Tag: album of the year
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Choose Your Weapon album – Hiatus Kaiyote
For geeky music fans who may possess a rudimentary grasp of chords, scales and rhythms, Choose Your Weapon is a revelation. The Australian quartet toy with tempos, switch melodies and hijack genres with scholarly precision. It’s scary at times. Take Jekyll – it appears to be a conventional neo-soul outing until, two minutes into the […]
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4hero presents EXTENSIONS – various artists (4hero)
When an artist records someone else’s song in the pop world, it’s called a “cover”; the same thing in dance circles is a “remix”. Now, judging by this release, there’s a third category: an “extension”. Strictly speaking, it’s neither a cover nor a remix because the original artists — in this case, Marc Mac and […]
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One Offs, Remixes And B-Sides album review – Domu
At the turn of the century, it seemed that on a weekly basis, another broken beat track was released on ground-breaking labels such as Bitasweet and Main Squeeze. The likes of IG Culture, Bugz In The Attic, Seiji, Mark de Clive-Lowe and Kaidi were putting out scores of singles. But what was unique about those […]
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A Next Set A Rockers album review – 2000 Black
Major labels make it painless for fans to buy their wares anywhere in any format. Wanna download? iTunes and Amazon are primed to take your cash. Prefer a CD? You can buy one while doing your weekly shop at Walmart. But in the case of Dego and Kaidi’s new album, punters will suffer; A Next […]
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Jazz Re:freshed Vol. 1 album review – various artists
This compilation by London promoters Adam “Rock” Moses and Justin “TopRock” McKenzie is a studious snapshot of nu jazz and broken beat sounds, genres long snubbed by major labels. Without this album, where else would you hear Femi Temowo’s poetic Wood And Things, the head-nodding broken beats of Kaidi Tatham or the psychedelic soul of […]
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One Sweet Life album review – Brotherly
Even if you’re steeped in the hip environs of the leftfield music scene, you may not know of Robin Mullarkey and Anna Stubbs, aka Brotherly. Their anonymity will not doubt continue if, as Commercial Break’s been told, this CD remains misleadingly plonked in the R&B section of some stores. True, this is a vocal album, […]
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Play With The Changes album review – 4hero
Since 1998’s Twin Pages, Dego and Marc Mac (the producers behind 4hero) have been known for their refined blend of beats and strings, a mix that earned the pair a Mercury Prize nomination that same year. Since then, little has changed. The duo follow the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it school of music — as evident on this album’s […]