Rock /
Tsaca Tsap
20014 release ** "Estonian pop music is relatively rare to find north of the Gulf of Finland. In fact, Ramo Teder, who performs under the name Pastacas, also moved to Finland after making his album Tsaca Tsap. But more than the Finnish rural landscape that opens out of Teder's window, the songs on Pastacas' third album have been influenced by his musical background. A childhood spent in music schools and the influence of a jazz guitarist father clearly belong to Tsaca Tsap, which Ramo has mainly…
Cross & Satellite Station
2010 release ** "Verdure is Donovan Quinn, who resides in Walnut Creek, deep in the East Bay of San Francisco. He's performed his songs with the Sky green Leopards (collaborating with Glenn Donaldson) and can currently be found performing solo, occasionally being joined by various friends and collaborators under the umbrella of the 13th Month. His Verdure alias draws influence from heavy collaboration with the Jewelled Antler Collective, that loose-fitting West Coast group of artists known for b…
Catbirds & Cardinals
2011 release ** "Catbirds & Cardinals is the latest psychedelic album lobbed into New World shores from Dan Melchior und das Menace. Coming down slow with a clear vision, it’s a sure hit. Since the late 90s, Shepperton, England native Dan Melchior has consistently delivered an avant-pop that is off-kilter and literate, with a sense of menace and a stronger sense of play. He’s a new Jesus of Cool, riding just about the underground like the antipodean Chris Knox. The sound of Catbirds & Cardinals …
Smoke Ring For My Halo
2025 stock ** "Philly’s Kurt Vile can sound like Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp or Lou Reed — if those standard-bearers were murmuring through a speakerphone after a few salvia bongs. On Vile’s fourth LP, the stoner haze lifts a bit, and he settles on a mood: chilled-out but guarded, and wrapped in gorgeous folk-blues guitar-picking. The vibe is warmly psychedelic, but reality is banging at the door. “When it’s looking dark, punch the future in the face,” he slurs in “Runner Ups,” a Dylanesque rambl…
My Only Warm Coals
2025 stock ** "My Only Warm Coals neatly sums up a fifteen year span of Emil Amos' (Grails/Om) basement home-recording in nineteen songs. Using the 4-track like a mirror in LSD therapy sessions, Amos disassembles himself and leaves the puddle on the floor for the listener to contemplate without easy resolution. The record also arcs a period of "lo-fi" recording technique and sonic experimentation that has largely gone undocumented in the larger underground culture, while epitomizing a supremely…
Bush League
"No Songs Name, No Band Members Name, No Contact, No Nothing!!!". Mysterious 10" released on French label Yakisakana
Wild Songs
2012 release ** "Estasy is the project of Emiliano Maggi, an Italian singer/songwriter who has spent the last couple of years releasing low-key CD-Rs and collaborating with artists and filmmakers in Rome. A lot of the time his live performances with other artists, well-documented on YouTube, are set to spooky visuals, and in those that aren't Maggi wears quite frightening masks. Sure, quite a bit of that does sound like the sort of standard gimmickry rife in 2012, but there's something about Emi…
Heaps of nothing
2010 release ** "The second album from Australian band Naked On The Vague, who have doubled in size for this batch of new material. The tone is characterised by dark and fearsomely heavy garage-punk, with a wafer-thin coating of distortion lending a little extra bite to the band's already vicious dynamics. "Bleak, unrepentant, withering and droll, Heaps of Nothing is a 21st century codification of the gallows wit and mesmerizing otherworldliness of (Dub Housing-era) Pere Ubu, Primitive Calculato…