Nathan Micay
Industry OST
LuckyMe
I really enjoyed the TV series Industry – and I’ve recommended it to a few people that have either hated it instantly or told me they’d already tried it and couldn’t get past the first episode. One of the complaints, too, was the film’s relentless music; sitting deep inside and under ever scene. Read More
Dezron Douglas & Brandee Young
Force Majeure
International Anthem Recording Co.
Here’s something really beautiful that has come directly from Covid-19. There have been many lockdown performances and attempts at sharing and connecting from artists – and now we’re starting to receive the ‘traditional’ recordings from those ad-hoc shows. Live to Instagram or Facebook, Zooming to the world or to a small, subscription audience – and then we’ve already had many finished products that grab the best of those loose, sprawling ‘shows’. Well, this album by partners in music and life Dezron Douglas & Brandee Young is not their first record together (they’ve both been bandleaders and made at least a half-dozen recordings together) but it is their first from the forced conditions; the title taken from the escape clause a promoter writes into contracts where they can get out of paying an act or cancelling at last minute due to ‘act of god’ circumstances and scenarios. Read More
The Faggets
WE DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT SHIT
The Faggets
Edgy, eh? Lol. I remember the excitement of being a teenager and finding songs by Ween albums by Method of Destruction, King Missile and whatever else. The swear words and silliness. The Frogs. Puerility. Gimme! It was stupid and it knew it. But where is the line and does it matter if the piss stains that coat the line are shaded with irony? Satire is getting harder to do, harder to prove and should be smarter. Read More
Yussef Dayes Trio
Welcome To The Hills
Cashmere Thoughts
Take a look at that cover – the drum-kit on fire! – it’s either evocation of playing with such heat as to near fear for your life or a symbol of burning it all to the ground, either way it’s about leaving it all on the stage. And that’s precisely the feel from the get go and all the way across Welcome To The Hills – a live-album swansong for the Yussef Dayes Trio released in the final weeks of 2020 capturing a gig from the year before. The trio – featuring Dayes on drums and Rocco Palladino (yes, son of Pino) on bass with Chris Stacey on keys – is utterly on fire the entire time in this Copenhagen gig that farewells the British-jazz ensemble.
I say British-jazz because that’s really been a thing – and several times. There was the post-war big band variant that was distinctly British but in the last decade or so there’s been a broken-beat version of jazz that owes as much to dance music and bedsit producers and though there’s the Thundercats and Chris Daves and Robert Glaspers of the world, and so many more, there is something that has been happening in the UK scene with the development of this distinct strain.
There’s a relentlessness to this, no posturing, barely any stops, it is fluid and hypnotic and it’s always more cool than calm; a frenetic energy always pulsing.
Palladino’s warm-liquid basslines help to propel the groove here, Stacey adds shimmer and sparkle and the vaguest hints of melody (his playing is rhythmic for the most part) and of course Dayes is an absolute groove-monster.
I first heard him with the formation of the duo with Kamaal Williams – as Yussef Kamaal their Black Focus album from about five years ago was crucial to this new wave of a distinctly British-jazz. Here on Hills the trio interplay is astounding, there are moments when each member gets to showcase their own chops (of course, it’s a jazz gig after all) but really the feel here is of telepathy; each player knowing they all can rub their heads and pat their tummies at the same time, more than that they can do it all together without ever muddying the waters, only ever dizzying the minds of those that listen.
R.I.P. to this trio. You have to hear this killer-good live record.
