We all know prog-rock is a sub-genre that covers anything from spliced 8-bit music from Alex Kidd in ‘Miracle World’ to long guitar-based songs to unlistenable self-indulgent noise. In the case of this recent release from Melbourne’s Montresor (a chara …

Describe a man, put him in a tree, rescue him from the tree. Short film/story writing 101. It works musically as well, either as a song, a long composition or as a record. And this is the basic structure of ‘Twelve Hundred Times’, except that Melbourne …

Well, give or take a few days, that was 2011. As ever it’s flown by at an unbelievable rate of knots but it’s definitely been quite a year, both on and off the musical field of play, as it were. Special mention has to go to And So I Watch You From Afar …

Discovering what you can do with six bits of wire on a wooden frame with mains voltage running through it is something millions of people around the world have enjoyed. A much smaller number become proficient and truly innovative, and with Niss we get …

The new album by Russian Circles, ‘Empros’, reminds me of driving at night; the pleasure of absorbing all senses with the music blasting and just you and the road. The unification of only what is ahead in the headlights and images flying past, looking …

There’s something of a swagger about Hearse Pileup’s music that really appeals to us here at E&D. A trio from South London who’s trademark sound stomps the line somewhere between Queens Of The Stone Age and The Stooges. So, we tracked them down & poppe …

As a package, this triple-gatefold two-CD release promises so much from the start. The wonderful illustrations by Mandi A Morgan display a marriage of precision and chaos. It suggests we will see the same from This Quiet Army, which is in reality Eric …

Let’s get it straight from the outset – this is noisy and it won’t get much radio play. Most listeners will not make it through the first track and I’ve seen this kind of stuff empty a bandroom when played loud enough. For those of you who do like it n …

A while back, like less than three months ago, my son suffered a ruptured appendix, which led to a really bad set of infections that landed him in the hospital for 21 days. Why am I sharing this? We are back in the hospital as I am writing this! But th …

The Narrows are amongst the cream of an extraordinary crop of great bands currently lighting up the Manchester alternative scene. A band that creates broodingly dark atmospheres in their songs may not be the obvious choice to release a Christmas single …

It’s been almost a month now (in fact today, 4 December, is exactly a month!) since the latest from MINIONTV, a 5-song EP entitled ‘Arecibo’, was released. I really wish that I had written this review a lot sooner, but life being what it is…Now that …

There may be a few album openers from 2011 that are better than ‘About as Helpful as You Can Be Without Actually Being Any Help at All’, the wonderfully-titled first song on Dan Mangan’s latest album, ‘Oh Fortune’, but I doubt very much if they are any …

Clock Opera @ Electrowerkz, Islington, London. December 01 2011 Clock Opera are, without any shadow of doubt, the most exciting thing happening in music at the moment. I say this not as my opinion, but as an unequivocal statement of fact. Strong words, …