Towards the end of last year I reviewed the gloriously tumultuous album Beyond Space Edges by heavy avant-prog band Unit Wail, and sometime early in the new year I was sent a file containing the 2016 remaster of their first…
View More Unit Wail – Pangaea Proxima
An album long anticipated by this particular scribbler, Italian avant-prog band Yugen’s fourth studio album, Death By Water, arrives in a year already blessed by several high quality releases, and it would be in danger of being lost in the…
View More Yugen – Death By Water
Johanna Elina sings her stripped-back songs of bared souls and mystery to a soundtrack of sometimes gentle and minimal backing containing electronica and found sounds, alternating with more edgy palettes of modern rhythmic clatter and thrum. Finnish by birth, she…
View More Johanna Elina – Belonging
Dancing Plague Rats in a Melody Jus… Serves as many as you want it to, a satisfying meal, that akin to the finest arrabiata will be fiery and full of flavour, but subtleties will not be lost in the heat.…
View More Panzerpappa – Pestrottedans
Continuing my occasional penchant for jazz rock in a “big band” style, viz-a-viz Gavin Harrison’s Cheating The Polygraph and The Nathan Parker Smith Large Ensemble with Not Dark Yet, both fine and fairly recent examples of this seemingly resurgent sub-genre,…
View More The Ed Palermo Big Band – One Child Left Behind
Their album title might give you a clue, but the Hedvig Mollestad Trio are not, despite the look of the band name, a jazz trio, oh no maties. What they are is a yin-yang-yin primal force of ur-rock noise dealing…
View More Hedvig Mollestad Trio – Black Stabat Mater & EVIL in Oslo
Agam Hamzah is one of a number of extraordinary Indonesian guitarists brought to the attention of the wider world by Leonardo Pavkovic, owner of the determinedly eclectic MoonJune Records, whose travels in that region of the world have resulted in…
View More Ligro – Dictionary 3
Breathtaking in its scope, and daring in its musical choices, Say So is an album of unbridled ambition that dares to reach for the stars. Their previous and second album Shiny Eyed Babies was released in 2014, and made an…
View More Bent Knee – Say So
Arriving seemingly fully formed out of nowhere, well, Boston USA to be precise, Body English make music that may well be described as intelligent pop, avoiding as it does any obvious traits that would make for easy genre pigeon-holing. The…
View More Body English – Stories Of Earth
Over the years I have developed an occasional hankering for the more obscure end of the vast metal scene, one supposes it is Dark or Black Metal, frankly I don’t care, I just like the portentousness of it all when…
View More New Keepers Of The Water Towers – Infernal Machine