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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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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High and mighty

6.5/10
FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT
Chicago post-rockers Pit er Pat’s latest for Thrill Jockey was largely recorded live in the studio, with raw production embellished by an arsenal of exotic instruments including a bobo balaphone (!), Burmese temple gong and a vibraslap - to cite a few favourites from the press [...]

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Too long but It Still Moves me
8.5/10
The Louisville, Kentucky band’s third full-length is a whopping 75-minute set recorded in a grain silo and positively swimming in reverb. By eschewing modern recording techniques altogether they were taking a big risk on ‘It Still Moves‘, their first for a major label, but is with the swagger [...]

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Hail Radiohead!
8/10
It can take a few years to properly appraise an album by a band as great as Radiohead. It is important to shake off the initial impressions - distorted as they are by the weight of expectation - and allow the album time to grow on you. A band that has so consistently [...]

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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, Animal Collective’s [...]

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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 reviews about [...]

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