Charcoal Estates/Votes For Pinnochio/No Gateway (5:01)
X Marks The Spot (5:47)
No Show Tonight (5:19)
They Seek Her Here (6:06)
Platform (5:59)
No Show Tomorrow (4:37)
Review: The second solo releases from Edward Ka-Spel to appear on the Lumberton Trading Company label offers eight spectacularly original compositions from the outsider artist. These are tracks that bore their way into the heart and mind through startlingly personal moods and meanings. The atmosphere is often tense, and, when it's not, 'surreal' is the word that springs to mind - albeit more unusual hallucination than comical experiment. 'Platform 5' might be the best example of how unnerving things can get, the low, rumbling synth bassline underpinning spoken word, distant, almost inaudible harmonic refrain and eerie chorus. 'No Show Tomorrow' asks "what if they had a war and nobody showed up' to seemingly disconnected tones, notes and noises. 'They Seek Her Here' ups the tempo with a synth-wave-breaks trip through dystopian spaces.
Review: No prizes for guessing the kind of sonic avenues we're invited to explore here. Less obvious is the fact Kandodo is actually Simon Price, a name many psych lovers will recognise from British heavyweights The Heads - a group that have spent the last few decades bending minds to their will, or at least sound, and opening up third ears with far reaching cosmic tones. Here you can expect similar wormholes to open, but dark matter reigns supreme. Introverted to the point of collapsing in on itself, Theendisinpsyche feels sludgy, deep, heavy and all the things that make us look down and then inside ourselves. With the B-side taken up by 22-minute long epic, 'Swim Into The Sun', you should hopefully know just how intense and inescapable things get - which should only ever be taken as a strong recommendation from us.
Review: It has been two decades since we last heard a peep out of post-emo triplet Karate. Thankfully, the one thing that hasn't changed in that time is their deft songwriting abilities - striking a sumptuous balance between jazz-blues, unplugged pop-punk-grunge-garage, and some other bits in between. Folk this ain't, but it feels cut from a cloth that's stored close by, at least. Here we are, then, with Geoff Farina offering us ten new tracks with help from long-time partner on this project, Andy Hong. 35 minutes of beautiful songwriting, exceptional guitar work, and a mood that's somewhere between sombre, chilled out, and primed to explode, this might be one of the most re-listenable rock records we have had the pleasure of writing about in some time. In fact, it is.
Steve Reich - "Electric Counterpoint I Fast" (4:28)
Steve Reich - "Electric Counterpoint II Slow" (5:37)
Steve Reich - "Electric Counterpoint III Fast" (4:23)
David Chalmin - "Particule" (5) (5:37)
David Chalmin - "Particule" (6) (3:16)
Timo Andres - "Out Of Shape" (3:52)
David Lang - "Ever Present" (5:03)
Anna Thorvaldsdottir - "What Things Become" (6:53)
Philip Glass - "Closing" (5:41)
Review: Formed in 2018, Dream House Quartet has been reshaping the boundaries between classical and contemporary music. The group consists of pianists Katia and Marielle Labeque, both renowned for their versatility across genres, along with Grammy-winning guitarist Bryce Dessner of The National and composer-producer David Chalmin on guitar. Their repertoire spans radical commissions and essential works from the past 50 years. After releasing their self-titled digital EP in 2023, the quartet now unveils their latest project, Sonic Wires, coinciding with a November 2024 tour. The album features pieces by Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Bryce Dessner, Sufjan Stevens and Anna Thorvaldsdottir.
Review: It feels like every couple of years a new reissue of Kikagaku Moyo's magical 2013 album Forest of Lost Children comes around, but we are not moaning. This group is "a musical union between five free spirits" or in less poetic terms, band founders Go Kurosawa (on drums and vocals) and Tomo Katsurada (on guitar and vocals) plus bass by and Akira also on guitar. Their sound is as unique as any, with psychedelic, folk, prog-rock, psychedelic-folk-mixed-with-prog-rock and more all collided into one another on an album that keeps you on your toes and guessing at what might come next even within each track, let alone across the whole album. If you're a new interested party this is a great primer for what the band is all about.
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