Aubades by Jean-Michel Blais (Album Review)
Quebecois neoclassical composer Jean-Michel Blais has been releasing his own brand of piano-focused instrumental music since his much-acclaimed debut Il came out in 2016. His third album, aubades, sees the composer rearrange over five hundred separate improvised piano pieces into an eleven-track mission statement on the beauty of spontaneity and the importance of aContinue Reading
Interview: heka
heka is a 28 year old Italian artist based in London. She caught my ear last month with the astoundingly gorgeous single ‘no-one’, and I wanted to know more about this somewhat elusive musician. You’re from Italy but now based in London. Was a career in music your motivationContinue Reading
Henry Earnest – Dream River (Album Review)
Irish muso Henry Earnest has been operating on the outskirts of the Irish music scene for several years now. As part of the Dublin collective knowns as Herzog TV, Earnest (who globetrots between Lisbon and Tokyo) has been gradually maturing from his bowl cut days to a fully fledged artist,Continue Reading
How I Learnt To Disengage From The Pack by Ben McElroy (Album Review)
Nottingham based musician Ben McElroy has been making waves with his latest album How I Learnt To Disengage From The Pack, and for good reason; it doesn’t take long for its gentle finger stylings and emotive string work to hit you. Based on pagan themes of mid-winter harvests, the albumContinue Reading
Single Reviews: February 3rd 2022: Softcult, Heka & GG Skips, Rolling Blackouts CF, No Monster Club, Maria BC
Photo by kevin laminto Gaslight – Softcult indie rock/pop Gaslight from Softcult’s new EP Year of the Snake balances itself precariously on the line between pop and indie rock. With top-quality production and an obvious knack for melody, the inoffensive track is a joy to listen to. Textured drums keepContinue Reading
Gilboa – Quiet Sweet Nothings (Album Review)
If home-produced, rough-around-the-edges indie-pop is your bag, then Quiet Safe Nothings by Gilboa could be right up your ally. For those who appreciate melody and intention over execution, tracks like opener ‘Quiet’ and ‘Away’ will please the most, while my personal favourite ‘Song in Open D’ will find fans with listeners who value honesty and vulnerability in theirContinue Reading
Single Reviews: January 27th 2022: The Lost Days, Rokia Koné, Dalila Kayros, Gabriel Kahan, Julian Zyklus
Photo by Alex Plesovskich In the Fade – The Lost Days folk In the Fade, the most recent single from Californian folkies The Lost Days, is a wholesome affair marked by heavily strummed acoustic guitar, loose tambourine, understated vocals, and sliding bass licks. The girl/boy harmonization of the vocals create aContinue Reading
nocny – mayforest (Album Review)
The recent explosion of ambient music is making it hard to weed the great from the good (all music is good, objectively). Thankfully many resources exist as necessary sieves, one such is the always trustable A Closer Listen. A recent perusal of their site led me to stumble upon nocny, a ‘heavilyContinue Reading
Tongues – Tanya Tagaq (Album Review)
A riveting experiment at the intersection of spoken word, performance art, and electronica, Tongues by Tanya Tagaq is an absorbing, challenging, and often uncomfortable listening experience. The imagery throughout the album is fiercely somatic, using the metaphor of tongue removal as a symbol of language and culture loss at the hands ofContinue Reading
What Does It Mean To Be American? – Robert Stillman (Album Review)
Robert Stillman is an American experimental jazz practitioner currently based in the United Kingdom. This transplant of continents has led the artist to some self-reflection on the philosophy of nationality on What Does It Mean To Be American? Sprawling opener Cherry Ocean is a brooding piano-based piece, Stillman’s velvety vocals resting atop the sporadicContinue Reading