, I don’t owe them money. It’s true. Indie seems to have become a tad formulaic of late, the realm of airbrushed... Continue Reading →
Those awfully nice people at Mule Freedom have put together their end of year playlist, music garnered from this years cool clients and awesome artists. As most of the people mentioned have also been covered in DAA, I thought that a share was in order. Mule Freedom, and the man at its helm Gerry Ranson,... Continue Reading →
Punk’s not dead, it just got a new set of threads and learned to move with times. And for every dozen or so bands who never got the memo, the one that said, “turn up, make music, break stuff, evolve, move on, repeat” there is one like Healthy Junkies who learned how to keep the punk... Continue Reading →
The world turning around us is becoming an ever more opinionated, polarized and divided place. Amidst the cacophony of 24/7 news coverage designed more to entertain than to inform, political correctness has taken center stage. In this maelstrom stirred up by unscrupulous politicians more concerned with maintaining the status quo than the welfare of their... 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 →
Collisions between the classical and contemporary music world have always gone on and to varying degrees of success. I guess where one is the realm of discipline and exactitude the other is more often the home of feeling and improvisational jamming. Getting the two to work together probably relies on being able to switch mindsets... Continue Reading →
Genres are like dinosaurs. They were a necessary part of evolution, a necessary step between a distant then and a here and now but now they seem out of step with the modern age. Big, lumbering and troublesome. St Geo seems to have the same view of the cliched music genre. Why pursue one particular... Continue Reading →
I sometimes cast my ears around the current pop scene and do that cliched, grumpy old man thing…"it was all better back in my day". It wasn't but with the onslaught of TV talent show wannabes and the synchronised dance routine driven videos which pour out of the ivory towers of the “music industry,” it’s... Continue Reading →
Not all music is made to satisfy the more everyday urges. Yes, we all like an uplifting tune whilst we get ready to go out on a Friday night, a catchy singalong on the jukebox at the bar or a rousing anthem to help us let off steam but as musical iceberg analogies go, that... 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 →
If you asked me to sum up the wonderfully titled Everything At All Times and All Things At Once in one word then I would have to say …funky. But then why would you? Okay, funky it is, but forget the type of funky that gets injected last minute into pop formats by besuited executives... Continue Reading →
Space, the final frontier. A phrase as true in 60’s sci-fi as it is in modern music. Too many artists see the blank sonic canvas and feel the need to completely cover it with their sound. Space, when utilised properly is a powerful tool. It is the atmospherics which collect between the lingering notes, the... Continue Reading →
If you are not enchanted by Ingraham’s gorgeous, crystalline voice right from the start then head straight for the Accident and Emergency department of your local hospital, there is something seriously wrong with your heart. And with most of the music going on behind her being tastefully stripped back and delicately woven around, you have... Continue Reading →
There is something wonderfully infectious about the Reggaetron grooves and easy rhythms that ooze out of Darshae Kiér ’s latest release. Reggae has always had a back end sound which is hard to not be beguiled by and the dance floor has always been driven by beats which make you want to move. Halasana Girl... Continue Reading →
Even before you get to the music itself there is something wonderfully endearing about going on here. With a song title which just says that fad and fashion isn’t their game, take us or leave us, and a band name which is both confident of their skills yet slightly wacky in the way that they... Continue Reading →
In an earlier time, those seeking to describe Nandan Gautam’s music would have simply have labelled it “world music” and moved on. But what does that even mean? It’s a term which takes in everything from recordings of traditional Balkan folk singers played at middle class dinner parties to muddy, outdoor musical festivals made up... Continue Reading →
