Articles
grant_temp has written the following articles:
Excepter - Debt Dept
Excepter are one of those bands. If you're a leftfield listener you'll know of what I speak; they don't strike you as more than goofy noise hooligans at first. Then, when you're listening to them walking through a back-alley on the way home from work they sneak up on you and crack you on the skull with a metal pipe»
The Shins at Los Angeles The Orpheum, Sun 15 Apr
My feelings rarely get this mixed up. Preparing to review The Shins in LA I found my mind was like a martini Bond would never drink: shaken and stirred. You see, I really, really don't feel they've come close to duplicating the magic of Oh, Inverted World which, to me, is the definitive post-millennium indie-rock album...»
Victor Bermon - Arriving At Night
I’ve been listening to Victor Berman’s Arriving At Night for a while now, not that I realised it – his jazz-tinged lounge-lizard music has a way of slipping into the foreground...»
Hetero Skeleton - En la Sombra del Pajaro Vellud
How does something excruciating become pleasurable? Damn, good question, but my guess is that it takes many, many years to find beauty in sheer, deliberate ugliness...»
Lymbyc Systym - Love Your Abuser
It would have been easy for Lymbyc Systym to fall into a deep, cavernous post-rock trench if they were to loiter in any one sound for too long. Although it lingers in a creative holding pattern at times, Love Your Abuser breaks free from any and all constraints with enough regularity that you’ll forget about the limitations of their choice of expression and simply enjoy...»
David Karsten Daniels - Sharp Teeth
“There is a joy / you can’t contain / there is a feeling / you can’t explain.” It’s funny because as I listen to a lyric from opening track ‘The Dream Before the Ring that Woke Me’, I realise it describes David Karsten Daniels’ debut for Fat Cat quite well...»
Wet Confetti - Laughing Gasping
I need to hear another Gang Of Four-ish band like I need to eat a used, scab-flecked bandaide or pass a golfball-sized shard of Kryptonite-esque calcium through my urethra...»
Explosions In The Sky - All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
As tired as the post-rock genre is, records like All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone are keeping the artform alive, if only by a thread as withered and delicate as the soft sections of Explosions In The Sky’s latest. Although the Texas quartet expand on the suffocatingly – albeit deliciously so – uniform motif of previous album The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, All Of A Sudden… unflinchingly holds true to the band’s tradition...»
Christina Rosenvinge - Continental 62
As Christina Rosenvinge smooth-coos “Ooh la-la” at the end of ‘A Liar to Love’ I can’t help but agree; those exact words go through my head every time I listen to Continental 62, a ten-batch of tunes with enough character to match the velvet purrs of its headmaster...»
Gang Wizard - Byzantine Headache
Many deeply ensconced in the Load/Not Not Fun/Blossoming Noise label fold tend to think there are no in-betweens with experimental music: either you get it or you don’t. I’d like to posit that there’s plenty of room in the margins of the confusing genre...»
the house of
It’s a mess, it’s redundant, it’s... unprofessional, but musicians collaborate all the time because, in certain instances, two heads are better than one. In the case of The Octopus Project and Black Moth Super Rainbow, nearly a dozen heads are better than one, at least in theory...»
Alela Diane - The Pirate's Gospel
The Pirate’s Gospel yo-ho-hos and arrghs its way through 11 tracks in just over 30 minutes. Rest assured there are no harps, no cracked, shape-shifting hysterics and no appearances by Rev. Banhart...»
The Melvins - A Senile Animal
How wonderfully appropriate an album title for the woolly mammoths of sludgy, seedy, grainy, gaudy, rolly, polly, stingy, syrup-y metal that keeps on going... going... going long past a date where anyone but their true fans would be paying attention. Thing is, The Melvins have built quite a following over the years. From scratch, no less...»
The Black Neon - Arts & Crafts
Conjuring the ghost of Kitaro would seem impossible, seeing as the cult composer isn’t dead. But The Black Neon do just that with the synth-driven opening track of their full-length debut, Arts & Crafts. After a slight detour into by-the-numbers indie rock, Steve Webster returns to his surprisingly new-age roots only to blend it with the indie feel of the track before it. Things ping-pong back and forth between dreamscapes, rock, and dance-driven synth-pop for the remainder, often a tad comparable to a MUCH more laid-back Russian Futurists or Emperor X...»
Black Fiction - Ghost Ride
Fleeting an idea as ‘ghost rides’ may be, deflecting Black Fiction’s enthusiasm is difficult. Emphasising peripheral sounds others ignore, the five-piece troupe, led by Tim Cohen, fall victim to the same pitfalls as their experimental ilk, namely generic-sounding drum machines, aimless tunes that not only go the way of the buffalo but stay and live with them chewing cud, and occasionally annoying vocals circa Avey Tare...»
Pinback - Nautical Antiques
Don’t buy this until after you’ve bought a bag, a clue and the first two Pinback albums...»
Tool at Washington State The Gorge in George, Sun 27 Aug
It might be hard to believe for those outside the fold, but if you were of a certain age and persuasion in the mid-to-late Nineties, it’s likely that Los Angeles four-piece Tool shook you to the core...»