The “Prairie Prayers” EP is a neato release by lo-fi indie rockers Shimmer Kids Underpop Association. Already on the first track, the San Francisco-based group mix a sound reminiscent of the Velvet Underground meets “Pet Sounds”-era Beach Boys: psychedelic, energetic, and jingle-jangly bittersweet pop rock on a quest to surprise listeners and innovate in a stagnating genre.
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Isis’ masterpiece “Oceanic” combines sludgy, muscular riffage with gut-wrenching deathcore growling by vocalist Aaron Turner. The dense sound found on the record is heavily inspired by extreme metal giants Neurosis, but Isis manage to create a sense of rising and falling tension far more seamlessly from track to track. Drumming is tight, as are vocals, and the whole mush of hazy, crushing and hypnotic tracks
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Never before have I had my hopes up this much, only to become so disappointed in the end.

I, along with the rest of the Rush fanbase, had been eagerly awaiting their latest album, the first studio album from the Canadian trio since 1996. After having heard the first single, and album-opener “One Little Victory” on the Internet a month or so before the true release, I was ready to proclaim this to be the best Rush work since Moving Pictures. I mean that song had it all, a great riff, great drumming (as always from Neil Peart, my favourite drummer of all time) and great bass playing. Heck, even Geddy Lee’s voice seemed to have the same spark as it had in the early eighties. Now this was going to be a comeback worthy of the kings of progressive rock!

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Books’ “The Lemon of Pink” is a good example of what musical collaging techniques can achieve in terms of creating an atmosphere and a specific mood in listeners. A lot of it actually sounds like a 21st century adaptation of Mike Oldfield’s supreme “Tubular Bells” album, shifting and flowing between different sounds and emotional states seamlessly.
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You can laugh all you want at Geddy Lee’s (at times) insanely over-the-top vocals, but the inescapable fact remains that “Permanent Waves” is a well-done and wildly catchy album, laden with happy, feel-good anthems in the style of arena/prog. rock. Actually Geddy tones down his voice a bit for the record, making it more likable and accessible to an even wider audience. Way! One of the main criticisms of Rush no longer counts!

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This is awful and I refuse to be polite. Who said noise pop wasn’t pretentious, because guess what? It is. Xiu Xiu’s second album is “A Promise” which ultimately fails to deliver. A whispery, angsty male voice with electronic screeching and small technoesque thumping sounds, computerised clapping noises and tape samples make the whole thing a little too forced and a little too thin.
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No, but seriously, Hella’s “The Devil Isn’t Red” is a good album, and for all I know Hella might just be one ‘helluva’ band. In fact, judging from this, their third studio long-player, they probably are. Fusing a 70s progressive rock sounds with heavier, noisier guitars and drums, Sacramento-Californian Hella have put together a solid record featuring a continuous flow of (more…)

“The Shape of Jazz to Come” is undoubtedly one of our time’s greatest free jazz records, and indeed the title says much of what it would herald for other musicians in the jazz genre when it came out in 1959. In “The Shape of Jazz to Come”, Coleman and his trumpeting partner-in-crime Don Cherry re-define the basic concepts of what it means to play and love jazz, preferring to (more…)

“Nightfall” is regarded by many disciples of Candlemass as the aboslute pinnacle of the bands’ achievements through their 20 year tenure on the metal scene. Full to the brim with dark, gloomy, epic goodness, it is hard to consider the album as otherwise.

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Ah, this may just be Scott-Heron at his very finest. His black street poetry/proto-rap is most neatly summarised in the politically charged “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” and his sharp social awareness penetrates many of the songs on “Pieces of a Man”. Musically, Scott-Heron plays a sort of fusion blues/jazz, with loose drumbeats and some thick, pounding bass lines, incidentally the formula he would use for much of his later work through the 1970s and 80s as well. Gil Scott-Heron has a way of creating warm music with a slick production, perhaps falsely so if one takes time to listen to the lyrics which are at times full of accurately directed anger and melancholic tales telling the tragedy of oppressed and torn black youth. His tribute to jazz stars Billie Holliday and John Coltrane, entitled “Lady Day and John Coltrane” shows off Scott-Heron’s at his poetic finest, using his vocal abilities to their fullest.

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