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Grand River
Blink A Few Times To Clear Your Eyes
Editions Mego
Ambient, minimalist, new age, techno – these were the things, and in fact the blur of them all – that helped carry me through 2020. I’ve been listening to instrumental music as long as I’ve been listening to music. I’ve been listening to soundscapes, soundtracks and ambient washes for nearly as long and they’ve never seemed more relevant, soothing and ‘helpful’ than in the last year. Add to the list then the latest from Grand River. Read More
Sympathy For The Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters
Mike Edison
Backbeat
Most people know that Charlie Watts matters – most people that would read a book about how Charlie Watts matters would already know I reckon…hell, I already wrote my own piece arguing much the same ages ago – but that didn’t stop me lapping up Mike Edison’s take on things. There are many reasons to feel comfortable in Edison’s hands here – not least the fact that he’s a drummer himself. But he’s also a damn entertaining writer and this book hurtles along at near fever-pitch, at times almost replicating the way Watts will take a sinewy groove (say Slave from Tattoo You or Mixed Emotions from Steel Wheels) and give it its very own form of propulsion. Read More
Sleaford Mods
All That Glue
Rough Trade
Granted, I was a little slow to the party with Sleaford Mods. I heard a few tracks and thought they were clever, biting, funny – but I couldn’t commit to the albums. That changed with 2019’s Eton Alive which I instantly thought was brilliant. Something clicked. It arrived at the right time for me. And I started heading back through the singles and EPs and albums – and then this arrived to help with that; a stop-gap collection that isn’t quite a Greatest Hits but is a great sampler helping to fill the blanks in. Read More
Khatia Buniatishvili
Labyrinth
Sony Classical
By my count this is Khatia Buniastishvili’s eighth album for Sony Classical, her fifth solo piano recital – its title hinting at the twists and turns offered within, where previous records were often straight tributes to heroes (and strictly classical composers – Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin) here she switches shoes to offer several different dances including a wee flourish of jazz-lite on Serge Gainsbourg’s La Javanaise. Read More
Blanck Mass
Calm With Horses (Original Score)
INVADA Records
When not one half of the group Fuck Buttons, Benjamin John Power has been making music as Blanck Mass. I never gelled with group work but love his solo electronica pursuits. So I was pleased to hear it was him behind the score to the movie Calm With Horses. The film is wonderful, based on the story/novella of the same name from Colin Barrett’s Young Skins collection. Read More
Sammy Hagar & The Circle
Lockdown 2020
Mailboat Records
One of the worst things about lockdown – and I’ve had a telling off from a few musicians already – was the interminable live sessions; bedroom recordings of half-cocked covers. Earning income is one thing – some people needed the money, others were donating to charity, the majority of course just passing time and sharing some music but most of it was dreadful. And there were high profile failures, from Charlie Watts forgetting his drum kit to Elton John forgetting the vowels… Read More
Kevin Keller
The Front Porch of Heaven
Kevin Keller Prod
Kevin Keller’s “ambient chamber music” is the sort of balm I am always there for – and glad it’s there for me. For most of the last decade it’s been one of my absolute go-to genres. The figureheads for me – and for many – in this ambient/minimalist world are of course Eno, Harold Budd (R.I.P.) and then of course there are many others from the worlds of indie-rock (Robin Guthrie) and classical (Bruno Bavota) and most overtly it’s in the world of modern film-scoring (Clint Mansell/Cliff Matinez) where soft electronica sits in and underneath shoegazing guitar motifs and delicate frames of piano. Read More
The KLF
Solid State Logik 1
KLF Communications
Need proof 2021 is going to be a better year? A wee glimpse and glimmer arrived on New Year’s Day with sudden appearance of this singles collection to all streaming services and the news that The KLF was back in the business of actively promoting, er even acknowledging its musical catalogue…
Rewind to 1992, Messers Cauty and Drummond disintegrate their band – they burn a million pounds in a performance art extravagance/extravaganza and delete their catalogue; it re-appears for a time and obviously anyone with a browser can find what they want and many with record collections held on to their treasures but the band is gone. They disavow almost all knowledge of all of the offshoots from/within The KLF, including of course The Timelords (Doctorin’ The Tardis) and The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (It’s Grim Up North) leaving trace memories of some of the best, weirdest and most wonderful dance-infused indie-pop tunes of the late-late 80s and early-early 90s. Well, there have been the books, the docos, the mixes and the general memories of it all already to help keep it alive.
But now the music is back and this collection of eight singles – those towering achievements (Justified and Ancient, Last Train to Transcentral, 3AM Eternal, What Time Is Love?) feels not just like a reminder but part of the salve for bruised souls and wounded hearts in this time of pandemic, rigged markets, shit-fuck cunts and whatever else might be buggin’ ya or conspiring to be all up in that grill.
There’s also news of further music and more from the back-catalogue eh. Rejoice! 
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