zakè & Coppice Halifax : Tree Grid

Collaboration is the spice of creativity, as well as life. Of course being in a room alone with just your ideas, musical instruments, and a recording device can also be a completely satisfying experience, but when you can bounce ideas off of another creative mind there’s nothing more exhilarating. Having a like-minded soul building upon […]

Beck : Ride Lonesome

If you’re a fan of sad Beck Hansen then you’re in for a treat with his new album Ride Lonesome. We have the 3rd record in a trilogy of sadsack Beck records, following Sea Change from 2002, then Morning Phase in 2014. These are the sad Beck songs, expertly produced to a finite sheen; spectral […]

Mastodon : Marrow Deep

After Mastodon parted ways with longtime guitarist/songwriter Brent Hinds it seemed an era was at an end. The metal quartet had made their mark on the metal community for 2 decades, releasing forward-thinking records like Leviathan, Blood Mountain, and Crack The Skye. These were albums that towed the line between speed metal, prog, and punk […]

Sleep : Hempispheres

Sleep are absolute legends. Not only did the trio -which included Al Cisneros on bass, Matt Pike on guitar, and Chris Hakius(later Jason Roeder) on drums- help define stoner and doom metal in one fell toke…I mean, swoop, but they showed how heavy and loud a three-piece can be. After their game-changing album Dopesmoker, the […]

Ty Segall : Chrome

For the most part you know what to expect from a Ty Segall album. It used to be that one would arrive every year, if not even sooner than that. You could count on Tinnitus-inducing fuzz volumes, drum freakouts, and Ty doing his best to sound like someone singing while melting in lava at the […]

Mike D: Thank You

It’s been 14 years since the passing of MCA, aka Adam Yauch, of the Beastie Boys. When one third of the long-running rap group left it seemed like that was it. The Beastie Boys were done. Remaining members Ad-Rock(Adam Horovitz) and Mike D(Michael Diamond) did re-emerge 6 years later with a Beastie Boys memoir and […]

Dinosaur Jr : There Near

There’s something comforting about a new Dinosaur Jr album, because no matter what point you jumped on the J Mascis train the band will always sound like Dino Jr. Sure, the early stuff was messier, noisier, and more in line with the no wave sound of early 80s NYC. But starting with ’91’s Green Mind […]

Hawksmoor : Yclept Thorn

There’s a dank haze that emanates from James McKeown’s latest outing as Hawksmoor. After a couple immense and Komische/Berlin School-heavy records with the great Soul Jazz Records -plus an amazing collaboration with Ivan The Tolerable- Hawksmoor has returned to the crypt of Library of the Occult for Yclept Thorn. This is no ordinary electronic folk […]

John Carpenter : Cathedral

I’ll admit, the first couple things I heard from John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies’ latest LP Cathedral I wasn’t that excited about. It was touted as their “heavy metal” album, and while there were chugging guitars and heavy rock drumming going on, it just didn’t seem like a musical trip I wanted to […]

The Strokes : Reality Awaits

You remember the early 2000s boom of post-punk and new wave bands that came out of the druggy New York lower east side club scene? It was so big there was even a book written about it. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jonathan Fire Eater, DFA Records, Interpol; as well as bands like The White Stripes, The […]