indie
Kieron Tyler
Turning over the sleeve of With Animals reveals a full-frame picture of a Tascam Midistudio 688. First marketed in 1990, it was an eight-track home studio which aimed to bridge the gap between analogue and digital. Midi signals could be fed into it. As could digital recordings. What was input was captured as an analogue recording on a cassette tape. White Town's "Your Woman" became the best-known track recorded on this hybrid, envelope-pushing tech.Foregrounding this gear is a statement of intent. Not just to say that retro mind-sets are at work, but also that a particular ambiance is being Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A sight every music fan should see and hear once is The Proclaimers playing Scotland. Around 18 years ago I saw them play a giant marquee at the T In The Park Festival. It was like a rally, a roaring wall of joyful fanaticism (on which note, their autumn 2018 tour there sold out 30,000 tickets in 20 minutes!). If it was a rally, though, it was a righteous, tending-to-socialism one for The Proclaimers have a strand of activism in their blood. On their latest album, this is writ large.The title track sets the stage at the start, a two-and-a-half minute classic, one of their best, with punk Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Signed to FatCat records and purporting to create music that “recalls thoughtful days spent outdoors”, Breathe Panel’s self-titled album could easily be lost in the thriving soft-psych scene that seems to have set itself up in the south of England. Ultimately, though, Breathe Panel’s considered melodicism and dynamic range ensures that it’s a strikingly tender body of work that gets more and more enjoyable with each listen.Album opener “Carmine” quickly blossoms into the simple-yet-catchy guitar hooks and soaring chords which permeate much of the album. “Myself” treads along more gently; Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Shoegaze was only a moment really, a scene that flared briefly as the Eighties drew to a close. The music press – the “inkies” - used the term to describe bands, usually flop-fringed with lazy posture, whose heads would hang as they played gigs, ostensibly because they were looking at effects pedals and wotnot, but really because they and their music were shy. Following the example of My Bloody Valentine, they’d found a way to hide their pop songs amid distortion, deep down in it. But what no-one realised was that shoegaze’s reach would be so far and long.Who knows whether Hannah van Loon Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Cornbury Festival holds a very special place in my heart. When the babies were young, we realised that if we were going to be up all night without sleep we might as well be sat in a field listening to music rather than staring out of the window at a dreary North London street. Luckily for us, we accidentally picked one of the most family-friendly festivals out there.Over the years Cornbury has gone from strength to strength, headlining musicians from Bryan Adams, Kaiser Chiefs and Seal to Tom Jones, Razorlight, Jools Holland, and Van Morrison. Thank abso-goodness then, that rather than Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
At 29 minutes, the second album from Paris’s Juniore is short. But as it makes its point, it’s hard to hear how it needs to be longer. Magnifique opens with “Ça Balance”, a harmony-drenched vapour trail suggesting a kinship with the great French Eighties band Antena. It’s that good. As is the rest of this album.Nodding to Sixties archetypes such as John Barry, Ennio Morricone and late-decade Françoise Hardy as well as the synth-pop of early Elli et Jacno, the glistening surf-inclined bricolage pop heard across Magnifique’s eight tracks could have appeared in the shops 30 years ago without Read more ...
Owen Richards
Lamp Lit Prose is the ninth Dirty Projectors album since 2003, an incredibly prolific output for any artist. All the more impressive when you consider it’s the project of producer/songwriter David Longstreth, who also finds time to collaborate with artists such as Rihanna, Kanye, Paul McCartney and Solange. Such a notable CV befits an act as innovative as Dirty Projectors, and their latest release further demonstrates the talent on show.“Change is the only constant law” sings Longstreth, an appropriate lyric as Lamp Lit Prose is a journey of shifting influences. Tracks range from folk and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Earlier this year, in May, Brighton hosted the Vinyl World Congress where Paul Pacifico, head of the Association of Independent Music, told the assembled that, “People pay for vinyl not because they have to but because they want to - they want a physical representation of their emotional connection with an artist." There was a general agreement that vinyl collectors and fans account for the majority of sales, but also that things are still stable and/or rising. Here at theartsdesk on Vinyl, we cover collectible artists of yesteryear (below are boxsets by Buffalo Springfield, Brian Eno, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
How great is Uniform Distortion? As great as Greg Sage’s Straight Ahead or Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Ragged Glory or Dungen’s Ta det lugnt or Alex Chilton’s Like Flies On Sherbert. That’s how great Uniform Distortion is.Uniform Distortion is the fourth solo by Jim James, mainstay of My Morning Jacket and in-demand producer and collaborator. He’s helmed albums by Basia Bulat and Dean Wareham and, most recently, contributed to Laura Veirs’ The Lookout. His last solo album, Tribute To 2, was a covers set where he tackled songs by such unlikely bedfellows as Al Bowlly, Dylan and ELP. Tribute Read more ...
joe.muggs
For a decade now, Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson – Lykke Li – has been a poster girl for the Scandinavian, and particularly Swedish, ability to find the highest common factors between high gloss pop and introspective indie/alternative music, and to make it into something that hides emotional heft behind glossy surfaces and impeccable poise (see also Little Dragon, Alphabeat, Miike Snow...) Her fourth album, however, might well lose some of the fans who leaned towards the indie elements of her music. In probably the biggest single creative shift of her career, huge swathes of Slowdive, Beach Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mark Hodkinson is a Rochdale writer, journalist, songwriter and musician who’s also behind underground label/publishing house Pomona. Black Sedan is the latest product of his febrile mind, a band collective that’s been slowly coming together over the last couple of years. Their debut album sprawls about a number of styles but retains a likeable cohesiveness, wallowing in a loose, strummed stew that’s lightly psychedelic with plenty of sonic trimmings.It begins with “Love on Love”, a delicious, widescreen piece based around Charlie Chaplin’s fantastic speech at the end of The Great Dictator, Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
In just five years, what the team behind Hidden Door Festival has achieved is quite remarkable. Having sprung up in 2014, taking over a group of disused vaults behind Waverley train station, the festival’s mission to transform redundant spaces in Edinburgh has left an immovable, and much needed, creative footprint on the city. In 2017 this not-for-profit festival, which is run entirely by volunteers, re-opened the Leith Theatre, a stunning venue which had lain in disuse for almost three decades.Having breathed new life into this incredible space, which is now gradually becoming used more and Read more ...