‘The littoral British retreat that is Brighton may be better renowned for saccharine tat and chish and fips still swimming in gristle and grime than it may be for musics and the manic frenzy their festivals so often entail, although the city becomes a bloody hive of hype for the one weekend of the year. That is this, and this is the 2013 edition of The Great Escape. So let the buzz begin!’
Review: Thursday, 16th May / Friday, 17th May / Saturday, 18th May. Gallery: Thursday, 16th May / Friday, 17th May / Saturday, 18th May.
‘With lyrics of snapped rachides and cameos from hip hop heavyweights, you’d be forgiven for fearing a seismic shift in focus as they retract their toes from the avant-garde to embrace a rather more accessible aesthetic. Flashes of the wilfully outré remain, not least in Vonsild’s voice itself – a slippery falsetto that’s tricky to pin down and harder still to comprehend – but even from an external perspective, they’ve been gravely undervalued for all too long already.’
Dots & Dashes review Infinity Pool – the third full-length from the ‘glorious irregularities in an increasingly regular musical landscape’ that are When Saints Go Machine.
‘Now warming up for the release of their fifth full-length in seven years, San Francisco duo The Dodos haven’t exactly held us forever rapt over the course of their discography. Sophomore recording Visiter was a personal fave, although elsewhere they’ve faltered for want of a more tender term as Meric Long and Logan Kroeber have often fallen for the predictable, or worse still the plainly soporific. Though if a perfunctory peek into the inner workings of the forthcoming Carrier should be any genuine yardstick, then they’ve set their sights far higher than they have of late, and Confidence restores just that. A bristly opus of sorts that harnesses the emotivity of Local Natives and stitches that vulnerable underbelly into a rhythmic workout thunderous enough to send a ball of dense pigskin right out into touch, it’s a ruddy potent maelstrom of swirling guitars and swollen toms. A recording approaching perfection, as Long avows: “Who has it all, has nothing” one senses that so much could yet be theirs if Carrier carries on in a similarly vivifying vein of form.’
Carrier is anticipated August 27th via Polyvinyl Record Co.
‘No sooner have we looked to northwestern Spain and to next month’s Primavera Sound than we’re back in Barcelona – at least musically speaking – as we turn to next month’s Sónar. The one and indeed only International Festival of Advanced Music and New Media Art this year commemorates its 20th anniversary, and to celebrate it boasts a line up of utmost refinement pooled from the spheres of electronica and organica alike. As with our every Fest Bests feature, we were unable to include everyone we’re restively awaiting over in Cataluña and as such the likes of Major Lazer & Mykki Blanco & Liars & Bat For Lashes have, alas, fallen by the wayside although below be our presupposed highlights for the city-spanning, premium lager-swilling throwdown…’
Fest Bests: Sónar 2013.
