Sister Lightyear are signed on to the Stockholm-based label Trewetha records, and have written and recorded a relatively good, energetic, albeit somewhat standard rockband EP for their debut release. I mean, I stopped getting excited about this sort of thing somewhere around 1999, but the songs are all quite tight, catchy and so on even if they all sound a bit like the latest thing off NME’s front page.

Read the rest of this entry »

This demo strikes me as a happy, playful kind of crazy space dream with all the prog rock associations in place, and for a home-mixed-recorded demo it’s surprisingly good both in terms of technical mastery and creative inspiration. While I’m no big fan of this type of music - i.e. upbeat, slightly futuristic prog rock - I can certainly see that Pet Umbrella’s work has potential beyond most of the thousands of other demo discs mailed out to overworked reviewers each year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The CDs I get in the mail roughly fall into the following categories: poor music but good artwork, good music but poor artwork or, as is the case on very rare occasions, stunningly beautiful music and artwork ditto. The duo Ponies in the Surf, consisting of the charming pair Camille and Alexander McGregor, have surely managed to produce a record which falls into the highly esteemed latter category. The sweet and sensitive voice of Camille (reminding me slightly of an American Isobel Campbell) complements well the seriousness and darker voice of Alexander, the vocals backed up by a brooding, at times bittersweet and melancholic acoustic guitar. It’s all so charmingly simple that I don’t know how anyone could resist falling in love with “A Demonstraiton” at first listen, a record which with seemingly great easy captures the sensitivies of the artist’s nature in musical form. They even perform a sweet little soft-spoken thing in French entitled “Je T’aime”. Cliche? Not at all - tastefully done and all, think Leonard Cohen, Donovan and Galaxie 500.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Euw, Bob Dylan, isn’t he the guy with the weird, croaky voice?” I heard a young girl comment on the last bus home the other night. Suddenly I felt very old. So I decided I’d go hunting in my shelves and dig out a couple of Dylan records, and see if the old man still had some sense. And the conclusion must be, yes, he most certainly does. Universal truths die hard.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, what good can be said of Asgaroth’s “Red Shift”? Unlike most writers in the metal community, I seem to be very harsh and mean in my treatment of metal releases. Maybe I’m wrong but I just don’t believe in misguiding listeners and buyers in order to stay “true to the community”. My job as a critic is first and foremost to make an analysis of the art work at hand, and then evaluate to what extent I think this art work is good or poor.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Prophecies of War” is a kind of musical interpretation and discussion of modern warfare in experimental jazz format. In the booklet, composer Andrew Hanna points out that, “The reality of war is horrific, gruesome and deadly,” a sentiment which he and the others in Outward Bound try to express through the record in a variety of ways, combining cacophonous saxophones, wild drumming, the regular guitar/bass combo and some bits of poetry interspersed here and there. Unfortunately, while the record has a noble intent and is an experimental, potentially innovative concept which I support in theory, “Prophecies of War” comes across as both awkward and trite. Rolling musical lines which don’t seem to in any particular way reflect their thematic descriptions as I was expecting when reading the booklet are alright, but then not very impressive. There’s nothing wrong with the music, but then again there’s not much right or really exciting either. To be honest, the “poetry” is quite terrible as well in a pretentious liberal arts college kind of way, particularly on the final track “War” (I feel like scum). The words “bad” and “sad” are actually rhymed (sigh) - the obligatory reference to “America” as being the “Land of the free” and “Home of the brave” makes “Prophecies of War” come across as the same old embittered, resigned stuff I’ve come to expect from the radical youths of the United States when it could have been so much more.

Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s a very nice album though, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, a little Mercury Rev. The hazy voice and all that.”
“He seems to do that well. I like that one line in the second song…you know, ‘If you see me by the liquor store, don’t tell my father…’”
“‘…and if you see my father down by the liquor store, don’t tell me anything at all’ or something. Yeah, that’s a good couple of lines. Very tragic. He sings about his mother taking pills too.”
“Hazy melancholia. I like the sort of alt-country/Mercury Rev/Flaming Lips sound mixed in with electric beats.” They listened to the record for a while. “He’s never missed a meal in his life, though. You can hear it.”
“The well-known trap of middle class pretensions?
‘Oh-I’m-so-destroyed-by-my-tragic-childhood and all that?”
“Yeah something like that. But maybe I’m just a cynic. Maybe he’s had it rough. Oh, the uncertainty!”
“Don’t you think some of the tracks are a little chaotic?”
“Maybe. Like, it’s difficult to hear where one track ends and the other starts. Of course that just makes the album a bit more, oh, organic?”
“Yes, definately organic. Reminds me a bit of Jason Molina from Songs: Ohia, actually, except he’s not very organic and he makes all his tracks stand out on their own. But the whole mood, the atmosphere.”
The record comes to an end.
“Let’s give it another go.”
“Yeah. It’s a nice record overall…Starts are always tough.”
“A 10?”
“Maybe not. 7 or 8?”
“Something like that. Let’s hear it again.”

Read the rest of this entry »

“Resound” is a fine mix of futuristic, trippy sampling work and other tasty soundscape stuff, maintaining a clear direction with groovy melodies throughout. The work of one-man crew Ugress is spiced up by the lush vocals of Therese Vadem as well as various film dialogue samples where appropriate.

Read the rest of this entry »

_

Read the rest of this entry »