Posted by: mx on: January 28, 2009
Oceana are a very young and interesting post-hardcore band, sounding quite focused and passionate. The sound is hard to classify as it goes between screamo, a few clean melodies, metal riffing and drumming, prog licks and post-rock instrumental atmospherics. Still don’t expect them to be particularly catchy, the music takes a lot to really grasp [...]
Posted by: mx on: January 27, 2009
Zach Condon aka Beirut returns with two short EPs, one recorded with a brass funeral band from Oaxaca, another being, er, indie synth pop. I think the first is more interesting, although to me it actually sounds like a second-rate Balkan brass band playing without a few members by the end of a wedding/funeral. This [...]
Posted by: mx on: January 20, 2009
Song titles such as How To Bill The Bilderberg Group and I Like Rockefellers’ First Two Albums, But After That… sure do promise a great blast of prog rock and free jazz? After listening to Omar’s music (At the Drive-In, De Facto, Mars Volta, solo works) for almost ten years now, this album brings yet [...]
Posted by: mx on: January 20, 2009
There have been so far two essential rock’n’roll howls in my life that I always return to: those of At The Drive-In and Icarus Line. I think I’ve just found the third. The Bronx are compulsory.
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band website
Posted by: mx on: January 18, 2009
When Twiligh Omens ended, it was fourth perfect modern pop rock song in a row from the start of the album. I worried what kind of a beast it is going to become. A few songs later, I was, to bo honest, relieved – they were good but not as brilliant as the openers, so [...]
Posted by: mx on: January 17, 2009
I think some of these songs are not that easy to find actually? Here’s the tracklist:
Arnold Lane
Candy and a Current Bun
See Emily Play
Scarecrow
Apples and Oranges
Paintbox
I didn’t have them at least, and I like Syd Barrett, so there.
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Posted by: mx on: January 12, 2009
There’s a very cool limited edition release from DJ Shadow out there that’s slowly been appearing on the torrent scene. It’s 4 volume set of his early mixes that he originally made on his, you guessed it, 4-track recorder.
My favourite here is the first volume prepared in 1991 for a Bay Area radio station, which [...]
Posted by: mx on: January 11, 2009
A great release from The Aliens, whose members stem from Beta Band. The album goes on for more than an hour, two songs over ten minutes, but this album is in fact a constant stream of different musical ideas – sometimes they’re pieced together in one song, sometimes they split, lose the focus a bit [...]
Posted by: mx on: January 7, 2009
Merriweather Post Pavilion is one of those albums which, after you’ve listened to it for the first time, you don’t really remember a lot, it leaves you overwhelmed with sounds but you just know that you’re gonna love it as you listen to it again and again. My ticket to the strange world of Animal Collective [...]
Posted by: mx on: January 3, 2009
Same as it never was begins as if it’s an instrumental hip-hop album. And hip-hop really is the root of Herbaliser’s music, played by a mini orchestra around Londoners Jake Wherry and Ollie Teeba. But only a couple of seconds later it reveals its true kaleidoscopic face, made of glaring elements of funk, jazz, soul [...]
