Demob Happy

Beak>- Beak>
6.5/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Subterranean bass throbs, some cod-ghostly wailing and vaguely arabesque improvisations on a rusty sounding organ … ’Backwell’ is the opener of the self-titled debut album by Beak>, a new band including Portishead’s Geoff Barrow. With its slighty nauseating retro synths fanning out mechanically over chugging motorik, ‘Blackwell’ signposts [...]

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FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
White Denim - Fits
8/10
Such is the strength and depth (to borrow a football cliché) of music Stateside at the moment that I find myself with three acts on heavy rotation at the moment from Austin, Texas, alone. OK, so Spoon haven’t done anything lately but they’re a band [...]

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BRAND NEU ! - Various artists
8/10
BRAND NEU! is a tribute to the influential German band (aka Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother) that brings together a respectable selection of artists inspired by the Krautrock innovators. There are one note chugging guitars and hypnotic motorik grooves aplenty in this beguiling compilation, which doesn’t suffer too much from [...]

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Album Review: Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years
8.5/10

In a recent Pitchfork review Animal Collective declared that it must be “weird to be in a band with good musicians”, referring to the fact that they basically view themselves as electronic collagists than a band in the strict (i.e., formally trained) sense. It is an interesting [...]

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Album Review: Crystal Antlers - Tentacles
7/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Among the many acts hyped in 2008 there was a proliferation of new bands called Crystal something. Crystal Castles, Crystal Stilts and Cystal Antlers all came out of the leftfield to get blog love last year. Having been totally confused by the similarity [...]

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FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Back to the future
6/10
‘Your Ear Knows Future’ is the sophomore effort from Baikonour - aka Brighton’s French-born Jean-Emmanuel Kreiger - a veritable one-man band whose debut ‘For the Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos‘ was a heady blend of space rock and electronica. Where that first record was indebted [...]

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FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Voice of The Hive
7/10
A sombre flute, the clunking toll of a bell, a solemnly plucked acoustic guitar … cue medieval clichés: misty moats, drawbridges, hooded monks, damsels in distress. But hold on, it’s not Led Zeppelin IV … a shimmering drone, Mellotron, and suddenly all manner of spiralling [...]

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FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Exile on ‘25th Street’
8.5/10
‘NYC‘ is Kieran Hebden’s (aka Four Tet) fourth collaboration with veteran jazz drummer Steve Reid and while I won’t pretend that I have heard the other three, the word in the blogosphere is that this is the most equal of their partnerships, with Hebden given [...]

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Gang Gang goes bang

8.5/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Long-time darlings of New York’s ultra-hip, art-conscious underground music scene, Gang Gang Dance look braced to make a wider breakthrough with their new album ‘Saint Dymphna‘, released in the UK on Warp. Like their contemporaries Out Hud, Gang Gang Dance makes a hybrid of post-rock [...]

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Second poor album in a row for once-great psych rockers
6.5/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
‘Snowflake Midnight‘ is a departure from previous Mercury Rev records in that it is almost entirely dominated by electronics and glacial synths. A digital wonderland as sonically rich as Flaming Lips’ ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots‘, Mercury Rev’s latest [...]

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