MV + EE – Space Homestead

May 21, 2012 Album, Reviews No Comments

MV + EE - Space Homestead

By Kenny McMurtrie

Oof! Rather like when you miss a downward step and have cause to make an involuntary noise upon reconnecting with terra firma, so un-met expectations can also force an audible reaction. Having very much enjoyed 2009’s Drone Trailer from these guys I was therefore left on the couch making something approaching said noise right from the off with this new release, Space Homestead (MV + EE‘s 32nd album since 2001 apparently). … Continue Reading

Smoke Fairies – Blood Speaks

May 18, 2012 Album, Reviews No Comments

Smoke Fairies - Blood Speaks

By Kenny McMurtrie

A solid and weightier release from the girls of Smoke Fairies this time and ‘Three Of Us’ is a fantastic track, with its swooning vocals and simple but effective guitar solos. Whilst the video for that song looks to have been filmed by the sea either in East Anglia or along the south coast, it is the flat, near featureless landscapes passed through by train in a few sequences within it that the album as a whole seems to identify with. A sense of being in between one thing ending and another beginning pervades the work viz the line “There’s a version of the future hanging close above my head, but I can’t get to it” in track number nine, ‘Version Of The Future’. … Continue Reading

Simian Mobile Disco – Unpatterns

May 16, 2012 Album, Reviews No Comments

Simian Mobile Disco - Unpatterns

By Kenny McMurtrie

Album number four from Simian Mobile Disco and the duo have taken their feet off the pedals and decided to freewheel on this one it seems. Nary a decent hook throughout its length. Instead they’ve leant heavily towards the third word in their name and come up with a set of mid-paced background music which wouldn’t induce you to even tap your feet. So it’ll probably go down a storm live in a tent in a field when you’re off your face. Sans drugs, however, it’s all rather boring. … Continue Reading

Damon Albarn – Dr Dee

May 8, 2012 Album, Reviews No Comments

Damon Albarn - Dr Dee

By Kenny McMurtrie

If John Adams ever writes a musical setting for the Latin mass there’s a good chance it will sound like large parts of Damon Albarn‘s Dr Dee. His efforts may be more listenable however, as Britpop this is clearly not. Nor are there any obvious African influences, given Albarn’s forays into the musical milieu of Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent years. Some sort of Olde English song cycle is maybe the closest reference point with his own vocals being more in line with The Good, The Bad & The Queen than Blur or Gorillaz. … Continue Reading

Black Mountain – Year Zero OST

April 25, 2012 Album, Reviews No Comments

Black Mountain - Year Zero OST

By Kenny McMurtrie

Quite what surfing has to do with resetting the calendar a la the Khmer Rouge is anyone’s guess but then equally I’d never before considered Black Mountain as being a particularly surf-oriented group so who knows. Whether the 10 songs here do amply soundtrack the film in question I can’t say, but as collections of 5 previously released songs and 5 new ones go it works pretty well. It has to be mentioned at this point though that I seem to only have 9 songs to write about. Maybe the tenth will turn up on the official releases. … Continue Reading

Brendan Benson – What Kind Of World

April 23, 2012 Album, Reviews No Comments

Brendan Benson - What Kind Of World

By Kenny McMurtrie

This album is apparently self-financed so I assume from that that means no record label currently has faith in Brendan Benson’s marketability. Personally I quite liked his 2002 solo effort (Lapalco), the first Raconteurs album hit the spot and the first single (I think), ‘Spit It Out’, from 2006’s The Alternative To Love was good but to date the best thing I think he’s been involved with was Mood Elevator’s Listen Up! from over a decade ago. I’ve not therefore been losing sleep over his lack of visibility in my musical life of late. … Continue Reading

Lightships – Electric Cables

April 19, 2012 Album, Reviews No Comments

Lightships - Electric Cables

By Kenny McMurtrie

With Teenage Fanclub being as fond of hiatus as Thomas Pynchon there comes a time when the individual members feel the need to let off some creative steam. Norman Blake did so last year with the Jonny project and album of the same name and now it’s Gerry Love’s turn with Lightships. Expect nothing out of the ordinary though, this is just what you’d hear if, for a change, only one member of the band wrote their entire new album rather than the usual split of 4 songs each. Therefore as stop-gaps go Electric Cables is a cracker. … Continue Reading

Black Dice – Mr Impossible

April 12, 2012 Album, Reviews No Comments

Black Dice - Mr Impossible

By Kenny McMurtrie

Sample an hour’s worth of belches and farts, talk gibberish over it and apply all possible effects available to you on the production board you’re using in whatever passes for your studio and you’ll get an approximation of the crap that passes for music on this waste of space. Who listens to such dross, let alone buys it? Somebody needs to point out what I’m missing here in terms of musical innovation over self-indulgent trash. They’ll have to do it sometime well in the future though as I don’t intend to waste any more time right now listening to what amounts to aural abuse. … Continue Reading

Orbital – Wonky

April 3, 2012 Album, Reviews No Comments

Orbital - Wonky

By Kenny McMurtrie

It’s been quite a while since listening to an album made me lose track of the passing of time but Orbital‘s Wonky did just that, to the extent that I ended up oversleeping and being late for work. I didn’t hold it against it though so it soundtracked my workday too. … Continue Reading

Conor Mason – Standstill

March 22, 2012 Album, Reviews No Comments

Conor Mason - Standstill

By Kenny McMurtrie

Given the insipid nature of the work by the likes of Blake, Morrison and Sheeran, the thought of having to listen to a male singer/songwriter in order to review Standstill had my teeth on edge right from the start. Like midges I started to wonder if there was any point in their existence and would the world not be a better place without them as the modern versions never seem to measure up well against those of the past. … Continue Reading

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