Spanish Primavera is the first major music festival to switch to a mobile-only ticketing policy - Barcelona fest is abandoning physical and "print-at-home" tickets for its 20th anniversary next summer. Organizers say they hope to combat touts by implementing the technology, BBC reports. The festival draws 220,000 fans to Barcelona every year, and it made […]
"Even when it finally settles back into more comfortable lyrical terrain... the music strays beyond their usual comfort zone: ragged and underpinned by glitchy electronic beats. It suits them out there... Musically, Giants of All Sizes is richer and stranger than anything they’ve released since their commercial breakthrough" - Guardian's Alexis Petridis writes about his […]
"While their music may contain a multitude of music theory complexity, it can also be accessible, funky, tender, vulnerable, head-banging, and heavy on guilty-pleasure pop/rock tropes" - PopMatters says about Bent Knee's fifth album. PM describes the Boston band as "prog rock... avant-garde... art rock.. jazz... good old-fashioned metal", but they "use their massive musical […]
On his 20th birthday (October 7), American rapper Mavi released his debut album 'Let the Sun Talk', lyrically rich, with production from Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE, and Navy Blue, among others. AlbumoftheYear.com describes it as "incredibly sharp, consistent, very immersive and hazy hip hop record with a ton of great production, great lyrical raps and a creative […]
'No Home Record' is a first solo album by Kim Gordon, former voice of Sonic Youth, and here, she sounds as fresh as ever. Lyrically, she is dealing with "these calamitous times with as much wit and menace", as Guardian says in their review (five of five stars). Sonically, it's like anything we've heard from […]
"As the production mastermind behind one of the year’s other breakthrough acts, Octavian, J Rick occupies a prime position on the vanguard of UK rap, 'No Retreat, No Surrender' is only going to further consolidate that status" the Quietus says about J Rick's new mixtape. "If J Rick seems like something of an outlier just now, […]
'2020' is the sixth album from the much lauded, eccentric songwriter, "hugely witty, but dark as fuck. His lyricism is, frankly, wonderful", the Quietus says about Richard Dawson. His latest album "is heartbreaking, violent, defeated, and yet majestic... He’s an astonishingly good writer. I am awed and envious". What has changed since his last album? "He’s […]
One of the most adventurous guitarists around today, Bill Orcutt releases his new album 'Odds Against Tomorrow, Friday 11, "a tremendous collection of solo performances". "While Orcutt weaves an unusual, jarring web of notes, it's not mindless plunking or blind slashes of guitar chords", PopMatters argues. "He's a highly gifted musician, with a playing style […]
Norwegian producer Lindstrøm has transformed dance music into something both emotional and architectural, and now, on his latest album, 'On A Clear Day I Can See You Forever' he loses all the disco, and leaves just the space, Stereogum says in its review. These songs are "indistinct haze that nevertheless lends a certain grandeur to […]
Big Thief this week release new album 'Two Hands', five months after their latest, 'U.F.O.F.', the latest being an "earth twin" to the older one's "celestial" spirit. 'U.F.O.F' was recorded in Washington State's dewy forests, as multi-layered, highly constructed studio work, and 'Two Hands' was recorded almost entirely live in the harsh, decaying desert of El […]
Pat Thomas, the 72 year-old “Golden Voice of Africa”, has published new album 'Obiaaa!' (meaning "everybody"), this week, a "living, breathing testament to a music that is very much still alive and being championed by those who have spent their lives perfecting its craft", Guardian says in review. Overall feel of the album - "joyous […]
It's Detroit rapper's fifth album, with appearances from Blood Orange, JPEGMAFIA, Obongjayar, and Run The Jewels. Kind words from critics: "Masterfully produced and exquisitely executed" - Clash Music; "As a presentation of Brown as an exceptional rapper, it ticks all the right boxes" - The Line of Best Fit; "It's Brown's pen game and ear […]
Guardian's music critic totally likes the new Cave&Seeds album: "The most straightforwardly beautiful set of songs that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have ever recorded". In comparison, "Ghosteen occasionally feels like an infinitely warmer, sweeter sibling of 2016’s 'Skeleton Tree'", and Cave, getting older, of course, but his voice "sounds rich". The album is composed of […]
"We fall in love again and again because a little self-sabotage never stopped anyone" - Pitchfork says about Angel Olsen's new album 'All Mirror' (gave it their "Best New Music" tag, grade 8,9 of 10). "Olsen suggests that nihilism and optimism are closer than you think, that what feels like knowing yourself is almost always […]
Philadelphia-based indie pop/rock singer-songwriter's 'The Feel Is Now' is a "warm, inviting album that combines rich melodies with arrangements that seem comforting but also contain plenty of unexpected edges", PopMatters says. Gianmarco Cilli recorded it with the help of a small but mighty collection of musicians (members of War on Drugs, Dr. Dog, Spinto Band […]
