December 2011
14 posts
19 tags
Squealer top ten of 2011 (part 2)
2011 hasn’t been the greatest year all round; economic meltdown, riots on the streets, ecological disasters and the travesty that is the Lou Reed and Metallica collaboration have all been billed as signs of the impending apocalypse but today we bring you ten records that have made this particular Squealer writer’s year that bit brighter through the fog of doom and gloom.
Without...
7 tags
Little Girls
Toronto’s Josh McIntyre, a.k.a Little Girls, has been making his own brand of scuzzed-out electro-pop since 2009, fusing elements of 80s post-punk with the new wave pop aesthetic under delicately placed yet suffocatingly thick layers of fuzz and reverb.
So far, so familiar. Yet what sets McIntyre apart from his peers, of which there are increasing numbers, is the inherent darkness and...
6 tags
Maria Minerva
London-based Estonian Maria Juur has the slightly unenviable honour of taking the penultimate “featured artist” slot of 2011. This is not to say, though, that the music she makes should suffer any similar such near-overlooking. A hazy, trippy, skewed, near-unhinged variation of MTV-pop, Maria Minerva has all the faded-memory qualities of a forgotten, warped, foreign-language hits...
6 tags
Soccer96
In lieu of writing about our almost uncontainable glee in hearing Bella Union’s news that Dirty Three will be releasing a new album in March, due to the lack of any pre-release material, we bring you the math/glitch/synth-pop/electro wizardry that is Soccer96.
Armed solely with a couple of Roland keyboards and a basic drum set-up, the Brighton/London-based duo create dizzyingly...
13 tags
Squealer top ten of 2011 (part 1)
2011 has been a good year for music. It was a good year to launch our Squealing endeavour, and December has been a good month for starting plans for bigger, bolder and brighter projects for 2012. So good, in fact, that we neglected this important rite of passage for music journalism until a relatively late point in the month.
So, part 1 of our staff end of year lists (stay tuned for the rest of...
6 tags
Keep Shelley in Athens
We intended to feature the newest addition to the ever-tasteful and ever-expanding Planet Mu roster last week, to coincide with the release of EP Campus Martius, but somehow Greek synth-pop duo Keep Shelley in Athens got bumped/mislaid/forgotten about. The record itself maintains an icy yet blissful tone throughout while still managing to flit between dark and light; from the dancefloor filling...
4 tags
Shigeto
High school-ditching, jazz-studying woodshedder Zach Saginaw picked the pseudonym ‘Shigeto’ in reference to his grandfather and the Japanese line in his heritage - an affectionate and genuine tribute to a culture and background that has informed and fed his music.
New album Lineage (released by Michigan’s fiercely original, trendsetting Ghostly International label) is a heady...
9 tags
Listener
Dan Smith, the man behind “Talk Music” project Listener, has to be one of the hardest-working men in music. His touring schedule for 2011 spans roughly 170 shows, with a few solitary days/weeks off dotted here and there. According to data from Songkick (in which Listener does not feature but Squealer did the counting) only three bands played more dates in 2010. In 2008 he took a...
16 tags
AU
Three years is a long time to go without a release in an age frequently referred to as that of instant information and market saturation. For the discerning and attentive listener, however, the world’s musical fountain never runs dry. Hell, three years is a chance to discover new inspiration, recover a forgotten cause and initiate a new chapter in life, precisely the tack taken by...
30 tags
Squealer transmission 7 - One hundred posts
In celebration of the 100th post on our still short-lived little music blog, we painstakingly spent several hours in the twilight zone of the early morning crafting an expansive, multi-genre, 100-track playlist to act as both a new Transmission and also a reference to our third figure.
So, listen, enjoy, and thank Slayer; Mouse on Mars; The Feelies; MF Doom; Nine Inch Nails; Health; Unwed...
7 tags
Oliveray
Today’s featured artist is a Russian doll of music related news centred around the prolific and talented Peter Broderick. Fresh off the back of his recently released Music for Confluence, which we announced some months ago and is now available to buy through Erased Tapes, Broderick has teamed up with German composer and label mate Nils Frahm under the name Oliveray for new album titled...
5 tags
Zombi
Signed to legendary metal label Relapse, and nearly sharing their name with London’s acclaimed Zomby, Pittsburgh’s Zombi are characterised by driving, pulsing synth lines and Kraut-inspired, virtuoso percussion lines. Though sharing a formula with countless dance and electronic acts, there is a certain cinematic darkness to what Zombi create - an enveloping, digitised landscape of...
7 tags
Weird Wives
Though Florida’s mindblowing Weird Wives have been on our radar for some time now, we have been relatively slow on writing up their caustic, biting sleaze-punk on Squealer. Incidentally, this is despite head-Wife / Miami scene-stalwart Nick Klein donating us several recommendations for featured artists from his own local circle of artists (c.f. Beings from past updates and a handful more...
7 tags
Bowerbirds
Centred around lovers Phillip Moore and the wonderfully named Beth Tacular, the music of Bowerbirds has always been an obvious representation of their personalities; homely and warm yet strong and fiercely independent. New album The Clearing was written and recorded in the house and studio the couple built for themselves amongst the pine trees of North Carolina and opening track ‘Tuck The...