Author: Nick Gale Page 2

Various Artists - The Jam Files: Past Present Future

Various Artists - The Jam Files: Past Present Future

This compilation by long-running German dance label Peppermint Jam features three discs, labelled 'Past', 'Present', and 'Future'. 'Past' opens with an edit of a track by label boss and fleetingly famous producer Mousse 'Horny' T....

Review posted on 9th August 2011

Herman Dune - Strange Moosic

Herman Dune - Strange Moosic

Given that the most noteworthy thing about Herman Dune's new album is the existence of an oddball music video for the single 'Tell Me Something I Don't Know', a promo which features professionally dashing Mad...

Review posted on 9th August 2011

Various Artists - Brew Records Split 10"

Various Artists - Brew Records Split 10"

This 10" vinyl release by Leeds-based Brew Records features four tracks, all of them new: Kong's 'Ribbons', Shield Your Eyes' 'Jessica', That Fucking Tank's 'Nwonwobh', and Castrovalva's 'In Our Prime'. It's an impressive line-up, and...

Review posted on 11th July 2011

Easy Star All-Stars - First Light

Easy Star All-Stars - First Light

The New York-based reggae collective Easy Star All-Stars have carved out a niche for themselves as talented interpreters of other people's songs. Their best-known releases have been re-workings of canonical rock albums such as Pink...

Review posted on 11th July 2011

Atari Teenage Riot - Is This Hyperreal?

Atari Teenage Riot - Is This Hyperreal?

If you ever wondered what it would feel like to be trapped inside a Marxist washing machine, then this is the album for you. Your stomach will churn and turn as Atari Teenage Riot's thudding...

Review posted on 11th July 2011

Fink - Perfect Darkness

Fink - Perfect Darkness

Fin 'Fink' Greenall is signed to Ninja Tune, used to be a trip-hop DJ, and now crafts quavering guitar-based music, which means that all critics are mandatorily required to refer his music as 'folktronica'. Between...

Review posted on 11th July 2011

Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See

Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See

The lyrical landscape wandered by Alex Turner has changed with each Arctic Monkeys album. Throughout their cocky, confident debut Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, he was stepping over half-eaten kebabs and...

Review posted on 11th July 2011

Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact

Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact

Eye Contact is a beautiful, fragile, fading echo of the eighties. It's the sound of somebody catching sight of that decade out of the corner of their eye, in a dream. Nothing captures the essence...

Review posted on 11th July 2011

Planningtorock - W

Planningtorock - W

I simply don't believe that Janine Rostron is genuinely planning to rock. Considering an awkward shuffling dance? Maybe. Contemplating nodding her head gently to some left-field sounds? Sure, it could happen. Planning to rock? Never....

Review posted on 24th May 2011

Various Artists - Showcase: Independent Sounds of Yorkshire and Humber

Various Artists - Showcase: Independent Sounds of Yorkshire and Humber

Let's start with some good news: this compilation contains precisely no second-rate Arctic Monkey pastiches. There are no half-arsed tributes to the Kaiser Chiefs, and no songs with more than a passing sonic resemblance to...

Review posted on 24th May 2011

You Are Wolf - Hunting Little Wolf

You Are Wolf - Hunting Little Wolf

If you've always felt that not enough contemporary pop music addresses the fate of Sedna, Inuit goddess of the sea, who was thrown from a kayak and drowned by her father and whose fingers, which...

Review posted on 24th May 2011

Dels - Gob

Dels - Gob

Reading Dels' biography set all sorts of alarm bells ringing in this reviewer's head. He grew up in East Anglia. He has a studio in his back garden. He raps over beats created by Micachu....

Review posted on 24th May 2011

Bedouin Soundclash - Light The Horizon

Bedouin Soundclash - Light The Horizon

Bedouin Soundclash make confident, clean-cut, commercially viable pop which tastefully blends together elements drawn from reggae, rock and soul music. They're accessible but never stupid; they're talented musicians, but they never show off; they owe...

Review posted on 24th May 2011

Metronomy - The English Riviera

Metronomy - The English Riviera

If you were hoping for a return to the wonky electronica which dominated Metronomy's debut album Pip Paine (Pay Me The £5000 You Owe), I'm afraid you'll have to give up on the possibility: Joe...

Review posted on 12th April 2011

Parts & Labor - Constant Future

Parts & Labor - Constant Future

Parts & Labor are a Brooklyn-based band with links to that borough's arty noise-rock scene. If the preceding sentence has generated any preconceptions about Constant Future, you should probably scrap them. It's not a daring...

Review posted on 12th April 2011

Little Scream - The Golden Record

Little Scream - The Golden Record

Laurel Sprengelmeyer is female, and she's a singer-songwriter, but you shouldn't read too much into that. The fact of her gender, and the fact that she writes music and gives voice to it, could easily...

Review posted on 12th April 2011

John Vanderslice - White Wilderness

John Vanderslice - White Wilderness

'My friends came down way too soon', sings John Vanderslice, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar whilst collaborator Mimi Choi and her Magik Magik Orchestra ramp up the drama by adding layers of horns, strings, piano,...

Review posted on 12th April 2011

Gorillaz - The Fall

Gorillaz - The Fall

It would be hyperbolic to describe The Fall as Damon Albarn's Kid A moment. Albarn's work tends to inspire grudging respect rather than rapt, quasi-religious devotion. Gorillaz, for all their commercial success, lack the critical...

Review posted on 12th April 2011

Bill Wells And Aidan Moffat - Everything's Getting Older

Bill Wells And Aidan Moffat - Everything's Getting Older

The extent to which former Arab Strap vocalist Aidan Moffat's lyrics are rooted in personal experiences has never been entirely clear to me. He always sounds like he's confessing his deepest personal secrets directly to...

