I stumbled across Sumner McKane on a Reddit post recently, and decided to give this album a listen. It’s a nice combination of instrumental AOR rock, post-rock, and prog tinged slightly with a few psychedelic elements hear and there. Easy listening.
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The loops Richard Pinhas (once leader of the legendary Heldon) are in full force, but this has a more beat-laden flavor to it. It’s spacious, relatively heavy in parts, but a really pleasant listen besides.
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From Tidiane Thiam‘s Bandcamp site: “Hailing from the sleepy fishing Senegalese fishing town of Podor, home of the great Baaba Maal, Thiam taught himself guitar by playing along to late-night radio broadcasts of Manding music. He soon developed his style, often reworking Pulaar folk themes into his compositions. On Africa Yontii, Thiam’s third album for Sahel Sounds, he teamed up with hip-hop beat maker Ndiaye Moctar from studio M.N. Records to provide accompaniment, integrating unexpected elements such as field recordings and electronic sounds”
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This is a charmingly freakish album from the French band Musala nan Eilan which has the audacity to combine post-rock with Celtic music, among other genres. From the band’s Bandcamp site: “Five musicians who don’t know each other, coming from different musical worlds, finding themselves under the same roof for some weekends. Discovering each other, trying to understand each other, making everyone’s tastes and expectations collide. From these moments shared together a sort of musical glossolalia was born. A language specific to the five musicians, which none of them really understands. A clumsy praise to the clash of influences. An…
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There is almost nothing I can add to the lore of Khruangbin except to say that, despite me occasionally talking about albums which are fine for nighttime listening, this one belongs to the sunrise. It has the feeling of an album you would play after an intense night out on the town, and coming down from the high of people around way too many people for too long. From their Bandcamp site: “The title makes it clear. A La Sala (“To the Room” in Spanish), the fourth studio album by Khruangbin, is an exercise in returning in order to go…
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No reviews today as I will be out and about, so I leave you with a haunting instrumental track by the Turkish band Yabancılar.
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Castles In Space are a label whom I just stumbled into over the past few days, and I’m liking what I’m hearing from them a lot. This particular piece of hauntology comes from Jonathan Sharp, a composer who is, like me, a child of the 70’s. He split his time between Cumbria and London, and the music reflects his memories of those years long gone by.
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The indubitable Far Out Records have produced what might be my favorite record of 2023, a guitar album by Brazilian guitarist and fellow Los Angeleno Fabiano do Nascimiento. I’ll let the label’s crack promo team describe this absolute beauty of a record below: “Adopting Hermeto Pascoal’s concept of Universal Music, a rejection of nationalistic tendencies in order to express all of one’s musical influences all at once, Fabiano avoided leaning too heavily on any particular musical language, without denying his own musical roots. After studying classical piano as a child, the Rio de Janeiro native discovered the guitar aged 10.…
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Ulaan Passerine is one of many aliases used by Los Angeles-based guitarist Steven R. Smith. This latest album is a shimmery walk into guitar instrumental territory. Smith produces an elegant kind of instrumental music that would sit well with both post-rock fans and those into a more mellow psychedelic vibe. Think along the terms of the band Oregon as a reference. Not ‘easy’ listening, but ‘gentle’ listening. Well done.
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The Jagaloons are an instrumental surf/garage-rock band out of Albany, New York. They have the energy of a punk band, the suaveness of those who play exotica, and can work in spaghetti western themes into their music. Brilliant stuff.