Minnesota-born, Wisconsin-raised, New Jersey-based drummer Matt Slocum favors a low-key style that, seeming bashful at times, it’s far from being uncommunicative. His solid chops and thoughtful markings are always conducted in aid of the collective, often bringing out the best on his bandmates, which, in the present case, is the old pal and frequent associate, pianist Gerald Clayton, and ingenious bassist Larry Grenadier, who records for the very first time with the drummer.
The 10-track Sanctuary marks his fifth release as a leader and features all original compositions, except “Romulus”, a song composed by multi-instrumentalist Sufjan Stevens, where the mellifluous brushwork maintains the pressure low. Originally a 3/4 indie pop song with…
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…Recorded in the first two months of 1975 at Rockfield studios (with some sessions also taking place at SARM studios in London), Futurama was the second album by Be Bop Deluxe and the first to feature the line-up of Bill Nelson (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Charlie Tumahai (bass, vocals) and Simon Fox (drums). Produced by Roy Thomas Baker (who at the time was also working with Queen), Futurama was an album of immense musical inventiveness and creativity and was a huge leap forward in creative terms for Bill Nelson.
The album gained much praise thanks to Nelson’s composition skills and his highly innovative guitar playing. Featuring such wonderful material as ‘Maid in Heaven’, ‘Sister Seagull’, ‘Music in Dreamland’, ‘Sound Track’, ‘Between the Worlds’,…
That Jimmy Barnes is at his best when he is being himself would seem to be a statement of the obvious. Except that his career sales suggest it is not a truth universally held. His solo breakthrough and enduring moniker, Working Class Man, was a collection of American cliches which might have failed a Bon Jovi test (“blue denim in his veins”; “He did his time in Vietnam, still mad at Uncle Sam”); and his late-career highs were a couple of soul covers albums which were deep in his wheelhouse of influences but have been covered by a million other singers. Barnes has done very well indeed working someone else’s patch.
But is it really about the lyrics? Yes, and no. Not a prolific, nor a particularly driven songwriter, Barnes’ weakest albums have not necessarily…
The sound of walking in a Mexican canyon transforms into the distinct beat of the heart, distant chants, sticks, stones, and the whistle of blowing wind: The Peyote Dance, a new album by Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith, produced in collaboration with Leonardo Heiblum and Nicolas Becker, out via Bella Union, is a soundtrack of elements that invites us to explore a sacred space. The album takes as its starting point Antonin Artaud’s book “The Peyote Dance”, a work inspired by his revelatory experiences with the Rarámuri in 1936, and is being announced 4th March, to mark the anniversary of Artaud’s death.
The Peyote Dance is the first in a triptych of albums to be released by Bella Union over the next year titled The Perfect Vision, which take…
Since the late ’80s, Jamaican dub innovator Lee “Scratch” Perry has sporadically collaborated with British producer Adrian Sherwood, whose truly jarring, rule-breaking sound is a clear descendent of Perry’s. Rainford (Perry’s legal birth name) follows sometimes underacknowledged albums such as From the Secret Laboratory, in addition to Perry’s guest appearances on records by Dub Syndicate and Sherwood’s collaborations with dubstep pioneer Pinch. Both artists are in fine form on Rainford, with Perry delivering his inimitable brand of playful, free-associative verse and Sherwood twisting trippy rhythms around him. The crushed funk dub of “Cricket on the Moon” serves as a bed for Perry’s manic growls and alien observations. More dramatic and…
In the late spring of 1968, after years spent making his mark within the Jamaican music industry as an artist and jobbing producer, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry unveiled his own Upsetter Records label. Over the months that immediately followed, his exceptional talent was repeatedly reinforced with the release a series of popular 7” singles, the most successful was his ground-breaking hit, People Funny Boy.
By the summer of ’68, the recently launched Trojan Records had acquired exclusive rights to Perry’s productions, issuing the best of his work on the company’s flagship label, prior to creating a British version of his Upsetter imprint, early the following year. This deluxe 7” box set collection gathers faithful reproductions of the first ten 45s that showcased his work in the UK, each…
Canadian country-folk singer-songwriter and frontman of Blue Rodeo, Jim Cuddy is set to ease you into the warmer months with his latest album, Countrywide Soul. Recorded live on the top floor of Cuddy’s barn, Countrywide Soul is intended to be as “natural as possible” to keep the “woody sound of the barn board room.” It consists of 12 songs, including two new ones, a few covers and some re-worked material from his solo albums as well as from Blue Rodeo.
