December 7, 2015I’m assuming this one’s flown under the radar for most, otherwise we’d be seeing much more of it everywhere. Joane Skyler seemed to magically appear on the scene about two years ago with a cassette on Reckno titled Orz. Returning to the label that she debuted on (after a brief stop over on the Boomkat house label last year) she’s…
November 25, 2015I was pretty late on to Sleaford Mods, but damn I’m glad I got there. Not a lot of groups at the moment that can court a substantial fan base and press while still managing to stand for change, or even say anything at all for that matter. Sleaford Mods are hopefully inspiring a few cats to join them here.…
November 12, 2015First encounter here with DJ Boneyard in the form of an eight track cassette of proper raw house. Fans of Marcuss Mixx (where’s he been by the way?), the brutal Andy Blake plates or even the Cerberus Future Technologies stuff we’ve been loving of late should flock to this. Blown-out drum machines drive the ghetto-bass samples, pounding along at 130bpm…
November 10, 2015Raw machine music is like crack to me. Something about off kilter beats on programmed kit sounds under-produced and recorded on to something shitty makes me really dig some records. The more beats and the fewer synths the better. Released on Silo Rumor and credited as a compilation of various producers, How To Kill A Boombox (Underground Cassette Productions 1989-92) is…
November 2, 2015The Dead Albatross season has once again come and gone, with Annabel (lee) being crowned the winner of 2015 for By The Sea…(And Other Solitary Places). And while we await the traditional winner’s circle photo there’s no reason not to grab a rewind of the finale in which Paul Ackroyd aka Kamikaze played all albums in contention and counted down…
October 28, 2015Now that votes are in for Dead Albatross 2015, I don’t mind saying that Defenders Of Style were very near the top of my ballot. Their release The Death Of Meaning would’ve in fact topped it if it was just based on new musical discoveries from the voting process, as this was the best new discovery to come out of Dead Albatross…
October 16, 2015One for the digital diggers here; someone’s just brought our attention to the Qatar Digital Library, and the thousand or so hours of material they’ve uploaded for free access via Soundcloud. Qatar Digital Library (QDL) is an ever-growing resource featuring the cultural and historical heritage of the Gulf and wider region freely available online for the first time. Part of…
October 2, 2015So while we’re still waiting to hear the new full length from Russell Haswell on Diagonal (it’s in a pile of awesome shit at the moment) it’s worth shouting about this limited 12″ that dropped on Editions Mego recently. Limited to 300 copies it’s a fitting tribute to the famed EMS Studios in Sweden where the track was written and…
September 30, 2015It’s all about Dead Albatross this time of year, so get ready to see a few releases from the last 12 months thrown up on these pages as we live with what may be regarded an unusually high number of full lengths LPs (twenty five in all) of various preference levels for over a month. And sometimes those various levels…
September 28, 2015Records for days at the moment, too much goodness to cover properly. Licking Mirrors on Cerberus Future Technologies, Battles on Warp, Jamal Moss as Hieroglyphic Being and I.B.M.,Russell Haswell reaching back and new Oneohtrix Point Never are a few of the names that’ve delivered mind-blowing full lengths recently. But one thing we’re proper hyped out is the new Laurel Halo.…