Ruins – Pure at Heart (Album Review)
Ruins are a Liverpudlian alternative pop-duo who create emotive soundscapes with rock-steady drum machines, gentle guitars, and falsetto vocals. Vocalist Lloyd Rock has a dulcet and high-pitched voice, and when coupled with the sometimes bizarre music of Nik Kavanagh, Ruins create a highly distinctive sound. There is a calming gushContinue Reading
Saun Santipreecha – Dandelye (Album Review)
LA-based Thai musician Saun Santipreecha knows about dichotomies. His recent album “Dandelye” juxtaposes surreal ambient soundscapes with mysterious musical structures across six tracks of sprawling scope. Dandelye is an anglicized form of the Thai word for ‘dandelion’, a flower seen as a weed in LA but rare in Santipreecha’s native Thailand. ThisContinue Reading
Single Reviews: 3 July 2022: Ultraflex, Foreign Television, Public Circuit, BADVRIL, Gemma Rogers
Photo by Andrea Ch Ultraflex – Mi Vuoi Uplifting trance Ultraflex are an enigmatic trance duo from Germany, and their recent single “Mi Vuoi” is a deep and hypnotic fusion of ambient pop, jazz, and EDM. This track is teeming with skill and talent; from the changing rhythms and aceContinue Reading
Radagast the Brown – The More They Tell Me About You, The Less I Believe Them (Album Review)
Radagast the Brown is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium, but also the moniker of ambient composer and producer Ezekiel James Hampton from Napa, California. The godfather of ambient music, Brian Eno, once described that genre as being “as ignorable as it is interesting.”, yet theContinue Reading
Fantømex – Terraformed (EP Review)
Elon Musk wants to terraform Mars. He says this is to ensure the future survival of humanity but is there a better example of a ‘God complex’? Being responsible for creating literal worlds and the artificial manipulation of planets is a fascinating concept, but it exposes the darker ambitions ofContinue Reading
Le Days – Stuck In My Head (Album Review)
Le Days is the moniker of Swedish experimental musician Daniel Hedin, and his visceral new album “Stuck In My Head (Alternate Recordings)” takes the listener to the depths of his dark and troubled soul by way of abstractly constructed music-cum-performance art. Most tracks here are reinterpretations of songs which originally surfaced onContinue Reading
Jack Goldstein – The World Is Ending and I Love U (Album Review)
War in Ukraine, inflation, rising temperatures, and a widening political divide between left and right. One has many reasons to feel an apocalyptic dread when considering our outlook. On “The World Is Ending And I Love U”, Margate-based musician Jack Goldstein hosts a cast of collaborators to create a remarkablyContinue Reading
The Birthday Letters – Yearning for Vitalists (Album Review)
Vitalism is a belief that living things and non-living things are fundamentally different. Living things have souls, or what vitalists call “élan vital”. It sounds harmless, but according to Dr William F. Williams, it forms the basis for pseudoscientific medical practices that claim many health problems are caused by imbalancesContinue Reading
Errunhrd – You Can Be You, I Can Be Me (Album Review)
Errunhrd is a dream-pop project by Canadian multi-instrumentalist producer Shirin Ghoujalou. Her most recent album, “You Can Be You, I Can Be Me”, is an atmosphere-heavy collection of eleven fully formed ambient pop tracks built on a foundation of beats and washed-out synths that allow Ghoujalou’s euphonious vocals to intrigue withContinue Reading
Single Reviews: 23 June 2022: Quade, Gurf, Play Dead, Zueva, Sigmund Faust
Photo by Athena Quade – Spiral art rock A single in two parts, “Spiral” by Bristol four-piece art-rock outfit Quade is a mysterious musical endeavour, combining post-rock, neoclassical, and spoken word. The tense mood builds and is released by mourning strings and shifts in rhythms, but the sinister feeling itContinue Reading