
Caroline Polacheck’s is an adventurous pop star, and that’s always a good thing. She’s recently hit out at lazy comparisons to Bjork and Kate Bush, preferring to make music under her own steam, which is fair enough. She’s got a big voice and likes to be mildly awkward, which we say as a compliment of…

Hey! Do you like new music and, not just new music, but slightly difficult music that’s fun? Well, you should check outy Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra newbie, ‘Future Shaman’. Apply here if you like wonky jazz and post-rock. It’s discordant, good stuff. Mazurek is a composer/trumpeter and the Exploding Star Orchestra features Damon Locks…

We like a popstar making bold choices, and Sam Smith has been doing exactly that lately. It doesn’t matter whether you like the tunes or not, we should absolutely support a commercial artist when they lean into the experimental and off-kilter. Did you see them on SNL, with Sharon Stone draping themselves all over the…

It feels kinda shitty referring to a new artist as ‘Bjork’s daughter’, but needs must. Isadora Bjarkardottir Barney is her name, and she’s released her debut solo work as part of a comp showcasing Icelandic music. The comp is called ‘DRULLUMALL 4’ and Isadora’s track – ‘bergmál’ – is really good, you’ll be glad to…

The mighty Pet Shop Boys are all set to share some previously unreleased songs in April. It’s all part of a new thing they’re doing and that new thing is a book called ‘Annually’. The 2023 edition of the yearly release (hence the name) will be a 64-page hardback affair, containing journals, photos from their…

You can try and be as clever as you want, deep diving on this, that, and the other… but sometimes it’s just worth reminding yourself how great a band were. From Detroit, America’s greatest music city, Inner City was the brainchild of the great Kevin Saunderson and Paris Grey. Saunderson of course, was one of…

Light In The Attic have been doing a wonderful job giving Lee Hazelwood’s back catalogue a spring clean, and they’re at it again, this time with ‘Nancy & Lee Again’, now available to pre-order on vinyl and, even better, 8-track! It’ll be streaming too, if you’re not in the habit of buying stuff. It’ll be…

Some people are already all over this, some are not – but Eddie Chacon was in Charles & Eddie (‘Would I Lie To You?’ ohyeah!) and he’s been releasing really, really brilliant music lately. Like, utterly fantastic AOR/Future Soul/NuYacht brilliance on Stones Throw Records. No lie. With the 2020 album ‘Pleasure, Joy And Happiness’, he…

Oh, the fractured and chequered history of the mighty Sugababes. There’s been six members, and you could only really argue that four of them really count, and the puritans, three. Obviously, the holy trinity are Mutya, Keisha and Siobhàn, but Heidi’s tenure involves some of the group’s most iconic moments, even if deep in our…

BBE Music put out good shit, and if you’ve heard their J-Jazz compilations, you’ll know that they’re some of the finest, most adventurous comps around. In addition to that, they’ve put out a brilliant book chronicling Japanese jazz called J Jazz: Free and Modern Jazz From Japan 1954-1988, which is a look at some super…

Khruangbin are back everyone, and yes, they’re wigs! The new song is called ‘May Ninth’ and, for fans of the trio’s sound, it sounds like Khruangbin, so no worries – they’ve not pivoted to sounding like dubstep or anything. It’s taken from the imminent ‘A La Sala’ and it’s gently psychedelic, woozy stuff. The album…

It’s 2001 and the USA, UK and pals are carpet bombing the Middle East. January, George Dubya Bush is sworn in thanks to some hanging chads, Apple launches iTunes and, later that year, 9/11 would change everything forever. While US democracy looked shaky, while war saw people taking to the streets in protest, people set…
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