 |
archive: record reviews | click sleeve for detail
|
death from above 1979 romantic rights | november 2004
now known as death from above 1979 the hairy duo unleash a grating track unto the world. guitar distortion dance music, with the power to have you trashing around your kitchen. or cowering grabbing your ears in discomfort, depending on your predicament. personally, i love it. |
josh doyle the end of fear ep | november 2004
the first to be heard from josh in a very long time, his new solo work wanders onto untrodden territory. 5 tracks to make you think about your life, this record wants to hold your hand. pretty, comforting & nice: you might just find you like it. |
kaiser chiefs i predict a riot | november 2004
catchy, bouncy & with silly lyrics, kaiser chiefs' first major release gets the toes tapping & suddenly the title makes complete sense. a disappointing b-side, but nice use of tambourine makes up for it. that & the "repeat track" button. we eagerly await the album... |
pellumair iris | november 2004
the delicate & ambient sounding duo release their first single on rough trade's tugboat records. a perfect purchase for those suffering from ...insomnia. with it's calming & soothing properties, perhaps jaymie & tom should have considered titling the release "lavender" rather than iris? |
delays lost in a melody/wanderlust | november 2004
previously unreleased track lost in a melody is delays' poppiest effort so far. the throbbing disco beat & sing-a-long-ability of the chorus vigourous "runrunrunrun! ... lost in a melody" makes for a jolly fun time. on the other hand, the calypso wonderment of album track wanderlust ensures that should you be unable to catch a plane to some paradise, at least you can close your eyes & let them transport you there through the power of melody. beautiful. |
the black velvets get on your life | november 2004
stalking onto the music scene with debut single "get on your life", the black velvets reintroduce the classic rock sound of led zeppelin & ac/dc (as you'll find should you read practically any review of them), with magnetic riffs ready to pounce on the unsuspecting public like a starved panther with an attitude problem. |
the hundred handed on parade ep | december 2004
the five track ep, with it's somewhat understated artwork says a lot about the band; it would seem that some people have struggled to pick up on the hundred handed's tones & rejoice in their glory, but when you peak through the many layers the consequences are amazing, like being the only person able to open a glass sweet jar... you know the ones. opening track a question of etiquette gallops & twists leaving you onlooking attempting to catch up with the manic & rhythmic jaunts of the band, expressed with the feverish veracity of a bad dream, yet maintaining an air of dignity that the gents possess at all times. a bleak fanfare introduces the following track, x=y, which launches into a leg shaking combination of drums & guitar lines before falling into bluesy bass led section, rushing back to the leg shaking, & ending with guitars sounding more morse code than melodic. then along comes we decline: short, sharp & ballsy, and, neglecting the statement of "we decline" in the lyrics, sounds as if is most definitly rushing up a hill to kill you. yes, kill you. HUH! it's big & brash, but with a niggling edgy tragicness laying below. the tempo slows with a lazy complaint a favourite of mine live, if purely for the almost reggae bassline. the mood is sombre, with sad lyrics such as "your heroes are dead or they are in disgrace", yet ultimately the track is postive "open your tired eyes", and never dull as interest comes constantly from all elements of the band, something the hundred handed appear to do very easily, but then, they do have 3 guitars... finally, in walks the ghost of billy bray, begining with soft drums & develops into nearly five minutes of meandering narrative, sometimes delicate & pretty, & sometimes whailing & sour, seemingly about taking the role of the religious cornish figure. as a whole, the songs gently & easily move onto one another, which perhaps means there is no reviting dynamic between tracks, but with each song presenting new themes to occupy the mind, it's easy to be destracted from the last as the next comes along. i prefer to think of it as five songs on one ep, rather than an ep of five songs. or rhubarb & custards; i like them too. hundredhanded.com back to top |
the wandering step christmas at my house | december 2004
ahhh, lovely... a quirky upbeat christmas sound, from the twinkley sleigh bells, soft vocal tones (not unlike swedes [ingenting] if you've had the pleasure of hearing them at all - but in english), & rockabilly dance beat combined with lyrics most everybody can relate to this track is yuletide excellence. go download it while you still can. thank you the wandering step for the lovely present *smiles* xx. |
glodie lookin chain you knows i loves you baby | december 2004
com.ee.dee. you know the score by now surely? this time the glc take it down and get sexy. well, as sexy as you can get being several chav lads from newport...
