The spirit of Krautrock has spread well beyond the German-speaking world, and has for some time now. Primitive Air is an American collaboration between Drew Piraino, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Emil Amos reminds me of the more freaky (yet still gentle) parts of bands like Popol Vuh and modern bands like…
I’ve read over the years about Botswana having a very interesting metal scene, but I knew nothing about the local music. This might not be the purest form of regional music, but this disc by Duncan Senyatso (may his memory be eternal) and the Kgwanyape Band is pretty catchy and…
LeiLuo Studio is a small record label based in my former home of Beijing, China. The track reviewed today is a fusion of musics from Zhejiang from the She ethnic group. The label/band’s Bandcamp site explains further below: This is a piece of new fusion single composed and arranged by…
I can’t think of a music more joyful than ska. Jamaica’s finest export (next to reggae and its sub-genres, of course) is wonderfully represented on this compilation put together by the legendary Kingston-based record label Studio One. Lee Perry, Delroy Wilson and The Wailers feature prominently on this comp, and…
This Z Tapes release left me floored. Rapt are a folk band out of London who have an ethereal sound which reminded me of musicians like Nick Drake fronting a band on 4AD. Think, perhaps, of a more airy-sounding This Mortal Coil gone neofolk. The sound is folky without being stale,…
I think it’s impossible to overestimate the important place Roy Montgomery has in the annals of New Zealand’s experimental rock scene. Thanks to his work on labels such as Kranky Records and Drunken Fish, he has quite a high international profile, and it helps that the music he’s produced for…
Soundtrack composers don’t seem to need films to cue inspiring, haunting scores anymore. Take, for example, the new double album by Californian composer William Ryan Fritch. The story that goes along with this fabulous artifact is as impressive as the music is. We let the label, Lost Tribe Sounds, tell…
The guitar, all by itself, can serve as tool for making a haunting orchestra’s worth of sounds. My good friend Santiago Fradejas, now resident in Kent, of all places (!) presents a mini-LP’s worth of brooding, swelling, lilting soundscapes. There is a menacing element tying the album together, as though…
Igra Staklenih Perli were one of the greater monster progressive/psychedelic rock bands to come out of Yugoslavia (the band themselves were Serbian) during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and though some of their work could be seen as taking cues from legendary western groups like Pink Floyd, I hear…
Dyerwave is a stand-alone genre sitting inside of synth-wave, which has produced a number of appealing artists who bring 1980s visual imagery and marry it to dystopian visions of the future. The artist responsible for this release, Amid The Ruins 1453 is a Serbian composer and fellow Orthodox Christian who…