Reino Boonstra's Review feed

Cold Specks - I Predict A Graceful Expulsion

Wed, 23 May 2012 23:40:00 GMT

Het is nog mogelijk. In dit decennium vol verschillende muziekgenres en de hieruit voortvloeiende kruisbestuivingen heeft Cold Specks zomaar een nieuw genre aangeboord: 'doom soul'. Laat je door deze pikdonkere omschrijving echter niet direct misleiden, want I Predict A Graceful Expulsion is bij vlagen opzwepend en dynamisch. Ook worden er op veel momenten wortels blootgelegd van Southern American-invloeden. Toch hebben we hier te maken met een verzameling gekwelde liederen, voortgekomen uit een ongelukkigere periode. Van een zwart gat is niet direct sprake. Hoe ongelukkig de ziel op deze plaat ook mag zijn, aan de zuiverheid ervan is weinig af te doen. Er is nog hoop.

Rumer - Boys Don’t Cry

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:32:56 GMT

Sarah Joyce covers male songwriters both culty and canonical on album number two.

On Boys Don’t Cry, the follow-up to her million-selling 2010 debut Seasons of My Soul, Rumer has recorded versions of tracks written by men in the 1970s. It doesn’t quite have the subversive qualities that Tori Amos’ similarly themed 2001 album Strange Little Girls had – with the possible exception of her take on Neil Young’s A Man Needs a Maid, where the sense and meaning of the original are somewhat altered by its being performed by a woman in 2012.

Sugar - Copper Blue

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:32:50 GMT

NME’s Album of the Year for 1992 reissued with a wealth of worthwhile extras.

The music and influence of the pioneering Minneapolis hardcore band Hüsker Dü was investigated brilliantly in Michael Azerrad’s 2001 book on the 80s alternative underground, Our Band Could Be Your Life. But for Bob Mould, Hüsker Dü was his life – and going on the stories, tales of financial penury, addiction and interminable band squabbling, it was a pretty miserable existence. His work with Sugar – the power trio he formed in 1992, four years after Hüsker Dü’s demise – feel like an attempt to wash away the angst of the post-punk years, to try on a sunny expression and see how it felt. And while Sugar were themselves short-lived, their music, particularly that collected on excellent debut album Copper Blue, sounded like salvation.

Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury - Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:32:42 GMT

Dredd himself would approve of this imagined soundtrack for 2000 AD's megalopolis.

Step inside your nearest CD stockist and chances are you won’t find a section for imaginary soundtracks. Yet it’s here that one should rack Drokk, a collaborative set from Portishead’s Geoff Barrow and Life of Mammals composer Ben Salisbury. It’s inspired by the near-future urban sprawl that is the fictional Mega-City One, home (and office) to 2000 AD’s most famous law enforcer, Judge Dredd.

Jimmy Edgar - Majenta

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:32:37 GMT

Edgar’s sweaty-palmed beats are as saucy as ever on album three.

It’s impossible to describe Jimmy Edgar’s recorded output without quoting Alan Partridge: “It’s basically sex music.” I Wanna Be Your STD, young Jimmy told us a few years ago and, judging by the album title’s reference to a lurid hue of pink and the gaudy, third-eye dilating blow-up doll that adorns its cover, not much has changed in his sweaty palmed world. In the interim, Edgar has been slapping his bass betwixt New York and Berlin whilst developing an interest in Transcendental Meditation (other notable musical exponents: The Beach Boys’ equally insatiable Mike Love).

Gemma Ray - Island Fire

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:32:31 GMT

A singer with potent pop sensibilities, packaged exquisitely and uniquely.

It’s hard to improve on Bronze Rat’s description of their own Gemma Ray as a “torch-singing, guitar-taming, pop-noir maverick”. The Essex girl born Gemma Smith was PJ Harvey-like in her infancy, but today is something like a sumptuous pile-up of Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly, Françoise Hardy, Helen Shapiro, The Shangri-Las, a Harmony Rocket guitar stroked with a 8” carving knife and some other indefinable strands of DNA, the whole resembling some future ideal of rock’n’roll vintage.

Kelis - Kaleidoscope

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:32:24 GMT

Striking debut from one of the most vital RnB forces of the 00s.

Kaleidoscope was not simply the first time many heard the smoky, rich voice of 20-year-old Harlem-born Kelis Rogers; it was also their first encounter with the wizardry of young production team Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, aka The Neptunes. This marriage of the two creative forces forged an album that rewrote the RnB rulebook.

Mac Miller - Blue Slide Park

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:32:28 GMT

While it’s evident how he’s won hearts, Miller’s not the complete package yet.

Hip hop has hit something of a self-aware apex in the 21st century's first decade and changed, learning which buttons to press to ensure success. Pittsburgh native Mac Miller might very well sum up the entire conundrum it's now facing with this debut album proper, earning a UK bow a conspicuous stretch after confirming his ascent on its stateside release in November 2011.

Infadels - The Future of the Gravity Boy

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:32:22 GMT

A fine offering of upbeat and punchy electro-pop.

It is not that difficult to see the appeal of London’s Infadels. They have not so far been ones for subtlety, taking cues from 80s electronica, adding an often ferocious punch that has resulted in an end product altogether more muscular than the majority of what has come before. As noted proponents of a pejoratively ‘big’ electronic-based rock sound, fans of Infadels and the genre in general may be pleased that they don’t stray too far from this musical blueprint on The Future of the Gravity Boy.

