Feature: "Classically Strained" (The Sunday Times)

Classical Music: it's the preserve of the older generation, right? Wrong. "What’s happening now... would have been unthinkable to generations who grew up annoying their Mozart-loving parents by playing rock’n’roll loud." The Sunday Times' Culture magazine allowed me to explore the world of neo-classical music, chatting with the likes of Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm and Valgeir Sigurðsson. Erased Tapes were kind enough to jump the paywall and post the story here.

Feature: "Classically Strained" (The Sunday Times)

Album Review: Ensemble's 'Excerpts' (BBC Music)

How I wish the revelation that Olivier Alary sings like Red House Painter's Mark Kozolek had struck me earlier. Still, I did my best to nail this intriguing album here, where I highlight that "he has an ear for the experimental, but he’s not afraid of sweetening the pill with a haunting melody or two". Which, I hope you'll agree, is fair enough...

Album Review: Ensemble's 'Excerpts' (BBC Music)

Feature: "Slow Music Berlin" (Slow Travel Berlin)

"One thing that always helps us unwind at Slow Travel Berlin is music." So here's a collection of Berlin associated music that suits the Slow Life. Settle in, now...

Feature: "Slow Music Berlin" (Slow Travel Berlin)

Live Review: "Not The Archandroid We're Looking For: Janelle Monae Live" (The Quietus)

After "the kind of coverage normally reserved for drug-addled models with absent minds when it comes to underwear", it was my turn to check out Janelle Monae, and I even got to take pictures of her doing shadow puppets, while The Quietus editors got to indulge their Star Wars fixation in the headline. Yep: it's all right here.

Live Review: "Not The Archandroid We're Looking For: Janelle Monae Live" (The Quietus)

Feature: "Dialogue Berlin" (Slow Travel Berlin)

Living abroad is all very well, but sometimes you seek the comforts of your homeland, and Sharmaine Lovegrove's Dialogue Books aims to provide English language books to people in Germany, while simultaneously helping to cultivate a literary scene in Berlin. I talked to her for Slow Travel Berlin.


here

Feature: "Dialogue Berlin" (Slow Travel Berlin)

Feature: "Let's Dance. No, Thank You" (Electronic Beats)

I'm not much of a dancer. "When someone invites me to go clubbing, I shudder and break out in cold sweats. This might seem odd, but until you’ve been questioned about epilepsy whilst freaking out to Prince, or have reached for a non-existent hand when attempting an archaic prance, you cannot understand my fear." Electronic Beats asked me to elaborate. Click the pic to find out more.

Feature: "Let's Dance. No, Thank You" (Electronic Beats)

Album Review: Codes In The Clouds - As The Spirit Wanes (Uncut)

3/5
Dramatic instrumentals from Dartford

Though novelty’s in short supply on this quintet’s second album, intensity and commitment are not. Mining the same seam of cinematic post-rock as Mogwai and Explosions In The Sky, they specialise in delicate guitar-focussed passages that bloom and explode with a primitive, dramatic beauty. Recorded in only five days, much of it displays a welcome sense of urgency as well as a lack of pomp, with ‘Look Back, Look Up’ as close as the genre gets to pop. Perhaps due to its mastering by labelmate and pianist Nils Frahm, there’s also a gratifying eye for detail in their arrangements.

Album Review: Codes In The Clouds - As The Spirit Wanes (Uncut)

Album Review: Beat Milk Jugs - 10 Years Of Hangovers (Uncut)

3/5
Preposterously named electronic indie from Latvia

Originally from Daugavpils but now based in the UK, Beat Milk Jugs have travelled equally far into the past for musical inspiration. ‘Dvina’ opens with a ghostly Russian voice, but it’s soon lost amidst fierce ‘Firestarter’ programmed drums, while ‘Not My Day’ finds common ground between New Order and Ride, lazy Bernard Sumner-esque vocals drawled over an increasingly tense bed of shiny guitars. ‘7th Street’ offers raw guitars and a bizarre vocal sample concerning sausages, and elsewhere hints of Underworld, Nine Inch Nails and, oddly, Fourtet can be found within this unsophisticated but often pleasingly ferocious malevolence.

Album Review: Beat Milk Jugs - 10 Years Of Hangovers (Uncut)

Album Review: Jesus & Mary Chain's 'Upside Down - The Best Of' (BBC Music)

"To declare, as this CD’s artwork does, that East Kilbride’s The Jesus and Mary Chain are "arguably the last great British rock’n’roll band" is almost as provocative as the music with which they kicked off their career..."

And so begins my review of this retrospective of the legendary Scottish Reid brothers' career. Read it all here.

Album Review: Jesus & Mary Chain's 'Upside Down - The Best Of' (BBC Music)

Feature: "Let The Red Rag Fly" (The Quietus)

"It's hard to divorce music from its creators, and if 'Picture Book' is judged in the light of Mick Hucknall's subsequent slide into serial-shagging champagne socialist capable of disgusting even the coffee table owning, tabloid reading masses who buy his records then it's unlikely that it's going to get a fair hearing."

Still, never one to shirk my responsibilities, here's a defence of Simply Red's debut album, the politically charged and desperately underrated 'Picture Book'...

Feature: "Let The Red Rag Fly" (The Quietus)

Feature: "Musical Minimalist" (Slow Travel Berlin)

Berlin's always been known to foster an impressive musical scene, but until recently it's been largely focussed on electronic music. Now there's a new breed of avant garde musicians making a name for themselves, and Erased Tapes' and Bella Union's Peter Broderick is one of them. I spoke to him for Slow Travel Berlin..

Feature: "Musical Minimalist" (Slow Travel Berlin)

Feature: "Video Nasties" (JMag)

It was M.I.A.'s 'Born Free' that highlighted just how the new breed of music videos tries to get our attention, something I already looked at for Intelligent Life. Australia's JMag asked me to investigate the new phenomenon of Music Video Nasties a little further. Click the pic to read more...

"If you want your band to be seen, break a few taboos with your next video clip..."

Feature: "Video Nasties" (JMag)