This is an instrumental math/noise EP, and the collective name under which its creators work references anime (either this TV show or this movie – or perhaps both?).
No matter what the mainstream magazines might have you believe, it just doesn’t get any cooler than this. Read more…
Finally, on their third album, Animals As Leaders have sold out. Gone are their trademark twisting riffs and über-dense polyrhythms – all of their previous idiosyncrasies have been ironed out, replaced with a light and airy, easily digestible, radio-friendly approach sure to see them bothering the pop charts. In fact, Miley Cyrus made headlines just hours ago when she tweeted “OMG cant get enuf of da noo AAL record! Mega luv #nextalbumtobeallgent”. Time to jump ship, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Only kidding. Read more…
And we’re back! After major heart surgery, a round of Type-A flu, acute appendicitis, and many other less-than-fun experiences, The Musical Melting Pot is finally back online and ready to bring you even more epic new music.
Needless to say, the past several weeks have been brutal, difficult, and not a little dark – but there were moments of positivity and clarity scattered about as well. One such moment was the release of this EP – a Facebook news feed discovery that yielded many hours of blissful escape from windowless quarantine rooms and slowly healing surgical wounds. I owe a debt of gratitude to RedTower simply for existing; some intangible quality separated Afterall from its peers in terms of sheer immersive potential, providing many much-needed periods of relief. As TMMP’s archives demonstrate, my musical tastes are nothing if not eclectic; therefore, that this EP consistently topped the entire contents of my iCloud library and Spotify’s bottomless catalogue for seven full days is testament to the existence of some potentially imperceptible x-factor.
But what might it be? Read more…
Throughout ‘Pages Apart’, South-East alt-rockers Atiptoe blend Biffy Clyro’s off-kilter riffs with clean and pristine guitar-pop commercialism, resulting in four tracks sure to satisfy musos and casual listeners alike. Everything you need is here: Precociously tight playing (‘Congratulations Professor’); badass guitar intros (‘No Dogs (Dogs Kill Penguins)’); frenetic five-Jägerbombs-in-ten-minutes energy (‘Rud’s Yard’) and catchy lyrics layered over mathy complexity (‘My Flexible Friend’).
When you come across an album titled What Just Happened?, it’s going to get your attention. But from an artist’s perspective, giving your album a name like that is a pretty risky proposition. The amount of expectation automatically placed upon a release called What Just Happened? is going to be immense; if you take that leap, even the slightest flaw is guaranteed to result in a critical backlash so fierce that your best course of action will be to go into hiding. Such a lifestyle change might well suit an undercover secret agent or investigative journalist, but for a performer it’s pretty much the kiss of death.
If an album called What Just Happened? had been released by almost any other band or artist, it would likely have ended in tears. But for the debut long-playing release from an acoustic virtuoso whose playing has, for a long time, been soundly praised by worshippers the world over, What Just Happened? is a spookily fitting monicker. Within the first five seconds of opening track Boogie Slam, Dawes instantly proves his worth as not just a guitarist, but a musician, drawing the listener helplessly (and willingly) into a deep, warm, and luxurious musical world. Before long, this album’s title becomes an almost meditative mantra as Dawes drags several instruments’ worth of parts from a single guitar, not letting up for a moment yet steering well clear of the “notes for the sake of notes” territory frequently occupied by his peers.
Track two – Dawes’ globally renowned rearrangement of Gotye’s hit Somebody That I Used To Know – is, as the reputation that precedes it suggests, mind-blowing and heartbreaking all at once. At the time of writing this review, I’m having heart surgery in a few days – and I’m considering pausing this track and calling the hospital to make sure I should really be listening to it. The standout element of Somebody That I Used To Know absolutely has to be the dynamic mastery on display here: Loud notes pop out in all the right places, while in the background soft comping glides by so consistently that you would absolutely swear that either this tune is multi-tracked, or Mike Dawes is some kind of lizard-person / alien hybrid sent to Earth to take over the acoustic fingerstyle world. In short, Somebody That I Used To Know may make you start taking David Icke seriously. Approach with caution. Read more…
If there’s one thing I couldn’t care less about, it’s musical comfort zones. Life’s too short to limit your auditory experiences to a single genre; and so, whether I’m in a release’s target market or not, I’ll still give it a chance. EPs like Jamie Jooste’s The Man is Always Right are the reason I continue to do this. Packed full of soul, fastidiously crafted songs, and drenched in P!nk’s self-consciousness-less attitude, this release offers more emotional depth than most of its peers while retaining the Mister-Sheen-slick production values required to climb the pop industry ladder. Read more…
On paper, this should be terrible. A music video that tells you how to make hummus? What? Read more…
We all know what it’s like to see an awesome live set, forget to check out the act’s recordings after the show, and rediscover them somewhere down the line. You know what comes next: You wind up kicking yourself, all the while berating your brain cells for allowing it to happen in the first place.
In this instance, that horrible sense of self-loathing was mercifully avoided. Having watched and reviewed Natalie Ross’s Independent Venue Week set at the Boileroom in Guildford, I set about searching and unearthed The Thrill of It All. Read more…
I’ve said this before, but it’s always worth repeating: If your music would fit into a Tarantino or Rodriguez soundtrack, I’m going to love your music.
CeCe’s Framework EP definitely fits this bill. Read more…
Very few bands give as few fucks as Baby Godzilla. Even fewer bands use this trait to their advantage; there’s a very fine line between “putting in no effort” and genuine fuck-giving-free music. Baby Godzilla, however, are on the right side of every line. Every track on Knockout Machine is intensely chaotic, and yet makes perfect sense. In fact, if you were to force Baby Godzilla into a tightly-quantized corner, the results would most likely lose every last iota of structural integrity, and just dissolve into something utterly unlistenable. Read more…