Back catalogue: Rock (All)

Review: Transporting us to a waking dream of Los Angeles, two enigmatic music makers from the City of (Fallen) Angels present a truly stunning journey into hazy half-memories, afternoon fantasies, borrowed recollections and thoughts of things yet to happen. In many ways, Salt & Sugar Look The Same feels incomplete; tracks, half-tracks, movements, bits and pieces feel like our minds often work. Was that what we think it was? Did this happen? According to the official release burb, these 18 brief but beautiful compositions combine finger-plucked guitar work, the lens flare of electronica, and warped samples to create a take on the American primitivism music movement. The result is something that transcends boundaries of sound, time and place, and exists in a world of its own creation.

Review: Bridging the gap between guitar-driven rock and ambient techno - they would later become the first artist to bring guitars to Warp Records - Seefeel skillfully blended electronic loops with post-psychedelic basslines, mermaid-like vocals from Sarah Peacock and intelligent percussion. Their debut album for Too Pure in 1993 was both ahead of its time and timeless, offering a quiet revolution of repetition and downtempo somnolent soundscape, a record that remains beautifully undated. Tracks like 'Imperial'. 'Industrious' and 'Charlotte's Mouth' demonstrate Seefeel's knack for using guitars as electronic complements, layering hypnotic smears of feedback with Peacock's intimate whispers. The eight-minute opener, 'Climatic Phase No. 3', floats with barely-there percussion and a lazy, dreamy melody, while 'Filter Dub' delivers a sublime, drowsy bass line perfect for slipping into sleep. The album's structure leans into drone and quirky ambience, creating an experience more akin to a dream state than a traditional rock record. Quique feels proto-IDM, a precursor to the ambient-motorik noise-pop aesthetic that artists like Tim Hecker and Mouse on Mars would explore. Seefeel's early work remains a blueprint for electronic experimentation, demonstrating that the band's forward-thinking approach helped define a genre that continues to defy easy categorisation. Quique is not just a product of the 90s - it's a sonic vision that still feels fresh and boundary-pushing today.

Review: Out of many recent stirrings of hype (a sold-out Cafe OTO live show, numerous reissues of their Warp-era material, etc) Seefeel return with a renewed sense of solidity, delivering their first project since 2011. As ever with the pioneering electronica crossover band, Everything Squared combines the sonofantasmic dissociations of shoegaze and dream pop with the flashier and more sublime ends of Warp-era electronica and ambient dub. Mainly composed and performed by the core duo of Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock, with bass on two tracks from Shigeru Ishihara, the record is a finely hewn intonarumori, working in original, but heavily pitch-bent vocals around light, but still scapular sound beds. An implied throwback to the chillout rooms of yore, the distinctively hoary hum of 90s analogue ambient still rings as truly as ever here.

Review: Jinxed By Being see Shackleton and Heather Leigh continues the run of great music initiated by their previous collaboration, Flesh & The Dream LP, this time enlisting the talents of Ben Chasny aka Six Organs of Admittance, resulting in a genre-bending masterpiece that seamlessly blends haunting mantras, tangly riffs and sub-heavy rumbles. Chasny's cosmic folk jangling intertwines with Shackleton's illusory, ritualistic rhythms, creating a sonic landscape reminiscent of Talk Talk, Sun City Girls, Comus, and Kluster. The album, influenced by the New Weird America movement, sees Chasny's fingerpicking immersed in Shackleton's fractal treatments, resulting in a hypnotic fusion of acoustic and electronic elements. Tracks like 'The Grip of the Flesh' and 'Stages of Capitulation impress, with Chasny's spectral vocals and manipulated guitar blending seamlessly with Shackleton's atmospheric basslines and dreamy keys. Jinxed By Being defies categorisation, offering a fresh direction for progressive psychedelic music, whether folk, rock, or electronic.

Review: Chicago-bred noise rock legends Shellac deliver their sixth studio album To All Trains, following up 2019's The End Of Radio Peel Session retrospective with an abiding, slowly-honed new full-length - their first original work in a decade. Though released to little fanfare, To All Trains is a totemic album, committing to themes of transience and dread; guitarist Steve Albini, drummer Todd Trainer and bassist Bob Weston do it properly here, promising a pristine new release born of long weekends, tireless sweats and, naturally, all-analog treatment at Albini's Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.

Review: Sightless Pit is Lee Buford (aka The Body) and Dylan Walker (aka Full of Hell). The creative pair's debut album Grave of A Dog put them right up there with the best bands in the heavy metal scene. They now follow it up with another album that redefined heavy guitar sounds. Lockstep Bloodwar is an eclectic one sound wise and it features some big names making guts appearances such as Gangsta Boo from Three 6 Mafia, YoshimiO from Boredoms, plus Midwife, Lane Shii Otayonii and more. This version comes on limited translucent red marbled vinyl for a look as freaky as the music sounds.

