Review by Simon Vansintjan

Beat the Devil’s Tattoo is Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s sixth studio album, released on the 8th (the 9th if you live in North America) on their own label.

The first time I heard of BRMC I was fifteen and patiently waiting for Metallica to do their thing. I don’t remember much of the concert except that one of the guitarists (he may even have been a singer) was continuously smoking while he was on stage. I didn’t pay much attention to them then, and haven’t really since. Then on a whim I decided to listen to this album. Read More

Review by Ali Quaile

‘Broken Bells’ is the self-titled album from the American indie rock band consisting of artist and producer Brian Burton aka Danger Mouse and the lead vocalist and guitarist of The Shins James Mercer. Burton is no stranger to collaborations having produced for Damon Albarn’s side project Gorillaz , Beck, the Black Keys and being one half of funk-soul project Gnarls Barkley with singer Cee-Lo Green. Burton and Mercer have already worked together on the track ‘Insane Lullaby’ from the quintessential album ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ from Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse which when initially released in physical form contained only a blank cd-r but is set for a proper release in June.  Read More

By Ali Quaile
It’s been five years since Damon Albarn has released anything from his cartoon electronic, pop, hip- hop outfit Gorillaz. The third studio album from the group and one of the most highly anticipated albums of 2010 but is it any good? I think the problem with creating so much hype around an album is that unless it’s an absolute masterpiece one tends to be disappointed and I think that is definitely the case here. Read More

By Simon Vansintjan

Eluvium’s newest album – Similes – is absolutely striking. I’ve been a fan of Matthew Cooper’s work for a while now, it’s ambient music that I can relate with. I can identify his songs while generally other artists just blend into one happy humming noise that I can blissfully ignore while I study away. Copia, for example, is filled with tracks that I can put on to listen to for themselves while also enjoying it and studying. Read More

Review By Chris Imlach

It’s been just shy of two years since Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip released their debut album Angles and now they’re back with the follow up – The Logic of Chance.

The major thing you notice about The Logic of Chance when you first listen to it is that it lacks the stand out tracks that grab you straight away, like Thou Shalt Always Kill, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Fixed and… well pretty much everything else on Angles did. However that is not to say that this new record is not any good. Quite the contrary in fact – aside from the bouncy, catchy Great Britain which does have that initial impact the other tracks grow on you and reward re-listening until pretty much every song gets stuck in your head. Read More

By Ali Quaile

The new album from the Scandinavian siblings is one that is definitely different. Rather than a standard release it is the soundtrack for an opera based on Charles Darwin’s seminal work ‘On the Origin of Species’ which they wrote for Danish performance group ‘Hotel Pro Forma’ and so cannot really be seen as a follow up to their 2006 album ‘Silent Shout’ but rather more of a side project. A collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock, it really stretches the boundaries of modern music. It seems to be the popular thing in modern opera to recruit the aid of contemporary pop artists as was seen in the ‘Monkey Opera’ whose soundtrack was written by Blur frontman Damon Albarn. Read More

Review by Ali Quaile

It’s been a while since Peter Gabriel has given us something to really sink our teeth into with his last solo album ‘Up’ being released in 2002 almost a decade ago. His latest album ‘Scratch My Back’ which came out today features a selection of covers of various new and old artists encompassing a diverse range of styles. Unlike the standard cover, Gabriel offers an insight into his own creativity by giving us his own interpretations of the songs aided only by various orchestral instruments arranged by John Metcalfe and none of the standard rock band set up. His husky voice gives a sense of raw emotion to each of the songs which conveys new meaning to them and allows the listener to approach them from a different perspective. Read More

Reviewed by Ali Quaile. Few bands have been as consistent in the quality of their music as Hot Chip. From their debut album ‘Coming on Strong’ in 2004 they have been giving us their quirky electronic pop which the nation can’t get enough of. Their latest album ‘One Life Stand’ is no exception containing its fair share of blippy synthesizers, drum machines and Alex Taylor’s dulcet falsetto. The epitome of geek chic, Hot Chip manages to combine an array of electronic instruments with heartfelt lyrics giving us their original sound. Read More

By Simon Vansintjan

I was given this album at the music team meeting and asked kindly whether I could review it. I agreed that I would, but now I’m a bit intimidated. Mainly because I’ve been listening to the thing for the better part of the last month (I know, I am all that is evil), and … I’m still listening to it on an almost daily basis. This album will probably slot itself into my top five albums of the year, and there’s only been one month of 2010.

