Authors: Ryan Hall
Review: Bremen – Eclipsed
Bremen = Hawkwind + The Oscillation + Wooden Shjips … read more
Review: Black Books – Self-Titled
Black Books write big songs confined to small places. There is an epic and anthemic quality to Black Book’s cloistered little pop songs: a driving, pulsing urge to express something too huge for words written in broad brush strokes of soaring choruses and the diffused light of atmospheric passages oozing out of guitars and synths that blend ambient colorings into vital, crunchy power chords. … read more
Review: Black Hearted Brother – Stars Are Our Home
After fronting the legendary shoegaze band Slowdive, and then moving on to the delicate folk on Mojave 3 and his own solo output, Neil Halstead has returned to the free-floating psychedelia of heavily affected guitars and synthesizers with his new band, Black Hearted Brother. … read more
Review: Birds of Passage – This Kindly Slumber
On her latest album for Denovali, Merz steps in front of the microphone and behind the thousand blinking lights of pedals and sequencers to create an album full of elegiac drones and deconstructed neofolk tunes that form out of the ether like a heavy mist across a bog or clouds quietly forming on the horizon. … read more
Review: BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa / Anla Courtis – Golden...
BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa / Anla Courtis = The Wanda Group + Skullflower + Rashad Becker
… read more
Review: AUN – Alpha/Heaven
There are depths in Alpha/Heaven that go beyond your garden-variety ambient drone record. … read more
Review: And So I Watch You From Afar
The Belfast, Ireland trio, And So I Watch You From Afar, returns with their technicolor warpaint-smudged and candy-coated Slayer riffs punching gaping holes into rainbow-bleeding amplifiers. … read more
Review: Akron/Family – Sub Verses
Sub Verses is Akron/Family’s densest, busiest and most undeniably rockist album to date. For these reasons, piled on top of their familiar vocal harmonization and expansive experimentation into the marriage of the limitless boundaries of electronic programming and the gnarled, woody heart of American rock n’ roll, Sub Verses makes the case for Akron/Family being one of the most vital groups working in rock music today. … read more
Local Reviews: Theta Naught
It’s Naught Christmas-time! If there is one thing to avoid like the plague this Holiday season it is overproduced, pandering Christmas albums. Luckily, for Theta Naught, Naught Christmas is none of those things. … read more
Local Reviews: Apache, The
Apache, The, is not Drew Danburry. Seriously. Stop calling them that. Although Danburry may be on vocals here and his characteristically verbose songwriting is all over this introductory eight song EP, this is a hairy beast of a record that is hardly the positivist, restrained acoustic music Danburry is known for playing. … read more
Local Reviews: Ghosts of Cinema
How does one reject both time and color? Some sort of laser? In trying to avoid the pitfall of lyrical content focused solely on relationship drama, the young Ghosts of Cinema reach for some pretty ambitious, yet ridiculously obtuse subject matter on their debut album. … read more
Local Reviews: Soft BleR
ElekHztro, from Orem’s Soft BleR, is an album that doesn’t show its true colors until most listeners have pushed skip on their iPods. Electronic wizard Sam Davis places a formidable road block with the first half of the album that could alienate listeners without the patience to wade through the headache-inducing minimal chord progressions and pummeling house beat. … read more
