“…and so they remixed everything” by sleepmakeswaves reviewed by Gilbert Potts and Kevin Scott for (((o)))

While they work on their next studio album, the San-Francisco based dream-pop/shoe-gazing specialists Echodrone have recorded a six-track covers album which takes in Louis Armstrong, Gary Numan and George Michael among others.

Since forming as Last Party back in 1985, The Bitter Springs have released a score of albums all driven by the energy of songwriter Simon Rivers’ ability as a storyteller. That’s not to dismiss the musicians in the band (who also acted as Vic Goddard’s …

Imagine yourself in a church and just as the organ begins to play the church suddenly sinks underwater and then just as you’re about to panic, you’re saved by a guitar riff that hauls you back to the surface. That’s pretty much the opening 10 seconds t …

When it comes to Icelandic music, the few exports that gain exposure on these shores tend to go down with something close to unabashed devotion – from Bjork (and The Sugarcubes) and Sigur Ros to the less well known Mum, 2012 sensations, Of Monsters & M …

Back in May 2011 Oliver Catt had an idea about recording songs from his bedroom and releasing them. As the project grew, so too did the number of collaborators working with the Manchester-based Catt, and by April 2012, Fantasy Rainbow had a string of s …

Guitars. They swoop, they slide, they rumble and they roar all the way through the fabric of ‘The Birds Fly Low’, the third album from Creature With the Atom Brain, and finally gets its UK release after being available in some territories since April. …

A New Orleans nightclub, an excitable uncle on Christmas Day, a Victorian carnival, a jazz musician literally melting into the floor of a stage, a different, more contemporary carnival, a cartoon character being chased, a choir of clowns banging symbol …

When an album is classed as being in the ‘cello pop’ genre, you can be fairly certain you’re dealing with something you’ve not heard before. That’s certainly the case with Swede Linnea Olsson’s debut, ‘Ah!’. Opener ‘The Ocean’ is a lush neo-classical c …

The start of Tilly & The Wall’s fourth album arrives with a kaleidoscope of sounds, and for a band who don’t have a drummer it makes a lot of noise. Listen to it while staring at the crazy abstract cover art and you’d be forgiven for seeing eyes blinki …

“We’re sorry that we’re late,” belts out Ultrasound vocalist Andrew ‘Tiny’ Wood in the midst of opening track ‘Welfare State’. So he bloody should be. It’s been 13 years since the band’s absurdly-hyped debut came out. Back in the late 90s a series of b …

There was a hint of what was to come on this covers album by hipster favourites Field Music when they recorded versions of Pet Shop Boys ‘Heart’ and ‘Rent’ for Record Store Day earlier this year. If that gave a clue to the sort of song Field Music woul …

Like a lot of grunge rockers, Effluence set their stall out early doors on this debut release with an almighty crashing introduction of feedback, drums and guitars going crazy. A verse arrives like a angry train, then by the time we’re 45 seconds in th …

The further into the past that the 80s sink, the more we forget what we’d come to hate about the decade. Instead we can revel in what we loved about it – and not in a Duran-Duran-are-a-guilty-pleasure way. This is the decade that took punk and twisted …

Opening with a bright acoustic guitar that belies the emotional undertones of Calexico’s first release in four years, it feels like the band has never been away. Things have changed though. The Arizona band decamped to New Orleans to record this record …

The first few seconds of volcano’s third release sounds like Salvador’s Dali’s alarm clock. To say it ‘erupts’ would be easy, conventional, and that would be doing this Chicago band a huge disservice, because if ‘Piñata’ does anything, it marches to th …

There’s always been a fairy-tale element to Duke Special’s music that transports the listener to different worlds. That’s something Belfast-based Peter Wilson’s alter ego has managed to pull off again in this first new “commercial” album since 2008 – t …

Maybe it’s the cold, the long dark winters, or the isolation that does it, but Scandinavia digs shoe-gazing. There have been some awesome exponents of the genre in recent years and they’ve clearly influenced this sophomore release by Gothenburg-based I …

Airick Woodhead, the man behind Doldrums, is a video artist as well as a musician, and this EP has the feel of something that has been edited in the way a film might, with enough splicing and mashing to blunt a razorblade. The opening few seconds of ‘E …

Since the release of Paloma Faith’s 2009 debut, the whole female retro-soul thing has gone a bit mental thanks to Adele shifting 40 zillion albums or something. Comparisons are therefore unavoidable, and fans of the genre will be singing along to the a …

Back in the days before downloads it was fairly common for a band to release two version of a single – one with b-sides and one with remixes, something that Gunning for Tamar have pulled together in this six-track release that combines three versions o …