give this to someone for christmas if you want them to think you're an idiot. |
manic street preachers empty souls | december 2004
thankfully, the follow up to the awful the love of richard nixon from ye olde welshies the manic street preachers, empty souls is a gorgeous track, of delicacy & optimistic tragedy, and yet with the same vulnerability as there by the grace of god, this time there is perhaps a bit more encouragement that there is more life in them yet. it's lovely, lets hope the next single from album life blood is another good one. |
gary go so so... ep | january 2005
the four tracks are all lush & beautiful in the style of the london writer, musician, co-producer, making for a rounded and what feels like a very honest collection of songs.
i need your time is the most upbeat track on the ep, swingy & bouncy, cleverly worded, & rhythmic with a exhuberant use of time changes, the opening track is thriving with layers of melody and texture, most proinantly that of gary's warm yet raspy vocals.
so so follows like poetry set upon music. the track is solumn & delicate, but builds into a great full song with sweeping swaying strings, and a repeated guitar hook. so so gently falls back and the good one's always go is next.
a track which i find slightly unsettling due to the erie piano chords that start the track. the air of the song is reflective, whilst at the same time it writhes itself into what feels like a state of panic.
the final song on the ep, speak is one of my favourites. seeing gary go live has left the lyrics ressonating in my head long after the gig has ceased. gary states he's "not got a words with way", softly & calmly meandering along, until we read the end of the song... everything comes down to gary's voice & a piano "i must be crazy to be me" ... gary go may be feeling so so, but is ep certainly is not. it's beautiful, & stunning & i am thrilled to possess a piece of work as exciting as this! i may sound like an ass kisser, but no, really, go and see this musician. |
interpol evil | january 2005
this song has a killer bassline. possibly the strongest song from the album antics [perhaps commercially anyway] paul banks sings of an affair. there are moments of artistic lyrics that stand out as espeically good when sung in banks' almost monotone voice. it's spikey & dangerous & careless at the same time. fuck me, evil is good. |
kasabian cutt off | january 2005
another kasabian single... cutt off tells like a story, about a scientist, called john... the guitars sound twisted, & the bass line is theatrically creepy, but you'd never guess, because you really don't need to pay attention to understand this band. this isn't the usual energetic thrashing of a single, with which kasabian have done so well releasing so far, instead it's more like a laid back oservation, whilst still easily identifiable as the leicester band due to the combination of ballsy vocals from tom meighan & sine-y vintage synths. oh, and the video has retro cars & a flying shark. oh yes! |
thirteen senses thru the glass | january 2005
this was thirteen senses first single, & i thought it was brilliant. & then what happened with their follow ups? well they're re-releasing thru the glass, because it is brilliant, so maybe the second time will bring them more luck. |
athlete wires | january 2005
a beautiful and touching song, wires tells of singer joel's newborn, thankfully avoiding the usual cliche moments of baby speak. instead the song is dignified & lyrical, and a gorgeous piece of work. there's the same athlete "vibe" as with tracks from the vehecals & animals album, but this time more personal & poigniont. the artwork isn't bad either |
hal what a lovely dance | january 2005
the very irish hal bring out their second single from their forthcoming album, sugary sweet like cakes your grammee used to make. what a lovely dance is cute & happy, & a little bit country sounding, having owwowing guitars with david's impressive soaring vocals. & backed by the just lovely original version of debut single worry 'bout the wind, i reccomend it served with a nice cup of cocoa. |
samm hung i love the leader | january 2005
sammo hung were chirpy, gorgeous, frantic, punky, clever, exciting, insane and catchier than they should have been. the single and its b-sides sound like they were inspired out of some six-dimensional reality where guitars play more spikily depending on the angles at which you hold them to each other, and god knows how but it makes sense. "you, me, and reason can get together" insists jemma roper on the minute-and-a-half popspasm second track "in a fit of something", as if reason is something alien to the dynamic between them and you. and she's right.
