Music, Records

Eagleowl - This Silent Year

Languorous chamber-pop full of silence, distortion and exquisite humour

(Fence) Here are a few clues that this is a rare and unhurried debut album: it starts with a beat, and then the beat slows down; the instruments come in one by one; the opening words are ‘some other time’. The album’s centrepiece is in fact its…

Juan Atkins & Moritz Von Oswald - Borderland

Engaging, if slightly underwhelming release from two of techno’s most iconic figures

It’s something of an event when two of techno’s most iconic figures, Juan Atkins and Moritz Von Oswald, join forces in the studio. Intriguingly, they’ve offered scant information regarding their motivations behind Borderland. Perhaps we shouldn’t be…

Also released round-up: Gold Panda, Mount Kimbie and CocoRosie reviewed

Releases from Attic Lights, Scott Walker, Woodenbox, Gastric Band and Three Blind Wolves also rated

Gold Panda - Half Of Where You Live (NOTOWN/Ghostly International) ●●●● The Berlin-based Essex boy returns with the follow-up to 2010 critical smash Lucky Shiner. Still well in touch with his muse, he punches all the right buttons of distressed…

Optimo: The Underground Sound of Glasgow

Tracks from Golden Teacher, Auntie Flo and Debukas feature on mix compilation showcasing the city

(Glasgow Underground) The mouth waters and the ears tingle at the thought of this, the first in a series of compilations showcasing the sound of a city by someone who knows it well. The producers have chosen well here, for they could have no more…

The National - Trouble Will Find Me

A great sixth record, but not one which parades the fact before you

(4AD) The idea that much of the music here was written by guitarist Aaron Desner while bedevilled by bone-aching fatigue and sleepless nights following the birth of his baby daughter is a compelling one. It ties into the sense of a band shattered…

Young Fathers - Tape Two

Textured and intriguing album from Edinburgh hip hop group who have come of age at last

(Anticon) As if their breakthrough release of Tape One earlier this year on groundbreaking Los Angeles intelligent hip hop label Anticon wasn’t vindication enough of the promise that Edinburgh trio Young Fathers have been putting in the bank for…

Orchestre Poly-rythmo De Cotonou - The Skeletal Essences of Afro Funk

(Analog Africa) The third compilation of vintage recordings from Benin's greatest dance band, The Skeletal Essences of Afro Funk stands as a fitting tribute to founder Melome Clement, who died of a heart attack in December last year. His 'Ne Rien…

Glenn Jones - My Garden State

Album of John Fahey-esque impressionistic storytelling from American Primitive guitarist

(Drag City) For an artist whose compositions are entirely instrumental, Glenn Jones has a special talent for impressionistic storytelling. Like a musical translation of a haiku or imagist poem, his finest songs reflect on an image or idea, bringing…

Black Host - Life in the Sugar Candle Mines

Splendid mix of prog tentacles and free jazz goo

(Northern Spy) Bursting out of some back-alley Brooklyn laboratory in an explosion of prog tentacles and free jazz goo, Black Host are bizarro world mutant cousins to Little Women. As the sole horn player in a jazz-rock (of sorts) combo, Darius…

Albums round-up - April 2013

New releases from The Postal Service, Small Black, Akron/Family, Sweet Baboo and Collar Up reviewed

The Postal Service Give Up: 10-Year Anniversary Reissue (Sub Pop) ●●●●● Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard – of Dntel and Death Cab for Cutie respectively – likely didn’t consider the longevity of their fun little ‘record-by-mail’ project. But their…

Singles and downloads - April 2013

Releases from Book Group, Digital Jones, Panda Su and Roman Nose reviewed

Book Group - Homeward Sound EP (bookgroup.bandcamp.com) ●●●● Opening with the beatific alt-rock sucker-punch of ‘Year of the Cat’, this excellent feedback-strewn debut from Edinburgh’s Book Group (ex-Come on Gang / Kays Lavelle) is packed with…

Dirty Beaches - Drifters/Love is the Devil

A beguiling, globe-trotting, genre-spanning lo-fi album from Alex Zhang Hungtai

(Zoo Records) Alex Zhang Hungtai’s peripatetic lifestyle has taken him from Taiwan to Canada and then around the globe, and his lo-fi compositions as Dirty Beaches have a sense of dislocation that is both engaging and unnerving. There is no real sense…

