Not the Releases of the Year 2016

  ‘Album of the year’ lists are fine for representing a specific time period in music, and interesting because of how personal and subjective they are  – an element which becomes eroded by time, as is easily seen from the consensus found in the majority of ‘great albums…

Play For Today – current playlist 27 October 2016

  Naturally some crossover with last week’s since my attention span isn’t all that horribly tragic… 1. Kristin Hersh – Wyatt At The Coyote Palace (Omnibus Books, 2016) Review here! 2. ThrOes – This Viper Womb (Aesthetic Death, 2016) 2. Black Angel Drifter – Black Angel Drifter (Bastard Recordings, 2016)…

Weekly update: the charm of the EP

  This Friday’s weekly musings have a specific subject: the ‘Extended Play’ (EP): Just when the album as a physical format seemed to be dying out, the (somewhat overstated) vinyl renaissance came along, reiterating the obvious; that songs are great, but sometimes a collection of…

Album Review: Rachel Mason – Das Ram

 Rachel Mason ‘Das Ram’ Cleopatra Records (LP) / Practical Records (cassette) Release date: 18 November 2016 Rachel Mason has done so much work in so many fields (performance art/non-performance art/filmmaking/music/etc/etc – check out her website for a cross-section) that it’s easy to immerse oneself in her work….

Weekly Wafflings

  For a variety of reasons, it’s been far longer than intended since I last posted anything here. So this is now the first of my weekly updates, which will mostly, I hope, be posted every Friday. It’s been a funny summer; a house move,…

The First Monthly Report: January 2016

  Along with some tragic deaths, abysmal weather and so forth, 2016 began with lots of good stuff, some of it inevitably acquired at christmas, like for instance… FREZNO by Tony Stamolis (Process Books, 2008) Frezno is great partly because photographer Tony Stamolis’ hometown Fresno is, or appears…

Inevitably, the releases of the year 2015 (part three)

Onwards with more of the best new releases of 2015, as usual in no order, but with the first mentioned especially worthy of earspace… Oblivionized – Life Is A Struggle, Give Up (Secret Law Records) Oblivionized spent the years 2008 – 2013 or so building a…