psychedelia
Kieron Tyler
John Lennon does not appear on “Love You Too” and “For No One”. With “Taxman”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Here, There and Everywhere”, “Good Day Sunshine” and “I Want to Tell You”, his contributions are limited to backing vocals and, on odd occasions, some percussion too. He appears semi-detached from seven of Revolver’s 14 tracks.This realisation comes after reading the handsome book accompanying the Revolver box set. The pages with the track-by-track commentary have headings above each section of text, listing dates of recording, the studios used, the personnel and who played what. Leaf through, and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In the third week of April 1967, Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s “Somethin’ Stupid” topped the UK’s single’s chart. Sandie Shaw’s “Puppet on a String” was number two, and The Monkees’ “A Little Bit me a Little Bit You” snapped at her heels. Englebert Humperdinck’s recent number one “Release me” was at number five. All very pop, very mainstream.The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Purple Haze” was in running too then, as were Pink Floyd’s “Arnold Layne” and The Beatles’ “Penny Lane” / “Strawberry Fields Forever”. But other chart entries like Whistling Jack Smith’s “I Was Kaiser Bill’s Batman”, The Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Not content with having released one of the best hip-hop albums in recent memory (Cheat Codes, alongside Black Thought), producer Brian Burton has rekindled his partnership with The Shins’ James Mercer for the first Broken Bells album in almost a decade.Into the Blue is described as “an ode to the pair’s shared musical influences”, a phrase that can, let’s be honest, raise eyebrows and alarm bells. However, far from being a lengthy synonym for painful pastiche, the pair manage to plunder the past with remarkable panache.One thing no one can accuse Into the Blue of is limited range, and that’s Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The word “immersive” has, of late, been hijacked. Now used with conspicuous abandon by everyone from estate agents offering piss-poor 3-D renderings of bang average houses to fancy-dress film screenings, its true meaning has been immolated to the gods of mediocre marketing.Step forward Engineers multi-instrumentalist Mark Peters, whose new solo album, Red Sunset Dreams, does much to rebalance the scales and restore order for those who like their dives deep and their sound surround. The follow-up to 2018’s critically lauded Innerland, this new collection is a largely instrumental and wide Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The journey of Ross “Hudson Mohawke” Birchard has been truly one of the most extraordinary in modern music. From teenage scratch DJ champion and happy hardcore raver in some of Glasgow’s more feral club environments, in the late Noughties he quickly moved through making rhythmically fractured hip hop.Just as quickly he leapt into huge trap beats that made him a trailblazer in the explosion of the arena-packing US EDM scene, and from there to being studio collaborator of choice for Kanye West, making significant contributions to 2013’s Yeezus and 2016’s Life of Pablo. Now LA based, he is Read more ...
Katie Colombus and Caspar Gomez
FRIDAY 22 JULY by Caspar GomezWhen my regular festival pal Finetime and I have set up the wibbly, inflatable-poled tents he bought from Lidl, we settle to drinks, his from a chill-box, mine from a 35-pint container of Pilton Labyrinth scrumpy. We attune to the neighbours. Next to us is a tent-corral proudly flying a flag featuring a pink unicorn with penises for legs, spunking out rainbows. They are discussing the history of the Soviet Sputnik programme of the late 1950s. The people from the tents next door, that is. Not the unicorn’s penis-legs.As we will learn, this is the way people Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Many of her fans initially came across Filipino-born, London-raised singer Bea Laus – Beabadoobee – via the massive TikTok sensation “Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)” by Canadian producer Powfu, which was centred on the extremely catchy chorus to her song “Coffee”.But Laus, now 22, has been releasing music since she was 17, and her debut album Fake It Flowers, hit the UK Top 10 in 2020. Beatopia moves things forward sonically. Its sound is more interesting, hazy and stoned, but the songs don’t always match its ambitions.Where Fake It Flowers trod a path somewhere between Avril Lavigne pop- Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Martin Jenkins, AKA The Head Technician, AKA Pye Corner Audio, is all about layers. From the stacked pseudonyms, to the dense, sound-steeped strata of his music, there’s lots going on.His Black Mill Tapes series, released over the last 12 years or so, blends elements of contemporary dance music, epic electronic soundtracks, music concrète and dense, brooding atmospherics. The sound of dark soot dust descending on a remote hillside, it’s simultaneously comforting and claustrophobic. 2021’s Entangled Roots, meanwhile, was inspired by the underground conversational pathways of plants, taking Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Summer has arrived outside and sunny sounds are blasting from the speakers at theartsdesk on Vinyl. But not just sunny sounds, to be truthful, also sounds that cover most of the human emotional range, all from plastic discs in varying colours. Check in below for over 8000 words on music, from Afro-electro to Cornish rock to tango to genres beyond naming. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHShelf Lives Yes, Offence (Sorry Mom)Juddering, sweary, punkin’, sneering electro-rock is the game of London-based duo Shelf Lives, fronted by single-monikered Canadian frontwoman Sabrina and Brit producer-guitarist Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It’s hard to know exactly when new age music passed from being a retro curio to being part of the language of alternative music. Certainly it can be traced back to the early-mid Noughties, with acts like Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never and James Ferraro, and labels like Kranky and RVNG Intl. bringing synth repetitions and cosmic aesthetics into the world of North American noise and DIY music. This was linked in part to newer internet-native genres like vaporwave – and in the case of Oneohtrix Point Never, to a vast and sprawling web of connections which led to his behind the scenes Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Spring is in the air and vinyl is, as always, on the turntable here at theartsdesk on Vinyl. We’ve been ploughing through all the latest releases and reissues, played loud on a large sound system, each evaluated as fully as possible. Below you’ll find 7000 words to pick through and locate what sounds good to you. Unrestricted by genre, all musical life is here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHJames Domestic Carrion Repeating (Amok/TNS)Suffolk-based James Scott is in more bands than there’s space to list here, most notably punk outfit The Domestics. His solo debut is a complete treat that deserves Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Kranky, run in Chicago for very nearly 30 years now, is one of the most remarkably consistent record labels around. They helped define “post-rock” in the Nineties with key releases from the likes of Labradford and God Speed You! Black Emperor, and they’ve put out all manner of way out-there postpunk, psychedelic rock and electronica freakery, all well retaining a unifying aesthetic identity. And while doing all that, they have also quietly (how else?) become one of the most important platforms for ambient music in the world. With the likes of Loscil, Ethernet and Steve Hauschild they Read more ...