Articles by Chad Murray

“It’s just really explorative and fun and consistently feels like some kind of god-tier outtake from the Crash Bandicoot OST”

“sounds simultaneously achingly austere and rich in depth, like looking through a sheet of ice to see a deep chasm below. Like the band is on its last legs, there’s a fatigue that permeates through the sound, dichotomously sweltering and withered in the heat and atrophied beyond motion by the frost”.

In short, this bizarrely melodic, masterfully well-written and produced lysergic opus is easily one of my favourite albums this year.

In Erasable Assignments, Karhide gives the listener a calm and melodic space to think in a world of panic, noise and sensory overstimulation.

The vitriol of this album is the battlecry of a ripped-off generation paralysed unwillingly by the self-centred failings of its formers.

Mugstar just doing Mugstar is still really good and having pitted record versus gig with the band, I can definitely say this album will be awesome live.

I’d highly recommend Dark Sea if you’re a fan of LCD Soundsystem, electronic rock such as Modwheelmood/ SONOIO, OK Computer-Era Radiohead or the likes of Soundgarden and Jane’s Addiction.

When we were offered the interview, I asked Dan Salter, one of the founders of the website, if he had any questions for the band and he simply said, “ask them if they know that this *gestures at himself* is all their fault”.

Splintered Metal Sky is yet another spectacularly sultry and serpentine album that will fit in nicely with White Hills’ already stellar discography. Add this to your record of the year frontrunners.

I would say that everything they’ve done on this album is done well. Unfortunately, I honestly feel like they could’ve done a lot more.

If you like sloganeering, social commentary, comedic lyrics, post-punk and understated, humble perspectives then this is absolutely an album for you. It is what it says on the tin and for that it is highly commendable.

Material Loss is a solid album for dark ambient, noise and drone fans and is also highly recommended for any existing Soft Issues or Cattle fans. Take the plunge.

SØWT is a noise-rock band, featuring the frustrated youth of the Eindhoven music scene. Expressing ourselves using strong personal lyrics, freaky screams and heavy sound explosions. We try to create beautiful melodies that get ripped apart by the horror of our daily existence. Our music shifts between the dissonant and the pleasurable, the gritty and the polished, the passion and aggression and the calm and cool.

The key takeaways from DEAFBRICK is that there’s loads of great mad shit going on and there’s also bits where they give you a bit of a break.

“It’s very well-executed and if you come to it as what it’s intended to be, which I think is supposed to be a pretty weighty ‘Punishment’ with no reprieve, then you’ll leave highly satisfied”.

“They have a unique angle of being probably the most miserable and doomladen band I’ve heard in the psych scene and it’s no doubt a really strong debut”.

Exactly what you would expect from this lot. It sounds great, it’s super noisy and everything about it is executed really well.

I only work with music I really like, I will work for hours on a song trying to make it better so, I prefer not to do this if I have no deep connection with the music. I am very selective in what type of music I work on because I enjoy working with music not because I want to get the most expensive equipment or drive a fancy car.

As a fan of Ayn Sof, Temple ov BBV and Gnod in all its many incarnations and collaborations, I can safely say The Craic of The Cosmic Egg is Paddy Shine as I’ve never heard him before.

Faca De Fogo is a very successful representation of this approach of jamming with whoever wishes to and creating something that feels transcendental perhaps as a result of its own sincerity; it feels like you’re being welcomed with open arms because… you are.

We’re working on our next full length release – it’ll be our second as a band but our first since Mandy joined, so we’re really excited to get it out there. We’ve been underwater for our last couple of releases (‘The Race’ and ‘The Narrator’) so we’re heading into space for this one. Not to have our heads too far up our own arses, but we’ve really enjoyed translating stories into music (The Narrator is based off an HP Lovecraft story), so we decided to write our own this time. The record follows the story of a civilisation whose planet is destroyed for reasons they will never know – their escape into space and eventual decline into ritual and entropy.