i wouldn't normally insist that you buy something but since it's your *last chance* to find out if you like them or not... buy it! i insist! [you can buy it via links on the website] - wes white |
the beat up black rays defence | mega issue
01 black rays defence what's greasy, distored, smells of crayons & is woollen? |
bloc party silent alarm | mega issue
01 like eating glass when i first heard bloc party, i was convinced they were a dance band. there is evidence of this suspicion all over the place on this album, & i'd go out on a limb & say this is due to matt's intense drumming style, but nowhere is this dance notion more evident than on she's hearing voices, which is actually my favourite track on the album. (chooooooooooon!) however, unless you're looking for it, bloc party disguise their influences by using them to create something new every time, laced together track by track with kele's desperate crying out vocals. they're artrock, post-rock, dance, shoe gazing, britpop ecletic brilliance, & somehow they've made it all work. not only that, they've made it appeal to practically everyone in the uk, ever*. as you go through the album, song by song, each one stands out as something exceptional in some way, from the up tempo groove-a-thons in the form of banquet & luno for example, to the delicate preciousness of slower tracks blue light, this modern love & awe aching single so here we are. themed with love, politics & cosmopolitana, silent alarm could provide a cross section to life as we know it for so many, and this makes the album special in a way a lot of albums or even bands at the moment aren't. my only discomfort with the album (aside from the exclusion of "little thoughts") is that it does slow down significantly towards the end, after starting so fast which leaves me feeling like after thirteen songs there's still something incomplete about the collection, though it wouldn't surprise me if this was somethign as pretentious as a deliberatly decaying lifespan. um, no. whether the album stands the test of time or not remains to be seen; it has moments that will always be way up there in the gods, but mainly i hope that bloc party continue to be exciting & different. * taken from ruth moog's book of speculation blocparty.com back to top |
death from above 1979 you're a woman, i'm a machine | mega issue
your congenial host-of-bellyache, ruth of moog, was going to review this album, but she gave up and asked me to do it because every time she tried, she just ended up writing "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh". it's not hard to see why. every time i put "you're a woman..." on, the walls turn candy pink and jesse and sebastien from death from above 1979 appear in the room. not the actual human ones you see when you see them play live, but the monochrome ones you see on their album cover and in their marketing. you know, the ones with little elephant trunks. yep. those ones. as if that wasn't enough to freak you out on its own, then they push me on the floor, gag me, tie my wrists and ankles, and start doing this really weird kind of dance, nodding and shaking their heads and throwing unconvincing robot poses - they've got good rhythm though. last time, to avoid getting tied up, i tried removing anything remotely rope-like from the room before i hit "play", but they just used strands of their own black hair. it was thick and strong like wire. after a little bit of this idiot-dancing, they'll take anything they can find in the room and start bashing it against one of the pink walls. they really go at it hard, and i always think whatever they're using - the tv, a hammer, a copy of the complete works of jorge luis borges - is going to break, but they keep going and instead it's the wall that gives way. it's thrilling when that starts to happen because i know what happens next. as the wall starts to crumble, they start using their hands and feet and trunks, tearing and kicking and ripping the substance of the wall to make a huge gaping hole in it. when the hole gets big enough you can see that on the other side, it isn't the garden or the kitchen or next door or whatever any more, it's a great big black expanse of space with stars hanging in it. they keep going until the whole wall has gone and we're faced with this awesome view of the cosmos. and we're rushing through it, in the pink room, at a hundred thousand miles an hour, going left and right and up and down and around as the stars and their planets swoop towards us. trunk-jesse and trunk-sebastian stand facing the open wall, stood as if they're on surfboards or skateboards or those hoverboards you see in back to the future 2 or the thing the green goblin uses in spiderman. and they're crouching and moving with the turns we take through