Whilst it takes some patient listening to peel back the hidden layers contained within, the pensive Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane provides plentiful rewards through its serious-minded but soulful roaming through the expansive inner-world of Pan•American.
Adrian
95 posts
Whereas its predecessor saluted the scenery of the Peak District across a smorgasbord flavoured with kosmische Tortoise-tinted post-rock and retro-futuristic synth sculpting, this follow-up honours the North Sea-facing coastline of the UK, on a somewhat less divergent yet deeper-cooked buffet of sounds.
...brings together older material that has been fermenting in other canonical places with newer pieces cooked-up afresh between the foursome. The result is an album that intrepidly tips a lot into a collaborative cauldron and pours out plenty of impressive distillations.
Remarkably the result of just a one-day session last summer, Blank Arcades is an internally wandering yet never unfocused affair that finds multiple routes between sparse simplicity and collaborative camaraderie.... With such well-measured richness to unpack in its roomy interiors, Blank Arcades is another captivating Andrew Rumsey-curated place to get lost inside.
...a neatly-distilled pop-noir affair – which includes recuts of prior EP extracts and newer material – that shifts between layered moodscapes and shadowy minimalistic grooves... Glen Johnson is clearly unafraid to wander wherever his perennial penchants take him
If 2025 wasn’t quite busy enough for Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s Skep Wax label -- in widening its scope via a slew of new signings and extra global connections -- then 2026 looks set to just keep on building upwards and outwards, with some pretty epic touring schedules and a flux of new releases already in the calendar well into the spring.
...a product of near-seamless mind-melding that traverses multiple timelines of choice historic influences, without any fashion-focused anxiety.
...this second full-length set from Melbourne’s capital letter-averse kisses has a lot to live up to, both in comparison to the label’s stunning sole LP 2025 outing from Sienna Thornton and the quintet’s own utterly sublime self-released eponymous album from 2024.
Dialling down prior murkier and less direct tendencies to markedly push guitarist and lyricist Etienne Quartey-Papafio’s now-more-assured vocals much further to the fore, the sophomore Sunlight Echoes is a substantial and soulful step forward for the foursome, rounded out by drummer Jagun Meseorisa, guitarist Michael Adelaja and bassist Vanessa Govinden.
...turns back the clock with a re-curation exercise, to add a key chapter from her earlier work into the same label catalogue fold. Hence, 2010’s The Fallen By Watch Bird reappears in a double-duration coupling with 2011’s close companion collection, The Watchbird Alluminate, which were both previously released on the Bird imprint
...right at the very start of another busy year of activity – with several bouts of live Heavenly bookings to fulfil upfront -- Ian openhandedly gave over time to tell all on his early career routes; the life and times of Papernut Cambridge being celebrated across the freshly dispensed and indispensable Everybody Is In Papernut Cambridge compilation; the philosophies and operations of Gare Du Nord ; his broad range of other cultural commitments; and plenty more in between.
Supergroups as a mainstream proposition appear seem to have largely become a thing of the past, in part due to the music industry’s latter-day solo performer-centric focus and brute economics. Therefore, it has fallen to veterans operating in more independent imprint spheres to keep such convergences alive.
After a relentlessly prolific and steadily diversifying 2025, it’s perhaps not surprising that Precious Recordings is one of the first independent labels out of the release gates at the dawning of 2026. With respectively refreshing twists, the below pair of near-back-to-back vinyl and digital outings confirm that the core business of digging up the BBC’s buried treasure chests – with consent - remains undiminished: LP-length anthology of The Twinsets’ triptych of vintage John Peel sessions & Jetstream Pony’s recorded live-on-air appearance for 6Music, Riley & Coe Session 09.04.25 EP.
Whilst the arrestingly cheesy-peculiar front cover of Impostor Syndrome is rather offputtingly redolent of something you might easily flick past in a car boot sale crate of decades-old novelty records, inside the sleeve resides an assemblage of absolutely charming warmth and ingenuity.
Both a revolving door group and a single-minded mission, Matt Pond PA were officially inaugurated eponymically in Philadelphia way back in 1998, with the debut Deer Apartments LP. Since this beginning, the off-to-one-side enterprise has been adroitly steered by self-described ‘dignified drifter’ Matt Pond through innumerable membership configurations, label deals, modes of operations and sonic shifts across prolific releases of various shapes and sizes.
... after a snaky Sebadoh-infused instrumental prologue to usher us in (“Theme”), we’re firmly thrust into a series of tune-stuffed songs, with Josie’s magnetic vocals pulling things into sharp yet warm focus for the majority of proceedings.
Having recalibrated themselves somewhat with 2021’s towering epic Burials, Cambridge’s Fuzzy Lights return belatedly with the logical extension that is Fen Creatures. With Rachel Watkins retaining sole lead vocal and lyric-writing duties, alongside her role on violin, Xavier Watkins (guitar), Chris Rogers (guitar), Daniel Carney (bass) and Mark Blay (drums) continue to turn up both the turbulence and atmospherics, the folk-psych-rock melding appears even weightier and wider in its reach.
There is undoubtedly no productivity crisis in the broad spheres of nouveau shoegaze and DIY electronica, with complementary manoeuvres and convergence playing out between them to boot. This is certainly apparent in sifting through another review pile on the verge of toppling over, replete with a lot of familiar suspects from some reliable sources.