Album Of The Month

Album Of April 2023 – British Psych Pop Outfit TEMPLES With Their Best (So Far) ‘EXOTICO’

Posted on by JL

Standout album of the month

30 April 2023

Band: TEMPLES
Who: Glam and glitter popsmiths
from Kettering, England formed in 2012 by
charismatic frontman James Bagshaw and
bassist Tom Walmsle.
Active: Since 2012 / 4 LPs (new one included)

New album: EXOTICO

Clash Magazine says: “Indie rockers Temples demonstrate an illustrious way forward for traditional guitar music. Taking place in a mystical, dream-like utopia, this supremely ambitious sixteen track presentation is the broadest, most eclectic palette of sound yet to be released by the neo-psychedelic, alternative ensemble. There are no bounds. ‘Exotico’ let’s go of control, so remarkable things can happen. It’s the closest Temples have been to releasing a masterpiece, and that’s saying something.” Full review here. Score: 8/10.


(Photo by Turn Up The Volume)

TUTV: I became a Temples fan since their 2014 debut album Sun Structures. A psych
retro pop record sounding like 5-star sonic sugar. But the weirdest thing happened now with this new longplayer. I was really disappointed after my first listen. It all (16 tracks) sounded too mellow, too laid-back, too familiar, and too much.

But being a fan I didn’t want to quit on them and I had several spins thereafter.
At one point it felt like my ears made sense of it all, helped by the images of sunny beaches, cocktail bars, and palm trees that popped up on my inner dream screen.

This album grew on me spin after spin. It’s still a mellow, laid-back, and familiar-sounding collection of music. But its sunlit spirit, its vivid vibe, its infectious melodies are SUPREME. Let your thoughts ignore reality and drift away in your happy-go-lucky cocoon. Top-tier, top-tier record, their best so far, hands down.

Singles/clips: Afterlife / Cicada / Gamma Rays

– AFTERLIFE –

– CICADA –

– GAMMA RAYS –

FULL ALBUM

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TEMPLES: Facebook – Instagram

Best Album Of February 2023 – YOUNG FATHERS With Soul-Funk-Punk Drunk LP ‘HEAVY HEAVY’

Posted on by JL

27 February 2023

Band: YOUNG FATHERS
Who: Blood-tingling Scottish dance-funk-punk trio that made a grand entrance
on the music scene when they won the 2014 Mercury Prize (an annual music
prize awarded for the best album released in the United Kingdom) with their
debut album Dead.

New album: HEAVY HEAVY – their 4th LP
Released: 3 February 2023. Order info here.


(Press photo YF – FB)

Info: Written and recorded over the course of three years, the longest time taken
on a Young Fathers album, Heavy Heavy is a tour de force from the Edinburgh trio.
An overarching theme of being human can be felt throughout the ten-track album, exploring the feelings of euphoria and rush of emotion experienced at the end of a struggle, a sense of fulfillment as a result of the toil and hard graft that life throws at everyone. An unashamedly soulful and heartfelt album, where the drums set the
scene throughout to transport the listener to a place of celebration and awakening.


(Spectacular in Antwerp – 22 February 2023 – photo by Turn Up The Volume)

NME: “‘Heavy Heavy’ is a passionate, soulful and often mesmerising work that will stick around long past the first listen. Succinct and underpinned by a catchy melodic structure, it continues Young Fathers’ peerless run of singular albums and further cements them as one of the more unique acts to exist today.” Score: 5/5.

TUTV: This is one of those remarkable records (one every 3 months or so) that
arouses from start to finish, with the cliché no fillers, all killers all over it. You hear
its sonic brilliance, you feel its dauntless vocality, you know it’s a magnum opus.

Heavy Heavy is an undisputable first-class work where vitalizing soul, ecstatic pop melodiousness and self-willed hip-hop come together in an organic, inventive way.
Funk-drunk virtuosity with astonishing vocal teamwork.

And throughout this diamond of a longplayer a modern-day gospel choir causes
an emotive euphoria that grows on you with every spin. Final verdict: this is the
1st contender for best LP of 2023. Fact!

Singles (so far): I Saw / Tell Somebody / Geronimo

– I SAW –
Stunning stomper

– TELL SOMEBODY –
Majestic chant

– GERONIMO –
Trip-hop lullaby

Full album stream.

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YOUNG FATHERS: Facebook – Instagram

Album Of January 2023 – Imperishable JOHN CALE With His Spellbinding 17th Longplayer ‘MERCY’

Posted on by JL

30 January 2023

No retirement for the 80-year-old JOHN CALE. He’s one of
the many musicians that will go on until their last breath.

