Review: The Great Escape, Brighton (Friday 14th May)
Alex Tudor takes us through his highlights of The Great Escape Festival...»
Articles
spawk has written the following articles:
Blank Dogs - Under And Under
In the NYC district with the brightest spotlight on its emerging talent, Blank Dogs (based in Brooklyn) has earned his hype with a series of anonymous, solo releases, something like a trove of Cure and Sisters of Mercy demos from 1982. That's a good thing... »
Review: The Great Escape, Brighton (Saturday, 16th May)
Alex Tudor talks us through his highlights of The Great Escape festival...»
The Great Escape: Jah Wobble & Jon Savage in conversation
Amidst a dozen seminars about making & promoting music in what may soon be called Web 3.0 (yer Twitters and Spotifys), Jah Wobble of Public Image Limited is in conversation with Jon Savage (author of England’s Dreaming), about the timeless value of actually having a new product rather than just a new platform to regurgitate and recirculate.»
God Help The Girl - Extended Review & Analysis
“Are you still into the same things you were into ten years ago?” (Stuart Murdoch, 2007)»
Dag for Dag - Shooting from the Shadows EP
Dag for Dag are new Saddle Creek signings, Sarah and Jacob Snavely, originally from Missoula; currently, Stockholm. This is some of the most straightforwardly catchy indie guitar rock to grace my CD-player in a while, but (if it’s possible) it’s also the most solidly early-80s, and that doesn’t just mean: “lots of Chorus on the guitars”. »
Mark E Smith with Austin Collings: Renegade (Book Review)
The man himself says "I hope this book turns out as Mein Kampf for the Hollyoaks generation." Bet you want to know why, now?»
Flare - Cut
LD Beghtol is best known (in the UK) for his singing on Stephin Merritt’s 69 Love-songs (1999), and possibly also his Field Guide to the aforementioned classic, for the 33-and-a-third series of books. Flare is his »
The Drowned-Up: Recent Releases that slipped under the radar
DiS gets sent an awful lot of mail and, try as we may, we can't find the words to write at length about everything. So, each week (or thereabouts) from now until someone doesn't deliver their copy on time, we'll attempt to rush you through a heap of things we've been sent or been listening to.»
Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love
Describing his album as the musical equivalent of a Danielle Steele novel, Stephen McBean from Black Mountain seems to be having a stab at his own (digested) 69 Love Songs (1999). It's tuneful, and more entertaining than cloying, but: Why? »
Peaches - I Feel Cream
All the original elements are in place – the muffled thump of the kickdrum, the sinister pulse of fuzz-bass, the sporadic clatters of live drums – nonetheless, by alternating disco-diva vocals with the snide tone of a table-dancer, Peaches has come the closest yet to the pop album she should have made years back. It’s still sparse, but about half the songs here are actual songs. That’s a start... »
Shoegaze Week: Slowdive: "ecstasy without the clubbing"
For better or for worse, you can’t have an account of Shoegaze without Slowdive. They were purveyors of hypnotic soundscapes in an apolitical age; ecstasy without the clubbing. »
Alasdair Roberts - Spoils
A fine return to form for Appendix Out frontman, Alasdair Roberts, with his old bandmates, and a larger cast then ever. The Incredible String Band meets Joanna Newsom's Ys Street Band...»
Sigur Rós - Von
It’s Shoegaze Week and a Sigur Ros re-release is imminent (on deluxe 180g vinyl! hurrah!)»
BLK JKS at The Lexington, London, UK, Wed 15 Apr
Apologies in advance if my words sound rushed, but BLK JKS are playing next week (as part of Ether '09), so I want to save you from kicking yourself if you don’t catch them before they get the stepping-stone that is a Radiohead support-slot (or whatever), and you can’t say you saw them first. »
Akron/Family - Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free
Devandra / Michael Gira collaborating fellows have made a delightfully fresh-sounding folk-rock album. More than just a big sound, though, Akron/Family have become a band with a purpose.»
