The Pop Corporation

EIKO ISHIBASHI & JIM O’ROURKE

Eiko Ishibashi is a Japanese singer-songwriter, and Jim O’Rourke is related to loads of US experimentalists. This pair have collaborated before, and they’re at it again with an improvisational affair which is super pleasing. They toured Europe in ’23 and some of these improvs have been tracked down into an album called ‘Pareidolia’. This is
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PIANO POP FROM OBERBAUM

If you like your rock and pop to have the piano pushed up to the front, then you might like the new song from Oberbaum, which is the moniker of Belgian Lucie Rezsöhaz. ‘Solitude’ is taken from a new album which goes by the name of ‘I Should Be Softer’. You’ll be able to hear
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BABO MORENO BRAZILIAN JAZZ

Babo Moreno (aka Fabio De Oliveira) is a known head around London jazz circles, and he’s let everyone know that there’s going to be a debut solo LP. A crack session guy, he’s played with loads of people, but this solo outing is clearly more personal. Despite being from England’s capital, he’s he song of percussionist
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NEW BLOOD ORANGE FEELS LIKE HOME

Dev Hynes is a busy artist, so it is surprising he’s found the time to do any recording for his Blood Orange project, but we’re very glad he did. There’s a new track called ‘The Field’ which features The Durutti Column, Tariq Al-Sabir, Caroline Polachek and Daniel Caesar. Hynes also directed the accompanying music video
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SPOTIFY & WAR TECH

One of the great enemies of culture and society in the 2020s, has been Big Tech. As convenient as the whole thing has been, younger people are getting subscription fatigue, social media seems to have been a failed experiment, and Big Tech got in bed with authoritarians and are the billionaire class. A point has
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SABBATH EARLY STUFF

In the build-up to the last ever Black Sabbath gig, we’re now being treated to an album of the group’s early recordings – back then, they were simply called “Earth”, which is quite hippie of them. Either way, this is fun stuff for us dorks, and this material will be the first time it has been
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GROOVEJET VS POSH SPICE

If the ’90s had The Battle of Britpop with Blur’s ‘Country House’ going up against ‘Roll With It’ by Oasis, the 2000s equivalent was a race for number one which has been somewhat forgotten in the intervening years. It was the battle of Posh versus Posher. The house underdog versus the footballer’s wife. And what
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NEW ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

Did you like Animal Collective? Did their brand of spiralling psychedelic indie rock do it for you? Good news then, because they’re back! This seems to be a one-off single, but there might be more stuff in store if you keep your ear to the ground. It’ll be released on a limited edition 45, and
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MORE THAN A SURF BAND / THE BEACH BOYS

There’s been so many beautiful words written about the Beach Boys since the passing of Brian Wilson, that it feels partially redundant to add more here. However, for all the virtues of these tributes, there’s still a nagging sense of reducing the group to a ‘mere’ surf group, when clearly, they were so much more.
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DID THE FRENCH INVENT ELECTRO?

There’s a lot to be said for the fanciful things said by politicians and generally, you can’t trust them as far as you can throw them. They take credit for all manner of stuff while they had their fingers up their bums, so nothing should surprise us. However, we had to have a little sit
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