space, although it's not clear if we're really going where we are because they're controlling it, or if they just like to pretend they are because it's fun. and on the way we always come along these sexy alien women who are swimming in space, you know, like the cartoon women in the daft punk cartoon video, only sexier, and not cartoons, and they swim right into the room and start dancing to the music, while the trunk-death from above 1979ers surf the room into them like sonic the hedgehog picking up stars. it fills up with dancing women and i'm still left there gagged on the floor, watching. they pretty much ignore me. anyway it's only 35 minutes long so it's not the end of the world, but all those shenanigans sure do make it hard to review. er, yeh, that was brought to you by wes white who is clearly insane - ruth moog deathfromabove1979.com back to top |
redjetson new general catalogue | mega issue
01 divorce to listen to new general catalogue, it's hard to believe that it is a debut album. judging by the collection of song titles, essex six piece redjetson appear not to be the most optimistic of bands, but despite the apparent pessimism they've produced what is quite an amazing, challenging & intelligent album. their sound is well established through rhythm, punctuation & guitar work (that's three guitars, there), as well as involving string & brass arrangements, & the crystallite delicate tones of the glockenspiel. it is huge from the very beginning ebbs of divorce, to the intense finale of pieces go missing, & between these, an erray of understated ideas are easily followed up with vast, moving sound scapes. a number of the songs are quite morose, & there's definitely a sense of reflection presented in the album, however they're not all dark clouds & rain; songs like "stay comfortable" in their arrangement are a lot more hopeful sounding & inspiring, & as with "this city moans" is one of the examples where the writing is more led by melody than other tracks on the album. there is a great diversity in how the songs are carried through despite each song having a very natural rhythm... & a often clear fondness for 3|4. instrumental "new europe"'s gentle trumpet is warm over a pretty acoustic guitar, but this only makes the arrival of following track "a reptile, cold blood" more chilling. although maybe with a band like redjetson, you'd expect them to sound contrived & pretentious, through their moments of grandeur & cleverness, their songs are absolutely led by emotion & flow perfectly. the band leaves me absolutely passionate about their album: it is beautiful, imaginative & touching... & this is before i've even begun to scratch the surface. immense. redjetson.co.uk back to top |
duke raoul duke raoul [ep] | mega issue
01 aesthetics duke raoul's ep opens in style with one of the more melodic songs of the five tracks. aesthetics clocks in at nearly 5 minutes, & opens as a skewering explosive beginning to a congregation of songs post-rock in style, yet without being so complex & removed they cannot be understood & enjoyed without having to re-listen over & over again. having said that, this is one of those cds where with each track you want to play it over & over and in doing so you discover something new each time; that guitar part just gets better, the bass becomes more & more involving, the percussive accents are increasingly thriving. the bass then takes us through dubby, an instrumental where the ideas laid out at the beginning are thrown up & neatly placed back together for what overall is a pretty & relaxing four minutes and twenty seconds, & brings us all too soon to the final track fade to nothing, vocally the most brash & diverse of the five tracks. duke raoul's use of rhythm & timing i feel is one of their strongest features, as throughout their ep, the riffs & melodic sections throw off each other & wind up in the same place leaving your mind to wander in & out of the lines they lay down, but what i like most about them is their sophisticated & intelligent sound which balances perfectly with the passion & closeness you can hear in their music. duke raoul feel so good to listen to, that the disc just has to get played one more time... dukeraoul.com back to top |
kaiser chiefs employment | mega issue
01 everyday i love you less & less arhhhh, the pop is back! the Kaiser chiefs are here to shun the dodgy boy and girl bands of the last decade, & carefully waggle their fingers as they prepare to show us how it?s supposed to be done, in yorkshire at least. kaiserchiefs.com back to top |
rank deluxe rank deluxe ep | mega issue
