Yikes! Here in the Northern Hemisphere the golden days of this years summer are long gone and are slowly replaced by harsh and cold weather conditions. Sudden outbreaks of heavy showers, strong winds and dying trees await us. Therefore, autumn isn’t exactly the best time for most people to be happy about. However, maybe some music from the now warming South could distract our minds from the darkening skies. Hmm, Australia’s ‘60s psych pop rock outfit King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard might just be your imaginative way out of the dull autumn days to come.
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Category Archives: WRM
Wander Meulemans
[Live Review] Angel Olsen, EKKO Utrecht
What do Stockholm, Paris, Los Angeles, Glasgow and Utrecht have in common? Well, all cities were recently visited by the graceful singer-songwriter Angel Olsen. Olsen released her sophomore LP, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, this February and has been on tour ever since, playing night, after night, after night. The EKKO stage in Utrecht (The Netherlands) was the next in line for Olsen. And since the album made it to our ‘not to be missed in 2014’ section, a visit to this gig just couldn’t be resisted.
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Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks – Enter the Slasher House
If you’re into close encounters of the blurred kind musically you’ll find a safe haven within genre of experimental psychedelics. In the past twenty years or so this scene is mostly dominated by bands such as The Flaming Lips, Of Montreal, Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective and their innumerable side projects. Indeed, being a busy bee is pretty much the standard in this scene. Same goes for Animal Collective frontman David Portner (also known as Avey Tare) who announced a new outfit last year surrounding his own persona called Avey Tare’s Slasher Flicks. This year the band debuted with Enter the Slasher House. Continue reading
Peter Matthew Bauer – Liberation!
Maybe it would be best to call it quits. However, why should we? Especially after being together for such a long time. Indie rock band The Walkmen experienced a conflict like this first hand a year ago and decided a split would cause a lot of unnecessary hubbub, so an ‘extreme hiatus’ seemed a better plan. A creative gap seemed unavoidable, leaving fans empty handed. Continue reading
[Live Review] North Sea Jazz 2014, Ahoy Rotterdam
Summer is here! And that means a new edition of North Sea Jazz is also here once more to pump up the quality of the Dutch festival landscape. Like always the festival lineup is packed with some great names. What to think of Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, Pharrell Williams, Sun Ra Arkestra, Dave Holland, Outkast and Pharoah Sanders, just to name a few. No wonder the festival was sold-out well in advance. Yesterday, around five o’clock, spectators began to pour into thirteen areas of the Ahoy venue, eagerly awaiting an evening filled with jazz, blues, R&B, soul and funk. So, enough chit chat now, let’s kick-off this live review of North Sea Jazz’s friday the 11th of July.
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Sounds from the Dark Side top albums of 2014 (until now)
Hey y’all, summer solstice lies behind us so it’s time to saw the year in half. These are our top albums of 2014 until now and in no apparent order. Metal, Latin, Hip Hop-Jazz, Western funeral march music… we’ve got it all! Continue reading
Meridian Brothers – Salvadora Robot
Here’s some good news: Eblis Álvarez and his gamely fellows are back! Not that we’ve haven’t heard from Bogotá’s finest for a while though… Only a few months ago Meridian Brothers reintroduced themselves with the compilation album Devoción which was a follow up to their most recent work Desesperanza (2012). Salvadora Robot is the latest addition to their lively and dense catalogue and saw the light of day earlier this month. And yes, just for a tease, a whole new carnivalesque hallucination awaits us. Continue reading
BADBADNOTGOOD – III
Please bear with me for a moment: this review is about a young Canadian jazz trio that calls itself BadBadNotGood, which is written as BADBADNOTGOOD and abbreviated as BBNG. Seems simple right? Alas, it isn’t, especially when learning that BADBADNOTGOOD also is known under the confusing names of GoodGoodNotBad and The Odd Trio. Solely judging on the many band names one could say they’re struggling to find a comfort zone within the unruly landscape of the contemporary jazz scene. Or are they just here for the fun of it? Earlier this month BBNG dropped their third studio album since they started out in 2011 and remarkably carries the convenient name… III. Continue reading
Mac DeMarco – Salad Days
24-year-old Canadian, Mac DeMarco doesn’t mind to stir things up a bit. His onstage behavior is memorable to many. Heavy drinking, smoking, nudity, obscenity and indecent jokes are a regular part of his sloppy looking performances. At home things are not very tidy as well. The Guardian describes his house to be a dump and quotes him saying “I live like a scumbag, but it’s cheap”. Continue reading
Chad VanGaalen – Shrink Dust
I don’t know if you noticed, but I briefly mentioned the name of Chad VanGaalen during my last review of Timber Timbre’s Hot Dreams. But ok, I have to accept that my footnote was easy to be missed and, of course, doesn’t reflect the man’s stature of being a wonderful multi-instrumentalist, illustrator and animator. However, we’re in luck because a few days ago VanGaalen released his newest scion, Shrink Dust. So that’s reason enough for me to give him the sort of attention he deserves. Continue reading
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