Renaissance man and musician meets French philosopher and musician. Together, they form a bande à part – a band of outsiders. Fitting, really, as they borrowed their name from one of Godard’s lesser appreciated films, Detective. Together, through his love of crunching garage guitar and her starlit vocals and stylings, DTCV produce a gently ironic … Continue reading Watching the DTCV
Jamie Smith, better known as Jamie xx, has had a meteoric rise in the music world. He’s accomplished so much already – first with The xx, whose debut album, xx, won them a Mercury Prize, and grabbed top position in a host of end of year lists. Their second album, Coexist, was released to major … Continue reading Jamie xx shows his true colours
What do you do when you’ve done remixes for a vast range of well-known artists like Katie Perry, MGMT, Moby, Phoenix, and LCD Soundsystem? You collect some of the best ones, add in a few cracking unheard tracks, and put together an album that showcases your skill and unique “labor of love”, live-infused approach to … Continue reading Nick Millhiser of Holy Ghost! Talks About Weed and Music
The story of the DMA’S began, the way all good stories do, with a bit of a twist in the tale. Three guys from Australia, playing in other bands, stumble upon each other. They write songs, and there’s a buzz, a connection. Suddenly they’re signed, but they’ve never played together live – and there’s a … Continue reading Johnny Took of DMA’s Keeps It Honest
London-based Wolf Alice fears no genre. As the repressive need for boundaries evaporates, the four piece has jumped into the fray with an array of songs that casually parades their mastery of the free range. From pop to garage, grunge to folk, the band stamps every song with their inventive energy, like on their first … Continue reading Ellie Rowsell of Wolf Alice Talks About the New Album, My Love is Cool
Jonas Bjerre, Bo Madsen, Silas Graae, and Johan Wohlert, otherwise known as Mew, are releasing their first album in six years on April 27 on Play It Again Sam. Titled +-, it was recorded in Copenhagen with Michael Beinhorn sharing production duties with the band. It’s a sweeping, anthemic display of their particular musical sensibility, … Continue reading Johan Wohlert and the return of Mew
Drenge hit the headlines when they were named NME’s Best New Band of the Year, an accolade they shared with past winners like The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys. Their debut self-titled album had slamming tracks on it like “Backwaters”, “Fuckabout”, and “Bloodsports”, a song that Zane Lowe had as one of his hottest tracks. They … Continue reading Drenge open up about Undertow
Moon King is the combination of two long-time friends and musical collaborators from Toronto – Daniel Benjamin and Maddy Wilde. They started out by releasing 2 EPs, Obsession 1 and Obsession 2, and are now about to unveil their first full-length album, Secret Life, on Last Gang Records. It’s dreamy and intense, the vocals reaching … Continue reading My interview with Daniel Benjamin of Moon King
If you listened closely to Drenge’s first album, you would have noticed, floating here and there on the tidal wave of energy that burst out of each song, a moment or two of subtle craft. A drop of wordplay, a gap of silence that added more weight to what came next, a neat turn or … Continue reading My review of Undertow – the brilliant new album by Drenge
Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to achieve. Think of The Kinks. A song like “Waterloo Sunset”, the timeless Ray Davies classic, manages to be both easily memorable and emotionally complex all at once. Sometimes listening to a song is like a doorway to a different life. More than the sum of their parts, … Continue reading Review of new self-titled album from American Wrestlers
