Category: Reviews

If you’re fan of angular dance punk and are eagerly awaiting the new album from These New Puritans, prepare to have your horizons expanded somewhat.

If, however, the idea of a formerly quite sketchy band producing a colossal prog pop record, incorporating brass, choral vocals and dubstep wobble appeals to you, then the latest album from the Southend-on-Sea quartet might be just up your street.Lead single We Want War will tell you everything you need to know about Hidden, the album which is set for release on 18th January.

It’s a huge seven minute epic that evolves from guttural synths and tribal drumming into a fully fledged electronic beast that appears capable of swallowing us all. The song, and indeed the album, is a massively ambitious step into the dark for These New Purtians, who might have easily followed up their debut with something rushed, yet this blows 2008’s Beat Pyramid out of the water.

Check out the suitably epic video below, which features people flying around blank space in ultra slow motion before disintegrating into some water. Yeah, it’s that kind of song.

Sleekly Lion.

Our friends at Kill Rock Stars are reissuing Elliott Smith‘s Roman Candle and From a Basement on the Hill in April 2010 and they’ve also made a previously unreleased track available for free download!

Cecilia/Amanda was recorded in 1997 and features Smith’s signature melancholic lilting acoustic guitars and wistful vocals. Fuller in sound than many of his earlier works, a piano line in the background adds a more uplifting aspect to the musical side of this song and is actually quite Ben Folds.

Characteristically rather bleak on the lyrical front, Cecilia/Amanda is typical and beautiful Elliott Smith overall. As with From a Basement on the Hill, the music is all the more poignant for being unveiled post-humously.

You can listen and download here.

Winegums.

Comanechi have been on the gigging circuit for a while but with singer Akiko Matsuura’s numerous other bands (Pre and more recently and famously, The Big Pink) taking the lime light, only now have they managed to throw together an album.

A Crime Of Love, put bluntly, is half an hour of utter filth. Drum kit smashed to pieces by a yelping and purring nymphomaniac, greased up with Simon Petrovitch’s distorted and syrupy guitar lines. Think Bikini Kill meets Melvins-style sludge… think Melt Banana meets Nirvana. Hell, don’t think at all, just turn it up loud and prepare to be bruised.

Sexed up to the max, dripping with scrappy and erratic sleaze, screeching and unpleasant yet somehow delicious in an under-the-counter kinda way, A Crime of Love is a carnal delight. Just don’t tell your mother, she’d be appalled.

Trotty P.

It isn’t often that an album like Blakroc works. When rockstars try their hand at being hip hop or when rappers try to be rock [Weezy, I love you man, but c’mon now] it usually induces cringing and head-shaking, but when The Black Keys teamed up with Damon Dash and brought in luminaries such as Mos Def, Billy Danze, RZA and Ludacris, the signs weren’t as bad as first thought.

In fact, it’s much more than just a non-catastrophe, it’s a quality album that draws the best out of the Keys’ bluesy excellence and combines it with some excellent verses that make it seem impossible to think that this wouldn’t work. The album kicks off with a track that brings Luda and the ever-enjoyable O.D.B. together telling stories of women that have got them wrapped around their little finger and the record never looks back.

A softer side of the collabs arrives in the form of Nicole Wray who does a sterling job of sounding sultry over the more understated guitars, but for the most part it is the filthy fuzzy numbers which stand out on the record, Dollaz & Sense featuring Pharoahe Monch and RZA, Stay Off The Fuckin’ Flowers with Raekwon and What You Do To Me with it’s excellent hammond organ backdrop.

The track you can hear by clicking the player above is Ain’t Nothing Like You [Hoochie Coo] featuring Mos Def and Dipset’s Jim Jones on the best cut from the album. Mos Def’s hook is a guaranteed singalong just waiting to get into your brain.

Abjekt.

Regular visitors to Crossfire will know we’ve been repping the Minnesotan Doomtree crew for years now and they’ve done it again, bringing out a fantastic eight-track CD to co-incide with this year’s Blowout, their crew show in hometown Minneapolis.

Their False Hopes series, similar to Atmosphere’s Sad Clown releases, are aimed at tiding fans over for full-length though the standard blows away 99% of other rappers’ albums.

Number 15 in the series showcases the talents of all the members, from Paper Tiger’s punchy We’re Working Hard intro to Cecil Otter’s typically floating and downright pretty Carpe Diem instrumental. Dessa raps hard over a ridiculously fuzzy P.O.S. beat, Mictlan brings in Rich Rok [the only non-crew member on the record] and Lazerbeak’s production continues to astound which you can check out by listening to Sims and P.O.S. do their thing over his beat on Coup For The Kings.

With another full crew banger, Profit & Loss, following in the incredibly huge footsteps of No Homeowners and Drumsticks, to be found, it’s a wonder why there are people out there that don’t know them. As P.O.S. says in the track above, “We ain’t next cos we right now”. They’re untouchable, get involved.

Abjekt.