Back catalogue: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: BIG BRAVE's music epitomises what has been called 'massive minimalism,' with layers of textural distortion and feedback accentuating its weight and frayed edges. Their artistry blends traditional folk techniques with a modern deconstruction of guitar music, all of which is evident in the new album A Chaos Of Flowers, which is a follow-up to their fierce 2023 album Nature Morte. Lyrically, the songs delve into vulnerability, isolation, and co-existence in nature and guitarist and vocalist Robin Wattie drew inspiration from poetry by female-presenting artists, exploring alienation's impact on the psyche. This record is a testament to the band's ability to evoke intense emotions through minimalist yet powerful arrangements.

Review: Los Angeles-based Canadian-American experimentalist Claire Rousay has made a name for herself due to her unique approach to post-rock-inflected ambience built off of primitive DIY field recordings captured on a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder, resulting in a curious form of emo musique concrete or "emo-ambient". Following on from a myriad of collaborations, projects, and singles, Sentiment marks her first full-length to put her usually hidden voice front and centre; utilising auto-tune to craft emotive hyper-folk musings delivered with androgynous hues. Described as a "meditation of the poignant emotional terrains of loneliness, nostalgia, sentimentality, guilt, and sex"; Rousay uses fractured narratives and one-way conversations to deliver painfully relatable, often uncomfortable musings, smothered beneath layers of droning reverb, monotonous acoustic plucking, and everyday sounds almost too familiar to pinpoint. The end result is the musical equivalent to our inner monologue at its lowest ebb, nattering incessantly while the world moves on around us, while sonically, it's the culmination of all Rousay's experimentation thus far, yet simultaneously more fearless and fragile.

Review: Sightless Pit is Lee Buford (aka The Body) and Dylan Walker (aka Full of Hell). The creative pair's debut album Grave of A Dog put them right up there with the best bands in the heavy metal scene. They now follow it up with another album that redefined heavy guitar sounds. Lockstep Bloodwar is an eclectic one sound wise and it features some big names making guts appearances such as Gangsta Boo from Three 6 Mafia, YoshimiO from Boredoms, plus Midwife, Lane Shii Otayonii and more. This version comes on limited translucent red marbled vinyl for a look as freaky as the music sounds.

Review: Purely democratic bands are hard to come by, but Tortoise might just be a known exception to that rule. 'Rhythms, Resolutions and Clusters' is probably ther best LP in their lot to encompass this outlook; a well-rounded album of trudging quasi-electronic codi, released in 1995 as part of the industrial and post-rock scenescape. It hears 7 tracks nod to wonky, pained, muddy dub in the vein of 23 Skidoo, This Heat, Pole or Muslimgauze, and this new cream reissue of course contains all the remixes; Steve Albini, Jim O'Rourke, and Bundy K. Brown et al.

Review: Tortoise's 1995 album Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters gets a first new vinyl pressing in almost three whole decades. It is a fine collection of remixes that is from ended associates and family including Casey Rice, Mike Watt (Minute Men), John McEntire, Bundy K.Brown and many more. They all help make it a much better than average remix album with a couple of all time gems from these a-listers who are all in fine form. Jim O'Rourke's 'Initial Gesture Protraction' and Steve Albini 's take on 'The Match Incident' are two particular standouts.