When buying an album with anything to do from the world of dance music, it rsquo;s often hard to imagine how it will be pulled off live, but thankfully Basement Jaxx are able to ditch the idea of two blokes standing behind some laptops and instead deliver a performance that shows they ve put both thought and effort into how it will be presented live. Walking into the arena, it was pretty much expected that there rsquo;d be a huge set-up at the back for the Basement Jaxx to stand and do their thing.
Surprisingly, there was an array of electric guitars, acoustic guitars, drums, bongos and a brass section! It looked as if all the songs that Basement Jaxx were going to perform would be stripped down from their traditional electronic roots and reconstructed using apparent real instruments.
Posted in on December 8th, 2006 |
The birds have provided inspiration for several things, from aeroplanes to Shakespearean plays to rubbish Alfred Hitchcock movies; but now they re also the root of a kickass little album by alarmingly gifted saxophonist and composer Andy Sheppard.
If you ve never heard of Andy Sheppard, chances are you ll have heard his stuff - Andy Sheppard has provided scores for BBC documentaries and worked with performers as diverse as Massive Attack, Fela Kuti, Eric Clapton, The New York Dolls, Gil Evans, Elvis Costello and the mighty Ringo Starr. And now Andy Sheppard has come up with The Birds - a staggering album inspired by birdsong that from tranquil contemplative pieces to flat-out dancehall groovers and all the way back again. The Birds by Andy Sheppard is something special, and we re going to let you listen to some of it after the jump.
Posted in , on December 4th, 2006 |
And who s to argue with that? In fact, most Welsh bands that sing in English are pretty lousy too.
Catatonia. The Stereophonics. The Manic Street Preachers.
We could go on, but we d just depress ourselves. And when Welsh bands do decide to sing in Welsh the result tends to be the same trad bollocks, just accompanied by the noise of a man who appears to be choking on a pair of shoelaces.
And there we were, happy with our alarmingly xenophobic opinions, until Dan Y Cownter 2 landed on our desk.
Now we ve changed our minds. Welsh bands don t suck, we ve decided. Some of them are pretty bloody godidog.
Posted in on December 1st, 2006 |
And the fourth day, the fourth day may very well have been the most important day of all, because that was the day He helped And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead record their latest album So Divided. Or at least that s what we got out of Genesis. So few bands know how to infuse the raucus with melody that when one happens upon us, we stand before it dumbfounded and smiling.
So it is with Trail Of Dead and their album So Divided. On the next page we ll give you a valuable play by play detailing all the album s highlights.
But you d have figured those out for yourself now, wouldn t you have?
Posted in on November 17th, 2006 |
A year ago we were sent a painfully hip compilation album that sounded as if it was entirely created by a squad of self-regarding Nathan Barleys who somehow managed to turn on the electroclash preset button on their Bontempi synthesisers despite their heads being firmly lodged up their arseholes - except one song; Giddy Stratospheres by The Long Blondes.
Since then we ve been anticipating the debut album by The Long Blondes with a sort of terrified excitement; obviously we wanted to hear more but surely - surely - they wouldn t be able to live up to the hype or be able to reach the same heights as Giddy Stratospheres. Well, Someone To Drive You Home - the long-awaited album by The Long Blondes is out on Monday and it s full of songs that blow Giddy Stratospheres clean out of the water. Excited yet?
Posted in on November 3rd, 2006 |
Chances are that if you head down to HMV and browse through the Compilations section you ll be battered about the head with a 3.
99 12CD Ibiza Anthems box set or brain-numbing twaddle like Housework Music. Housework Music. For fuck s sake.
Compilation albums shouldn t be like that. Instead of forcing you to wear out the skip button on your CD player, they should pick you up and slap you in the mouth over and over again with songs you ve never heard but can t imagine being without after hearing them for the first time. Gareth Cherrystones Goddard is well aware of this, and his new Cherrystones Word compilation does exactly that.
As far as getting your lost psych garage proto-punk kicks go, Cherrystones Word is hands down the best compilation album released this year.
Posted in on October 27th, 2006 |
Usually when we go to gigs and review them we like to give a good detailed account of what happened, so you can get a pretty good feel about the event. However, just this once we re going to bypass all that and just sum up the entire Lily Allen live experience in one word:
Shit.
Posted in on October 24th, 2006 |
As if loading up the review copies of new album Songs From The Lodge with so much encryption that our computers seize up the instant we try to play it on them wasn t bad enough, New Rhodes then hilariously leave the first 30 seconds of Songs From The Lodge opener You ve Given Me Something That I Can t Give Back silent so that we a) turn the volume up as loud as we can and b) lean in really close straining our ears so that when the song eventually does burst screaming from the speakers we almost fall backwards off our chairs in shock. So New Rhodes unanimously deserve a slap for making listening to Songs From The Lodge an uphill struggle to start with, but what about the actual music itself?
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