In her eighth studio album, Polly Harvey has taken a significantly different route from any of her previous works. There is little resemblance to the grunge of her first releases, nor is there any likeness to the sparse piano and breathy vocals of her last album, White Chalk. Instead, Harvey has done what it seems [...]
The award winning Glasgow based music festival was back again this January, bigger and better than ever. The cross-genre, multi-venue extravaganza showcased a little bit of everything, from hot new talent (Rachel Sermanni) to guitar legends (Richard Thompson), folk heroes (Sharon Shannon) to Indie giants (The Walkmen). With so many fantastic evenings of music you [...]
Nick Biggs talks with Iron & Wine about religious influence, film professorship and the joys of collaboration. Over the last decade Sam Beam (or Iron & Wine, as he is better known) has become well known for writing songs about love, recording on a shoe-string, and his distinctive, melodic guitar picking. His new release, entitled [...]
Jean-Xavier Boucherat chats with Ben Chansy, aka Six Organs of Admittance. As might have been mentioned, we’re big fans of inane genre tags. The uselessly vague Freak-Folk label started getting thrown around in self-absorbed magazines around about the turn of the century and since then has repeatedly failed to encapsulate an abundance of interesting sounds, [...]
My flatmate said something really clever not so long ago, which was, there is really just too much music. He’s almost certainly right. Musicians and producers the world over should really take a year out and let everyone catch up. I can just see lovers the world over locking themselves up in cheap hotel rooms, [...]
I wearied of the term dubstep far quicker than I imagined I would, and as such I instantaneously grew weary of the term post-dubstep. As the year begins to shape up, and various music polls tip their tainted hats towards ‘new’ artists that have been recording and releasing music for a considerable time longer than published, [...]
Here is a band fairly much surrounded by hype. Upon listening to their debut album however, it would appear that it is well deserved. Violet Cries is a stunningly theatrical work, yet one that never approaches melodrama, full of eerie echoes and ghostly vocals. Opening track Argyria starts delicately, barely there at all. A distant [...]
The drug-and-alcohol-free Dylan Carlson has released more than enough material to suggest he might be looking for a broader place in history than the doom-drone pioneer from nineties Seattle, who took his cue from the Melvins and hung out with Kurt Cobain a lot. He’s doing a good job – this is a distinctly ambient, [...]
Jean-Xavier Boucherat talks with Wolves in the Throne Room about Soil, Shamans, and Huxley. Listen – this is just a student newspaper. We don’t have the time or resources to even begin to understand how scenes originally created with the intention of alienating just about everyone can gain worldwide appeal. So let’s start making some [...]
Nick Biggs examines Atlas Sound’s latest offering, available free @ deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com Prolificacy is not an issue for Bradford Cox. A quick scan over the recording dates for this four volume demo set is an intimidating exposition of an unusually active mind – 49 songs recorded in just a few afternoons at his home this Autumn. [...]
