It feels like surprise release drops have been the talk of major labels town ever since Beyoncé’s self-titled tornado tore through social media, towards that increasingly rare thing – actual album sales. Even though Beyoncé is hardly the first artist to have gone down that route (though she may have been the first to successfully […]
Read more
Based in Chicago, Disappears have been churning out LPs on Kranky with a frequency that’s almost become yearly tradition. Their fifth studio album, Irreal, sees the band sounding out their art-rock and post-punk from the bottom of a deep well. Dry throats and glazing eyes, uncertain interludes and unexpected trips into momentum – Disappears find […]
Read more
This year, the extent of grime’s cross-pollination with other genres, styles and cultures has been center of the spotlight for many. We’ve heard it take on things as near as its similarly-youthful London sibling dubstep, reach as far out to Jersey club and stretch to abstract experimentalism. Curiously, it shares a sonic hallmark with ballroom […]
Read more
It’s hard to be conservative with superlatives for an artist as singular as Murlo. With releases on Mixpak, Glacial Sound and Unknown to the Unknown as well as a host of other songs and refixes and an early entry in our Functions of the Now series, it’s safe to say Murlo had 2013 on smash. Even […]
Read more
For good or ill, techno will be techno. There’s huge space for variation under that umbrella, but for every serious-looking white male photographed in ominous shadows, there seems to be a dozen new different aliases to keep track of. Games Have Rules is the child born of two such men who also share the virtue […]
Read more
Context can direct the effects of art completely, and it can be a proper dastardly thing. With Punish, Honey, Sebastian Gainsborough’s second full-length as Vessel, there seems to be an asynchronous relationship between his intentions and the reception of the record. For starters, a declared intent to explore, “What does ‘Englishness’ in music really mean?” […]
Read more
We’re sat in the town square. The sound of the life around us buzzes in our ears; the coherent yet unintelligible voices of our neighbours and the townsfolk find their way to us, occasionally belonging to children, and even less so women, as men vie to place theirs above the rest; the market stalls situated […]
Read more
“Different feelings… this is doing one feeling, this is doing another feeling, or is this maybe doing a sad feeling, this may be doing, like a happy feeling!” So professes an excited voice at the beginning of the Black Is Beautiful-esque “Say Word”, summarising the potent duality of Mo Kolours’ self-titled debut. Even the artwork’s […]
Read more