mon 19/05/2025

New Music Reviews

Music Reissues Weekly: Blow My Mind! The Doré-Era-Mira Punk & Psych Legacy

Kieron Tyler

Any compilation with a track credited to “Unknown Artist” is always going to entice, especially when it’s one which goes the full way by digging into original master tapes to find the best audio sources and previously unearthed nuggets.

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Album: Electric Eye - Horizons

Kieron Tyler

Bergen’s Electric Eye’s pithy description of themselves is “psych-space-drone-rock from Norway.” They also say they “play droned out psych-rock inspired by the blues, India and the ever-more expanding universe.” Horizons is their fourth studio album.

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Portico Quartet, St John at Hackney review - softly beautiful discordancy

India Lewis

Composed entirely of their 2021 release, Terrain, Portico Quartet’s Friday night concert at St John at Hackney was a beautiful performance, albeit slightly marred by a low stage and a chatty audience.

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Music Reissues Weekly: The Sun Shines Here - The Roots Of Indie-Pop 1980-1984

Kieron Tyler

The Sun Shines Here - The Roots Of Indie-Pop 1980-1984 is three-CD set in a clamshell box with 74 tracks. The opener is “Better Scream”, January 1980’s debut single from Wah Heat!

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Black String, Grand Junction review – storm-force intensity

Tim Cumming

If you were looking for a word to describe Black String in performance at Grand Junction in Paddington, before the high altar of the church of St Mary Magdalene, itself a pinnacle of Victorian neo-Gothic bravura, then that word would be “intense”. Intensely intense. More intense than a blooming bank of Intensia.

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Sports Team, SWG3, Glasgow review - entertaining, but not always original

Jonathan Geddes

It may go against rock n’ roll cliché, but occasionally there is merit to good time keeping for a band. Lucia and the Best Boys saw their support slot in their home town of Glasgow reach an ignominious ending when they were cut off a song early, vocalist Lucia Fairfull’s chat having seen the glam synth pop group go over their allocated slot.

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Justin Adams and Mauro Durante, The Green Note review - fiery duo in an intimate space

mark Kidel

Two men trade licks: one of them delves into the heart of the blues, a potent dose of the boogie, the medicinal music of the Mississipi Delta.

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The Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You at 40

Tim Cumming

As The Rolling Stones – sans a much-missed Charlie Watts – generate old fashioned, 20th-century rock'n'roll excitement in the stadiums of north America this autumn, their final great studio album, 1981’s ...

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Field Music, Francis Lung, Electric Ballroom review - neither band is capable of standing still

Kieron Tyler

Forty five minutes into their set Field Music play “A House is Not a Home”, from their 2006 second album Tones of Town. An hour in, “Them That do Nothing” from 2010’s Measure is aired. They end with “Orion From the Street”, the opening track from their recent Flat White Moon album.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Graham Collier - British Conversations

Kieron Tyler

Over 1974 to 1978 Graham Collier issued five albums on his own imprint Mosaic. There was another in 1985 and eight releases on Mosaic by other musicians, but for its first four years the imprint was dominated by the British jazz composer, bassist and bandleader’s own work.

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