Demob Happy

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: Dark Was the Night: Red Hot Compilation - Various Artists
8/10
Most posts of Red Hot Organization’s ‘Dark Was the Night’ compilation begin with a summary dismissal of compilations in general, and particularly those in the name of charity. If such projects are as bad as people say, ‘Dark Was the Night’ - one of [...]

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5 x 2 = excellent film soundtrack
8/10
While ‘Cinq Fois Deux‘ the movie concentrates on a failed marriage, deconstructed in reverse chronology, the soundtrack is a more romantic proposition. As I have no frame of reference for this type of music - classic Italian crooners from the 1960s and 1970s - I can’t really comment on [...]

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‘4AM At Toumani’s’
8/10
Damon Albarn’s Mali Music project is an overlooked album of beautiful mood and texture that barely belongs to the hideous ‘category’ of world music. This is very much a subjectivised, western account of African moods and musicianship, taken largely from muddled field recordings and mixed down in London. Mostly the range of instrumentation [...]

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Float away…
8/10
‘20 Ways to Float Through Walls’ may sound like a cryptic title but it’s a fairly literal description of the boundary-hopping eclecticism featured on this fine compilation by the Crammed label. I am by no means an afficianado of ‘World’ music and rarely buy music that might fall into that category. I have, however, [...]

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