“When I was choosing songs for the record I tried to find those in which I could change the mood and tone or songs that I felt had been underdeveloped on previous records,” Cuddy said in the release.
“All in Time,” a remake of his 1998 solo album’s title track, opens Countrywide Soul…
Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan is set to release a live album with the contemporary-classical orchestra, s t a r g a z e, led by the revered German conductor Andre de Ridder. The collabora-tion – which sees Hannigan’s sparse, ethereal folk transformed into something cinematic and transfixing – has been taken to select festivals across Europe, and most recently graced the stages of London’s Barbican and Dublin’s National Concert Hall.
Thankfully for those yet to experience the mesmeric live show, their recent performance at the NCH in October last year is set for release in the shape of Live In Dublin, a discography-spanning 14-track live album, which also includes new track, ‘Bookmark’. This live record follows…
Craft Recordings has announced the next phase of its campaign to honor one of the great labels of soul – Stax Records.
…Fifty years ago, the iconic imprint was in a rebuilding period after ending their relationship with Atlantic Records. Effectively left as an independent with no back catalogue, the label had to be rebuilt. Stax’s execs were tirelessly focused on creating new and vital music to reassert their position as a formidable home for soul music. In just a few months during 1969, Stax and its artists released a staggering 27 albums and 30 singles during what’s been called the “Soul Explosion,” which is also the name of a 1969 compilation that Craft will reissue as part of a wide-reaching campaign. During this period, Stax…
‘Buntús Rince’ translates from Irish as ‘basic rhythms’, and this new compilation explores how Irish musicians were influenced by strands of different genres of music from around the world, merging them to create their own unique sounds. The compilation features some of the most innovative and talented figures in the history of Irish music and includes rare Irish jazz, fusion and folk outliers from the 1970s and early 1980s from musicians relatively unknown outside of Ireland.
Often regarded as a musical backwater, the 1970s finally saw Ireland begin to make its mark on international music. The nature of this feat is all the more commendable, considering how isolated and conservative the country still was in the middle of the last century. The emergence of acts…
After a five-year hiatus, British trip-hop pioneers Morcheeba return with a new album Blaze Away.
Their ninth album should please Morcheeba fans. Take the song “Find Another Way”, for example. It rolls in like a haunted breeze, an acoustic/twangy combination preceding front-woman Skye Edwards, one of the sweetest-sounding vocalists in pop, and she still has it. Tarred with the brush of being the bland dinner-party face of 1990s trip hop, due to their easy way with a pop song, there was always more to Morcheeba than many credited. “The Sea”, “Part of the Process”, “Trigger Hippy”, “What New York Couples Fight About” and others are simply delicious songs. The happy news is that Blaze Away has a good few more.
The band have gone through various…
Eighty years on from their very first release – Paddy Bryan’s The Man That Waters The Workers’ Beer – Topic Records, the world’s oldest independent label, celebrates its fascinating history with the announcement of the double-disc compilation Vision & Revision: The First 80 Years of Topic Records.
Once nicknamed the ‘Little Red Label’, Topic’s socialist leanings and early origins in the Workers’ Music Association quickly set it apart in the company’s early days. Much like Moses Asch’s Folkways Records, their recording output defied racial barriers, held communist ties and proudly played a key role in the international peace movement. However, it wasn’t until the post-war boom of the 60s, after gaining financial…
You won´t get your jazz much more grooving or rocking than Elephant9 on a stage. Already established as a vital live favourite on the Norwegian scene before their debut album “Dodovoodoo” in 2008, it was time to properly document this live force after five studio albums. Hence Psychedelic Backfire I and II.
Recorded in front of enthusiastic crowds during a four day residency at the intimate Kampen Bistro in Oslo, “Psychedelic Backfire I” shows the trio in full flight while guest guitarist Reine Fiske is a vital presence on “Psychedelic Backfire II”. Reine has previously proved a perfect guest for the trio, both on record and on stage. Never one to fight for attention, with Elephant9 he´s a true equal given the opportunity to express himself both…
Pittsburgh four-piece The Gotobeds‘ new album Debt Begins at 30 is their idea of a punk/indie rock equivalent of a trap mixtape, featuring guests on every track. Those include Protomartyr’s Joe Casey on the fierce “Slang Words,” his bandmate Greg Ahee, who contributes atmospheric guitar on the introspective “On Loan,” and Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich who brings his spirited voice to the sharp “Dross.” There’s also Silkworm guitarist Tim Midyett on the anthemic “Parallel,” Tracy Wilson of Positive No contributes to the very catchy and Pavement-y “Twin Cities,” and there are two different versions of the title track — one featuring Bob Weston of Shellac/Mission of Burma, and a Spanish language version with Victoria Ruiz of Downtown Boys.