Year of the Monkey is a new memoir by Patti Smith, where dreams mix with reality and shows the singer and poet "most at ease when... close to death", as PopMatters put it (a good part of the book is about Sam Shepard). So, worth a read? - "It is satisfying to catch-up with her […]
"A polished, wide-screen rock record full of hooks, heart, and melodies" - PopMatters says about The Menzingers' new album (gave it 8 of 10 stars). The album deals with issues of "loss, decaying relationships, the redemptive power of friendship... in a way that few modern rock bands can". "These are 12 more songs to sing […]
"With this batch of songs, they’ve figured out how to infuse a new-school Wilco record with old-school Wilco’s dynamism and grandeur. The result is their most stunning body of work since 'A Ghost Is Born'" - Stereogum writes about the new album by the American alt-country band. A pretty thing, Stereogum argues - "Tweedy breathes gorgeous […]
Prog-drone band Hashshashin from Australia, on their new album 'Badakhshan', "combine essential concepts from drone, into something simultaneously traditional, naturalistic, and forward-thinking". With it, the Invisible Oranges says, the band "has breathed the esoteric nature of their music into a figure of flesh and bone, a newly-formed hybrid between Earth and Aether". Listen to album […]
"Soaring and atmospheric... focused on lighter, more delicate music" - Brooklyn Vegan says about 'Lilac', fifth album by The Early November. "It’s perhaps the most purely gorgeous sounding record in the band’s discography", as well mature-sounding, similar to adult emo albums The Get Up Kids and American Football released this year.
"It won’t disappoint those hoping for effortless, lyrically X-rated flexes" - the Guardian says about American rapper's debut album, released on the 10-year anniversary of MA’s brother’s death - "her trauma and grief are woven through soul-inflected tracks".
"'The Afterlife' is just as much a psychedelic rock album as it is a jazz album" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about new album by UK space-jazz band, their second this year. "Dan Leavers’ synths make it just as rooted in modern UK electronic music as Shabaka’s sax makes it rooted in modern UK jazz. Save for […]
The Quietus picked up the best of the leftfield French music for the month of September. It's much easier listen them it would seem, but still unusual music, hard to put in any genre. Like a benign strange guy. Paper eaters in Papivores are really atmospheric, Palm Unit are on the jazzy side, and want […]
Songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Sequoyah Murray (a beautiful name, right?!), has a debut album out - "nine exceptionally dynamic songs". It's some sort of electro r'n'b + some world music - "of all the sentiments to pull from this accomplished debut, it stands out for its willingness to embrace the unknown and unexpected because you […]
Milwaukee-based guitarist and rapper of Philippine heritage, Mestozi is "full DIY, self-releasing and – working with what seems to be very little resources – he’s building gorgeous sad beats; veering between downtempo observational hip hop, off-kilter alt-folk and glitchy, droll, minimal psychedelia. Jazz, even", the Quietus says about his first full-length debut 'Peak Communication'. His […]
"A nihilistic, nocturnal brand of psychedelia: mechanistic krautrock rhythms, guitars overdriven into furiously combusting engines, a detached delivery that alternated between slithering and swaggering" - Stereogum says about San Francisco psych-band's seventh album. This time around, the band is "looking back to ’70s funk and disco", with songs feeling "almost like circles".
The newest album by Swedish prog-metal band Opeth, their first entirely in Swedish, "is an exquisite exercise in perpetual contrasts that, while familiar, demonstrates how much Opeth can still intrigue and impress after so many years" PopMatters says in review (9 of 10 stars). They conclude: "Their most wicked record of the decade, signifying that […]
"New album has them sounding like a fired-up, hungry band" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about Swedish post-metal band's new album. "It’s got plenty of familiar Cult of Luna elements, from towering sludge metal to soaring post-rock to hints of psychedelia, but they do all of that and more in ways that don’t just feel like […]
The 11th album by the folk-rock band Hiss Golden Messenger is "a fantastic sounding record, which doesn’t appear to be solely the result of the playing or the production" the Guardian says in review. "The mixes are uniformly fantastic, with electric guitar foregrounded, but not so much it swamps anything, and the folkier elements are […]
"The rhythmic energy... The joyful nature of Afro-pop... Whirlwind of head-bopping, dance-inducing melody" - the latest album by the Super Furry Animals' frontman is, seems so, exactly what the Quietus likes these days. "An album which represents optimism, cross-culturalism and the erasing of borders in favour of creativity and collaboration, is a breath of fresh […]
