Chancellorpink is one-man band Ray McLaughlin, who also handles production, marketing & putting the cat out at night! He’s been recording under the moniker for four years and self-released an album every year since. Sadly, having become disillusioned by the whole industry, he’s calling it a day, but not before putting out a couple of [...]
Fang Island describe their aesthetic as “everyone high-fiving everyone,” and on their wildly infectious second album, the Brooklyn rockers take manic musicianship and shoutalong choruses to another level– even with only a couple of verses and choruses. Fang Island is fractured like any post-punk record while also speaking the language of classic rock, yet often [...]
This San Francisco baroque-pop group’s second album is a homecoming of sorts, as it finds the Morning Benders embracing a more coastal, kaleidoscopic California sound. It also finds them embracing the cavernous experiments of Grizzly Bear, whose Chris Taylor shares a co-production credit. His studio presence is all over Big Echo. From warped music-hall strings to hymn-like, soft-focus [...]
Noise-makers and pedal-lovers Ceremony from Fredericksburg, Virginia, are releasing a new album on Killer Pimp, hopefully in April. I was waiting for an email from Safranin Sound about this, but apparently the band got a new label now and so I totally missed the release of a single earlier this year. This is great news indeed, [...]
For a band known for switching gears from track to track and album to album, Sisterworld is the most thoroughly Liars-sounding record so far. It has the rhythmic insistence of Drum’s Not Dead, the sleepwalking chants of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, and the straightforward songwriting of Liars, often sounding like a streamlined update [...]
Forget the cartoon characters. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s animated misfits have always been mainly interesting as a concept, and on much of the third Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach, it feels like Albarn and co. are ditching the idea of writing pop songs a cartoon band might front anyway. The one-time Blur frontman has transcended some [...]
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have risen to fame in the past year, and deservedly so. I’ve been watching them ever since they landed on my doorstep in snowy Iceland in 2008 and I helped arrange a one-off gig for a crowd of measly 30 or so people. I remember one reporter not bothering [...]
I guess there are two ways a shoegaze band can go these days. Mix it up with electronica as the likes of M83, Perfect Blue, Ulrich Schnauss etc have done to great effect or party like it’s 1988 encompassing the sounds of the era and the scene that celebrated itself. Whirl, on the evidence of [...]
The German producer Hendrik Weber’s follow-up to This Bliss is big and dense with the kind of detail that rewards close attention. Weber is unlike most minimal techno producers in that he doesn’t look to locate one groove and ride it for the course of a track. His songs open up, unfurl, and regularly change [...]
The full-length follow-up to Ys is no less ambitious, but this 3xLP set also has some of the most inviting and accessible songs of Newsom’s career. While songs here evoke moments of Ys and Milk-Eyed and Newsom’s harp is still the dominant musical focus, it’s striking how much Have One on Me feels like its [...]
Today seems to be the day long lost videos resurface! This one is by The Trudy for their single Oh! from a few years back which they claim they found down the back of the sofa. The band headline our free show at Rota next month which we co-host with Oddbox Records. Details here. My [...]
Local Natives have a familiar sound– rustic vocals, harmonies, clattering percussion– but songwriting skill and youthful energy mark their striking debut. Advance singles “Airplanes” and “Sun Hands” recalled elements of Dodos or the Fleet Foxes, but the best comparison perhaps is that they’re sort of a West Coast Grizzly Bear– right down to naming an [...]
Odd Box Records teams up with Indie-MP3 for a free afternoon of indiepop at RoTa in Notting Hill. Playing the afternoon are: The Trudy The Wednesday Club The Sequins The Gresham Flyers It starts at 4pm. Finishes by 8pm. And it’s free to get in. Guest DJ – Rocker from Dandelion Radio. ___________________________________________________ More info [...]
After a 2006 album created in collaboration with Air and Jarvis Cocker, Charlotte Gainsbourg returns with a surprisingly great LP written and produced by Beck. The nods to psych rock, junkyard blues, half-rap cadences, and ghostly ballads won’t shock anyone generally familiar with Beck’s oeuvre, but Gainsbourg’s versatile and vulnerable vocals add a depth missing [...]
Ever since Hot Chip started as indie kids seemingly dabbling in classic soul and modern R&B, they’ve been underestimated. Delivering lines about “20-inch rims” and “Yo La Tengo” in a proper English accent, as they did on their 2005 debut, can have that effect. Yet on their two subsequent records– 2006′s The Warning and 2008′s [...]
Ah, as the release date for A Winter of Mixed Drinks fast approaches (March 1st) we’re being treated to yet more Frightened Rabbit goodness. Â The band have released the album track Fun Stuff for fans to download, and… (in post Yet more Frightened Rabbit shenanigans… from Eaten by Monsters. Download this at eMusic iTunes)
Swedish electropop duo Lo-Fi-Fnk take their time between releases, but when they put something out, like 2008’s straggler single “Want U” (which can be heard on JeffMix2009.03.28 ) or 2006’s “Wake Up” (from their only proper album Boylife… (in post Song of the Week: Lo-Fi-Fnk march on from JeffreyGeoffreyBlog. )
Kraftwerk – Tanzmusik (1973) wellrespected : Ralf und Florian is such a fascinating transitional album to listen to, in that it so distinctly serves as a bridge between the heterodox experiments of Kraftwerk’s first two self-titled albums and… (in post Kraftwerk – Tanzmusik (1973)wellrespected: from A Post Punk Tumblr. )
März 26, 2010