Review: In many ways Spiderland is lucky to exist., Slint weren't exactly the most avid studio band in the world, only recording two full length albums during the five years in which they were properly active. They also disbanded around the time this record was released - 1991 - perhaps even shortly before, which could have scuppered any plans for their difficult second even after they managed to emerge from a recording facility with enough tracks.

But what tracks they are. Spiderland is rightly considered an absolute landmark, an LP that captures the spirit of rock 'n' roll in transition. Leaving one decade behind, and the hardcore punk that had dominated the underground guitar scene, while still retaining those ethics, it has one foot in grunge, another in experimental, another in garage and a fourth somewhere else. Enough limbs to mark it out as a real mutant.

Review: Originally released as a bootleg live album in 1986, Walls Have Ears was a rare window into one of Sonic Youth's earliest UK tour appearances. Though notorious on the band's black market, the album has only recently been given the band's green light, who've now licensed it in agreement with Goofin' Records. Containing early versions of later Sonic Youth fixtures like 'Expressway To Ur Skull', this is a key record for any would-be aficionado; made up of recordings of one of their final shows with Bob Bert at London's Hammersmith Palais, this is a great addition to your music-historical arsenal.

Review: Soulsavers release a 20th anniversary reworking of their 2003 debut record Tough Guys Don't Dance. This is the perfect complement to 2021's Impostor, fans of which will be able to trace a certain stylistic throughline from Gahan and co.'s earliest days into the now; the melancholic, gothic croons of the latter record contrast starkly with the huge, crunching, bleak-windy downtempo drivings of the former. 20, notably, features Josh Haden of the band Spain, whom at the time of the album's recording was then fresh from releasing his own debut record, the Blue Moods Of Spain. Recorded between the band's home in England and Haden's base in Los Angeles, TGDD was made using all-vintage electronic equipment, and showcases Soulsavers' love for Harmonia and Neu. Nonethless, 20 still sounds heavily inspired by the cinematics of Ennio Morricone, a titanic influence that would continue to be developed with each new record over the next two decades.

Review: Konrad Sprenger, as any real heads will know, is a moniker of Jorg Hiller, who works in many fields including composing, producing and instrument building. His work seamlessly blends scientific exploration of sound with pop sensibility and humour. From the diverse instrumentation of albums like Miniaturen and Versprochen to the electric guitar explorations of Stack Music in 2017, Hiller's evolution is ever-captivating. Here he unites these elements into a playful, infectious epic performed by Hiller and the enigmatic Ensemble Risonanze Moderne with guest Oren Ambarchi weaving swirling harmonics into its vibrant soundscapes. These two side-long pieces feature polyrhythmic frameworks blending shimmering guitar harmonics, horns and synthetic bursts into a mix of avant-garde and techno wonderment. Hiller doesn't release very often but when he does, it's worth taking note.

Review: Squid return to Warp with O Monolith, amping up the indie festival favourites' new penchant for fast, hardcore jangle-jams peppered with electronic glitchings and odd subject matters. Bright Green Field laid the formula at our feet, but we're certain it'll be O Monolith that best represents Ollie Judge and co.'s newly impassioned, kooky sound. Still, the playful song structures and exclaimed vocals remain present. New highlights like 'Undergrowth' capture it best: raucous blary horn sections, frightening choruses, and a sound that evokes that of a hellish circus, all make this one a rather enigmatic, intelligent listen. We'd expect nothing less from Squid.

Review: Sunfear is a project from Turkish multidisciplinary artist Eylul Deniz who now returns to Dark Entries with her sophomore album. Deniz has been making waves in sound since 2017 when she debuted her blend of ambient and experimental music using piano, guitar, voice and synths as tools for storytelling and self-expression. Inspired by Dante's Love That Moves the Sun and Other Stars, Pessoa's poems and Turkish poet Lale Muldur, this darker follow-up to Octopus channels some of her own personal loss and grief. Tracks like 'Above' pair sparse guitar riffs with swirling electronics, 'Bright and Wild' contrasts lush drones with jagged feedback and there are also hints of hope in the likes of 'Form Changed.' A great return.

Review: The Beggar is a mightily impressive 16th studio album from Swans. It is founding member Michael Gira who has written and produced it with some fine contributions from both current and past Swans members, plus members of Angels Of Light a guest spot from Ben Frost. This record emerged from the lockdowns of 2020 onwards and the sense of isolation that brought. The songs came easily, says Michael, once he came to terms with that and were informed by the fact that he worried these might be his last new writings. I they are, they are some of his best.