The second part of the week:
Luke Abbott - his first in 6 years. There's some mighty fine, stately pastoral electronica going on here. Recommended.
Anthony Moore - a re-released obscurity from 1976. Moore is an experimental composer with his roots in prog rock. This is a very inventive and quite poppy/glam album that should undoubtedly have sold more on release. Oddly, it features a member of The Police (Andy Summers).
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - I'm not sure what the Bad Seeds do on this as it's Cave on the piano solo. As expected, it's utterly spellbinding. Maybe slightly biased to his late career but there's older stuff here as well.
Chubby and the Gang - I'm a bit behind the curve with this lot. The broadsheets reckon they're the future of British punk. It's a fiun album but hardly essential.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - I haven't bothered with the live album. The studio album is good. They seem, for now, to have settled on a middle eastern/North African influenced sound. Vaguely desert rock!
The Tibbs - old school soul from the Netherlands (the spiritual home of soul, although the Dutch call it schoul). Pretty good, gets better as it goes on TBH.
The War On Chris Rea - especially for
@chunkylover53 and
@mad cyril. It's a pretty good live album and summation of their work so far, although I can see why those who don't like their smooth rock undertones won't like this. Has the unfamiliar sound of audience noise on it.
Matthew Halsall - as featured on BBC4's rather decent Jazz 625 special last Friday, Halsall is a leading light in Manchester's current jazz scene. This is enjoyable, primarily instrumental, kind of spiritual.
Ai Aso - minimalist Japanese psych folk. Very fragile and very listenable indeed...
Damaged Bug - I suspect that this came out earlier in the year and I've only jsut got round to listening to it. They're John Dwyer's electronic psych pop band. As with all of his stuff, it's great fun.
Contento - salsapunk apparently so Latin music but not as MOR as some of it could be and with a lot of energy. They look like roadies in their promo photos.
Album of the week: probably CCR Headcleaner as they're new to me, although Cave, Grandaddy, Luluc, the re-release from Anthony Moore and the slightly mad La Locura comp are not far behind.