Demob Happy

Patchy debut 6/10 After four or five listens this album by the former Herbert (Bodily Functions) muse is still something of an enigma. Moments of brilliance are diffused by frustrating meanders into glitch territory and lack of structure both overall and in individual tracks. There is alot of positive things to say however, with Siciliano [...]

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Cook the books 6/10 One of the most strangely overrated albums of recent memory, the release of Food for Thought brought such gushing press reaction that it certainly seemed worth the gamble. A low-key blend of manipulated found sound (people laughing, gates squeaking shut, sampled voices), cut ‘n’ spliced acoustic guitar, banjo and violin, and [...]

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Light as Air 6/10 Air’s third album proper is a cautious fusion of its predecessors, the much-imitated lounge classic Moon Safari and the plainly silly prog folly 1000 hz Legend. Despite the appallingly smug and unimaginative cover, Talkie Walkie opens with promise. Venus, Cherry Blossom Girl and Run evoke the kind of wigged-out, androgynous space [...]

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Leftfield on the leftcoast 6/10 Electronic music for the Swedish Leftcoast is an accomplished collection of deep house tracks that never quite surpasses the tones and structure of its genre. Naively, I bought this on the strength of the customer reviews on Amazon. What the other reviews aren’t telling you though, is that this is [...]

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Boys in the Hood 8/10 I’d never really heard of Hood before picking up on this album. For me its something of a find. It manages to evoke a particularly English kind of pastoral melancholy without being starkly folksy. On the contrary, as it happens, ‘The Negatives’ pulses with a strangely mutated R&B/Hip hop loop, [...]

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Disappointing third album 6/10 M83′s ‘Before the Dawn Heals Us’ is an absurdly OTT space opera, pushing both the kitsch and the sonic noisescapes to 11. Now shorn of one member, M83 is now only Anthony Gonzalez, with lyrics apparently written by his brother as a soundtrack to an unmade film (yawn). Whereas the awesome [...]

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Mercury Rev by numbers 6/10 Although not a die-hard fan of ‘The Rev’ – I own nothing before Deserter’s Songs – this album has finished my interest in the band. As with Lambchop’s tedious ‘Aw Come On’ / No You Come On’, there comes a time in many band’s careers when the effect of their [...]

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New Clothes for the New World 7/10 Disco Inferno are an interesting footnote to the British music scene in the mid-90s. Its 1994: while Britpop was rearing its ugly head in the guise of the Gallagher Brothers and their rivals Blur, and trip hop burgeoned under the commercial success of Portishead’s Dummy and Massive Attack’s [...]

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