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3 weeks ago | 
theguardian.com | Alastair Shuttleworth
‘Kissed by a witch, I got hexed!” Aya howls through a storm of screaming electronics and bass groans on I Am the Pipe I Hit Myself With. The song revisits a time before Aya Sinclair was one of the UK avant garde’s most exciting talents – when she was still a Huddersfield teenager, newly into Christian rock. The music gave her “this tingly, bubbly sensation”, she says.
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1 month ago | 
pitchfork.com | Alastair Shuttleworth
Think of Texan artists claire rousay and Mari Maurice, aka more eaze, as a kind of social-media age Ween: their collaborations marked by marriages of lo-fi experimentalism and pop standards, irreverent humor, and—above all—restless genre-hopping. Their first album together, 2020’s if I don’t let myself be happy now then when, explored their experiences growing up in San Antonio and coming out as trans women through a shifting morass of field recordings.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Alastair Shuttleworth
At Manchester’s sold-out Aviva Studios, smoke curls around a giant, ominous black box that resembles a freshly landed spaceship. It’s the perfect warm-up act for Cheltenham-born experimentalist FKA twigs, whose abstract take on pop has always felt inscrutably alien: from 2012’s dark, trip-hoppy debut EP1to her new club-inspired album Eusexua, her first to hit the UK Top 10.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Alastair Shuttleworth
As a child, Daveed Diggs and his schoolfriend William Hutson drew pictures inspired by the space-age album covers of funk legends Parliament, filled with gleaming UFOs and eccentric interplanetary travellers. Diggs would grow up to become an actor, winning a Tony award as the first person to play the roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton.
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2 months ago | 
pitchfork.com | Alastair Shuttleworth
When Richard Dawson finished his trilogy of epic, state-of-the-nation concept albums—set in the pre-medieval past (Peasant), present (2020), and future (The Ruby Cord)—he seemingly left himself with nowhere new to go. The series was absurdly ambitious, from his painstaking historical research for Peasant to The Ruby Cord’s 41-minute opener to his grand palette of strings, electronics, and group vocals.
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2 months ago | 
msn.com | Alastair Shuttleworth
Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
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2 months ago | 
theguardian.com | Alastair Shuttleworth
On new album A Firmer Hand, Hamish Hawk traded the easy, early Scott Walker-indebted indie of previous albums – 2021’s Heavy Elevator and 2023’s Angel Numbers – for a darker, grittier, more sexually forthright evaluation of who the Edinburgh artist really is. The contrast gets turned up during this impressive show, which charts just how far he’s come; after more than a decade of releases, he has matured into a charismatic, Jarvis Cocker-esque performer at the edge of the big time.
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2 months ago | 
daily.bandcamp.com | Alastair Shuttleworth
FEATURES Squid on Experimentation, Apathy, and Their “Album About Evil” By Alastair Shuttleworth · February 10, 2025 Photo by Harrison Fishman “An album about evil” is how Squid described their third album Cowards upon announcement: A maximalist experimental rock record bearing traces of folk and contemporary classical. It’s a far cry from the spidery, eccentric post-punk of 2019’s Town Centre EP, which first broke the Brighton group in the UK.
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2 months ago | 
thequietus.com | Patrick Clarke |Alastair Shuttleworth
When Jussi Brightmore moved his young family to Portugal in the Summer of 2020, exploiting a brief easing of lockdown restrictions and the last months before Brexit’s transition period ended, he was excited for a fresh start. Trading London for the natural beauty around Lisbon, his band Gum Takes Tooth – beloved in experimental circles for their crushing, airless EBM – would give way to something new, and perhaps more optimistic.
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2 months ago | 
thequietus.com | John Doran |Alastair Shuttleworth
In the winter of 2019, Snapped Ankles were returning from a show in France when a blizzard hit the UK. The anonymous East London electronic outfit – usually seen in outlandish-looking ghillie suits, presiding over dancing crowds, occasionally wielding synths built into rotting logs – found themselves stranded in the departure lounge on the French end of the Eurotunnel, with limited food and a 12 hour wait ahead of them.
