There are those albums that are based on vanity. Others are lifelines. The Agoraphobia Files by Paul Gill under the pseudonym Purbeck Temple is unquestionably the latter, a thirteen-track testament in defense of patience that emerged out of trauma and was moulded by years of loneliness, recovery and unassailable resolution. The background is devastating: a severe assault that caused Gill […]
Pop/Review Amara Fe – SHIFT
Twenty-four songs is a declaration. It is not just an album, but a universe, a mood board, thesis on what pop can be when an artist does not want to cut themselves down to the industry standard. SHIFT Amara Fe does not merely build on her first album Reborn, but rockets beyond it, with a collection that is both confidence, […]
Pop/Review DALE – Vertigo
It is very personal when an artist relies on music as a therapy and that is what Dale or Milan-based banker-turned-musician does with his first album Vertigo. The result of the highly stressful and self-aware time, this set of 80s inspired synth-pop songs is a record of one man attempting to learn about himself- and the kind of man he […]
ROCK/Review Rosetta West – God of the Dead
Other times you come across an album that alters everything you knew about a band. The God of the Dead by Rosetta West is just such a revelation–a daring artistic declaration that finds the Illinois blues-rock band at their most adventurous and emotionally bare. It is immediately evident that this is not merely another album full of songs, but a […]
ROCK/Review Blunt Blade – Forgiveness
It is something truly disconcerting about hearing Blunt Blade in the dark with the album Forgiveness. The seven-track adventure of the Minnesota multi-instrumentalist does not only cross boundaries, but destroys them, leaving a sonic terrain that is at once intimate and universal, haunting. By the first few bars of “Justified,” where the singer delivers the incantatory lines in a baritone, […]
METAL/Review Gus Defelice – The Sound of Inevitability
The Sound of Inevitability by Gus Defelice serves as a spectacular concept album which delivered an extraordinary musical experience to me. As soon as I pressed play the album instantly led me to an elaborate sonic realm that Gus masterfully constructed. His guitar skills remain insane throughout the album because every musical note joins harmonies and melodies with exceptional purposeful […]
FOLK/Review YVONNE LYON & BOO HEWERDINE – Things Found In Books
The emotional rawness of Things Found in Books transforms the listening experience into an encounter with lost memories stored within a forgotten book collection. The folk songwriting collaboration between Yvonne Lyon and Boo Hewerdine produced an intensely personal musical experience by writing songs around the brief memories that appeared on secondhand bookshop noticeboards. The soft mournful music touched me entirely […]