Fabulous Fabiano

Brazilian music is justifiably famous for bossa nova and Tropicalia in the sixties and seventies. But even today they are still producing excellent musicians such as Fabiano do Nascimento, a guitarist who has captured my imagination with his paired back sound. On his 2015 album ‘Danca Dos Tempos’ he teams up with the legendary Airto …

Kiwanuka

Michael Kiwanuka’s new self titled album is probably my favorite release of the year. It’s production has a slightly early seventies feeling and is packed with hooks and choruses that would be effective in any era. In short, it’s the sort of album you can put on and leave on

Wilkes

Last year, Sam Wilkes produced a beautiful short album/EP that Ive only really probably listened to now. And its a wonderful piece of work that works great as late night listening. Here’s a sample

Hope Downs

Released last year the Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever album ‘Hope Downs’ has an upbeat but raggedy feel, which I hope to be repeated when I see them at the end of the month Coming in at around 37 minutes it’s also short and sharp and eschews the current trend to create albums that last several …

A Trawl through Past Time

In 2003 Prefab Sprout frontman Paddy McAloon released an album under his own name. Titled ‘I Trawl the Megahertz’ this beautiful and poignant album was made at a time when McAloon was going through a particularly difficult time. Detached retinas had left him facing blindness and increasingly isolated he spent his nights listening to short …

Dans Ma Main

Moody, evocative and gossamer light French Canadian, Jean-Michel Blais, writes compostions for a winter evening in. He is described by some as a post-classical composer and during his recent concert at National Sawdust, he explained how he liked to take previously inaccessible modernist works that seemed to be deliberately obtuse and ‘hard’ for the listener, …

Daydreaming

Radiohead are never entirely what they seem. Beneath the surface are hidden depths that have been uncovered here by Rishi Kaneria. He has analyzed Paul Thomas Anderson’s video for the single ‘Daydreaming’ from their most recent album ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ and come with the following hypothesis

Fever Dream

It’s time to grow up and put away childish things. It’s time to put on Fever Dream by Ben Watt an album of laid back singer songwriter charm that is probably a little too low key to ever be truly popular. For anyone who doesn’t know Ben Watt was the songwriter and musician with the …

Burn the Witch

  When i was a nipper I used to watch Trumpton, a children’s animated short that showed the workings of a fictional English village. How lovely and twee it all was. Until Radiohead got a hold of it. They’ve merged it with the ‘The Wicker Man’ to come up with this vaguely disturbing music video …