Demob Happy

More Icelandic fairytale prog from the band that specialises in Icelandic fairytale prog 6/10 Sigur Ros are fast becoming a Popular Experimental Band That I Don’t Like, a moniker I have only knowingly bestowed before on Spiritualised. On paper, Sigur Ros are a band that I should love, but it just doesn’t really engage me. [...]

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Ghost in the machine 8/10 All the acrimony surrounding the release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, in which Wilco left Warner/Reprise to resist attempts to make the record more commericially viable, seems bizarre now. For despite its moments of sonic chaos, YHF is a great, Beatles-esque, countryfied pop masterpiece with great hooks and immediately indentifiable melodies. [...]

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Better the devil you know 8/10 If ‘Neon Golden‘ was The Notwist in a state of evolution, leaving their hardcore punk roots behind in favour of post-rock flavoured indie-pop and electronica, ‘You, The Devil + Me‘ is the sound of a band who have found their, er, sound. ‘You, The Devil + Me‘ may lack [...]

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Radiohead and the art of modern marketing 10/10 How much is music worth? Not the CD it’s printed on or the cover art, and certainly not the plastic jewel case – but the music itself? Or more precisely, how much is Radiohead‘s music worth? This is the question the band have asked fans to contemplate [...]

Radiohead [ 3:57 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Frequently enjoyed album 8/10 The term ‘slowcore’ doesn’t really do justice to this album, conjuring as it does images of painfully protracted, po-faced minimalist post-rock. ‘Frequently Asked Questions‘ is nothing of the sort. I bought this album on a whim on its release in 2001 and still find myself playing it periodically six years later. [...]

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Race In to Battles 8/10 Call them Math Rock, Postrock, call them whatever, Battles are a progressive act in the truest sense of the word. Whereas aforementioned genres can conjure images of po-faced musical purism, Battles’ sound is approached with a maximilist, more-is-more attitude. There are shades of Tortoise’s jazz-rock leanings here, ooioo’s tribal freak-outs, [...]

Battles - Leyendecker [ 2:44 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Radio transmission 7/10 TV on the Radio aren’t as an immediate band to get into as some reviews might have you believe. I loved their first EP Young Liars but found their debut LP ‘Desperate Youth Blood Thirsty Babes‘ wearyingly oppressive and turgid and two-starred it in an unpopular Amazon review. I have given Return [...]

tvontheradio - wolflikeme [ 4:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Try a little tenderness! 7/10 Now stripped to the core duo of singer Trish Keenan and multi-instrumentalist / programmer James Cargill, Broadcast’s thrid album places a greater emphasis on song-writing and lyricism, and less on sonic experiment. Whereas ‘Ha Ha Sound’ was a sprawling epic of icy lullabye and often abrasive rythmic and textural abstraction, [...]

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Scandinavian Dark Star 6/10 Much has been made of the atmospherics and wintery mood on this album but for me this was a dissapointment. The marriage of classical music and electronica is always an uneasy one – countless clinical, po-faced concept records have been made in this mould. What is missing from many of the [...]

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Superconnected 7/10 Broken Social Scene are a very unusual band. A huge cast of musicians participate on this record in a democratic process that leaves the producers with a lot of work to do, trying to make sense of what can often sound like two or three songs playing at the same time. The result, [...]

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