Steve Reich – Different Trains // Electric Counterpoint

I’m not usually one for big statements in music. If albums try to do too much I find they get bogged down and lose sense of what should be their main purpose: musicality. So, Different Trains, which sees Steve Reich at his most ambitious, pulling out all stops to compose a complex exposition that details …

Unwound – Leaves Turn Inside You

A monolithic statement of post-hardcore

The Brave Little Abacus – Masked Dancers: Concern in So Many Things You Forget Where You Are

I miss all the movement... Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! Cries of discontent mixed with strands and strands of absolute, do-or-die clinching hope, The Brave Little Abacus throw it all in and then some on Masked Dancers: Concern in So Many Things You Forget Where You Are. A New England band originating in the late 2000s that more-or-less started …

Traumprinz B2B DJ Metatron – Live at Planet Uterus

Life-affirming Deep House

Ghost Orchard – Bunny

After a weekend of techno assault my ears begged for something much more mellow coming into the new week, something that would drown out the distant, yet constant, “unce unce” that was somehow still carved deep into my brain. I tend to reach for records where fidelity is directed to the back seat in such …

Frank Ocean – Blond(e)

How far is a light year?

Cap’n Jazz – BIPFBSCITSABKKFTBPWSOESWTTO

Frenetic, Unabashed Youth. It’s often said that a musician or band is almost always at their peak creativity within the early days of their career, releasing a debut that will never be topped in terms of originality by their subsequent releases. With Cap’n Jazz (along with a whole lot of other emo bands to be …

The 25 Least-Regrettable Causes for Ry’s Accelerating Tinnitus in 2018

In a phenomenal year for music, picking the best 25 projects seemed a lot harder than it needed to be. 2018 brought textures that pierced and soothed, rocked and mangled, the avant-garde side of things becoming a real force to be reckoned with and the underground knocked heads with the mainstream in beautiful ways.It's a …

Homeshake – Helium

The similarly vibrant orange cover of Homeshake’s sophomore album, Midnight Snack, is delicately brushed to the bottom of my trustiest surfboard. The board rips, the album rips, and I realised that that album threw me into the rabbit-hole of music that is inescapable now. The reason this is relevant is because no positive bias that …

日野繭子 [Mayuko Hino] – Lunisolar

Leaving unfathomably harsh, emotionless and unstructured noise in the late-80's/90's, Hino understands that shock-value noise has no place in the present day. I was never expecting such noise coming into Lunisolar, however, knowing her involvement in the legendary "psychedelic" Japanoise group, C.C.C.C., but there was no denying it was going to be rough. In the …