featured releases
(Matador) CD & 2LP
The Scottish post-rockers are back. Holdovers from the romantic late 90’s, when indie rock was sooooo exotic (remember those days!?), Mogwai have quietly (and noisily) planted their feet & dedicated themselves to exploring the realms of darkness/light & melancholy/aggression that colour their catalog so heavily. 2006’s underrated Mr. Beast balanced fragile piano ballads with crushing, dense distorted guitar riffage; like Keith Jarrett jamming with Pelican. The Hawk Is Howling cavorts in a similar realm; these dudes are still wandering the muddy back alleys & bucolic scenes that littered Godspeed! You Black Emperor’s dreams – well worth some time & heart invested.
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19 September 2008 by Chris Long
| Pop / Rock
(Flemish Eye) CD & 2LP
On Skelliconnection, CVG’s homespun basement antics wandered too often in the realm of tedium instead of enchantment; with Soft Airplane, he’s refined things a little & the outcome is a doozy. All facets of CVG’s musical persona are in top form, from his acoustic meaderings, to his fuzzed out rock all the way through to the digital experiments that have up until now, been a bit of a toss up. The beautiful Neil Young-influenced acoustic quiver of Infiniheart returns here on opener “Willow Tree” & “City Of Electric Light”. “TMNT Mask” along with comical subject matter, wields CVG’s most effective electro/techno adventure, an undeniably catchy romp in bleepville. “Inside The Molecules” & “Bones Of Man” rock a little, while “Phantom Anthills” & “Frozen Energon” blitz you with synthetic textures & post-production glitchisms. This album is a total hi-5!
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11 September 2008 by Jeremy Robinson
| Pop / Rock
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(Death From Abroad/DFA) 2CD
The DFA — James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem) & Tim Goldsworthy (Cut Copy, Rapture producer) — have done much to bridge the seemingly unconnected edges of dance culture’s past, present & future. At a time when over-produced, excessively loud & brash electro productions are dominating the feet & minds of hipster dancefloors, The DFA continue to plug away, dragging the classic sensibilities, stylings & sonic pallets of disco, funk, house & techno into the fray with every release. (If you haven’t checked out Hercules & Love Affair already, PLEASE, do yourself a favour.)
With Nobody Knows Anything, The DFA’s Death From Abroad offshoot have partnered with Berlin’s Supersoul Recordings to bring a SLEW of new names, sounds & possibilities to dancefloor adventuring. Supersoul Recordings’ roster focuses on “the cornerstones of electronic dance music: Krautrock, Italo Disco, Electro, Chicago House & Detroit Techno.” And compared to much of the French & Australian blog-racket that has filled dancefloors over the last couple of years, these tracks sound truly refreshing, almost to the point of alien.
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8 September 2008 by Chris Long
| Electronic
(4AD) CD & 2LP… free Limited Edition 7” until we’re out
Over the duration of their musical output, Stereolab have cultivated music that sounds as distinctively one with itself as it does apart from everything else. While the influence of kraut rock is probably their most prevalent touchstone, each album seems to exemplify another distinct tract of their musical infatuation. Chemical Chords is no different; this time trimming itself with the concise sophistication of sixties pop, adorned with swift orchestral arrangements & Laetitia Savier’s omnipresent french-tuned Nico-esque falsetto. Brazen & resonant, Chemical Chords introduces itself enthusiastically & maintains its sugary-sweet grandeur all the way through its 14 bopping tracks.
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5 September 2008 by Tara Campbell
| Pop / Rock
(Leisure Thief) CD
Essentially a revisit of Lee Huztulak’s last ten years of musical meandering and collaboration; Scarlet Lake collects tracks recorded and manipulated both digitally and on a 4-track. At times profusely reminiscent of Akron/Family’s self-titled debut (a group to which he warmly tips his hat), the vocals teeter somewhere between Mark Lanegan & Ariel Pink, while the music treads the sublime line between discordant experimentation & graceful melodies. Many of the tracks were born here in Victoria (Huztulak’s past home) & sound of the time when summer slips into fall & the island air seems to return from alien to indigenous. Like the mood encapsulated by Grizzly Bear, Scarlet Lake seems to capture the transition from one season to another & the melancholy & euphoria that comes with it.