Music snobs tend to deride the pop song as non-art; throwaway and unimaginative. To some, the notion of the perfect pop song is an ultimately doomed ambition. Yet it’s deceptively complex, and – particularly in a modern context – surprisingly difficult to get right. You could argue that it’s the easiest thing in the world to make experimental music, for instance, but it takes a special kind of artistry to write an enduring, 3-minute pop song.
Amsterdam’s Pip Blom is an anomaly because melody comes naturally to her. Every song on Boat is exemplary of how guitar pop can prevail. It’s pop music with conviction: it’s subtly clever, at times indignant, often vulnerable, and always ballsy. Blom’s lyrics – while very occasionally tarnished by the usual indie pop…
Ambient musician Matthew Cooper’s work as Eluvium grew to become some of the more emotionally charged and cinematic of its type. As Cooper developed away from the long-format guitar drones of his earliest work, he’d include more nods to classical music as well as flirting with a mix of electronic and organic sounds, giving his ambient instrumentals more of a post-rock feel than that of more opaque soundscapes. Early in his discography, Cooper released 2004’s An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death, an album made up entirely of minimal solo piano compositions. While piano has played a major role in many subsequent Eluvium recordings, Pianoworks is the first of Cooper’s output since then that’s strictly solo piano. The 13 tracks here are spare,…
Lost River is an evocative post-ambient, richly textured sonic event, and one of the outstanding beyond-category recordings of recent ECM history. Drummer Michele Rabbia and guitarist Eivind Aarset had played many duo concerts, and Rabbia had also worked with trombonist Gianluca Petrella in other contexts, but this recording marks a premiere for the trio. Spontaneously improvised for the most part, and with mysterious detail flowering inside its soundscapes, Lost River keeps revealing new forms.
Rabbia’s drumming is freely creative and propulsive, and enhanced through his use of electronics. Aarset’s flowing playing will delight listeners who have enjoyed his…
Under the name Sinkane, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Ahmed Gallab has spent over a decade steadily building up a catalog that explores more than anything else his dueling affinities for ’70s funk and Aro-pop.
Complemented by veins of indie rock, jazz, psych, and reggae, his work has trended toward the biographical and at times, the philosophical. Raised for the most part in the U.S., his narrative bears the complexities of immigration; an African Muslim in origin, he was born in London, lived his early childhood in Sudan, and at the age of five settled with his family in the American Midwest. More so than on any of his previous Sinkane releases, 2019’s Dépaysé delves deeply into Gallab’s personal experience as an immigrant in…
Richard Hawley’s eighth solo album, Further is, like so many of his previous discs, a masterclass in good taste and relaxed easy listening vibes – but it’s one which manages to steer well clear of the middle of the road. In fact, there’s much here that is reminiscent of that other cool Northerner in a suit, Barry Adamson, who spent a fair few albums wrestling the Easy Listening genre from the ’70s cardigan-wearing hell of Val Doonican and his pals. For much of Further, Hawley is on a similar track with a groove that suggests Roy Orbison fronting Phil Spector’s famous Wall of Sound.
Further actually kicks off with the garage rocking “Off of My Mind”, where Hawley takes things by the scruff of the neck with squalling guitars and a purposeful thump and doesn’t let go…
Run Around the Sun has to be one of most apt album titles in years for how, in a short phrase, it perfectly encapsulates the tempo, rhythm and mood of the music it gives its name too.
The second record from Rachel Aggs and Eilidh Rodgers, Glasgow-based duo Sacred Paws, is an unrelenting, fast-paced doubling down on its energetic predecessor Strike a Match. Cartwheeling bass, carnival drums and intensely hooky Afrobeat guitars transport you to one of those blissful, sunny days in the park that Glasgow is crowned with way too rarely, but always manages to cocoon you from even your most worrisome of problems.
Jaunting and jangling, Run Around the Sun barely stops for a breather, making the Caribbean, Vampire Weekend melange of…
