The Nightingales – No Love Lost - April 2012 April 22nd, 2012

Three consistently contrary decades in, The Nightingales ought to enjoy the sustainably farmed cult status of The Fall; both bands’ last orders philosopher front-men work from similar Karutrock-abilly blueprints, The Nightingales’ more carefully drafted. With his pint pot spyglass, Robert Lloyd leads a crew of grizzled original ‘gales and talented young people into some typically…

Various – Time To Go, The Southern Psychedelic Moment : 1981 – 1986 - April 2012 April 22nd, 2012

The no-budget brilliance of the Eighties New Zealand indie-scene inspired a generation of post-punks, from Pavement to My Bloody Valentine, to stop worrying and splash some sloppy psychedelic Spector-style spillages on their reactionary rockist riffs. Bruce Russel’s insider overview avoids regularly anthologised standards to create a secret mirror history of the DIY decade, from the…

Opposite Sex – Opposite Sex - April 2012 April 15th, 2012

Opposite Sex are a curiously modern proposition, eschewing any especially contemporary musical wave, but nibbling omnivorously the rock and pop detritus on the verges of the information superhighway. Once alternative artists were archaeologists, channeling forgotten styles from deleted vinyl. Now all sounds are easily available to plunder. Opposite Sex’s debut’s opener, Le Rat, has the…

Lee Hazlewood – The LHI Years : Singles, Nudes & Backsides (1968 – 71) - April 2012 April 15th, 2012

You’ll know Hazlewood from the hits he penned for Nancy Sinatra, including These Boots Were Made For Walking. But this collection of lost singles reveals a great pop auteur, who constructed for himself a versatile degenerate cowboy poet character, equal parts Johnny Cash and Paul Verlaine. As usual, Hazlewood plays opposite a string of angelically…

Peter Brotzmann, Steve Noble & John Edwards – … The Worse The Better - April 2012 April 12th, 2012

In an East London side street, Café Oto hosts a program of international experimental sounds to shame subsidised arts temples, drawing demographic defying crowds of all ages through its doors. The first release on the venue’s own label, available as authentic vinyl slab or slippery download, is a forty minute splurge of sax, drums and…

Alasdair Roberts & Mairir Morrison – Urstan - March 2012 March 25th, 2012

Roberts’ six solo albums seamlessly incorporated traditional elements into timeless songs. But today he’s a full-blown folklorist, compiling the rare Scottish field recordings collection Whaur The Pig Gaed On The Spree, and issuing these Gaelic tunes with the Hebridean singer Mairir Morrison. An initially serious tone suggests diaphanously gowned highland visionaries in dimly lit Seventies…