The Welsh icon released his 17th solo longplayer,
called MERCY this month via Double Six/Domino.

The album features a cool club of guests. Animal Collective, Sylvan
Esso, Laurel Halo, Tei Shi, Actress, and yes, Fat White Family too.

Press info: “Cale’s first full album in a decade, moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronic torment toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future with the help of some of music’s most curious young minds. Cale has always searched for new ways to explore old ideas of alienation, hurt, and joy; Mercy is the latest transfixing find of this unsatisfied mind.”

Rolling Stone said: “Even as Mercy glares into the void, Cale demonstrates his optimism
by hanging out with younger musicians and often centering the album around contemporary rhythms, like the hip-hop he’s long considered to be a modern avant-garde.Like his Welsh brother and hero Dylan Thomas, Cale is going to fight against the dying of the light until the light is no more, but the ghosts of his past will be with him until the end.”

TUTV: No earworms, no feel good tunes, no pop hits. At 80 Cale still explores his mind and soul and he does it with shadowy introspections and chilling musings. Gloomy electronics create an obscure atmosphere and sometimes it feels like Cale is trapped in the labyrinth of his own psyche. You need several spins to get into the former VU legend’s world, but once you’re there the experience is spellbinding.

SINGLES: Night Crawling / Story Of Blood / Noise Of You

– NIGHT CRAWLING –

– STORY OF BLOOD –

– NOISE OF YOU –

FULL ALBUM

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TOUR

JOHN CALE: Bio – Discography – Instagram

Album Of October 2022 – Dark Goth-Wave Hero PIG With ‘THE MERCILESS LIGHT’

Posted on by JL

28 October 2022

Artist: PIG (London, UK)

Who: Raymond Watts aka PIG has enjoyed a varied career since starting out
as a pioneer member of the mid-1980s industrial rock scene. He toured with
big names such as NIN and Einstürzende Neubauten. He wrote music for
fashion and film artists, exhibitions and so many more artistic collaborations.

New album: THE MERCILESS LIGHT

Info: “What does worldwide quarantine do to our favourite porcine libertine?
Raymond Watts holed up in his sty and created ‘The Merciless Light’, the new album
by PIG. Ably aided and abetted by long time accomplices En Esch and Steve White, Watts also welcomes a new swine to the trough as Jim Davies (Pitchshifter/The Prodigy) adds another new level of impeccable (in)credibility and talent. ‘The Merciless Light’ seethes, swings, seduces and snarls. Extraordinary electronics and a glut of glitz, glam, guitars and grooves create a masterful mélange of mirth from our very own venerable Vicar of Vice.”

Turn Up The Volume wrote: The PIG of darkwaveness hits hard again following his
ace 2020 longplayer Pain Is God. With the new record, he reveals his lockdown blues experiences with 12 doom-and-gloom sledgehammers to crush concrete with.

Prepare your ears for brawny industrial bombast (No Yes More less / Veni Vidi Vici / Feed
The Wound / Taranatula), nightmares in slow-motion (Limbo / Sugar My Pill / The Judas Chair), wham-bam-glam drones (Glitz Krieg / The Dark Room) and the fantastic slow-burning gospel chant of the title track. It’s all there to have yourself a merciless head-banging pig trip. File next to Rammstein’s new opus Zeit.

Singles/clips: The Dark Room / Tarantula

– TARANTULA –

– THE DARK ROOM –

Buy/stream
THE MERCILESS LIGHT
here via Bandcamp


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PIG: Facebook – Instagram – Spotify

Photography by E Gabriel Edvy

Album Of August 2022 – ‘GOD’S COUNTRY’ By Barbed Wire Noise Turbo CHAT PILE

Posted on by JL

2 September 2022

Band: CHAT PILE
Who: Noize junks from Oklahoma City


Photo credit: Bayley Hanes.

Debut album: GOD’S COUNTRY
Released: 29 July 2022 – order info here

“There’s a sick irony to how a country that extols rhetoric of individual freedom, in the same gasp, has no problem commodifying human life as if it were meat to feed the insatiable hunger of capitalism. If this is American nihilism taken to its absolute zenith, then God’s Country, the first full length record from Oklahoma City noise rock quartet Chat Pile is the aural embodiment of such a concept.”

TUTV says: This volcanic beast of a record predicts Doomsday as we know it with destructive cannonballs accompanied by horrific primal screams (actually, last screams)
to soundtrack the end-of-times exorcism at work here. The flabbergasting closing track grimace_smoking-weed tells you all about the album’s agony. It’s about going-totally-out-of-your-fucking-mind and not knowing if living or not living is the answer. God’s country? Are you kidding me? It’s Satan’s country now. Contender for album of the year! FACT! Let’s rock!

