Ben Cardew’s new book, Space Age Batchelor Pad Music: The Story Of Stereolab In 20 Songs, recounts the tale of Stereolab in 20 songs that represent certain vital aspects of the band’s make up (from romance, to collage and repetition). In this extract, he looks at the idea of ‘propulsion’, as it relates to ‘Super-Electric’, the title track of the band’s second EP

Stereolab, the Lizard / Sausage Machine Christmas Party Camden Irish Centre London 1994. Greg Neate. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

‘Super-Electric’, the title song of Stereolab’s 1991 EP of the same name, feels like the golden moment when a band discovers its destiny, their individual sound emerging from their hodgepodge of influences with the regal purpose of Excalibur being hauled…

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An Undying Love For A Burning World features eight tracks, and is available for streaming now

Photo by Bobby Cochran

Neurosis have released their first new album in a decade, titled An Undying Love For A Burning World.

Spanning eight tracks, the album was recorded across three weekends in Seattle this past winter. The band’s return, they said in a press statement, is “not a reunion – we never broke up”.

The new record sees SUMAC’s Aaron Turner join the band on vocals and guitar. Of his contributions, Neurosis said: “He came straight out of the gate contributing, writing and presenting ideas. His energy matches ours perfectly. It’s as if he was always meant to be there.”

Turner added: “From the moment I first heard…

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Mary Chiney gets to grips with a holy grail of Antillean music, Roland Brival’s seamless marriage of American spiritual jazz with the ancestral roots of Martinique’s bèlè and carnival traditions

Many extraordinary works fade quietly into obscurity, only to be rediscovered years later. Roland Brival’s Créole Gypsy belongs firmly to this overlooked category, a staggering, deeply political, and intensely beautiful work of Pan-Caribbean spiritual jazz that has remained a ghost in the annals of music history since 1980. Now, rescued from obscurity and newly remastered by Soundway Records, this holy grail of Antillean music finally demands the reckoning it has always deserved.

Appreciating Créole Gypsy begins with understanding the life and perspective of its creator. Born in 1950 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, music…

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Leila Bordreuil + Kali Malone

Music for Intersecting Planes

The new collaboration between Leila Bordreuil and Kali Malone captures candlelit conjurations that unfurl into warning sirens, says Bernie Brooks

Music for Intersecting Planes by Leila Bordreuil + Kali Malone

A few days ago, a meme with evergreen top text washed over my transom. It went something like, “I’m no ecologist but this seems bad. When I saw it, it was paired with a nightmare image of a burning oil field, a towering, impenetrable plume of smoke, riding the air up and up and up, a pitch-black tsunami looming, suspended in time like something out of Fury Road – but real, perpetrated by maniacal dullards and genocidal buffoons. Seems bad. But again, that text is…

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The U-turn on potential policy comes after backlash to the plans

The UK government has scrapped its support for plans to allow AI models to be trained using copyrighted creative material, such as music, without compensating artists.

The government’s support for the idea was retracted in response to widespread backlash from figures from across different creative industries, with technology secretary Liz Kendall confirming the government’s U-turn yesterday (18 March).

“We have listened, we have engaged extensively with creatives, AI firms, industry bodies, unions, academics and AI adopters, and that engagement has shaped our approach,” Kendall said this week. “This is why we can confirm today that the government no longer has a preferred option [on copyright reform].”

She added: “We are not the…

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CEO Nick Williams has said the music tech company is in active talks on a possible acquisition, however

Native Instruments (NI) is formally entering into insolvency proceedings.

In a statement shared today (19 March), CEO Nick Williams said the Berlin-based music tech company and a number of its subsidiaries will soon be “transitioning from ‘preliminary insolvency’ into formal ‘insolvency’ proceedings”.

Williams added, however, that NI is in active talks with possible buyers and that they’re progressing well on a potential acquisition to save the firm. His statement said there was “strong interest from multiple parties with deep roots in audio and technology,” meaning the company could potentially continue operating in some form if a deal to save it goes through.

Williams’ statement continued: “What…

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The track marks the band’s first new music since 2022 and arrives 40 years on from their formation

The Afghan Whigs have shared a new song, titled ‘House Of I’.

Marking the first release of new material from the band since 2022, it arrives 40 years on from their formation. They’re set to mark the anniversary with an extensive North American tour through April and May, and you can find a list of dates for the run of shows here.

‘House Of I’, which you can listen to below, is the first preview of a new album from the band, which they’re currently working on with a view to releasing it sometime this year.

In a statement about the new track, The Afghan…

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Chris Pugmire offers us ten entry points into the back catalogue of Ed Kuepper of Australian iconoclasts The Saints, Laughing Clowns, and solo and collaborative renown

Ed Kuepper by Doctorhawkes

Please meet, acquaint or re-acquaint yourself with Ed Kuepper, one of the greatest musicians to come from post-colonial, or still-colonial, Australia. Were Ed only known as the guitarist in The Saints, he would be revered as the first finger to the socket, directly inspiring such fellow idiosyncratic players as Rowland S. Howard, Larissa Strickland, Kurt Cobain and Guy Picciotto. His relentless playing summons images of bee swarms and electrical surges, an elemental ferocity and economy divorced from even the heroics of their only true precedent, The Stooges. As the primary songwriter and…

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Teerath Majumder

Dust To Dust

Overflowing with sounds and ideas, the latest from the Bangladeshi composer-producer is full of surprises

No stranger to a juxtaposition, Bangladeshi composer Teerath Majumder has previous in merging seemingly disparate forms to create something new. His 2023 EP Mouno Shonchar blended traditional Bangla sounds with more contemporary compositions, whilst a collaboration with Dhaka-based, electro-acoustic outfit Taraga resulted in spiky metal riffs butting heads with ambient soundscapes. And last year’s Do Not Feed The Robots participatory concert featured musical improvisations responding to toys and robots as a way of criticising the disenfranchising approach of “so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI)”.

On Dust to Dust, however, he’s upped the ante.

Within the space of a single track, he takes us through a multitude of…

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The Heads’ chaotic Dionysian abandon is always tempered by a mathematical Apollonian rigour, finds Stewart Lee

When Iggy Pop sang “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell” on The Stooges’ 1973 swan song Raw Power, he anticipated the anti-romantic punk era nihilism that was to see future Brexit fan John Lydon describe love as “two minutes and fifty-two seconds of squelching noises.” Fifty three years later Bristol’s immortal space-garage psychonauts The Heads may still be sculpting their sonic monuments with some of the same flint axes initially fashioned by The Stooges, but rather than being petty and personal, their disgust is profound and existential. For The Heads, on what they claim is their final album, our whole pretty place is going…

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