Soft Pink Truth – Why Do The Heathen Rage - June 2014 June 22nd, 2014

After ten years studying Shakespeare, electronica guru Drew Daniel returns to exorcise childhood daemons. Daniel’s teenage fandom of Black Metal – the Scandinavian thrash hybrid sometimes, but not exclusively, inspired by Satanism and Nazism – sits awkwardly with his gay adult self. Selections from Darkthrone, Mayhem and friends are re-imagined as plausible and sinuous ’90s…

Various Artists – C86 Deluxe 3 CD Edition - June 2014 June 15th, 2014

In 1986 the NME’s annual cassette overview of the indie scene, C86, sold 40 000 copies and christened a genre. Blamed for crystalising an unfairly derided fuzzy guitar pop – with tracks by The Wedding Present, The Soup Dragons and the infant Primal Scream – it also pushed aspirational arty noise like The Wolfhounds and…

Drarsoncarsonalbion – Gold - June 2014 June 15th, 2014

In the ’90s Dylan Carson’s Earth played glacially slow metal under the influence of Sabbath, holy minimalism and, if we’re honest, heroin. In the noughties, a rehabilitated Carson refitted a still unflinchingly slow Earth with classy strings and early Fairport folk rock flavours. Alone with distorted electric guitar as Drcarsonablbion, now he’s staked out sunblind…

Bonnie Dobson – Take Me For A Walk In The Morning Dew - June 2014 June 8th, 2014

Seventy-four year old Dobson’s comeback sounds, astonishingly, just like the ’60s Greenwich village folk rock records that made her name, but better. She sings high and lonesome, apparently immune to ageing. A British band of alt-country all stars, playing like The Byrds dropping by on a day off, deliver a definitive reading of her signature…

Bo Ningen – DaDaDa - June 2014 June 1st, 2014

London-based Japanese ex-pats Bo Ningen’s early releases stitched Detroit flavored psychedelic guitar jams (a national musical obsession) into Sonic Youth style No Wave noise grooves, vivid with uncontrolled spillage. Their third album is more calculated, deploying the clean modern pop elements that countrymen Melt Banana and Boris also assimilate. Whilst some spontaneity is sacrificed, Slider’s…

Various Artists – Sombras : Spanish Post-Punk and Dark Pop 1981-86 - May 2014 May 25th, 2014

While bands elsewhere moaned melodramatically about the fascist state, in 1981 Spaniards fumbled out of an actual dictatorship in the wake of a failed coup. The forty two bands presented in this landmark survey of Spanish post-punk, dubbed the ‘siniestro’ sound, took shelter in big hair and a spiky solipsism, heavily indebted to the jagged…