alternative
Album: Dave Okumu and the Seven Generations - I Came from LoveFriday, 14 April 2023
It’s hard to think of an album that’s simultaneously as dramatic and as restrained as this. But then Dave Okumu has always put his music and ideas out into the world in the subtlest of ways.As a guitarist he’s been omnipresent for many years,... Read more... |
Album: Aksak Maboul - Une aventure de VV (Songspiel)Thursday, 02 March 2023
One of the greatest things a musical artist can achieve is world building. That is, creating a distinctive type of environment, language and coordinates for everything they do such that the listener is forced to come into the musical world, and to... Read more... |
Album: Kali Uchis - Red Moon in VenusWednesday, 01 March 2023
Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis knocked it out of the park with the vibrant, eclectic global pop of debut Isolation, one of the best albums of 2018.Since then, she's gained career traction via guest appearances with Gorillaz, Little Dragon, Mac... Read more... |
Album: Deathprod - CompositionsThursday, 26 January 2023
Ambient is everywhere now. After a quiet (lol) 2000s, when it rather disappeared into the cracks, perhaps tarred with the sense that the more cosmic sides of the Nineties rave experience were passé, beatless music steadily rose in profile through... Read more... |
Album: Låpsley - Cautionary Tales of YouthWednesday, 25 January 2023
Let me start by being pretentious and self-referential, spending ages doing that rather than reviewing the album. My theory is that most male music journalists aged between 45-65, like me, don’t PROPERLY love the music of 21st century female pop... Read more... |
Trans Musicales Festival 2022 review - vibrant eclecticism rules in RennesTuesday, 13 December 2022
It’s Friday night and I’ve finally arrived at 43-year-old French music festival institution Trans Musicales. Due to some dreadful nonsense, it’s taken a 12-hour train journey, two baguettes, one short Stephen King novel, six large beers, a tumbler... Read more... |
Album: White Lung - PremonitionThursday, 01 December 2022
In 2016’s abrasive album opener, "Dead Weight", frontwoman Mish Barber-Way laments over multiple miscarriages as her biological clock ticks away like a malevolent metronome.How much has changed in the last six years, then, and none more so than for... Read more... |
Album: Weyes Blood - And in the Darkness, Hearts AglowFriday, 25 November 2022
There’s been a quiet storm of critical approval building around Weyes Blood. American singer Natalie Mering has been releasing music for over a decade but, during the last two or three years a tailwind of positive verbiage has blown her faster... Read more... |
Working Men's Club, Chalk, Brighton review - untrammelled, noisy and grim-facedThursday, 24 November 2022
The chorus to Working Men’s Club’s song “Money is Mine” usually runs, “Endless depression, it’s time/Suicide is yours when the money is mine.” Presented as the penultimate song of their set, frontman Syd Minksy-Sargeant distils this. Grim-faced, his... Read more... |
Album: Christeene - Midnite Fukk TrainFriday, 18 November 2022
Christeene is not so much a musical entity, as a performative assault, an artist who pushes drag somewhere visceral, caustic, wilfully edgy and defiantly unpolished. The creation of New York-based, Louisiana-raised Paul Soileau, her videos and shows... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 73: Sandy Denny, Plastic Mermaids, Orbital, Speedy Wunderground, The Snuts, The Kinks and moreWednesday, 09 November 2022
After an unavoidable delay theartsdesk on Vinyl returns with over 9000 words on new and recent releases, ranging across the entire spectrum of known music. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHEdrix Puzzle Coming of the Moon Dogs (On the Corner)Nathan Curran... Read more... |
Other Voices Cardigan review - a celebration of music on the cuspTuesday, 08 November 2022
Other Voices is, according to its founder Philip King, a festival which celebrates what’s about to happen. Indeed, artists like Hozier, Fontaines DC and Amy Winehouse cut their teeth at this unique musical event which, although it has its home in... Read more... |
