Music
Travelling Through Soundscapes: FRANCESCO GIANNICO and ALESSIO BALLERINI
Soundscapes, the “unfinished symphony and without which we are simultaneously shaped the composers, performers and listeners” (Raymond Murray Schafer). In our accelerated world, these soundscapes, the mixing and fighting of nature and industrial landcapes, the sounds that come with them, the sounds that we make, represent an incredibly interesting proposition, the ultimate frontier and an heritage which needs being preserved. It is with this idea that Francesco Giannico and Alessio Ballerini, already respected artists and musicians in the field of multimedia installations and field recordings, decided to team up and form “Archivio Italiano dei Paesaggi Sonori” (Italian Archive Soundscapes), a loose collective that since 2010 has launched numerous projects, workshops and festival appearances. Read the rest of this entry »
Lasers, smoke and sounds: TOY
In recent months, Toy have established themselves as one of the best new bands to come out of London in years. Having formed around the core of Tom Dougall, Dominic O’Dair and Maxim “Panda” Barron, who had briefly been in the much hyped Joe Lean & the Jing Jang Jong, they started playing live with the help of old friends Charlie Salvidge and Alejandra Diez, getting residency at The Cave Club and The Shacklewell Arms. Theirs is a lysergic yet assured take on psychedelia and krautrock which inevitably has won comparisons with The Horrors; ask them and they will rightly say that rather than a scene, it’s a case of shared attitude and friendship. Read the rest of this entry »
Life Is A Beach: CAYUCAS
Cayucos is a surf town in San Luis Obispo County, California. Santa Monica’s Zach Yudin decided to adopt the name, after twisting it to Cayucas, for the songs that he started writing a couple of years ago. Exotic, yet redolent of beaches, sun, good vibes and girls (obviously), it must have sounded like a statement, a manifesto. Read the rest of this entry »
Hatching The Plan (slowly): ANDY STOTT
Sometimes all you need is to slow down. Manchester dj and producer Andy Stott has been active on the techno scene for over ten years, with a number of eps and two albums (2006’s “Merciless” and 20008’s “Unknown Exceptions”), to his name, but 2009’s “Night Jewel” and “Tell Me Anything” marked a clear change, dramatically rendering the frequencies lower and the beats slower. Words like crepuscular, deconstructed, claustrophobic got to be used more frequently in the reviews. As if finally hitting his stride, Stott became more prolific by releasing in 2011 two short albums, “Passed Me By” and “We Stay Together”, that can be considered with hindsight as the true watershed of his production and a preview of things to come. Read the rest of this entry »
Only The Good Survive: A Mixtape
Here we are again with a new mixtape. We are still kind of trapped in this winter that looks like it never wants to leave, and perhaps this month’s selection has got its inspiration during these days of chilly winds and frequent blizzards. Not that we believe that music is related somehow to seasons but let’s say this could be the perfect soundtrack for this winter’s tail. There are some of our all time favorite artists in here (Kraftwerk, Sonic Boom, Coil) alongside a couple of inclusions that are closer to avant-garde and pure experimentation than to alternative music (Bruce Haack, Daphne Oram). We enjoyed to put this selection together and we hope you’ll enjoy it too. Read the rest of this entry »
Ghostly Incantations: LIFE & LIMB
What happens when two solo artists get together in creating something which is far more than the sum of them? Andrea Mangia still lives in the south east of Italy, in a stubborn refusal of music industry rules; his freedom has led him to work with one of the most prestigious european labels, Morr Music, releasing a series of warm electronic albums under the Populous moniker. Mike McGuire comes instead from New York, and his blissful layered vocals will sound familiar to anyone who has listened his work as Short Stories. They met through mutual respect for their myspace pages, and decided to work together. That work became an album, “Drawn In Basic”, unsurprisingly released under the name of Populous And Short Stories, cut and produced through emails and file attachments, working in physical solitude while enjoying each other’s spiritual presence. It was a good start. Read the rest of this entry »
A Year In Records: 2012 ROUND-UP
End of the year list, we meet again. 2012 has been another exciting year for records, even in the middle of the usual “music is dead” rhetoric. So we approached the round-up game this time deliberately wanting to set a list of ten records which symbolized and represented the last twelve months. The idea was simple: write down your twenty favourite records, see how many get championed in every list and take it from there. Unsurprisingly, this simple idea became an exercise in arithmetics and statistics, once we realized the unanimous choices were very few. Read the rest of this entry »
LDWT goes PRIMAVERA CLUB 2012
A year later, we return to the scene of the crime. Primavera Club, the winter and smaller version of the Primavera Sound festival, is now in its sixth edition (and running for the first time in Madrid, Barcelona and Porto) and until now has never failed to bring the established acts with the up and coming ones which in a few months’ time will see on bigger stages. We arrive to Madrid to not so good omens, the festival has been plagued by organizational problems (how we would have loved to see Cat Power) and at the last minute the local authorities have decided to downsize one of the venues and increase security so that during the space of the evening we will be asked many times to produce passes and passports. Read the rest of this entry »
Through The Glass: WILD NOTHING
“I knew he loved me, cause he made a tape”. The purest of feelings, the simplest of gestures; one can be sure that since the summer of 2010, Wild Nothing, the brainchild of Blacksburg’s Jack Tatum, has become a stable presence on those tapes. After a couple of singles, including a subtly exotic reinterpretation of Kate Bush’ Cloudbursting, his debut album “Gemini” heralded the arrival of an incredibly talented songwriter, whose summery shimmering songs could hint a deeper intimate touch: obvious reference points were british guitar bands such as The Cure and New Order but with an almost whispered approach which recalled cult acts like The Wake and The Field Mice; in any case, it was hard to listen to the first few bars of Live In Dreams and not smile. A glorious start, followed by the decision to raise the bar, as Tatum released the “Golden Gaze” e.p. at the end of the same year and recruited a full band with which he has been touring since. Read the rest of this entry »
Little Stings: PINS
Manchester, so much to answer for. It may have been a while since Manchester could be considered the epicentre of UK new music movements but the less the city has been covered (thanks also to having got rid of certain few populist bands), the more awkward and interesting the sounds have become. There’s something approachable yet sinister at the core of the best Manchester acts and female four-piece PINS honourably joins those ranks. Formed just over a year ago, singer/guitarist Faith Holgate, guitarist Lois Macdonald, bassist Anna Donigan and drummer Lara Williams started to impress the live circuit by washing away their catchy pop melodies in dramatic echo and powerful noise. It’s no wonder that their debut single release (Eleventh Hour/Shoot You) – released on a gold cassette – sold out in days. Read the rest of this entry »
The Future Is Bright: THE FRESH & ONLYS 
Better Than Something: Interview with Ian Markiewicz and Alex Hammond 
Filming The Music: AG ROJAS 
Coyotes in My Backyard: TRAVIS MILLARD 
The Alchemy of Love and Fire: NEIL KRUG 
Drenched in The Rain of Dreams: Dimitri Drjuchin 
I CAN SEE FOR MILES: The Art of Jacob Escobedo 