The Archives
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03.31.09Review: THE SPACE BETWEEN THINGS – Songs About You EPThe last time I felt this way about a debut EP was when Ride dovetailed harmonic white noise into my fifteen year old head like some new configuration of sounds for my life. Then it was the introspective wall of shoegaze, now it is something resembling ghost psychedelics, an intricate tapestry of familiar instruments heard through the tunnel of an aural kaleidoscope. With "Songs About You", The Space Between Things finally begin their ascent into the wider public consciousness, while giant storm clouds of praise no doubt jostle for position in the wings. This is what musical free-climbing sounds like, ...
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03.20.09Review: SIMON PILER & THE ATOM BAND – Songs From HomeIn an imaginary back bedroom somewhere on your street, Simon Piler and The Atom Band are hunched around a whirring tape recorder that accidentally captures some process of song. The completed record - "Songs From Home" - is a collision of ideas coagulating to form a wonderfully lo-fi compound of sound. Dylanesque bluesy guitar-led folk runs effortlessly into experimental synthetics, random instruments pipe up long-lost melodies and samples of sound texture sputter on in the background. And all the while Simon Piler sings, intelligent heart-felt poetry, the underbelly of America, politically astute, emotionally aware, and unconsciously different. As compounds go, ...
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09.01.08Album Review: THE ORANGE DROP “The Orange Album”It is 1968 again. Pink Floyd and The Beatles have just been killed in a head-on high-speed collision of colour on your doorstep as you watch like a child from the safety of your bedroom window. You do not understand it, but a tiny droplet of orange breaks free from the technicolour wreckage of sound and seeps into the earth by the roadside. Many years pass, your hair grows, you hide a bong in a shoe-box beneath your bed and listen to loud psychedelic rock music. Outside your window a great orange tree has grown from the ground, its orange leaves glimmering ...
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08.19.08Review: BECKY N – Two Wheels EPBECKY N: Two Wheels EPBefore I tell you why I love this little record and why you will love this little record, let's get the lo-fi issue out of the way. Many years from now with a daisy-chain of shining records behind her, Becky N's swelling army of admirers are going to follow it back to where it all began and dig up "Two Wheels". An accidental collection of four songs recorded on either side of the planet by a poet with a portable microphone tied to her hair, this record electronically crackles and hisses with 21st century basement bootleg distortion ...