The Woodbine & Ivy Band – The Woodbine & Ivy Band - February 2012 February 1st, 2012

Peter Philipson, guitarist of the missed Starless And Bible Black, leads a Manchester collective through a superb set of traditional British songs, played in a pedal steel laden early Seventies West Coast style, with guest vocalists from folk’s fringes. Jenny McCormick walks the primrose path of The Wicker Man’s satanically seductive Gently Johnny; Elle Osborne’s…

The Azusa Plane – Where The Sands Turn To Gold - February 2012 February 1st, 2012

Jason DiEmilio committed suicide in 2006, his death hastened by tinnitus and painful sensitivity to sound. It’s assumed his conditions resulted from the atonal, high volume, feedback drones he wrenched from his guitar as The Azusa Plane, but DiEmilio’s music always sounded like someone trying to block something out with clouds of vibrating bliss. Here’s…

Darren Hayman – January Songs - January 2012 January 29th, 2012

Darren Hayman, a former John Peel favorite adept at addictive indie-jangles and precise writerly nuggets, has released thirty-one tracks, written and recorded at the rate of one a day throughout last January. The double CD is stripped of the tang of arrogance by Hayman’s obvious talent, and relative low-profile. Sleeve notes paint the punishing project…

Wolf People – Tidings - January 2012 January 29th, 2012

Wolf People satiate our lust for more of the acid-folk, hard rock hybrids of their 2010 debut Steeple with a stopgap CD of off-cuts, sequenced around found sound snatches to play like it was planned. Funky fusion rhythms Pentangle might have plied rub against nose drone trad-ish tunes, rehabilitated rock flute, and tumbling quicksilver twin…

Various Artists – Still Going On In Offices - January 2012 January 22nd, 2012

The slovenly combo’s pictured on this vinyl compilation look like rabid bedsit theorists from the early eighties DIY scene, but only three of the eleven tracks date from the era, including The Passionate Winemakers’ snotty strum Disintegrating Jellyfish. New recordings indicate the spirit still spurts. Electricity In Our Homes’ Here I Am is limply upbeat;…

Full Blast And Friends – Sketches And Ballads - January 2012 January 22nd, 2012

Two saxophone stars, the doughty German Peter Brötzmann and the Chicago attack dog Ken Vandermark, feature in an augmented Full Blast trio, their presence usually signifying relentless pulverisation ahead. But the percussionist Michael Wertmuller has written a score, shadowing Gil Evans’ arrangements for Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain, and fusing jazz composition and noisy improvisation.…