The Walkmen - Heaven

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:32:16 GMT

A record with the power to grab your heart, like an ex-lover you just can't shake off.

How you feel about listening to the sound of a band 'maturing' is inextricably tied up with whether or not you believe that rock'n'roll is at its best when the preserve of the snarling, chaotic and hungry young.

Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:32:09 GMT

Chicago outfit’s influential second LP reissued on vinyl.

The Thrill Jockey vinyl-only reissue strategy bathes in nostalgia for a period long before this second Tortoise album’s original release in 1996. A solidly spinning LP platter artefact has become somewhat more fashionable now than back then, and this release is part of a sequence of Tortoise reissues scheduled for 2012.

Gemma Ray - Island Fire

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:46:23 GMT

Toen in het voorjaar van 2010 de IJslandse vulkaan Eyjafjallajökull uitbarstte, strandde de Engels/Duitse singer-songwriter Gemma Ray in Australië. Om er maar het beste van te maken boekte ze een studio en besloot ze aan een nieuw album te beginnen.

Slash - Apocalyptic Love

Mon, 21 May 2012 21:09:25 GMT

Waar het vorige album van Slash dreef op wisselende collaboraties met talloze andere rocksterren, heeft de gitarist voor Apocalyptic Love zowaar een vaste band om zich heen verzameld. Het resultaat is meteen een stuk bevredigender.

Scissor Sisters - Magic Hour

Mon, 21 May 2012 19:02:32 GMT

The flamboyant poppers rediscover their magic touch on album four.

Scissor Sisters’ audacious cover of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb sounds as fresh today as in 2004 – but can the same be said for the band themselves? 2010’s Night Work album, despite the Frankie Goes to Hollywood-like majesty of Invisible Light, sounded panicked, testing the thin line between exuberance and contrivance. Its number two chart position was hardly a disaster – but the album sold less than previous sets, leaving this fourth album with plenty to prove.

Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music

Mon, 21 May 2012 19:02:26 GMT

Georgia rapper offers stark examination of societal ills on his sixth LP.

"This album was created entirely by Jaime and Mike." Jaime (Meline) being El-P, the iconoclastic producer from Brooklyn; and Mike being Killer Mike (aka Michael Render), the brash MC from Atlanta, Georgia. With all the force captured on R.A.P. Music — window-shattering bass lines, dizzying drum breaks and acerbic lyricism — one would think a militia recorded this album, Killer Mike’s sixth solo offering. But through all this heart-stopping activity, it really comes down to just two people: Jaime and Mike. Here, they’ve crafted an abrasive pièce de résistance that grows more agitated as it plays, condemning crooked police officers and the American justice system, among other things. This music declares war: face-punching, heart-stomping, no-holds-barred conflict for your ears and mind. It’s an all-out assault on pop culture and its worldly accessories.

Eric Prydz - Pryda

Mon, 21 May 2012 19:02:20 GMT

To cut a long, three-disc set short: if you love trance, you’ll love Pryda.

Eric Prydz is a machine, and increasingly a mechanism of legendary status. If you were to triangulate the effectiveness of other famous apparatus such as Big Bertha, The Terminator and Bob Moog’s name-sharing synthesiser you might get close to how clinical, productive and downright dazzling Prydz has become in the field of commercial dance music.

Alt-J - An Awesome Wave

Mon, 21 May 2012 19:02:14 GMT

A deeply exciting, original and inventive debut from recommended ones to watch.

It’s hard to place Alt-J. Originally from Leeds, they spend their time in a Cambridgeshire basement making their own brand of uniquely dubbed ‘folk-step’. However, the noises that An Awesome Wave emits far escape the dull, dark depths such a creative location suggests. Instead, it’s a stunning and encompassing affair of both innovative and electrifying musicianship and exemplary song writing.

Sons of Noel and Adrian - Knots

Mon, 21 May 2012 19:02:08 GMT

A meaty, satisfying listen suggesting greater things to come.

The self-described ‘mothership’ of Brighton’s Willkommen Collective, Sons of Noel and Adrian is a sprawling group of musicians headed by Jacob Richardson. Though ostensibly a ‘folk’ LP, Knots touches on a range of genres, acknowledging the influence of Chicago’s avant-garde rock and jazz scene and guitarists such as former Slint-man David Pajo in particular. A weighty listen, it is an aptly-titled one too: finger-picked classical guitars form the common backdrop to its songs; thick, knotty tapestries of sound that surge and recede with uncommon poise.

Katzenjammer - A Kiss Before You Go

Mon, 21 May 2012 19:02:02 GMT

An album that shape-shifts and surprises with a graceful, effortless ease.

The set-up for Katzenjammer is this: they’re an all-girl four-piece from Norway who met at music school in 2005 and who play (and swap) some 15 instruments between them, including a giant balalaika – a three-stringed, triangle-shaped Russian instrument that can be as tall as a man. It’s no surprise, then, that their second album – the bittersweetly-titled A Kiss Before You Go – is awash with musical moments that are equally idiosyncratic and eclectic.

Natalia Jayden - Kissing The Outcast

Mon, 21 May 2012 16:43:27 GMT

Meer dan ooit beheersen zangeressen de hitlijsten en radio, maar niet alle vrouwelijke vocalisten zijn even memorabel. Ook Natalia Jayden doet een verwoede poging om op te vallen tussen het enorme aanbod.