Review posted on 12th April 2011

Times New Viking - Dancer Equired

Times New Viking - Dancer Equired

It seems that the two most interesting things about Dancer Equired are A) That the "Notoriously hissy" (Whatever that means) trio took it upon themselves to record in a studio for the first time in...

Review posted on 11th April 2011

Emily Smith - Traiveller's Joy

Emily Smith - Traiveller's Joy

Traiveller's Joy is certainly not an inappropriate title for an album with such an emphasis on the folk wave we're all apparently riding at the moment. Maybe it's a way to be all free and...

Review posted on 29th March 2011

Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo

Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo

Kurt Vile's name conjures up images of defiantly snotty middle-aged punks covering Sex Pistols songs in a grotty basement bar. It's tempting to suggest that this unsavoury image couldn't be further removed from the reality:...

Review posted on 16th March 2011

Tallulah Rendall - Alive

Tallulah Rendall - Alive

Tallulah Rendall's new album comes packaged with a gigantic hardback book. The book features pictures of a series of works of art inspired by her music. There's a good deal of impressionistic painting, some elaborate...

Review posted on 16th March 2011

The Low Anthem - Smart Flesh

The Low Anthem - Smart Flesh

The Low Anthem's last album, 2008's Oh My God, Charlie Darwin was a strange record notable for its abrupt stylistic shifts. It sounded like it had been recorded by two completely different groups, one of...

Review posted on 16th March 2011

The Death Set - Michel Poiccard

The Death Set - Michel Poiccard

'I wanna take this tape, and blow up ya fuckin' stereo!'. Michel Poiccard's opening track is five seconds long, and consists entirely of a band member growling those words. It's a statement of intent, and...

Review posted on 10th February 2011

Hercules and Love Affair - Blue Songs

Hercules and Love Affair - Blue Songs

A few years ago, whilst working in an especially depressing call centre, I was subjected to a staff training day. Amidst the myriad absurdities, in amongst the management-speak and exercises in which my colleagues and...

Review posted on 10th February 2011

Miles Kane - Come Closer

Miles Kane - Come Closer

This new single by Miles Kane, who was formerly a member of The Rascals and the non-famous half of The Last Shadow Puppets, openly embraces one of contemporary British indie's trademark features, the wordless call-and-response...

Review posted on 10th February 2011

Oh No Oh My - People Problems

Oh No Oh My - People Problems

Travis Morrison, the frontman with influential indie types The Dismemberment Plan, once gave an entertaining interview in which he attributed his band's transition from confrontational punk oddballs into mature rockers to a tale a friend...

Review posted on 10th February 2011

The Phoenix Foundation - Buffalo

The Phoenix Foundation - Buffalo

It would be extremely simplistic to suggest that the sound of New Zealand's indie music has evolved as a reaction to the aggressively macho streak in antipodean culture, but there's probably a grain of truth...

Review posted on 10th February 2011

REM - Uberlin

REM - Uberlin

Every REM album since 1994's disappointing Monster has been described by one critic or another as a 'return to form'. Personally, I'm not convinced that the band are capable of making another album as good...

Review posted on 10th February 2011

REM

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Leisure Festival - Dreamland in Margate

Leisure Festival - Dreamland in Margate

On the same day that Glastonbury welcomed back Margate's adopted sons, The Libertines, Margate itself put on it's very own Leisure Festival as it...

Pretty Fierce talk to us about collaborating with Doja Cat, emetophobia, arena tours and staying

Pretty Fierce talk to us about collaborating with Doja Cat, emetophobia, arena tours and staying "true to yourself" [EXCLUSIVE]

Sheffield's very own all girl group Pretty Fierce are still on a high after the recent release of their debut single - 'Ready For Me'.

Will Varley & Jack Valero - The Astor Theatre Deal Live Review

Will Varley & Jack Valero - The Astor Theatre Deal Live Review

Three nights before the end of his current tour Will Varley returned to his home town of Deal to delight a sold out crowd in The Astor Theatre.

WYSE talks to us about her

WYSE talks to us about her "form of synaesthesia", collaborating with Radiohead's Thom York and the prospect of touring with a band [EXCLUSIVE]

With only a few days to go before Portsmouth based songstress and producer WYSE releases her new single, 'Belladonna', we caught up with her to find...

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Bay Bryan talks to us about being a

Bay Bryan talks to us about being a "wee queer ginger", singing with Laura Marling and being inspired by Matilda [EXCLUSIVE]

Colorado raised, Glasgow educated and Manchester based Bay Bryan is nothing if not a multi-talented, multi-faceted artist performing as both...

Keelan X talks to us about staying true to

Keelan X talks to us about staying true to "your creative vision", collaborating with Giorgio Moroder and being "a yoga nut" [EXCLUSIVE]

Former Marigolds band member Keelan Cunningham has rediscovered his love of music with his new solo project Keelan X.

Luke De-Sciscio talks to us about having the courage to be yourself, forgiving that which is outside of one's control and following whims [EXCLUSIVE]

Luke De-Sciscio talks to us about having the courage to be yourself, forgiving that which is outside of one's control and following whims [EXCLUSIVE]

Wiltshire singer-songwriter Luke De Sciscio, formally known as Folk Boy, is set to release is latest album - 'The Banquet' via AntiFragile Music on...

Annie Elise talks to us about the challenges a female producer has to face and

Annie Elise talks to us about the challenges a female producer has to face and "going through a year of grief and sickness" [EXCLUSIVE]

Electronic music pioneer and producer Annie Elise says that the release of her first EP - 'Breathe In, Breathe Out' feels "both vulnerable and...

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