Singles/clips: Wicked Puppet Dance / Slaughterhouse

– WICKED PUPPET DANCE –

– SLAUGHTERHOUSE –

Stream/buy God’s country here…


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CHAT PILE: Facebook

Album Of July 2022 – ‘MOON REFLECTIONS’ By EX-HYENA

Posted on by JL

2 August 2022

Band: EX-HYENA (Boston, MA)
Who: The musical project of Bo Barringer and Reuben Bettsak
crafting the sound of an emerging dystopia, a sort of fantasy
land that existed along the margins of reality and within the
confines of the imagination.

MOON REFLECTIONS – the duo’s 2nd LP

Reuben Bettsak: “Moon Reflections brings forth cinematic landscapes from the Ex-Hyena world,” says Bettsak. “This futuristic world is created to build imagination sparks, to grasp memories, and to delve into understanding our fragile minds. It’s interesting. I think our last album was maybe built a bit more on stories, and characters from a dystopian future world, and of course aspects of that world touched upon the realities of our world. But in building imaginary worlds, one can tap into the subjects of the mind. Moon Reflections dives into the deep, murky waters of memories, it falls down a void of nightmares, it experiences extreme loneliness, and it also highlights a few characters via cinematic scenes from the Ex-Hyena
future world. And it all meshes together because imagination is a great magnifying glass.”

Turn Up The Volume: Ex-Hyena conduct orchestral manoeuvres at the dark side of the moon with a variety of vibrant vibes. A mix of ambient spheres (At The Moondial / Sight Unseen / Dark Passage), idiosyncratic electronics à la Aphex Twin (Tremors / Magnification) and dark-colored-waves (Nightmare Pills / Capture The Stills / While Curtains Burn). Throw in some special Pink Floyd effects in here and there and you know what will be on your headphones when the lights go out at night.

Singles/clips: Capture The Stills / Nightmare Pills

– NIGHTMARE PILLS –

Ladies we’re floating in space.
Buy/stream the album here…


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EX-HYENA: Facebook – Instagram

Poignant Heart And Soul Intimacy With Midnight Hour Crooner OLI SPLEEN

Posted on by JL

Best longplayer of April 2022

30 April 2022

Artist: OLI SPLEEN
Who: Singer-songwriter
from Brighton, UK

New album: STILL LIFE

Oli Spleen: Ten years ago when I was in Paris finalising my debut solo album
“Fag Machine”, I would not have believed that ten years on I’d be five albums in.”

Cover artwork: The cover art is a painting by Sara Abbott of a baby albatross,
dead from plastic consumption. Based on a photograph by Clare Fackler (NOAA
Office of National Marine Sanctuaries). In seafaring folklore, it is thought that he
who kills the albatross will be cursed. This image reflects how we as a species are
dooming ourselves and future generations in our relationship to the environment.

Turn Up the Volume: Oftenly, hard times can be an artistic inspiration for
musicians (for all sorts of artists, actually). It can work or not for the psyche
of the listener. Here it works magnificently.

Spleen constructed 10 sonic paintings about his struggle for life, about
soul-destroying and physical pain, and doubts about the present and
the future.

10 heartfelt, tender, and very intimate ballads, at times distressing, at times mournful,
but in the end, there’s hope, redemption, and lust for life. Spleen‘s voice is both doleful
and warm, just like star crooners such as Nick Cave, Father John Misty, The National‘s maestro Matt Berninger and most of all the midnight hour voice of Tindersticks maestro Stuart Staples sound.

Ten pearls about suffering and surviving.
A poignant and riveting work. Don’t miss it.

Stream/buy Still Life here…


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OLI SPLEEN: Facebook – All Albums on Bandcamp

ALBUM OF MARCH 2022 – Canadian Pop Romantics BASEMENT REVOLVER With ‘EMBODY’

Posted on by JL

1 April 2022

Band: BASEMENT REVOLVER
Who: Indie outfit producing noisy and graceful shoegaze-esque
music out of their hometown of Hamilton, Ontario since 2016

New album: EMBODY – the band’s 2nd one.
Order the digital version here .

“Their sophomore LP, Embody, is explicit about these new ideas and new thoughts,
addressing them with a deeper sound and crisper production to adroitly express the
complexity of the world.

It is an album of friendship, of working out identity together and making deeply personal
art. This record, with its complex sonic landscape, sometimes lush and sometimes stark,
is of a piece with their earlier work, but it’s deeper and more self-aware. Embody is the
sound of freedom, especially in the midst of such pain, both locally and globally.”

