Richard Youngs – Amaranthine

Richard Youngs - Amaranthine

By Tom Bolton

If anyone’s channelling England’s dreaming, it’s Richard Youngs with his baffling, absorbing fragments that seem simultaneously alien and a fundamental part of us. The debate about Youngs always seems to get hung up on trying to describe and categorise: “Is this album more ‘avant-garde’ than the last?” or “Is he still experimental, or has he sold out?” This is definitely missing the point. His music is highly original, and seems to exist to defy and destroy categories. Nor do definitions help to understand what you’re hearing. He experiments, for sure, but the significance of his work is in its ability to help the listener value sounds and musical experiences they might otherwise dismiss. … Continue Reading

Karen Dalton – 1966

Karen Dalton - 1966

By Tom Bolton

In the hyper-documented, post-digital world can there really be any unknown great music?  The back catalogues of the 1960s in particular have been trawled on an industrial scale, and the scrapings from the ocean bottom packaged and re-released to fading acclaim.  In the context of rapidly diminishing returns, the low-key arrival of Karen Dalton’s 1966 is positively seismic.  This is the closest we are likely to get to songs that we’ve never heard before, that deserve to be considered with the best. … Continue Reading

H. Hawkline – The Strange Uses Of Ox Gall

H. Hawkline - The Strange Uses Of Ox Gall

By Tom Bolton

The Strange Uses of Ox Gall opens with a call to “cut the ballast loose”, but you might want to think twice before joining in.  Things soon get alarming: “Cut your arms off! Cut your toes off!” chants a ragged chorus, backed by a toy organ riff.  When the first full length track, ‘Funny Bones’, kicks in it is tunefully pastoral but also strangely obsessed with body parts.  This unsettling, distorted, acid-soaked perspective washes over the whole album, taking up where Syd Barrett left off with Piper at the Gates of Dawn. … Continue Reading

Tom Waits – Bad As Me

Tom Waits - Bad As Me

By Tom Bolton

Until Bad As Me rattled along a few weeks ago, Tom Waits seemed to have settled comfortably into a well-earned musical godfather status, revered by anyone with an ounce of taste but with his best years gradually retreating behind him.  Since his last proper album, Real Gone in 2004, we’ve had only leftovers.  Reviewing and pigeon-holing your career, as he did on Orphans – three CDs of unreleased tracks labelled as Brawlers, Bawlers or Bastards – is the kind of job best left to the obituarists. … Continue Reading

Roy Harper – Sophisticated Beggar / Flat Baroque and Beserk / Stormcock / Bullinamingvase

Roy Harper

By Tom Bolton

To celebrate Roy Harper’s 70^th birthday, which will also be marked by a Bonfire Night concert at the Festival Hall, the Believe Digital label is re-releasing his entire back catalogue – 18 albums, 1966 to 2000.  Taking no chances with the first batch of four, they have chosen arguably his four strongest records.

This is very timely recognition for an artist who never became as famous as he deserved. Harper shared similarities with the recently deceased Bert Jansch.  Both were guitar gurus, influencing a generation of musicians with their effortless technique and unmistakable styles. As a result they are both musicians’ musicians, better known to the wider public for their influence than for their own material.  Both also dropped out of the sight for many years, Jansch because of drinking and health problems, Harper through fragile mental health. The two shared musical similarities, developing intricate finger-picking acoustic styles during the mid-60s. However, their paths diverged and while Harper used the ‘70s to discover his inner axeman, Jansch most definitely did not.  These four albums are a great way to hear just how much Harper has to offer. … Continue Reading

Wooden Shjips – West

Wooden Shjips - West

By Tom Bolton

Pressing play on West is a reassuring experience.  From the first chords of ‘Black Smoke Rise’ you are, beyond doubt, in Wooden Shjips world, pretty much where they left it in 2010 on Dos.  The lead guitar lays down an absurdly heavy, frazzled riff that buzzes like a swarm of bees. African killer bees. Vocals are of the stoner variety – minimum effort, maximum headrush. The final third of the song collapses fractured, multi-faceted shapes as Wooden Shjips meticulously dismantle it with a typically trippy guitar solo. And this is just the start. … Continue Reading

Hudson Mohawke – Satin Panthers

Hudson Mohawke - Satin Panthers

Ross Birchard may hate being described as ‘bedroom techno’ but, like a 21^st century White Town, he is a home made music machine.  When he transforms into Hudson Mohawke he brings forth sounds that are both familiar and startlingly new.  His tracks – keyboard and sample heavy – are a mind-bending mixture of dubstep, techno, jazz, disco and syth pop, blended with gleeful abandon.  Debut album Butter, released on Warp in 2010, contained some revelations.  It included ‘FUSE’, a delirious wave of something sounding like synthesised panpipes.  It was reminiscent of ’80s theme sci-fi music and ’90s Nintendo soundtracks, yet sounded as though it was beamed in from a parallel, awesomely cool future.  It was really rather addictive. … Continue Reading

Jackie O Motherfucker – Earth Sound System

It is sixteen years since Jackie O Motherfucker’s first release, and music has moved on.  Their role at the heart of the scene annoyingly described as ‘Freak Folk’ influenced the sounds of the subsequent decade, helping to free a stream of excellent folk-influence musicians from their shackles, and recapturing the energy of the original folk cosmonauts, journeying to the heart of world music in the early ’60s.  At their best JOMF are essential listening, fed by a culture of improvisation and exploration developed among an elastic group of musicians.  They sought the new in the old, mixing blues, electronics, free jazz, raga, space rock and much else to create something that needed a new label to keep it under control. … Continue Reading

Roy Harper – Songs Of Love And Loss, Volumes One And Two

This new compilation of Roy Harper’s songs is released to commemorate his 70th birthday, and kicks off the re-release of 18 of his albums, from 1966’s acoustic Sophisticated Beggar to The Green Man from 2000.  It’s a fitting way to commemorate an artist who competes strongly for the title of the UK’s most under-appreciated musician, and this despite highly public acknowledgments over several decades.  Perpetually rediscovered, then mislaid again, Harper was lauded by Led Zeppelin (‘Hats Off to (Roy) Harper’) on Led Zeppelin III – the brackets a telling acknowledgement of his eternally low public profile.  Pink Floyd appropriated his anti-commercial, anti-record company stance in ‘Have a Cigar’, which he sings on Wish You Were Here.  He sang vocals on ‘Breathing’ by Kate Bush, and associated with Paul McCartney, Keith Moon, and the Nice to name just a few. … Continue Reading

Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact

Gang Gang Dance’s new album title positions fixes you in their gaze.  The opening line, “I can hear everything, it’s everything time”, a spoken epigraph, sets expectations.  Terms of engagement are pretty clear: if you’re not willing to open your ears and accept whatever they choose to throw into the mix, this ain’t the album for you. … Continue Reading