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2 weeks ago | 
brightonsource.co.uk | John Parry
If you think of making electronic music, synths, programming, samplers and keyboards would most likely feature as part of your staple kit. The electric guitar, symbol of everything rock, may not get a look in, unless of course you know about Christian Fennesz.
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2 weeks ago | 
backseatmafia.com | John Parry
This is not alt-rock revivalism, it’s electro-orchestral hyper balladry which maps a dark trail of failure and glimpses at a way forward. Welcome once again to a rare encounter with the illusive Brighton art-punk duo Be Kind Cadaver. First sighted back in the post-Covid energy surge of 2022 with their debut EP ‘Post Partum’, Daniel Hignell-Tully and Leroy Brown released a venomous probe into the personal and political with a quartet of shell-shocked anti-pop songs.
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2 weeks ago | 
backseatmafia.com | John Parry
It’s seems like quite a while since we’ve had any recorded output from Manchester’s electronic experimentalist I Am Fya. Well over a year ago she delivered The Sun Will Kill Me, a breezy, warm hearted slice of electro-pop which echoed with a trip-hop undercurrent. Framed by I Am Fya’s prolonged stay in Barbados with her unwell parents during Covid times, there were murmurings that the song and its video were part of a much larger project that this dynamic artist was working on.
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2 weeks ago | 
backseatmafia.com | John Parry
This gift to conjure up music which is immediate and relatable rather than wilfully obscure and impenetrable underpins the strength of ‘A Requiem’. One Little Independent Records–9.0Penelope Trappes recognises she makes music goes deep and once described her approach as “digging up the underworld with visual motifs, and a mystical, gothic darkness that symbolises my struggles”.
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3 weeks ago | 
backseatmafia.com | John Parry
There’s a real sonic synergy evident in this partnership. The similarities in the musical pathways between saxophonist Emma Rawicz and pianist Gwilym Simcock are a bit uncanny. Both studied at Chethams School Of Music and The Royal Academy, both have won a sleuth of UK Jazz plaudits including the Parliamentary Jazz Awards, Simcock in 2007 and Rawicz in 2021, both release through the seminal ACT records and both have had the ‘new rising star on the scene’ tag planted on them by those in the know.
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1 month ago | 
backseatmafia.com | John Parry
Passepartout Duo, the sonic partnership between pianist Nicoletta Favari and percussionist Christopher Salvito, thrives on constant travel, seeking out new collaborations as well as inspirational settings for recording and performance. Since their inception in 2015 the Duo’s globetrotting has gained momentum, taking their hand built electronic instruments cross continents on buses, trains and in dusty vans then occasionally pausing for thought.
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1 month ago | 
backseatmafia.com | John Parry
The unexpected should always be expected in Storring’s work. Delving into the musical potential of the humbucker pick-up and other electro-mechanical instruments, getting inspired by ghost towns in Ontario, recording a whole album from a pedestrian bridge near to his home and composing for a new instrument, the halldorophone, Nick Storring is the archetypal, restless experimenter. He’s driven by the ‘what if’ and the ‘why not’ but crucially not to the detriment of ‘what for’.
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1 month ago | 
brightonsource.co.uk | John Parry
Going by the rammed Folklore Rooms tonight momentum is gathering around Brighton poet, promoter, musician and rapper Jed Wright’s ‘basics’ sessions. The multi-genre gig which merges music and spoken word opened in March last year and now we’re already onto ‘basics volume 4’. Previous nights have featured amongst many others: storyteller/poet and troubadour Tagore Chayne, jazz chanteuse AVIJE, rock-soul power trio Stone Jets, the dream-wave folksinger Rea and award-winning poet Cecelia Knapp.
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1 month ago | 
backseatmafia.com | John Parry
It’s a richly dense, emotionally sweeping piece of early seventies singer-songwriter expressionism from McDonald, an artist who literally became lost in time. Different Strokes For Different Folks–8.9Vinyl reissues over the past few years have seemed to have been seized upon by majors gagging to maximise the current appetite for buying black (but now probably re-coloured) plastic. But beyond chasing the transient market, there are others who see their dedication to re-issuing very differently.
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1 month ago | 
backseatmafia.com | John Parry
Elements of Dark Folk, sacred music, electro goth and hauntology coupled with his established techno premises lead this music to places both other-worldly and strangely transformative. It was a question of time before Canadian producer/audio-visual artist T.Gowdy’s background filtered through to his engrossing electronic music and that time is now.
