Always back up your work, they say. Well, what about if you don’t? In the summer of 2019, William Doyle had learned to stop worrying and love the chaos. Enjoying a period of quiet reflection after the release of that year’s emotionally draining ‘Your Wilderness Revisited’, he took to recording freeform, spontaneous electronic pieces in his own time and on his own terms. Recording them, that is, but not backing them up.
Continue reading at DIY.
Tom Excell has spent his life surrounded by African music, from his earliest memories as a seven-year-old in the east of England, playing guitar along to his father’s collection of Afrobeat records, to his final pre-lockdown activities in early 2020, when he was touring around Tanzania and playing improvised sets with local musicians. A lifetime of learning to respect and appreciate the perspectives of other cultures is the basis of his latest and finest project to date, Freedom Fables, the third album by his band Nubiyan Twist.
Continue reading at Bandcamp Daily.
If you ask David Balfe how he’s feeling today, he will stop to think about it. The Irish producer and songwriter, who records under the name For Those I Love, takes the serious things in life seriously and it shows in his work.
When NME asks how important it was for him to depict Dublin in an authentic fashion on his outstanding self-titled debut album, he pauses for 12 entire seconds, eyes focused, formulating a considered and meaningful response. “I just don’t know any other way to do it,” he says, finally. “I don’t know that I’m a skilled enough writer to write fictitiously.”
Continue reading at NME.
Nuha Ruby Ra’s debut EP, ‘How To Move’ was written out of necessity. During a period of personal strife for the London-based artist a couple of years ago, she forged songs out of destructive forces that ultimately offered her a route out of the darkness.
Continue reading at NME.
One of Northern Ireland’s most successful musical acts of the last decade believe it is their Belfast roots that made them as they celebrate hitting the number two spot in the UK album charts.
Bicep – the duo of Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson – have been winning over audiences and critics with their blend of modern dance music styles since they emerged six years ago, with their second album, Isles, just missing out on the top chart position this weekend.
Continue reading at Belfast Telegraph.
When dealing with as challenging a group as Clipping, it feels appropriate to hold back any big assumptions about where their influences come from. The industrial hip-hop trio have clearly invested enormous time and intellectual energy in their work; to come in as an outsider and ascribe a specific masterplan to what they do seems a little forward, to say the least.
Continue reading at Loud & Quiet.
This summer, Marika Hackman found herself back in her childhood bedroom. Choosing to take refuge from London’s lockdown claustrophobia at her parents’ home, the sentimental echoes of her past were all around her. Not only was she back between the same four walls where she put together the songs that comprised her debut EP in 2012, she was once again sat at the same computer, recording a new set of songs; to ram the parallels home yet further, on both occasions the songs in question were all cover versions.
Continue reading at DIY.
The first time all six members of MICHELLE were in the same room, their debut album had already been released. “We didn’t meet each other until the day of our first show in the middle of November 2018,” reflects singer Layla Ku. “We were all strangers!”
Having been wished into existence earlier that year by producers Julian Kaufman and Charlie Kilgore, the collective formed as the result of a crackpot plan to conjure up a record (September 2018’s resultant ‘HEATWAVE’) that would document Big Apple life in two weeks flat. They assembled a group of singers that they separately knew – some well, others more peripherally – and set up a series of homemade recording sessions, with no more than one or two of the four MICHELLE vocalists included at any one time. Songs would often be written and recorded on the same day and, by the end of the fortnight, all of the ten tracks had been locked down.
Continue reading at DIY.
The nickname ‘Chubby’ was initially thrust upon Charlie Manning by others, but by the time of recording his new band’s first single in 2019 he had learned to embrace it. The newly christened Chubby and The Gang went on to record their debut album over a manic two-day stretch last autumn, having barely mustered 10 rehearsals together as a band.
Continue reading at NME.
“There are a couple of tracks on this project where I was thinking—is this listenable?”
There is a twinkle in Dorian Electra’s eye as they say these words. The Los Angeles-based artist knows full well that their music is not made for mass consumption. Speaking ahead of the release of their new LP, My Agenda, Electra pulses with enthusiasm when talking about the record’s deliciously disorienting aesthetic. (They refer to the album as a “project,” perhaps giving a sense of its scope and scale.) The twin poles pushing and pulling at the heart of the record are Electra’s genuine affection for mainstream pop and their desire to mangle and warp it at the same time.
Continue reading at Bandcamp Daily.
Finding My Edge 