Om - Advaitic Songs (Album Review)

If there was a competition to decide which bands were least likely to become really big in the next twelve months then surely Om would have to be near the top of the list. I mean, 'Advaitic Songs' is the best album of their career to date but it is so anti-zeitgeist that it may as well have a big sticker on the front with Nick Clegg’s grinning face on it. This is exactly the opposite of the sort of music that most people even think of listening to, and that is part of the reason why it is so brilliant.

Written by: Ben Bland | Date: Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Rob Zombie - Mondo Sex Head (Album Review)

Rob Zombie has never been one to shy away from the unconventional, or one to see a boundary in his music. So, he handed over some of his most famed musical offerings to a string of DJs, let them have their wicked way with his work and is now releasing their collaborative works, entitled 'Mondo Sex Head'.

Written by: Heather McDaid | Date: Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Green Day - Oh Love (Single Review)

Not content with one new album, Green Day are treating fans to three, but the question that plagues many is: Can Green Day produce three albums of pure quality? The trilogy of releases, being a challenge for most bands, could result in many filler tracks and there - in its depths - lies a string of songs that, when put together, would result in one mammoth record. 'Oh, Love' - the newest insight into what to expect - doesn't bode too well for the theory of three albums of pure brilliance.

Written by: Heather McDaid | Date: Tuesday, 17 July 2012

Moya - Lost And Found (Album Review)

Brighton-based singer/songwriter Moya released her debut album on July 9th and it’s a stunning first effort.

Written by: V O'Hagan | Date: Monday, 16 July 2012

Bloc Party - Octopus (Single Review)

Bloc Party are back, with balls.

Written by: Luke Bailey | Date: Monday, 16 July 2012

Grasscut - Unearth (Album Review)

Some albums are really frustrating. They promise so much but ultimately fail to deliver the substance that the listener really craves, hinting at greatness but instead settling for half-baked ideas and overall disappointment. It would be a bit harsh to say that 'Unearth' fits wholly into that description but at the same time this album never reaches the heights that Grasscut really could be scaling.

Written by: Ben Bland | Date: Friday, 13 July 2012

Duke Special - Oh Pioneer (Album Review)

It’s hard to ascertain why Duke Special isn’t something of a bigger name than he is. With 'Oh Pioneer' being his tenth studio album, and with his songwriting still deserving of plaudits, the artist less known as Peter Wilson must be beginning to think that the luck will never come for him in the harsh reality of the music business. A consistent producer of high quality albums, it is about time that the Duke got a break.

Written by: Ben Bland | Date: Thursday, 12 July 2012

Run, WALK - "Health" (Album Review)

It’s always very strange reviewing an album when you know its creators are releasing it as an endnote to their career. In the case of run, WALK! the frustration usually accompanying such records is all the greater, and not just because it is their long awaited debut full-length. If this, confusingly titled, album is anything to go by then this is, or rather was, a band with something special in them.

Written by: Ben Bland | Date: Thursday, 12 July 2012

Daniel Powter - Turn On The Lights (Album Review)

Best known as a one hit wonder for smash hit 2006 single 'Bad Day', which played in the background as Alvin and his Chipmunks gathered nuts for the winter and American Idol losers sobbed farewell, it's fair to say Daniel Powter is in need of some fair press, and after a four year musical hiatus spent, by his own admission, surfing and fighting his demons, suffice to say he has his work cut out.

Written by: Helen Grant | Date: Thursday, 12 July 2012

The Killers - Runaways (Single Review)

The new Killers single "Runaways" wouldn't have been out of place in the Joan Jett biopic of the same name. There is a distinctly classic rock sound to the track, with tales of teenage love on the run, a classic American fairy tale.

Written by: Mark Richards | Date: Tuesday, 10 July 2012

Dub Pistols - Worshipping The Dollar (Album Review)

It was only back in 2008 that if you heard the word “dub” dropped in to a conversation about music that you could still expect it to evoke connotations of reggae and splashes of brass, bass and Jamaican accents. But four years later and the takeover of dub step, has all but eradicated the original meaning of the word “dub” from the consciousness of anyone who wasn’t already keen on the sub-genre.

