John Martyn – The Island Years - October 2013 October 6th, 2013

Here’s 18 discs of Martyn’s slurred genius, from late ’60s folk whimsy, to the artful songwriting and edifying Echoplex experimentation of the ’70s, to a pointless final four discs of plasticised ’80s guff. All the canonical albums, including a coherent representation of 1975’s often bastardised free-jazz ambient-blues masterpiece Live At Leeds, are supplemented with superb…

The Dames – The Dames - October 2013 October 6th, 2013

The percussionist Clare Moore of blues punks The Moodists, and the pianist Kaye Louise Patterson of alt country pioneers Acuff’s Rose, are grand dames of Australia’s underground. Moore offers four arch negotiations with the downward gravitational pull of kitsch, Barry Adamson’s filmic mix reimagining cocktail lounge muzak as a psychedelic formica. Patterson pounds baroque pop…

Various School Children – Classroom Projects, Incredible Music Made By Children In Schools - September 2013 September 30th, 2013

Twenty years ago, Trunk records collated fun compilations of sleazy kitsch. Today, the label uncovers treasures from the immediate past that cast critical light on the present. Classroom Projects, music made by British junior school children in the ’60s and ’70s, includes everything from a surging choral rendition of Mike Batt’s Bright Eyes to a…

Hills – Master Sleeps - September 2013 September 23rd, 2013

The resilient recessive Seventies krautrock gene surfaces in Scandinavia, with Gothenburg’s Hills joining Goat and Circle in a growing Norse pantheon of glögg-fuelled trance-rockers. A belated British push for this, the band’s second album, anticipating further bombardment, softens the ground with sphincter-dilating bass grooves, vapor trails of hiss, pounding production line rhythms, Lutheran organ drones,…

Burnin Red Ivanhoe – Canal Trip An Anthology 1969 – 1974 - September 2013 September 23rd, 2013

With critical distance, Denmark’s Burnin Red Ivanhoe forged a distinct identity from plundered British and American psychedelia, this two disc retrospective reveals. 1969’s M144 album shrugged Stones licks to approach the punishing prog-jazz of early King Crimson; the eponymous 1970 album merged West Coast quicksilver licks with primitive drones; the title track of 1971’s WWW…

Deniz Tek – Detroit - September 2013 September 16th, 2013

Detroit’s punk doctor, Deniz Tek took the motor city sound to Sydney as a medical student, spawned Australian alterno-rock with Radio Birdman in 1974, and then joined the USAF and inspired the character Iceman in Top Gun. Today, he divides his time between emergency wards and electric guitars. Detroit is a lament for his decaying…