Turn Up The Volume: The most striking instrument on the album is the angelic voice of songwriter Chrisy Hurn. Just phenomenal. To my avid ears, she may join the female vocal likes of stars such as Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten, The Sundays‘ Harriet Wheeler, Belly‘s Tanya Donelly, and Mazzy Star‘s Hope Sandoval.

Yes that good, that special. Check ballad beauties Slow / Blackhole / Storm / Tired and my two favorites Skin and Long Way and you’ll hear why Chrisy’s voice is the band’s shining star. And when they rock out (Be Okay / Dissolve / Tunnel Vision) multi-layered shoegaze guitars take over and create a burning wall-of-sound that blows you away.

Overall this high-quality second LP encourages young people to be confident to be themselves, to be proud of who they are, and proud of how they look. It’s a vulnerable
and heartwarming, a passional and human, a tender and longing piece of work for heart and soul. Album of the month!

Singles/clips: Circles / Skin / Transatlantic / Tunnel Vision

– SKIN –

– TRANSATLANTIC –

– TUNNEL VISION –

Buy/stream Embody here…


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BASEMENT REVOLVER: Facebook

(Images via Auteur Research PR)

Album Of The Month – NOVEMBER 2021

Posted on by JL

1 December 2021

Band: CONVERGE feat. CHELSEA WOLFE and also
contributions from Cave In man Stephen Brodsky
Who: Longtime metalcore noiseniks from Boston
featuring the Goth heroine
Active: Since 1990 / 10 studio LPs

New album: BLOODMOON: I
Released: 19 November 2021

Kerrang! said: “Converge have long been rightfully revered as hardcore trailblazers, expanding the scene’s vocabulary through a questing spirit and willingness to experiment. Even within this ever-evolving context, however, Bloodmoon: I is so different to the rest of the Salem slammers’ oeuvre that it feels like a glimpse of an alternative timeline… You’ve never previously been able to describe a Converge record as mystical, but such is the arcane allure that defines this unique album, especially on Coil and the title track. Chelsea’s distinctively haunting contributions are inevitably a major factor here, but Stephen also makes his melodic presence felt throughout, with Jacob Bannon’s harsher throat completing a vocal triptych that never fails to thrill, their very different but complementary styles weaving together as if they were always supposed to co-exist.” Full review here. Score: 5/5.

Turn Up The Volume: Don’t expect that his album turned into something totally
surprising because Wolfe and Brodsky were invited by Converge to their sacred
studio.

But the colluding collaboration generates even more darkness to Boston‘s noise
freaks’ trademark pitch-black darkness with Chelsea‘s spellbinding vox adding an
obscure sensuality. The ghostly gathering is a grueling marathon of almost one
hour. It’s a celebration of all things gloomy and doomy with prog-rock textures.

A quiet-loud-quiet-very-loud rollercoaster of clashing, slashing and trashing
with a satanic sound as towering as the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston.

A Metal-Goth-Core Highmass!

Singles: Blood Moon / Coil

– BLOOD MOON –

– COIL –

Stream album here…

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CONVERGE: Facebook

Album Of The Month – London Singer-Songwriter GLASS SANDS With Sparkling Debut ‘BETTER THAN LIFE’

Posted on by JL

Best album of October 2021 according to Turn Up The Volume’s ears

29 October 2021

Artist: GLASS SANDS
Who: Musical moniker of indie singer/songwriter
Christopher Laurence Shackleton based in London.

Album: BETTER THAN LIFE

Info: Written and recorded over a five-year period, “Better Than Life” features some of Chris Shackleton’s most mature and versatile songwriting yet featuring ambitious sonics that take influence from alternative rock, post-punk, post-rock, krautrock and shoegaze. Lyrically, “Better Than Life” broaches on both the personal and the political with songs that focus on themes such as loneliness, populism, gentrification and just how far one is willing to go to find satisfaction in life.

Turn Up The Volume says: Expect an intriguing mix of moody moments (Coming Home /
In Your Hands / Ballad Of The Byford Dolphin / Hammerfest), guitar-driven riff-hook-and-lick knockouts that cut like a Swiss knife (Better Than Life / She Hangs On The Western Wall / Phantom Pains / Cigarette Machine) and a slo-mo closer (Basilisk) that could feature on
the soundtrack of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks TV series.

An overall versatile accomplishment that grows on you with every spin. A twists and turns record swinging from dreamy pop to fuzzing and buzzing rock and back. Don’t miss this! You don’t need a pool to throw a party with Better Than Life on the stereo. Best album October 2021!

Stream/buy ‘Better Than Life’ here…


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GLASS SANDS: Facebook