Review: Blackwater Holylight sacrifice their latest EP 'If You Only Knew' to the Suicide Squeeze gods, providing an intermezzo of cosmos and sludge. A chthonic dark psych explosion if we've ever heard one, we hear metal, shoegaze, and psychedelia culminate to an iconoclastic crunch point, as strange auraic statues of Cthulhu shatter before our eyes, evoking the god beast in actuality, not just representation. Lead track 'Wandering Lost' hears the band tear up constellate skies, as producer Sonni DiPerri shapes the track's many shifting structural tides, evoking the many emotional turmoils and stretching-thins of life; Sunny Faris (vocals, guitar, bass) further emphasises its point, that is, to embrace the inequitable unknown.
Review: 2020’s acclaimed Blue Note Re:imagined project heard London duo Blue Lab Beats - producer NK-OK and multi-instrumentalist Mr DM - usher in 2021 with the EP We Will Rise and its dynamic lead single ‘Blow You Away (Delilah) feat Ghetto Boy'. Now neatly bagged up in a five-tracker EP, with collaborations with Braxton Cook, Kojey Radical, Alex Blake, and DTsoul, this one’s a heartfelt but still breezy project, laying down healing and hope in the face of racism. Reassurance and joy interlace a sound pinching motifs of boom-bap and jazz-funk, with influences from hip-hop pioneers and the African diaspora. A future-focused London bowls headlong into the future, chanting the motto 'We Will Rise’.
Review: ?Boys Wonder's 'Be Reasonable' is a lovely and limited edition new 10" etched vinyl released exclusively for Record Store Day 2025. Serving as a companion to their long-awaited debut LP Question Everything, this limited-edition single features two previously unreleased tracks exclusive to wax. The band's distinctive blend of glam-rock energy, sharp wit and infectious pop hooks brings both of these to life and are part of the reason they have been endorsed by Vic Reeves as the greatest band that never was and hailed by Jonathan Ross as one of my all-time favourite bands.
Review: Byron Bay 60s-psych revivalists Babe Rainbow are the first band to be signed to King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's newly created p(doom) Records. When they announced this album at the end of 2024, with the release of single 'Like Cleopatra', it was the label's inauguration. The mystery in all of this, though, is how one earth does King Gizzard find the time to run a label when they release album as quickly as Mo Salah scores goals? Anyways, they clearly have a great ear as they've done the right thing in putting out this album of psychedelic acid pop, with its lysergic jams 80s synth-funk workouts. For all its nostalgia, there are parallels to more modern neo-psych bands that are really appealing, too. 'Aquarium Cowgirl' could have been a great release for the now disbanded London-based band Childhood, thanks to the reverb-y transcendental falsetto and floaty layers of dreamy guitar. Ultimately, this is a great, uplifting mood antidote to all the post-punk and shoegaze that's cornering the market at the moment.
Review: Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band, the enigmatic steel pan group from Hamburg, made waves in 2024 when their cover of 50 Cent's 'PIMP' was featured in the Oscar-winner film Anatomy Of A Fall. The track played a key role in the movie's success and led to the first-ever steel pans in the orchestra pit at the Academy Awards, further boosting the band's saliency. And yet despite global recognition, 'PIMP' is just a glimpse of their catalogue, which is already rather extensive. Since signing with Big Crown in 2014, Bacao've released four albums and numerous singles, and Big Crown Vaults Vol. 4 flaunts many of these dishings-out, with covers of Bob James' 'Nautilus', Khruangbin's 'Maria Tambien', and the uptempo original 'Kaiso Noir'. It serves as a tantalizing bud-whetter, too, before their oncoming fifth studio album.
Review: "I'd prefer it to be called just a country album," said TORRES of her collaboration with Baker, nearly a decade in the making, "but I'm proud to have made a 'queer country' album." TORRES had the initial idea to turn to the genre, inviting Baker to collaborate not only because of her shared southern roots but also because she'd also had a similarly religious upbringing that ultimately saw sexual orientation judged and condemned. The result is some deeply autobiographic songwriting on tracks like 'Tuesday', about a traditional family's rage at discovering their daughter was gay, the lilting 'Sylvia' and 'Sugar In The Tank', with pedal steel meeting acoustic guitar strum and very intimate sounding vocals. Bound to cause controversy in certain areas of the US, but it's got the quality and distinctive flavour to stand its ground.
Review: Now working under the alias Balaphonic, long serving Manchester artist Danny Ward steers his ear for percussion into something warm, rhythmically rich and hypnotic. He opens with 'Sunflowers in Dub (Deep Summer Mix)', where sitar, harmonica and fluttering keys glide across a humid dubscape, then folds in sun-dappled samba on 'Disorganics (All Strings Mix)', all brushed guitars and delicate groove. 'Six Fingers' leans deeper into Afro-Cuban melancholy, while 'Udders' chops South American drums into psychedelic loops, teasing out low-end heft. A standout collaboration with Ocean Waves Brasil, 'Oxum' blends gentle acid with dreamy textures and Afro-Brazilian swing, before closer 'Bloco Manco' lets off the brakes-delay-lashed, bass-heavy and totally locked-in. It's music built for dancefloors, but with the patience and touch of a drummer who knows when to let things breathe.
Blacker (The Marden Hill Sweet Green Jam mix) (4:39)
Jam Jah (5:16)
Divine Fact (Blacker 2)
(5:01)
Goodvibes Goodnight (3:28)
Anti-Gun Movement (3:08)
Review: The Ballistic Brothers were behind a great many infusion of breakbeat, jazz and Afro house during the 1990s, smashing onto the scene with the Junior Boy's Own twinkler of an EP, 'I'll Fly Away' (the lead track on which works just as easily at drum & bass speeds as it does at tapper-out tempos) as well as the complementary debut album, London Hooligan Soul. The Eccentric Afros were an early, assistive alias, used by an intermixing but not exhaustive list of some of the same producers involved in TBB before they assumed the latter name proper: Ashley Beedle, Rocky & Diesel (X-Press 2), Uschi Classen and Dave Hill. This second edition of "lost tape" reissues rediscovers some of the trio's best and most esoteric breaks-plates, which would've been heard on heavy rotation in the amalgamate days of the 90s London clubbing scene, yet not all of which have been put out properly until now.
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