Demob Happy

I never thought it would happen to me but finally I’ve succumbed to external pressures and have been unable to update this blog with any regularity. Firstly, I’ve been concentrating efforts on a new English-language website for my new home town, Grenoble, in south-east France. Secondly, I’ve recently become a father for the first time. [...]

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Album Review: worriedaboutsatan – Arrivals FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT 8.5/10 Will electronica make a comeback at the end of the decade? It seems that having gone organic in the 00s with folktronica, many electronica artists have been second-guessed recently by folk artists (from Bon Iver to Iron & Wine) augmenting their [...]

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‘Central And Remote’ 8/10 I came across Grizzly Bear via Dan Rossen’s brilliant – but wholly different – earlier project Department of Eagles. I was initially underwhelmed and bemused, but I persevered and can back previous reviewers who have labelled this a grower. If like me you have come to Grizzly Bear via Department of [...]

Grizzly Bear - Easier [ 3:44 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Lost classic but will they make another? 8/10 I would be tempted to describe this album as a ‘lost classic’ since it started as a minor independent release by two college roommates in 2003 and has steadily developed a cult following. People will continue to look back to this album while one half of Department [...]

Dept of Eagles - The Horse you ride [ 4:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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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 [...]

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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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The Autumnal Crush 7/10 Is electronica dead? Its certainly quite easy to trace the influences of Chris Clark’s Body Riddle. There are the tape-damaged keyboards patented by Boards of Canada; the rough jazzy breaks and dusty sampling of early DJ Shadow, whose influence over electronica has been understated; and the sped-up glockenspiels popularised by Kieren [...]

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Overland But Underwater 7/10 Kelpe sculpt the kind of dense, no-nonsence electronic soundscapes popularised by Warp stalwarts Boards of Canada. Whereas BOC have come to sound like a parody of themselves, heirs-apparent Kelpe revisit the BOC template without the restraint and obsessiveness displayed by their forefathers. ‘Sea Inside Body’ is a massive, cavernous album awash [...]

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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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Nu-school electro 7/10 Scott Herron’s Prefuse 73 is a combination of Warp-label glitch and instrumental hip hop that has him adored by IDM merchants and headz alike. It is not nearly as abrasive and uncompromising as some writers would lead you to believe, but rather a heady mash up of new-school electro and (largely instrumental) [...]

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