When choosing a musical instrument to learn to play when the opportunity comes around at school, there are several factors which may influence a child. Primarily, this will be, “What are my mates choosing?” – leading to gaggles of violinists, much to the chagrin of their families. Others may be swayed by the flashy gleam […]
I recently watched ‘Evil Dead Rise‘, a film so bad that I believe I may be the only person outside of cartoons to have had random punctuation spill out of their mouth. Amongst the inexplicable awfulness was a particularly bad score by Stephen McKeon, one so lazy and bereft of invention that I’m amazed anyone […]
The Mad, Sad World of the Boutique Blu-Ray There’s a recently released study which suggests 50% of US vinyl buyers don’t have a turntable to play them on. This study is wheeled out every year, but it’s a fun one that causes much teeth-grinding from many record-playing purists, and a nervous defence from those practising […]
It has been just under 25 years since the band Tad split up. Their final single, ‘Oppenheimer’s Pretty Nightmare‘, was released in 1999, and a collection of latter-day recordings and errant stray tracks, ‘Quick and Dirty‘ appeared in 2018. Since then, Tad (the man) formed the band Hog Molly, releasing one album, ‘Kung-Fu Cocktail Grip‘ […]
By any standards, the last band that you would expect to be still releasing new material in 2023 is Pere Ubu, yet here is their nineteenth long-player, ‘Trouble on Big Beat Street’. Angular, difficult, and not just apathetic to the mainstream but appalled by it, David Thomas and the six musicians accompanying him on these […]
For some time now, my phone’s ringtone has been “Be a Clown” performed by Verne Langdon. There has never been an occasion when my phone has rung and the tune it plays has been appropriate. Not at the doctor’s, at work, at funerals, whilst shopping… it’s guaranteed to provoke weird looks and, for some reason, […]
Such is the reverence now given to Les Baxter and Martin Denny, it’s easy to forget that in many ways it was Arthur Lyman who defined the sound of exotica. Who else but a man born in Hawaii would introduce the sounds of distressed parrots and aroused frogs to a distinctly gentle form of jazz […]
In the rather overpopulated world of what is broadly described as ‘outsider music’, it’s true to say there are one or two frauds, or at least those who have been shoehorned in. Are The Shaggs outsiders? Perhaps it was challenging or even outrageous to insist your clearly tone-deaf daughters perform for the masses – of […]
Unchained from the formalities of guitar, drums, bass, and vocals, Thomas Doyle – Tad – is a new beast entirely. Onto his seventh full-length release, there is even greater confidence in his doomy instrumental tracks, with the heaviness of his own historical output, the mathematical exactness of premium post-rock, and the otherworldly unease of experimental […]
Dinosaur Jr were perhaps the most-obvious-to-snaffle-up alternative band in the shopping spree undertaken by major labels in the early 90s. Slacker to the core, they had the musical chops, indie rock-club cool and guitar squawl that appealed to a cross-section of buyers, from floppy-haired indie kid to hardcore enthusiast. The band’s earlier releases on Homestead […]