Quercus - Quercus

June Tabor and Huw Warren collaboration blending jazz and folk tradition

(ECM) The great English folk singer June Tabor has been working with Welsh pianist Huw Warren for several years, most notably on her 2011 album Ashore. Now, under the Quercus umbrella, the pair is joined by saxophonist Iain Ballamy, best known for…

Admiral Fallow, Emeli Sande and Django Django nominated for Scottish Album of the Year Award 2012

Dam Mantle, The Twilight Sad and Lau also in running for best Scottish album of the last year

Admiral Fallow, Emeli Sande and Django Django are among the artists who are in the running for the Scottish Album of the Year Award 2012. They are part of a longlist of 20 albums, whittled down from over 270 titles by a selection of journalists…

Still Corners - Strange Pleasures

A record of great pop and immense beauty destined to possess your summer

(Sub Pop) A pleasure for certain, but not an unexpected one. As much as it owed to the much-missed Broadcast, Still Corners’ 2011 debut Creatures of an Hour was such an auspiciously pretty arrival that it’s little wonder to find the London-based…

Thirty Pounds of Bone - I Cannot Sing You Here, But for Songs of Where

Album exploring location and identity via travelling odes and upbeat celtic folk knees-ups

(Armellodie) As you might suspect of an itinerant folk hoarder who takes his grisly nom de plume from the average weight of a dead man’s bones, Johnny Lamb appreciates the gravity of his songs. His third album, I Cannot Sing You Here... frames his…

Little Women - Lung

Somewhere between free jazz, avant-classical and downtown art-rock

(Aum Fidelity) Like their more fidgety Brooklyn associates Zs, Little Women operate somewhere between free jazz, avant-classical and downtown art-rock. Lung is conceptualised around the human breath, treating it as a sound source and organising…

Matmos - The Marriage of True Minds

Diverse album a return to form for duo specialising in high-concept fun

For two decades now, Matmos have making music that goes way beyond sticking microphones in inappropriate places and making glitchy techno from the results. Originally emerging during the post-rock wave of cerebral electronic experimentalists that…

Phoenix - Bankrupt!

Post-breakthrough return is brash, unapologetic, full of pomp and self-assured tunes

(Atlantic) Bankrupt! begins with the brilliant bravura of ‘Entertainment’, a blitzkrieg of uptempo synths and guitars. It’s the kind of epic, contemporary new wave swagger that goes down just swell when performed in front of huge summer festival crowds.

William Tyler - Impossible Truth

A shimmering, uplifting psych-folk album influenced by 70s singer-songwriters

(Merge) With gilded stints as backing guitarist to Bonnie Prince Billy, Silver Jews, Candi Staton and Lambchop under his low-slung belt, you might be inclined to wonder if prodigious fingerpicker William Tyler had the motivation, energy or indeed time…

Neon Neon - Praxis Makes Perfect

Gruff Rhys concept album based on rogue leftist Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli

(LEX) Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys has long loved turning strange biography into pop music that’s stranger still. With the Furries, he referenced Howard Marks, Che Guevara and Einstein’s parents, and on the 2008 Mercury-nominated Stainless…

Bong / Pyramidion - Untitled

Beautifully executed split from the yin and yang of contemporary psychedelic rock

(At War With False Noise) Set controls for the heart of the Tyrant Sun, courtesy of Newcastle’s high lords of psychedelic sludge Bong and Glasgow/Edinburgh’s spry, mesmerising space-rock ensemble Pyramidion. Distinctly different in approach and…

Magic Eye / Le Thug / Zed Penguin / Plastic Animals - Split 12”

Four-band snapshot of Scotland’s more gloriously, and at times wilfully off-piste musical treats

(Song, by Toad) Eclectica abounds on this four-band snapshot compendium of dispatches from some of the country’s more gloriously, and at times wilfully off-piste musical treats. Each provide two songs for this limited edition vinyl, alongside more of…

Scottish National Jazz Orchestra - In the Spirit of Duke

Live recording an impeccably performed, if conservative, affair

(Spartacus) Compared to William Parker’s Essence of Ellington, an inspired avant-garde reinvention of Sir Duke, this live recording by the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra is a rather conservative affair. Led by Tommy Smith, the SNJO’s arrangements are…

Death Shanties - Nunatak

Free jazz outfit featuring Alex Neilson, Sybren Renema and Lucy Stein

(Self-released CD-R) When Alex Neilson launched his folk-rock project Trembling Bells, he spoke of having fallen out of love with improvisation, preferring to focus on songwriting. Five years on, the drummer fervently reconnects with free music…