Written by: Owen Sheppard | Date: Saturday, 07 July 2012

Digitalism - DJ Kicks (Album Review)

For anyone who’s not familiar with the DJ Kicks series from German label !K7 Records, and is a fan of all things in music of the electronic variety, sort your life out! Fresh from the record vaults and turn tables of Germany’s own DJ/producer duo: Jens Moelle and Ismail Tüfekçi (AKA Digitalism) has come this splendid mix of tunes not only of their material, but of some of their most favored from their own personal music library too.

Written by: Owen Sheppard | Date: Wednesday, 04 July 2012

Mike Patton & Ictus Ensemble - Laborintus II (Album Review)

“Erm, what the HELL are you listening to?”

Written by: Ben Bland | Date: Tuesday, 03 July 2012

Periphery - Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal (Album Review)

Periphery have always, and no doubt will always, be something of a love/hate band. Their brand of ‘djent’ is guilty of featuring all the clichés of the ‘genre’ alongside even more bombastic segments reminiscent of prog metal titans Dream Theater. Perhaps it would be fair to think of them as a bit like Protest the Hero…except a Protest the Hero that seemed determined to make themselves as hard to like as possible.

Written by: Ben Bland | Date: Tuesday, 03 July 2012

Bradley Johnson - Boomerang (Single Review)

Do you remember Bradley Johnson? The former X Factor contestant overcame school expulsions, arrests and underage binge drinking to reach the giddy heights of the X Factor live shows. Bradley and his band Nu Vibe were voted off the show to save pasty-faced womanizer Frankie Cocozza, but now he’s back, solo, and coming at us like a curved Australian stick.

Written by: V O'Hagan | Date: Tuesday, 03 July 2012

Cheryl - A Million Lights (Album Review)

“Please welcome to the stage, Gary Barlow and...Cheryl!” And so the newly surname-less Cheryl pranced onto the Jubilee stage like the most beautiful deer in the entire world, opened her mouth, and then Twitter exploded.

Written by: V O'Hagan | Date: Tuesday, 03 July 2012

Patti Smith - Banga (Album Review)

The opening song to 'Banga' re-introduces Smith with ‘Amergio’. Describing the track as “our overture, contemplating the exploits of navigator Amergio Vespucci, from whom America got its name. I imagined Vespucci coming to the New World with great expectations that they would convert the natives, only to find himself utterly transformed by the purity of the land and people” Patti Smith explains in the album’s sleeve notes. Including spoken-word aspects and the poetically driven lyrics she is so well known for, (Smith was once brilliantly described as a ‘Rimbaud with Marshall amps’) she commands the first track with her powerful voice running parallel to rhythmic, stabbing guitars and strings.

Written by: Emma-Louise Newlyn | Date: Tuesday, 03 July 2012

Danko Jones - Bring The Mountain (DVD Review)

Sometimes in life we have to accept that we miss out on great bands, and by watching a DVD I have discovered that a band perfectly tailored to my music taste has - until now - slipped through the net. I've always said that watching a band's DVD when you're unfamiliar is like a crash course 1.01 in said subject and, taking that to be the case, I'm glad to have finally been educated in the world of Danko Jones.

Written by: Heather McDaid | Date: Monday, 02 July 2012

We Are Augustines - Rise Ye Sunken Ships (Album Review)

Brooklyn, New York is an area more or less synonymous with big, uncompromising, American hip hop, yet out of the city haze have come We Are Augustines, one of the most promising of 2012’s indie rock crop.

Written by: Owen Sheppard | Date: Tuesday, 26 June 2012

Moya - Lost And Found (Single Review)

There's not really much to be said about 21 year old singer Moya at the moment. No reflection on her as an artist, there's just genuinely not a lot on the internet about her at the moment. This will all change though, once her single 'Lost and Found' is released.

Written by: Emma Dodds | Date: Monday, 25 June 2012