Various Artists – Trojan Presents Dub, 40 Deep And Heavy Hits - July 2011 July 17th, 2011

Trojan’s catalogue of reggae classics re-emerges in another series of compilations, now under the ‘Trojan Presents’ banner. This re-packaging process has been ongoing for over a decade, but this latest petit dejeuner de dog is a doozy. In the Seventies, Jamaican engineers with an instinctive understanding of sonic drama stripped existing recordings of distinguishing features,…

Dennis Hopper Choppers – Be Ready - July 2011 July 10th, 2011

An English musician sits on the outskirts of the Spanish desert town of Tabernas, where Italians shot American cowboy movies on now abandoned sets, and concocts a widescreen country rock record influenced by the mariachi hued soundtracks bashed out to accompany them. Scott Walker only sang themes to two Spaghetti westerns, Joe Hill and The…

Advisory Circle, The – As The Crow Flies - July 2011 July 10th, 2011

On this exceptional album’s inner sleeve, a sixties bypass bisects a prehistoric earthwork, and the folklorist Ronald Hutton discusses seasonal rites. Within, a set of tuneful, tonal, slices of clean and cold electronica hums with post-war optimism, warped by echoes of the transcendentally bland music that underscored Seventies architects’ pitches for concrete car parks. The…

Jolie Holland and The Grand Chandeliers – Pint Of Blood - June 2011 June 26th, 2011

On her 2003 debut Catalpa, Jolie Holland’s simplistic guitar and mellifluous vocal suggested she’d just wandered down from some Appalachian peak. Eight years later her fifth album’s opener All Those Girls chugs out in a more standard country rock milieu and her voice has dropped a few octaves. Holland still sings, delightfully, like she’s chewing…

The Waterboys – In A Special Place, The Piano Demos for This Is The Sea - June 2011 June 26th, 2011

To escape ‘The Big Music’, The Waterboys’ bombastic mix of Gnostic Christianity and Dylanesque drama, Mike Scott turned to folk for 1988’s Fisherman’s Blues. But Scott had claimed Steve Reich’s serial minimalism influenced 1985’s era defining album This Is The Sea, and these solo piano demos duly reveal him beating out percussive, unembellished two chord…

The Blue Aeroplanes – Anti-Gravity - June 2011 June 26th, 2011

It’s three decades since Gerard Langley first spieled professorial poetry over various combos of match-fit musicians, crafting kinetic explosions of mid-‘70s New York art-punk in the Avon delta. The Blue Aeroplanes are heavier on their feet these days, but more muscular than before, and feature Rita Lynch as Langley’s newfound vocal foil. Where once they…