Review: Heavy Jazz returns with Ellis Island, their latest instrumental offering following the success of 'Indian Rope Man'. This new release highlights Brian Auger's signature jazz prowess, delivering another intricate and powerful workout. The flip side honours the late Zoot Money with the first-ever 7" release of 'George Bruno Money'. This limited edition comes in a carefully designed sleeve featuring foldout flaps and a cutaway rear. It's an essential piece for jazz lovers and collectors alike, brimming with soulful rhythms and nostalgic nods to jazz legends.
Review: The new Bauhaus BBC Sessions release hears British goth pioneers Bauhaus at their most vital, documenting the three-year period that they swept the airwaves like vampire bats with a hearse's worth of recordings made for UK radio. Spanning early post-punk urgencies to the relatively more textured darkness of their later work, these sessions were recorded for shows hosted by John Peel and David Jensen, flapping through alternate takes of 'Double Dare', 'In the Flat Field', and 'Third Uncle'. Together with a recent vinyl reissue of a 1983 performance at the Old Vic in London, which snapped a shot of Bauhaus at the peak of their dramaturgic snarks, both releases provide a compelling, rough-edged, bouffant counterpart to their studio albums, before goth went bird's nest: Bauhaus live and direct, with all the mood, menace and momentum fully intact.
Review: When Yorkshire-based four-piece bdrmm released their self-titled debut in 2020 via Sonic Cathedral, it was a homage to the power of foreboding reverb-soaked guitar music. Now with their 2024 release - after they moved tentatively towards it with their 2023 follow-up I Don't Know - they have ventured into soundscaped dance music kept within a pop context. It's still got a darkness to it and the guitar is there but it's given no more importance than the synths and arpeggiators. Overall, having more tools to sculpt their sound with makes them sound liberated. Lead singer Ryan Smith has one of the most evocative voices in British music, leaning into the stoner feel that reverb provides, but still retaining an ear for melody - as if to say there's no shame in pop. Having the lead singer of Working Men's Club - Syd Minsky-Sargeant - as a guest is a huge get for them and suggests that bdrmm have elite taste for collaborators as well as the ability to recognise when the time is right to shift from what they first set out to do when they formed. This is a rebirth and they sound all the better for it.
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