Showing 310 results for: Album Reviews Archive
Bitch Magnet – Bitch Magnet - December 2011 December 4th, 2011
The Ohio trio Bitch Magnet, named with knowing naughtiness back in a lamentably lost PC world, recorded from 1988 to 1990, and in that two year period plied hardcore punk with a whole new palette of post-rock possibilities. Here’s everything you need on three discs, in advance of two belated British dates next week. Escape…
Derek Bailey, John Butcher & Gino Robair – Scrutables - December 2011 December 4th, 2011
Six years since his death, instant composition’s original zen master has been busy in absence as usual, with a reissue of his superb 1983 solo Concert In Miwaukee, some newfound 1972 recordings of the Iskra 1903 trio, and this previously unheard late period gem, scratched out in Stockwell in 2000. The Yorkshire yogi plays electric…
Matthew Sweet – Modern Art - November 2011 November 27th, 2011
Nearly thirty years back Matthew Sweet formed the short-lived Commuity Trolls with REM’s Michael Stipe. Two decades ago his third album, Girlfriend, set a rarely bettered benchmark for jangly guitar power-pop craftsmanship. Sweet’s striven in its shadow since, to slowly diminishing returns, like some latter-day Brian Wilson, pursuing phantom pop perfection in a sandpit full…
Don Gere – Werewolves On Wheels - November 2011 November 27th, 2011
In 1988, Savage Pencil’s superb compilation Angel Dust alerted collector nerds to hidden caches of Biker Movie Soundtrack albums, and battered copies of Satan’s Sadists, The Wild Angels, and Hell’s Angels on Wheels, bristling with gasoline surf guitars and hack psychedelic travelogue tunes, were swiftly snaffled. The 1971 lycanthropy-biker flick Werewolves On Wheels lack an…
Alan Wilkinson – Practice - November 2011 November 20th, 2011
The future of British free improvisation is safe in the hands of modestly monumental musicians like Alan Wilkinson, captured here alone and virtually naked, blowing his horn unaccompanied in a disused Dalston hospital. A stately and stark take on Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman shows sceptics Wilkinson can carry a tune should he wish to, and…
Barrel – Gratuitous Abuse - November 2011 November 20th, 2011
Alison Blunt, Ivor Kallin, and Hannah Marshall spontaneously score three lengthy pieces, and a short spasm, for violin, viola and cello. Barrel’s music, they admit, involves a lot of scraping. Initially, the trio’s genetic make up means it’s difficult to for the listener to peer through the shadow of the classical tradition or the minimalist…