The Hold Steady - A Positive Rage
This is a damn-near perfect live-album – everything a great live-album is and should be, with quotable banter, most of the songs sped up and urgent, and some of them shagged out, but all the more gritty for it, too. »
Lady Sovereign - Jigsaw
Lady Sovereign passes the first test of Good Pop (you can play her album at a party, start-to-finish, with little or no irony), and indeed the second test (you can listen to it on headphones, and actually kind of admire the Lady’s wordplay). Who'd have thought it? Not Alexander Tudor... »
There's A Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars And The Rise And Fall Of 60s Counter-Culture (Book Review)
On a day when many of us are taking to the streets of London to demonstrate ahead of tomorrow's G20 summit - and various publications dust off old arguments bemoaning the lack of protest in modern music - Alexander Tudor considers Peter Doggett's excellent, unromanticised account of the Sixties counter culture.»
Radiohead's Kid A - the DiS re-appraisal
Prompted by Radiohead Week, a raft of re-issues from, erm, some record company or other and the shameful knowledge DiS awarded Kid A a scathing 4/10, way-back-when. It’s time to make amends...»
A Brief History of Radiohead, in B sides
Seeing as how EMI's Radiohead reissues didn't do something as helpful as round up the B sides in one place, DiS has put together a mixtape that you could happily play as an album, which also works as a brief history of Radiohead at their most conventional... and sometimes most experimental. »
Swan Lake - Enemy Mine
With second albums from Swan Lake and Handsome Furs arriving the same fortnight, it’s becoming clear that Spencer Krug (Swan Lake / Sunset Rubdown / Wolf Parade) and Dan Boeckner (H. Furs / W. Parade) could be the Lennon and McCartney of our generation, competing to push surrealism and pop together in ever-weirder shapes. Is this Sgt Peppers, or Let It Be, though...?»
Nadja - When I See the Sun Always Shines on TV
After the re-worked CD-Rs, the collaborations, the Eno / Bazinski-style Classical manipulations, and – oh yeah, the ambient-metal masterpiece, Desire in Uneasiness – all from 2008, Nadja cannily bring the dual-bass and drone treatment to some slowcore and shoegazer classics, as well as 80s cheese and death metal, for a magnificent covers record that deserves to be their breakthrough.»
DM Smith - Heavy Ghost
For a minimal, seemingly insubstantial album, when Heavy Ghost by DM Stith sounds like anyone (contemporary) it sounds like serious heavyweights: Rachel’s, Antony's The Crying Light, Radiohead (in their retro moments), Bjork’s vocals-only album Medulla.»
A. Armada - Anam Cara
Influences: EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY, EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY, EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY. Sounding uncannily like the second and fourth EITS albums (but not the classic third one), this is either flattery or sonic stalking. Still, if you want more of the same – with no surprises whatsoever – you won’t be at all disappointed. »
Bishop Allen - Grrr...
Dispensing with any instruments or effects that actually go “Grrr”, US twee-types Bishop Allen strike a fine balance between cutesiness and tunefulness on their second record. »
Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Thematically, and for the quality of songwriting, Fever Ray fully deserves to be considered a follow-up to Silent Shout; nonetheless, it’s also a line-in-the-sand for The Knife-as-pop-entity, a Kid A-like demand to be respected on the artist’s own terms, or left alone. You can’t dance to any of it, whatever the remixers may do, but you can certainly inhabit it. »
MGR y Destructo Swarmbots - Amigos de La Guitarra
Not, in fact, compatriots of Rodrigo y Gabriela, these Amigos de la Guitarra are guitarists Mike Mare, and Mike Gallagher from Isis, and their debut is a superb post-rock record, free of metallisms, and most reminiscent of Tarentel, or Mogwai’s recent soundtrack-work.»
Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day
Bookended by Kimya Dawson-style whimsy, Julie Doiron's power-pop moments chug along like Weezer, and the slower moments equal the crumbling beauty of Cat Power’s Moonpix album or Mazzy Star. A precious record, this.»
Handsome Furs - Face Control
It’s a well-known bit of pop trivia that the synth-led sound of Springsteen’s wilderness years was indebted to the organs and skeletal drum machines of electro-duo Suicide. Face Control sounds like Born in the USA if The Boss had thrown a little more evil in the mix; plus, tried replicating Alan Vega’s demented yelps. Yep – it’s THAT good…»