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2 September 2008 by Tara Campbell
| Local, Pop / Rock
(LL) CD & LP
Finally a domestic release for Youth Novels, the debut from the young Swede. There is much to dance, clap & whistle to here, as Lykke Li whips up a bevy of catchy-as-hell tunes. The cute factor is pretty high, but so are the pop instincts; “I’m Good, I’m Gone” is possibly this year’s “1 2 3 4”. There’s an air of playfulness abound as well; twinkling, clinking, rattling noises seem to naturally mold the sketches that Li colours with her nimble, still developing voice. For fans of Feist, Frida Hyvonen.
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28 August 2008 by Jeremy Robinson
| Pop / Rock
(Smalltown Supersound) CD, 2LP due in October
Hans Peter Lindstrøm’s splash on the scene was a glitter-washed one; 2005’s still-brilliant “I Feel Space” announced the space-disco revival that he has since spearheaded with frequent collaborator Prins Thomas. Where You Go I Go Too is closer to the pair’s self-titled release on Eskimo from 2006 – Lindstrøm opens up a Pandora’s box of tropicalia, Italo-lounge & 80’s cocaine-epic-osity, all throbbing, bobbing & spilling over round, mid-tempo drums. The lengthy 30 minute title track spends equal time grooving & meandering – it’s too indulgent for most – but for anyone wanting a bit of a twinkling, sun-soaked journey, Hans Peter is your man.
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28 August 2008 by Chris Long
| Electronic
(Fonal) CD & LP
Blossoming from the minds of two brothers from Finland, it seems this fragmented work of melodic semblance & textural melancholy includes the whole Scandinavian forest & its elves. With glitchy bursts, music box curdlings, Finnish spoken word & angelic ghost melodies, it sounds as though it was recorded over the ebb of a tide. “Kevätrumpu” grazes between wind chimes and a lo-fi dance party, with vocals that flirtatiously allude a Finnish Kate Bush. “Italialaisella Laivalla” & “Tyttö Tanssii” sound like they’re left to be sung by a man on a tree-stump on the last desperate night of summer. This is living in a Scandinavian forest inebriated with memories of all-night parties in Helsinki – it flickers like an eerie twilight whilst carrying a bag of magic raindrops.
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28 August 2008 by Tara Campbell
| All Around The World, Pop / Rock
(Kompakt) 4CD
Wolfgang Voigt is the mastermind behind one of minimal techno’s largest stables: Kompakt. But before his brand was dominating global dancefloors, Voigt was exploring the deep dark realms of his German psyche as Gas. Drawing from German schlager music & Wagnerian classical influences, plus ambient staples like Satie, Aphex Twin & Eno, Voigt conjured clouds of throbbing ambience & drone, ceaselessly propelled by submerged kick drums. Nah Und Fern compiles the entire Gas output — Gas, Zauberberg, Königsforst & Pop — there’s slight remastering, but nothing that detracts from the nimble balance of tension & levity within Voigt’s most revered project. A brilliant document of one of the most important canons within the ambient techno world.
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28 August 2008 by Chris Long
| Avant-Garde, Electronic
(We Are Free) CD
From the world of the frenetic Baltimore scene (Dan Deacon, Video Hippos, Ecstatic Sunshine) comes another crew, this time with two guitars, no bass & lots of fucking energy. On their second album Ice Cream Spiritual, Ponytail create an erratic train running with high-freted guitar work, rolling drums & the artistic flamboyance of lead vocalist Molly Seigel, who sounds like something between a hyperactive parrot & a wild boar in heat. The record’s turbo fluster of crayon-coloured-craze certainly will leave those involved with a heart beat per minute that would worry a physician. The sound of punk-infused paint colour aimed at the art gallery: yes, please.
16 July 2008 by Tara Campbell
| Pop / Rock
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