Here’s a nice track from the duo Midwife (Madeline Johnston (of Sister Grotto) and guitarist Tucker Theodore.) It’s a lovely unfurling drone-pop track that has shades of Cocteau Twins and the ambient, dreamier moments of Mogwai. The song creeps along at a funereal pace, shrouded in gauzy haze of distortion before the fog clears to reveal fragments of effected and intertwined guitars, like fading sonic … Continue reading NEW MUSIC: Midwife – Angel
Press play and the first thing you’ll hear on the new Low album is the equivalent of a digital sandstorm. Slowly but surely, out of the static and sonic scree comes the voice of Alan Sparhawk, sounding like a ghost trying with all his might to re-engage with the physical world. It’s a fascinating way to open an album; a new approach for Low and … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Low – Double Negative
Though Old Faith are only releasing their debut LP, the post-rock quartet have previously released a couple of EPs under another name. This finds them realising a sound that harkens back to the golden era of post rock when bands such as Mogwai, Isis, Pelican and Tortoise were regularly releasing music that wove epic dynamics, hypnotic guitar-led incantations through sonic peaks and valleys. For more … Continue reading NEW MUSIC: Old Faith – Landing
New music today from musician and songwriter Loomis who hails from New Orleans. There are some great moody, gauzy textures going on in this song ‘Deep’ that remind me of New Zealand band JPS Experience filtered through Chicago post-rock. The circular nature of the way he arranges the instrumentation is great on this track. You can check out his album Shark Water on Spotify and … Continue reading NEW MUSIC: Loomis – Deep
For Stuart Staples, he of the silken croon out front of UK moodists Tindersticks, it’s been 13 years since his last solo album, Leaving Songs. That record was comfortably in the same musical orbit as Tindersticks – baroque, jazz-informed and dramatic songs placed somewhere between latter day Talk Talk, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. In the intervening years he’s continued to work on film soundtracks which … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Stuart A. Staples – Arrhythmia
Low have a new album called Double Negative coming out via Sub Pop Records on September 14th and today the label has shared a clip featuring videos for three of its songs – ‘Quorum’, ‘Dancing And Blood’ and ‘Fly’. Working again with producer B.J. Burton, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk and bassist Steve Garrington returned once again to Justin Vernon’s April Base studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin … Continue reading NEW MUSIC: Low Share Three New Songs from ‘Double Negative’.
Ryley Walker is a restless musical soul, constantly shapeshifting and looking for new ways to present his avant jazz/folk guitar songs. Over his first three solo albums he travelled from Tim Buckley/Van Morrison/Nick Drake traditional folk to the songs that, three years ago, explored more eclectic and contemporary territory on Golden Sings That Have Been Sung. On Deafman Glance he continues that work, taking further … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Ryley Walker – Deafman Glance
Sydney slowcore dream rock trio Roadhouses have released their second single from their forthcoming self-titled debut LP. Pre-order Roadhouses ‘Black Lights’ is an atmospheric piece of late-night, wistful psychedelia with Cec Condon’s drumming recalling Portishead and Yvonne Moxham delivering a beautifully melancholic vocal. Sweet sadness never sounded so good. Continue reading NEW MUSIC: Roadhouses – Black Lights
It’s been seven years since the last solo album from Jamie Hutchings. In the interim he’s busied himself with 2 noisy rock records with Infinity Broke and the wonderful Down The Unmarked Road, the result of his collaboration with Peter Fenton of Crow. Now he returns to the solitude of the self with the intimate, graceful and poetic Bedsit. This is a sparser and more … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Jamie Hutchings – Bedsit
If there’s one thing that Ben Salter (The Gin Club, The Wilson Pickers) always appears to do, it’s to back himself. This time he’s even gone so far as to name his new solo album Back Yourself, and in the spirit of impromptu creativity and capturing songs on the fly he took a new and challenging approach to the writing and recording of the album. … Continue reading INTERVIEW: Ben Salter
Boris are now 25 years into a career that has stretched from the barren expanse of doom to hazy dream pop renderings and onto avant garde soundscapes and blistering, psychedelic punk rock. They hone in on a style and explore it to its logical extreme. On Dear they again hit the heavy button but this time they go deep into the detail, exploring both heaviosity … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: Boris – Dear
Jamie Hutchings (Bluebottle Kiss, Infinity Broke) and Peter Fenton (Crow) have come together as The Tall Grass, which began as a live acoustic duo project before being expanded upon and sonically coloured in the studio with a wide-ranging band sound. It’s still on the laid-back vibe though – wistful, poetic, and melancholic. The sound of their other bands is still evident, particularly Hutchings with his more … Continue reading ALBUM REVIEW: The Tall Grass – Down The Unmarked Road
Doubtful Sounds 