Issue 46

think Fripp, Will Sergeant’s Themes from Grind or the slower moments in Schultze’s Black Dance and you’re almost there

Dark, Gothick and magnificent. If you like this sort of dark folk/drone release, it’s indispensible.

White Fields and Open Devices, while having a number of fairly solid songs will be too easily over looked in favour of other bands in the genre.

...it must be said that Crossing Border must take great credit for highlighting left-field Dutch talent. It’s important, and well, I find it unbelievable that outside of say Noorderslag no other major ‘national’ festival really does it, especially when there is a real renaissance in Dutch underground music...

At times though, Jersey can get too easily sucked in to an easy listening indie sound, and can end up sounded too like the Postal Service...

There are plenty of ironic noises and the instrumentation is always “interesting”; Beck is never far away stylistically. Or for that matter, Money Mark.

You can’t argue with 20 minute takes on Pink Lady Lemonade now can you?

To be honest it’s an album that - for all it’s formidable strangeness - is incredibly accessible and poppy.

This is great fun, tipping it’s titfer to Clinton, Art of Noise and lo-fi in equal measure.

I can imagine this LP slipping under the radar of many. It shouldn’t.

Its understated charm could pass you by, which would be a shame as tracks like The Magicians Assistant, All That’s Real and Dreaming of Dogs are beautiful, quirky things.

Two pretty geeky looking guys took to the stage, one a gangly NHS glasses-wearing drummer and the other who - compared to his band’s album cover - looked pretty much like he had been to the barbers this very day.

There are bloody strings, daft tempo changes, and the suggestion that things could erupt into a camp-fest if we’re not careful.

I don’t know where Skeletons are from but if it’s not New York I would be very, very surprised.

It was whilst listening to the harpsichord of Young Eucharists that something hit me – the album reminds me of the recently reformed (still?) mid-nineties band My Life Story.

But combine said heavy guitars with his slap bass and dance music and what do have? Electro-metal-jazz, and if anyone thinks that is accessible they are, quite frankly, off their chump.

 Also, it is on this track that Mtungwazi gives it the full Shirley Bassey and it seems somehow inappropriate given that is based around the life of Guantanemo Bay inmate Bisher Al-Rawi.

You get distracted by the whole rock star myth. Fame and money and all of those things, they’re seductive things.

I gave her all a man could give/That’s not too much/ But that’s the way it is.

I have absolutely no idea what’s going on at any point and I can’t make head nor tail of it.