When checking out a female-fronted band, it can often be hard to focus on the music. Frankly, in such situations it’s common for everything except the vocalist’s makeup to suck horrifically. After all, it’s a sad (if unsurprising) fact that sex appeal sells – and many acts aren’t above milking said time-honoured marketing ploy until it’s dry, shrivelled, and flaccid.
Thank god, then, that Fine Fine Titans are above that bullshit. Read more…
As a writer, having a mind that’s always on is kind of a good thing. Writing has been described as thinking on paper – but as horror maestro Stephen King points out, writing is actually more than that.
Writing is telepathy. Read more…
One of the fun things about keeping an open mind is that things can always change. This is especially important when it comes to life as a music fan; many listeners have a tendency to adopt strict rules and set-in-stone fundamentalist attitudes toward “The stuff I like” and “All the rest of it”. It’s no surprise, then, that so many people claim to be bored when it comes to music; but this just doesn’t have to be so.
At TMMP, we make a point of not doing things the locked-in-stone way. So even if an act doesn’t make a great first impression on us, we’re happy to look deeper and give them a second chance. Read more…
Strident and ultra-confident strutting delivered via thick, lush tones. Sensual melodic contours that become rolling hills and deep valleys while skilfully avoiding Satriani-esque clichés. Instrumental guitar that leans on the less-wanky and more-emotional end of the spectrum. A damn good tune. Read more…
“Nothing’s new in music anymore!”
“It all sounds the same these days…”
“Everything good was done decades ago. New music just sucks.”
These quotes (and more) are all common music-fan complaints. But anyone who’s ever said such things has never heard of The Algorithm. Read more…
Having heard In Dynamics live before checking them out on record, this isn’t what I expected. During Questions, there’s a lot less of the Biffy Clyro sound I noted during their live show, and many more beams of uniqueness poking through the dark thundery clouds of rock. Read more…
Heart, hair, swagger, and balls. Autumn Eases You Into The Dark has all these things in abundance.
Especially the balls. Read more…
Prepare to have your brain broken.
Maxi Curnow is, I suspect, not really human. As a guitarist, he’s capable of channeling Guthrie Govan, Alex Machacek, and Steve Vai; as a vocalist, Curnow can give any leading tech-metal frontman a run for his money. Calling Maxi Curnow “talented” just doesn’t work. The only option here is to go nuclear and pull out “virtuoso” instead. It may be an overused phrase these days, but it has to be said: Maxi Curnow is a virtuoso. Full stop. Read more…
Turning a first name into a brand name can be a risky proposition. On the one hand, it’s great for solo artists as it’s more personal than hiding behind a pseudonym – but on the other, it makes it very difficult for people to search for you online. There are many Erikas in the world – especially on Spotify, where you can find Erikas playing everything from acoustic folk standards to dark, brooding electronica, lounge jazz, and even six albums worth of accordion music. Google “Erika music” and the top hits are for a dermatology consultant (Dr Erika N. Music – I kid you not), a YouTube video featuring Nazi military music, and a list of still more artists named Erika who are, annoyingly, not the ERIKA (full caps) that we’re looking for. Read more…
Scrappy. Rough around the edges. Grooves like a hard-rocking, JD-fuelled badass. Opening track Edge of the Bed is (and/or does) all of these things. Strike takes a more laid-back approach, grinding slinky soul and unforgiving backbeats into fine powder and exhaling it into a thick cloud of cigar smoke. Even my laptop’s on-the-hour spoken time updates want in on the action, dropping in in perfect time as if this digital stream were pressing a knife made of ones and zeroes into Apple-branded circuitry. Read more…