Richard Hawley – Standing At The Sky’s Edge

Richard Hawley - Standing At The Sky's Edge

By Joe Bates

Hype can work in mysterious ways. More of a system in which all acts can exist than a force that lifts up certain artists, even the shiniest ‘undiscovered gem’ is not immune to it. Not that long ago, it was Elbow who benefited from not being hyped or over-exposed. ‘Elbow are doing this sort of thing but ten times better’, was the reaction when a particular Coldplay or Snow Patrol song became bafflingly ubiquitous, ‘so why is no one buying their records?’ When enough people began to voice variations of this, suddenly Elbow got massive. … Continue Reading

Nicki Minaj – Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

Nicki Minaj - Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

By Joe Bates

We’re probably still a couple of years away from judging the objective value of songs by their Youtube likes/dislike ratio, but for discussing the new Nicki Minaj album Pink Friday 2: Roman Reloaded, let’s pretend we’ve reached that point. This is the lead single from the album. 43 million views is about right for someone of her reputation and stature, but unusually, the video generates over double the amount of ‘dislikes’ as ‘likes’. You can see why the video and song might irritate people, but, come on, is it really that much more ‘dislikeable’ than ‘Sorry for Party Rocking’? … Continue Reading

Odd Future – The Odd Future Tape Vol. 2

Odd Future - The Odd Future Tape Vol. 2

By Joe Bates

Despite all the hype and build-up, Odd Future‘s first official release got the reaction it deserved. An average record from the leader of the collectivel, Tyler the Creator’s Goblin was remarkably dull for a group known for their shock-value antics and lyrics. Despite selling quite well and being praised by some critics, it succeeded mostly in taking some of the momentum from Odd Future. Music by various members is still being released regularly, and they even have their own Jackass-style TV show now, but the buzz has definitely diminished. … Continue Reading

Drake – Take Care

Drake - Take Care

By Joe Bates

Aubrey ‘Drake‘ Graham occupies a very singular space in the music business, straddling the rap and alternative world through both the music he releases and the company he keeps. Comfortably one of the biggest names in the rap world, comfortable on the blockbuster tracks that this position entails, his own music indicates a broader approach than many of his contemporaries. The combination of his lyricism, which highlights insecurities, misgivings and doubts in a way that no other mainstream rapper would admit to considering, and his ‘sound’, which is associated with the low-key synth washes of main producer Noah ’40′ Shehib, makes him very distinctive indeed. His background, a Canadian with acting experience on a very successful TV show, is often used against him, but it is basically his main strength. He is a semi-outsider which might make him subject to crass criticism in the  spectacularly narrow-minded rap world, but the license it gives him for greater music expression and for exploring new ground more than makes up for it. … Continue Reading

Kurt Vile – So Outta Reach EP

Kurt Vile - So Outta Reach EP

By Joe Bates

Kurt Vile‘s Smoke Ring For My Halo, released earlier this year, is one of the year’s more complete releases. A very gentle listen, it hinged on Vile’s skill and instinct with the guitar, managing to achieve intimacy and directness with quite complex arrangements. His lyrical instincts were not as trusty – too often on that record, his rambling, personal style resulted in some astronomically awkward lines – but even with these moments, the record was still a success. In So Outta Reach, we have an EP featuring five songs from the same sessions, as well as a cover of the Bruce Springsteen track ‘Downtown Train’. … Continue Reading

Neon Indian – Era Extrana

Neon Indian - Era Extrana

By Joe Bates

In a week where M83 release an album that would have even in the 1980s been described as ‘a bit much’, it’s clear that decades revivalism is still going very strong. What started as quirky attempts to approximate the sound snowballed into certain bands wanting to hone in solely on a nostalgia that many music fans have for those years, whether or not they were old enough to actually remember anything, musical or otherwise, from the time. A whole genre has developed around it, and one of the principal ‘chillwave’ artists is Neon Indian, the main project of Alan Palomo, whose album Era Extrana was released last month. … Continue Reading

Slow Club – Paradise

Slow Club - Paradise

By Joe Bates

If you’ve got a friend of the aspiring-singer-songwriter variety, and you’re any kind of friend, it’s likely you’ve attended your fair share of open mic events to offer support. For nights that revolve around sensitive souls with acoustic guitars, they can be brutal; the more nuanced a song, the louder the audience chatter, so the more interesting artists are always at risk of being swept aside. Earnestness tends to be the weapon that most of the singers wield to cut through the indifference, but when this doesn’t work, you need an extra selling point to turn the heads of those impatiently waiting for their friend to play. … Continue Reading

Zomby – Dedication

The ever-shifting and ever-morphing world of ‘dubstep’ and everything that word is meant to represent, is at this point the stuff of potential PHD theses. For now, we can leave that to someone who has the requisite grant money and spare time and just talk about Zomby‘s particular place within it. One of the bigger names of early dubstep, his major contribution was the excellent rave-tribute album Where were U in 92?, which combined the euphoria of the second summer of love with the stomch-troubling bass drops of dubstep. After that, the One Foot Ahead of the Other EP came in 2009, but in relative terms, he’s been fairly quiet, particularly for someone who apparently writes ’70 or 100 tunes’ a week, each in 15 to 20 minutes. Now in 2011, with the world of dubstep seemingly in a very different place than when he left it, he’s back with his second full-length, Dedication. … Continue Reading

Clams Casino – Rainforest EP

New Jersey’s Mike Volpe, aka Clams Casino, has had a rapid, heartening rise into public consciousness. Something near to a genuine word-of-mouth sensation, he made incredible music for rappers like Lil B and Soulja Boy, who alternately destroyed his beats in both the positive and negative senses of the term. After releasing a very, very good free mixtape of some of his beats via Twitter, people began to notice that they were richly evocative pieces of music in their own right – often working better as instrumentals in fact. Tri Angle Records picked up on this and have signed up to release this short, 5 track EP of new material. … Continue Reading

Primavera Sound Festival Review – Part 3

26-28 May, 2011

The final part of our round-up of Primavera. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here respectively

Saturday
Due to bad planning on my part, myself and my travelling partner have to check out early in the morning on the Saturday after 5 hours sleep. We at this point know our flight is at 10.20 the following morning, and with airport transfers and such, it will be 30 hours before we will be able to be comfortably horizontal. So we start the day with some nice sitting down at the beautiful Auditori venue for John Cale performing Paris 1919. It’s a wonderful experience, and the orchestra and Cale boom out the songs, which transfer naturally from the introspective tone on that record to a setting such as this one. An encore which lasts almost as long and focusses on old and new material is wildly inconsistent, and too much for a lot of people to take. At one point, during what sounds like a new lounge trip-hop song, people stream to the exits as if Cale had just dedicated it to Franco. It’s difficult to take in some of this material with the level of tiredness I’m feeling, but he’s earned the right to do it after playing songs like ‘Paris 1919′ and ‘Andalucia’.

… Continue Reading