Recommended Records
Alex Turner - Submarine
This is Alex Turner's real age of understatement and it's a resounding success. »
Tim Hecker - Ravedeath,1972
Whatever grand plan Tim Hecker may or may not have had in mind here, let’s just say that much of Ravedeath, 1972 will put you in the position of a slack-jawed medieval peasant, floored by hearing the power and beauty of that organ for the first time. »
Josh T. Pearson - Last of the Country Gentlemen
Like listening to Elliot Smith, Ian Curtis or Hank Williams, you are acutely and uncomfortably aware that Josh T. Pearson means every single word.»
Earth - Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1
For a band so slow to never get stuck in rut, to never become stationary, is quite an achievement. Long may Earth trudge onwards. »
Parts & Labor - Constant Future
Constant Future is the sound of a band who, after nearly ten years together, are comfortable with their sound, who know exactly what they’re good at and sound like they’re having great fun doing it. »
Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo
It’s fair to say Smoke Ring...’s reliance on gloom and loneliness rarely lets up. But he’s trying to find beauty in it, which I guess is the point.»
My Two Toms - Who We Were And What We Meant By It
When ‘folk’ in the singer-songwriter sense is reduced to phone advert platitudes, looking further back, or sideways, into the folk canon makes sense.»
Banjo or Freakout - Banjo or Freakout
Each submersion is every bit as worthy as the last.»
Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
Of late, a new Mogwai record has been greeted in a manner not unlike the arrival of a new jumper at Christmas: an initially underwhelming offering that befores an indispensable wardrobe item. »
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
England’s dancing days might be over, but things could be worse.»
...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Tao of the Dead
Tao Of The Dead is And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead taking the strengths and hallmarks of their 17 year career into one beautifully orchestrated concept and returning back to form. »
Conquering Animal Sound - Kammerspiel
Kammerspiel is a ghostly collection of minimalistic beats, loops and fragile ambience, overlaid with Kampman’s beatifully frail vocal. »
How to Dress Well - Love Remains
Love Remains is an album at odds with itself. On the one hand, it’s a gentle voyage into a land of elegant dissonance where barely there beats are swept away by warm washes of sound installation-ish noise. On the other, it’s a conflicted record that asks more questions than it answers. Krell ponders whether the only place indie-rock/chillwave has left to go is inward, to the depths of ambient or whether to embrace a world of soul or climb to the heights way beyond The Neptunes or Kayne. Yet, in an age of choice, why pick one answer? What if both answers are right? ...At first, this is a harsh, uninviting record with all the gloss of R&B replaced by the sand-papery texture of a cat’s tongue. If you could imagine Jodeci’s second album with the same musty are-my-speakers-broken haze as Pinkerton and Person Pitch, it helps to reveal what’s behind this dense production fug.»
Bright Eyes - The People's Key
With The People’s Key Bright Eyes have pulled off the difficult trick of sculpting a record concerned with weighty, complex themes and made it sound like the breeziest, most effortless thing in the world.»
Deerhoof - Deerhoof Vs. Evil
If familiarity breeds contempt, regularity breeds complacency, and Deerhoof’s prodigiously consistent output should not overshadow how precious they are. »
Esben & the Witch - Violet Cries
Violet Cries is a record of exceptional class and calibre, a band doing things in a comprehensively new way.»
Destroyer - Kaputt
No matter the variety of styles, the multiple layers of instrumentation and the revolving cast of musicians, Destroyer remains at its core a shabby, tousled-haired poet with an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder.»
The Fall - This Nation's Saving Grace (Omnibus Edition)
If you want to look back on a legendary band peaking, or even if you just want a place to start, this is it. Welcome to The Fall.»
Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean
Kiss Each Other Clean makes Sam Beam four for four – more if you count the EPs and 2009’s rarities set Around the Well. But more than being just another great album, it suggests a brilliant and unpredictable future from an artist who, unbelievably, appears to be only just getting started.»
Talons - Hollow Realm
Setting the bar high for future releases, Hollow Realm is a superb album, uplifting and moving with a sense of melody that is often lost with similarly technically adept musicians.»
Forest Swords - Dagger Paths
Tantalisingly short but precociously fully formed, operating both within and totally apart from current trends, it’s like nothing else out there.»
Daft Punk - Tron: Legacy
Daft Punk have finally proved that after all, they indeed are human. And it is a wondrous, spellbinding epiphany. »
Teeth Of The Sea - Your Mercury
Teeth of the Sea are a band from London who make music that would definitely have been called post rock in the past; whatever it is now, it's pretty awesome. »
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
For rap fans it's both a testament to the versatility of the genre and Kanye's own brilliance that he can make something so refreshingly different which still fits comfortably in the rap canon.»
The Notwist - Neon Golden / On/Off The Record (Deluxe Edition)
There is not a single wasted note on the record.»
Various - Black Hole: Jon Savage Presents/California Punk 1977-1980
A world full of smackheads and thugs and benders and vile performance art brats and people who by most accepted metrics were basically talentless - some of them made some of the most exciting music the planet has been graced with to date.»
Earth - A Bureaucratic Desire for Extra Capsular Extractions
A Bureaucratic Desire For Extra-Capsular Extraction is yet more proof that Earth were, and indeed still are, vitally different to so much of what’s come before them, after them and even surrounded them. »
Weezer - Pinkerton (Deluxe Edition)
It is heartening and not a little bittersweet to be reminded how Weezer once made sad, twisted, broken-sounding songs like these, and they made them work.»
Orange Juice - Coals to Newcastle
It confirms Orange Juice as more than an influential indie band – it shows up their ridiculousness, their ambition, their open-mindedness, their limitations, their self-reliance. »
Former Ghosts - New Love
This is an engaging, rewarding listen that promises great things in the future from our four heroes. »
"More bands should split up" - Brett Anderson opens up to DiS about the return of Suede
Drowned in Manchester #15 – May 2013
armchair dancefloor 39: Mount Kimbie interview, Bobby Browser, Powell, Move D, Leon Vynehall...
DiS meets John Lydon - Part 1: The Man
DiS Does Singles 20.05.13: Paramore, Laura Marling, The Replacements
DiS joins the Music Alliance Pact + May 2013's global MAP compilation
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