• Music

    Hull of Light – Gilded Liminal Shrines

    June 22, 2024 - By 

    Here we have Hull of Light, an “…international collective of cosmic cowboys and cowgirls with members from Megason, Suffering Hour, Zeresh (our beloved friends), Underground Spiritual Game & Sleepwalker [夢遊病者].”  The music was absolutely not what I was expecting, as a few of these come from a raw, powerful black metal background.  Not this EP.  This sounds like it would have fit with early 1980s post-punk.  There is an aggression, a lo-fi quality to it that screams to be noticed.  I thoroughly enjoyed having my ears blasted by this.

  • Music

    Porch Kiss – Fort Stevens 2006

    March 1, 2024 - By 

    This is the first time I had the pleasure of reviewing something from Start-Track, a fine small label run by our friend Filip Zemčík.  Porch Kiss’ music is sparse and lo-fi, reminding me of a lot of British indie band from the 1980s with lower production values and fine songwriting.  Pensive music, and a great listen.

  • Music

    Jettenbach – Extracts from The Diary of Mars

    August 13, 2023 - By 

    Our friends at Jettenbach, a fascinating project from England, have prepared for us a Martian travelogue.  The concept sounds like something taken directly from a sci-fi movie, dialog and all, and it’s quite an interesting thing to hear.  The music drifts from floating experimental ambient to hard-beat.  This shifts genres rather quickly, so listening was a bit of an adventure, though a worthy one.

  • Music

    Various Artists – Meticulous Midgets 2023

    May 25, 2023 - By 

    Our beloved friends at Russia’s finest indie music magazine, Meticulous Midgets, has released their annual compilation of weird experimental, lo-fi and avant-garde music. Featured artists include Russia’s own Assembly of Honey, the Italian ambient sound sculptor Marco Lucchi and Latvia’s Ш​у​м​и​л​о​в Б​о​р (Shumilov Bor) among a host of talent worldwide.

  • Music

    The Chills – Scatterbrain / Scatterbrain​-​Storms: Outtakes

    January 15, 2023 - By 

    We have two releases today to share with you.  Both come from New Zealand’s greatest indie rock band, The Chills, and at least to my ears, should be seen as one cohesive session.  The first, Scatterbrain, came out in September of 2021 is a rather lush affair, quite different from the early, stripped-down lo-fi albums.  Great production, choruses, an almost proggy feel to some tracks dot the album, yet the songs still have that hallmark Kiwi indie sound.  Scatterbrain​-​Storms: Outtakes is quite different, however.  Three tracks, more stripped down and raw (well, they’re outtakes for a reason, right?), and I…

  • Music

    handwrist – The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste

    January 7, 2023 - By 

    As we celebrate Christmas on the Julian Calendar this day, I thought it nice to share with you an album I found from a Portuguese composer called handwrist, working in the medium of psychedelic, progressive and drone rock, perhaps with lo-fi touches, basing his compositions on the aforementioned Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, whom St. Basil the Great wrote about in the 4th Century.  Merry Christmas to one and all.

  • Music

    noemienours – The Dry Path

    July 18, 2022 - By 

    It’s hard for me to make out the influences of this album, but I can say with certainty that listening to this rather weird album was a pleasure.  From noemienours’ Bandcamp site: ““The Dry Path”, noemienours’ 5th LP, developed around a Gobi Bear narrative of barren edge conditions as an access point to supra-natural realities, is definitely a turning point in the noemienours discography, notably because of its introduction of harpsichord in the noemienours instrumentarium, but also because of its recourse to a widened approach of its lo-fi musical approach, by creating a new musical form somewhere between Swedish post-black…