Ttwenty-three years of Freq; none of this would have been possible without all the writers, photographers, contributors, family and friends who have helped keep it going this long. Freq?has been online in various forms since 1 April 1998; this iteration has been around as of 2010, with an archive […]
Sofa For Propan‘s third album and their second for Sofa Records, they have dusted off a piece that was originally commissioned by Femme Brutal for the 2016 show at Oslo’s Parkteater. To produce these sprawling adventures, the duo has been augmented by six friends and fellow travellers on Swagger, and […]
Thrill Jockey Kid Millions, erstwhile Oneida drummer, serial collaborator and sonic adventurer has chosen to release this current sonic curveball under his given surname; whether this is to put distance between his other projects, it is hard to know but it makes for another half turn in his scattergun career. […]
Zam Zam What an arresting cover, the naked singer holding up the ace of hearts and the inevitable ace of spades, “the most powerful cards in the deck”, as weathered metaphors for the prismed verve contained therein, compass points for the emotional minefield of first love, first heartbreak and the […]
Buried Treasure For Revbjelde‘s long-awaited follow-up to 2020’s Hooha Hubub, Buried Treasure supremo and long-term Zyklus member Alan Gubby has been joined once again by Tim Hill on saxes and Peter Hope on vocals, as well as various other one-track guests. Having listened to and enjoyed the recent Zyklus compilation, […]
limitedNOISE For the latest issue of his Climbing In Circles series, drummer Will Glaser has brought in long-time collaborator Matthew Herd on sax and piano and trumpeter Alex Bonney, here stretching his electronic legs. Coming into the studio and using the opportunity to improvise as well as see how the […]
One Little Independent Not content with having issued his LüP album back in 2021, soundscape artist and musical machinery constructor Lomond Campbell has chosen to release a cassette of those loops that were utilised on the album. Spread over ninety minutes, these brief snippets give the impression one might have […]
Discus After a three-year hiatus, Guy Segers is re-acquainting us with his mysterious part-improv, part-structured vehicle, the Eclectic Maybe Band. Once again, there is a deep well of respected musicians from whom he elicits some diverse and intuitive outings and which he then painstakingly stitches together in the studio to […]
Discus Ron Caines and Martin Archer reconvene here for their third Axis album, two years on from Dream Feathers and with a cast of collaborators that includes familiar faces and some new to the adventure, but all willing to lend their personal stamp to Ron’s suite of undulating shoreline visions. […]
Crammed Discs This was quite a feat that Crammed Discs undertook to bring together Konono No1, Kasai Allstars, Deerhoof, Juana Molina, Wildbirds and Peacedrums and one of Skeletons to make an international supergroup melding that wild and evocative Kinshasa sound with some of the more esoteric of western alternative musical […]
HomAleph As much as I still enjoy the ‘”ded ded ded” years and esoteric tsunamis of yore, the warm melancholia of this latest offering is melting firmly in there, clawing a cottoned reflective that’s the perfect late night accompaniment to some moonlit Bordeaux. The butterflying bleed of the opening “If […]
KrysaliSound Apparently there are only forty copies of the latest KrysaliSound collaboration between regular colluder Wil Bolton and label head Francis Gri, which seems crazy considering the soothing quality of the sounds contained therein and the current need for them as the world lurches from one crisis to another.
Wedge I saw one of Tinariwen’s earliest London shows. It was an exotic mixture of West African sounds and almost Jimi Hendrix guitar motifs blended together to cast a spell over the audience that sat there that night. So here I am, twenty years later, discussing some of the bands […]
Curling Legs Following on from this pair’s recent collaboration on John Derek Bishop‘s last Tortusa album, here they venture further into the outer reaches of sound construction with Svein Rikard Mathisen‘s deconstructed guitar reacting with or gently cajoling the found sounds and electronics that John draws upon. The ten song […]
Warp Thankfully for fans of Broadcast, their cups runneth over with three simultaneous releases of hard-to-find goodness. Warp are giving official releases to a compilation of BBC Sessions, as well as two smaller but in some respects far more fascinating insights into what made the group tick when pursuing their […]
Hubro This latest release from Hardanger fiddle player Nils ?kland has been six years in the making as it was originally prepared for the Vossajazz 2016 event. The interim period has found him compiling just the right selection of players to do the pieces commissioned for that event justice. His […]
Rune Grammofon It has been a couple of years since Master Oogway‘s last outing and we all know how the intervening period has been for musicians. Instead of entering the studio, they have chosen to release a live recording made with flautist Henriette Eilertsen at Oslo’s jazz hotspot Kafé H?rverk; […]
Even in the midst of the continent’s most devastating war in half a century or more, the Eurovision Song?Contest?sails on; and what better than having Kev Nickells take on the annual task of examining and occasionally eviscerating each nation’s entry in all the detail such a cultural monument deserves. It’s […]
Buried Treasure For Buried Treasure‘s eighth anniversary, head honcho and all around good guy Alan Gubby has corralled a veritable feast of artists and fellow travellers to lay down some tracks in celebration of what must be one of the most eclectic rosters around. Octocorallia is a veritable smorgasbord of […]
Metropolis The storyteller returns, sardonically sniping at the last two years, its imagery vultured from the four-walled mirrors of the pandemic and the continuing sorry state of things. 2019’s Angel In The Detail was certainly a high point and this is definitely a continuation of that success, as the poppy […]
Jazzland With Johan Lindvall‘s latest trio recording, the players expand upon the ground covered in 2019’s No City, No Tree, No Lake, but take Johan’s agitated precision in slightly darker and rather dreamier directions. The pieces on this album were all written by Johan around the piano, but the interplay […]