On the third Khruangbin album proper, the Texan trio’s incorporation of prominent vocal textures articulates rather than intimates, making for a triumph of globe-trotting songcraft. Over the last seven years, Houston’s purveyors of dubby, downtempo Mediterranean funk, Khruangbin, have built a considerable following that’s enabled them to tour almost constantly. Initially … [Read more...] about Khruangbin: Mordechai – Album Review
Kate NV: Room for the Moon – Review
The Russian hybrid-pop experimentalist Kate NV brings exuberance and respite from the world’s chaos with a spellbinding and playful collection of multi-lingual art-pop. The Moscow-based electronic composer Kate Shilonosova, aka Kate NV, operates in an eccentric, multi-layered and painterly sound world that resists easy interpretation and categorisation. Her third … [Read more...] about Kate NV: Room for the Moon – Review
Tenci: My Heart Is an Open Field – Review
The Chicago singer-songwriter Jess Shoman hits a radiant sweet spot on her idiosyncratic, scratchy and bareboned debut album. Jess Shoman’s bedroom folk project as Tenci possesses both a scratchy, junkyard charm and a sepulchral elegance that constructs a hermetic musical universe all of its own. If you like your moonshine folk minimal, hushed and blessed with a voice … [Read more...] about Tenci: My Heart Is an Open Field – Review
Flying Lotus: Flamagra Instrumentals – Review
Flying Lotus, the standard-bearer of sci-fi beats, issues an instrumental edition of last year’s collab-heavy, cosmic hip-hop opera, Flamagra, bringing expressive vision and mastery of mood to centre stage. The LA-based producer and beats wizard Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus first pricked up tastemakers’ ears with woozy trip-hop transmissions on the pioneering Brainfeeder … [Read more...] about Flying Lotus: Flamagra Instrumentals – Review
SAULT: UNTITLED (Black Is) – Review
There’s a lot of social commentary happening on the enigmatic SAULT record UNTITLED, an energised and timely opus of sprawling funk, soul, gospel and spoken word that addresses the wave of social change engulfing the world today. The shadowy trio known as SAULT sprang up from nowhere in 2019 with not one but two album releases, May’s 5 and 7 in September. On both these LPs … [Read more...] about SAULT: UNTITLED (Black Is) – Review
Neil Young: Homegrown – Album Review
Buried before its scheduled release, Neil Young releases Homegrown, finally gets its place in the sun, some forty-five years after being shelved. The veteran singer-songwriter Neil Young is known for having several complete albums stored in his vaults, and the mythical Homegrown is the latest in a schedule of previously unreleased 70’s albums from his ‘Archives’ series. … [Read more...] about Neil Young: Homegrown – Album Review