music in quarantine: march 2020

  This is another roundup of new music that seemed interesting enough to me to check out. Not, you might think, an ideal time to be releasing a new album; and yet, with the majority of music sales, despite the resurgence of vinyl, still being digital…

what January 2020 sounded like

  Despite the portentous title, this is a round up of things I was sent by nice PR people that sounded interesting, since I said at some point a while ago that I’d do this regularly (and why not?) so here they are, in alphabetical…

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2018

  It’s that time of year again; I’ve had to make some end-of-year lists for various places, so this will be a short-ish version. 2018, like most years, has been a year full of terrible and excellent music and mostly there’s no difference between the…

It’s time for your six-monthly review…

  What a shock; I haven’t even slightly kept up with weekly (or even monthly) updates on here and now we’re in July already. Everything in the world seems so grim that it’s hard to actually do anything at all so I shall fall back on…

Weekly Update: Complicated Comforts

For a variety of reasons, it is being a slightly stressful, sleepless time, so I’ve been looking at things that are, in a variety of perhaps complicated ways, comforting or soothing (to me). I suppose comforting because it can be a relief to have one’s…

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2016 (Part Three)

  Some more highlights… Lauren Redhead – Ijereja (Pan Y Rosas Discos) Probably the least conventional release of the year on my list, I wrote about Lauren Redhead’s ambient/noise/found sound opera for Echoes and Dust, so will keep this short. An intriguing mix of music and…

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2016 (Part One)

Last year, I ended up writing multiple ‘releases of the year’ lists because I kept forgetting great things and having to add more posts to include them. I feel like keeping it (relatively) concise this year but will probably end up doing the same again….

Play For Today – Playlist December 9th 2016

1. Jesca Hoop – Memories Are Now (Sub Pop, Feb 2017)   Not listened to it many times yet, but the forthcoming album from singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop is sounding pretty good so far 2. David Bowie – Diamond Dogs (RCA, 1974) The death throes of Bowie’s glam…

Play For Today – Current Playlist 25th November 2016

  After many delays, another week, another playlist… 1. Kristin Hersh – Wyatt At The Coyote Palace (Omnibus Books, 2016) Review here!  2. Stench Price – Stench Price EP (Transcending Obscurity Records, 2016) 3. Baby Tears – Succubus Slides (Choice Records, 2016) 4. Bethlehem – Bethlehem (Prophecy Productions, 2016)…

Weekly Update: Halloween Horror – Outsider Music & Venusian Death Cell

It’s Halloween next week; and what better time to write a few words about the parallel universe of outsider music? ‘Outsider music’ is one of those nebulous but still quite useful terms that litter the language of music. Like “singer-songwriter”, it doesn’t really denote a…