21 Gun Salute to one of the greatest guitarists the world has ever seen.Jeff commanded huge respect and love from all the other great guitarists, more so than any other player I’ve encountered. His influence, innovation and his sheer mastery of the instrument is unparalleled.I once heard him play ‘Yesterday’ in Ronnie Scott’s, where he […]
for Dame Vivienne (Swire) Westwood April 8th 1941 – 29th December 2022 Yesterday’s dress will now shine Despite the dark of death’s cupboard As you close the door to the showroom And walk the way shadows walk Into a new form of light Where the saintly will now meet the sequin And where the young […]
Boris – W Sacred Bones In 29 years of playing and 26 in this lineup, Japanese rock trio Boris have never stood still. Thus, they follow ‘NO’, 2021’s album of furious, and relatively lo-fi, crustpunk, with one of the most detailed, sonically advanced records they’ve ever made. ‘W’ ranges from spooky abstract-but-intimate songs through ‘Loveless’ […]
Mazen Kerbaj Sampler / Sampled Morphine So, this is just all the way out there. On ‘Sampler’, Lebanese trumpeter Kerbaj pushes his instrument as far as it will go in all directions with various processing to produce hundreds of snippets and blurts of the most gloriously weird noise, intended for sampling and manipulation. On ‘Sampled’, […]
Carmen Villain Only Love From Now On Smalltown Supersound The Norwegian-Mexican American instrumentalist and producer Carmen Hillestad has matured record by record and collaboration by collaboration. Her fourth solo album is next level even by her lofty standards. At times it leans to ambient, fourth world, dub techno, Steve Reich-ish minimalism and more but it’s […]
Miranda Forester seeks to question the place of the female nude in the western canon. More accurately the place of black women in that equation. Working directly from live observation Forester, as the artist progenitor inverts the androcentric gaze as described by John Berger: As a systematic way of apprehending women as objects to fulfil […]
The emergence of a new “underground” in East Africa David Cecil, Co-founder, East African Records Uganda exercises a powerful magnetic attraction for those who enjoy a bit of risk and chaos. Its feverish nightclubs, lush climate and distinctive rhythms have drawn increasing numbers of sonic adventurers from all parts of the world. Since I first […]
Lucy – Lucy Plays Wanton Witch Stroboscopic Artefacts Bangkok-resident Malaysian artist Wanton Witch has already radically redefined industrial techno / electronica aesthetics with her 2021 self-titled debut album. Now the sounds are turned on their head again as Stroboscopic Artefacts founder Lucy, not so much remixes the record as builds a whole new one from […]
There aren’t many UK bands in the Punk genre that have had the lasting impact that Crass have. The collective have received an equal amount of love and hate over the decades and all without having any mainstream success. There was no crossover hit, no jeans commercial “sell-out” mega-hit and most folks in the street […]