The album starts with the low rumbling build up “The Children”, complete with synthesized voices and steady drum beats. Slow paced it’s a fairly appropriate album opener, one that could have just as easily have acted as a closer. You know the type of song that I mean, it’s all-right – definitely not the highlight of the album, but it does hint at what it’s all about, and then fades smoothly into “Ambling Alp”. If you haven’t heard it yet, here is your chance. It’s a magnificently upbeat song with some magnificent pep-talk style lyrics – even if it has the makings of one that might easily become over-played. But after a month of continuous play on my computer – it hasn’t yet. And then the album launches into hypnotizing pop-psych-electro song after hypnotizing pop-psych-electro (yay for genres right guys?) song. Read More

Jack Binns offers his review of the solo album everyone has been waiting for.

With the release of ‘Phrazes for The Young’ Julian Casablancas is the fourth member of The Strokes to release solo material. This might as well mean the last member of The Strokes since there is no sign of Nick Valensi releasing any solo material. So what have we been waiting for? Well if I’m honest no one was expecting a great deal, the bar set by his band mates is a fairly low one with Albert Hammond Jr. releases perhaps being the high point. Luckily for us, and Julian, ‘Phrazes…’ is far more than a fifth of a Strokes album. Read More

Jack Binns reports

Before Embryonic, I knew The Flaming Lips as a big-top act with rubber spheres, confetti cannons and an appearance on The SpongeBob Square-Pants Movie soundtrack; so a quick glance at the head-being-born-from-another-head cover of this eighteen track space trip is enough to tell you that something has changed for The Flaming Lips.

Opener Convinced of the Hex begins with a squeal of white noise and the bleeps of a Geiger counter before a hypnotic bass riff spools on and the voice of Wayne Coyne’s cultist bemoans our irrational fears. The existential doubting and Can-inspired grooving continues with The Sparrow Looks up at the Machine, Powerless and post-apocalyptic See the Leaves. Read More

Richard Vause considers the merits of the new Editors album.

First things first for Editors’ 3rd album; the name. There is nothing wrong with In This Light and On This Evening, but I just can’t help thinking it would have much more of a ring to it as ‘On This Night and In This Light’. 4-year-old-esque insistences on rhymes in poems, songs and (apparently) album titles aside, I was curious as what we’d be getting from them Editors boys this time around. After two impressive, platinum albums of epic, guitar tunes, Editors’ change in direction is a surprise. Goodbye guitar-basis and hello a new, synth-driven, electronic style. Think ‘Editors in Space’.

And after my initial listen I was not convinced by this switch at all. As a fan of The Back Room and An End Has A Start I was disappointed to hear an album that sounded as uninteresting as vocalist Tom Michael Henry Smith’s name. Apparently there was just one set sound repeated on all 9 tracks, with no stand out songs to come anywhere near the levels of Munich, Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors or The Racing Rats. However, after a few more listens the industrial, Kraftwerk-inspired sound was starting to grow on me. Read More

**** (FOUR)/5

Vested interest: I had classes with Marcus Mumford when I was a first-year classicist, on the rare occasion that he turned up. He dropped out after first year, so we will never see how great a Hellenist Mumford would have become. Academia’s loss is The Sons’ gain, however, as the debut Mumfs LP hits ears at last, proving that Mumford is a keener student of songcraft than Cicero. Read More

There are probably some things you should know about The Protomen before I start describing their music to you (unless you’re satisfied by “Go buy this album, because it’s really good”, then please feel free to go and buy this album, because it’s really good). The Protomen are a gimmick band. They play music based on the Mega Man video game for the NES. For their first album they took the story of Mega Man and made it into a masterful rock opera. Their second album, Act II – The Father of Death, is a prequel to their first album and the original Mega Man game. It focuses on Dr. Tom Light’s creation of the robots, his consequent doubts about them and their usefulness, and Dr. Wily’s attempt to use them to control humanity, and destroy Tom’s reputation (by killing Emily, Tom’s wife, and then framing the doctor for the act). With Dr. Light on the run, the story starts to follow Joe, an ordinary citiizen, as he meets the now exciled Dr. Light, and ends with Joe dead in his suicidal attempt to give the city back to the humans and take it away from Dr. Wily’s robots. Tom Light then realizes that he has “work to do”, setting the stage for the actual story of Mega Man. Read More