01 style i don't care! what a way to kick it off, "style" is four mintutes of jerky fun, & the obligatory introduction to the south east london four piece, who have taken thamesmead's clockwork orange heritage & run away with it as if it's their own; catch them if you can, the cheeky soundrels. if you don't work yourself into a state of frenzy over the energetic bounces of style, put the cd down, and just walk. away. because this is all about callus apathy towards anything but 'avin' a laugh, gov! and if style didn't do it for you, you're quite clearly a lost cause. being influenced by punk ethos type ska, not unlike ian dury & the blockheads, rank deluxe separate themselves from other current ska influenced bands by being rough and rawkus, unlike the cleanliness of dead 60s, or the poppyness of hard-fi, or the ...blatantness of ludes... the technical term for what they got, may or may not be "RAH!" "pleasure" takes down the tempo before being lifted back up again by steal my soul, a song reflective of the scummy bits of the south east as if greasy hands were something to be proud of. final track "the straight jacket" plays with riddling bass & guitar stabs & concludes with a self righteous round of applause. it's up to you if you join in or not, but if you're gonna, you may as well get your hands dirty. we like these songs, oh yes we do. rankdeluxe.com back to top |
david fridlund amaterasu | mega issue
01 - amaterasu is the solo release of swedish artist david fridlund. the album itself flows beautifully, as it dances & waltzes track by track effortlessly, but not without dynamic, where david clearly knows how to transfer his thoughts both lyrically & musically. there is a sense of ease in the folky gatherings of tracks such as then i will miss you with it's dainty yet resonating string arrangement, & this slight folk reference and ease is present throughout the album, until something you weren't quite expecting jumps up to bite you on the bottom. amaterasu is an album to be enjoyed, meandering through as you intently observe the scenery, with purpose & completion. some songs stand out as uplifting & maybe slightly quirky, the instrumental knives being an example of this, as well as the second single taken from the album, white van, & busride & carsick, which has a fantastic jaunty outro. all of this in contrast to some of david's song arrangements which are so simple & natural, evident in the first single released from this collection, april & may, one of the tracks where david's vocals are joined by those of partner sara culler. the album is only a slight departure from david's creations as david & the citizens - there are a lot of similarities, as would be expected, and the differences are possibly more subtle, but the result is none-the-less fruitful, & i think a good aid to pinpoint exactly where david is musically. this album has been one of my favourites for months, securing its spot by my cd player by being absolutely gobsmackingly amazing... i think it will be staying there for a long while to come. david fridlund @ adrian recordings back to top |
the fever redbedroom | mega issue
01 cold blooded the first time i listened to this album right the way through, it seemed nice enough. okej, i didn't get it. there's all these sounds coming at you, & i'll be damned if i can understand a word geremy jasper is choking up. but after closer inspection, the key is in the artwork. this album has a style & a concept, & each song is track after track from the weird world of the fever... it's just a case of finding that portal - & luckily as you open the flaps encasing the cd, there it is. the lyrics! now not only can you understand what jasper has been shouting at you for the last forty five minutes, but the whole package makes sense. everything from the layout, the artwork & the sounds are tacked together with the mental meanderings of the bouffant haired one. opening track cold blooded starts with a menacing drum pattern, as sharp & cold guitars are pressed on top, and already the imagery begins to flow. it's impossible not to picture the bizarre almost burlesque-horror scenes painted throughout the album, "lift the veil to kiss her sailor's mouth, dry ice lips crack open & the smoke comes out" both vile & enticing & as if the whole mass of words is one huge brainstorm carefully laid out into a sequence that just about makes sense. thefeveronline.com back to top |
boy kill boy suzie! | mega issue
01 suzie this song is super great. it's stylistically very 80s synth pop in the vein of a-ha [if you're in doubt, this is a gooood thing], with a brilliantly catchy melody & ever the opportunity to sing along to the hooky lyrics. there's a bit of a dark undertone to the song, the lyrics are a bit sad [either that or they're about richard whitely & carol vorderman], but in true bittersweet style the song is so upbeat that i couldn't review it without getting up to have a dance. boykillboy.co.uk back to top |