Savage Republic, Exploratorium, Ophelias, and Shiva Burlesque Land On Big Takeover’s Year End List
The Big Takeover’s Jack Rabid is out with an extensive list of favorite 2022 releases, and Independent Project Records is all over it. On his list of Best Releases Of Old Recordings & Reissues are picks from Savage Republic, Exploratorium, Shiva Burlesque, and The Ophelias. See the whole list right here! As followers of the label’s social media accounts […]
Post-Trash Reviews June McDoom, Whose North American Tour Begins Later This Month
Post-Trash, which previewed June McDoom‘s EP last fall, has a new review of the set. The record, according to the site, is “a daring and lovely debut EP that doesn’t just bounce between polarities, but actually unfixes them… Stylistic precision and restraint—slowing it down/turning it off—temper the album’s bold experimental gestures without obscuring their brilliance. June McDoom stays […]
New Noise Says Particle Kid’s New LP Is “A Testament To His Legacy”
Particle Kid‘s Time Capsule, writes New Noise, “is a testament to Micah Nelson’s new legacy…The varied sonic and lyrical content feels like being inside a time machine that you cannot control. The album jumps from ’90s alt-guitar riffage, to Western outlaw music, to space rock, to drum machines with ease. Along the way, we encounter sci-fi lyricism, dinosaurs, […]
Downbeat Gives Five Stars To Mary Halvorson’s Adventurous New LPs
Downbeat writes that “there are two levels of composition in jazz — first, the formal realm of tunes and arrangements, and second, the spontaneous magic of improvisation. With her twin solo albums Amaryllis and Belladonna, Mary Halvorson proves that she’s top-of-the-field on both fronts, operating in two distinctly different milieus.” Amaryllis, which the site compares to work by Carla Bley, “uses something more […]
Impatto Sonoro Describes the “Awe And Illusory Stillness” On Display With Tyondai Braxton’s Telekinesis
Italian website Impatto Sonoro has reviewed Tyondai Braxton‘s Telekinesis, at radio now from Nonesuch Records. A Google translation of the review says, “The classic-contemporary mixtures are a long wave of expectation and silences full of unease, confusion and anxiety. Winds and strings are now engaged in suspending continuous cycle movements in mid-air, between ambient drones and waiting symptoms which soon […]
New Music From James Yorkston, Nina Persson, and The Second Hand Orchestra
On January 13, James Yorkston, Nina Persson and The Second Hand Orchestra will release the follow up to James Yorkston and The Second Hand Orchestra’s The Wide, Wide River – a Guardian Top 10 Folk Album of 2021 – The Great White Sea Eagle. The record didn’t start life as a follow up; in early 2021, Yorkston began visiting his studio in Cellardyke, […]
NPR Shares Mary Halvorson’s “Belladonna”
“Given the way she swoops and pecks at her electric guitar, a craft honed over two decades,” NPR writes about Mary Halvorson, “her first foray into string quartet composition, Belladonna, comes with a similarly determined and dramatic precision…[on the album’s title track,] it’s the way that Halvorson’s guitar hides in plain sight that excites, as she speedily tremolo picks […]
CultMTL Says Gus Englehorn’s “Tarantula” Is An Eardrum-Hijacking Success
Dave McIntyre of CultMTL has made a list of “The Top 52 Montréal Songs of 2022,” writing that “tons of great local artists — and especially their tunes — have jumped onto my radar this year.” One such artist is Gus Englehorn, whose “Tarantula” presents “the sound of using very few words to hijack one’s eardrums.” See the […]
Indie For Bunnies Recommends Patrick Watson’s New LP
Indie For Bunnies has a review of Patrick Watson‘s Better In The Shade and writes that “In less than twenty-two minutes and just seven songs, the forty-three-year-old Montréal musician manages to perform a lot of magic, experimenting and enchanting: whatever way Patrick uses to express his emotions, the result is very pleasant and warms our hearts.” The review hails […]
The Vinyl District Applauds Last Year’s Savage Republic Releases
The Vinyl District has included both Savage Republic releases from last year on its list of best reissues and archival releases from 2022. “Tragic Figures remains one of the more underrated records to have emerged from the US underground of the 1980s, expanded here to 2LP by Real Gone with an extra album of rehearsal recordings. Afrika Corps’ [sic] live […]
The Quietus Says Mary Halvorson’s New LPs “Mark A High Point” In Her Career
On new LPs Amaryllis and Belladonna, The Quietus writes, “Mary Halvorson establishes without any doubt her position at the vanguard of jazz and modern composition. For anyone who is yet to get on board with her work, this stunning ‘post-genre’ release offers the best chance to date to start appreciating her multifarious musical activities… Although the stylistic variations across the two […]
Gus Englehorn, Tapped for SxSw 2023, Lands on Queen City Sounds’ Best of 2022 List
Birdy Magazine has Queen City Sounds’ Best of 2022 list from writer Tom Murphy, who says this was “one of the best years of music in recent memory. According to Murphy, Gus Englehorn made one of the year’s best with Dungeon Master, a “wonderfully eccentric storybook of colorful dreams, fantasies and nightmares.” Get the full list here. The album is at radio now […]
MAGNET Honors Caitlin Cobb-Vialet’s Endless Void On Its End Of The Year List
MAGNET Magazine‘s list of best singer/songwriter releases of the year, as compiled by the site’s Hobart Rowland, includes Caitlin Cobb-Vialet‘s album Endless Void. While that list, here, is not much more than a collection of album covers, the magazine previously covered Cobb-Vialet in a feature to be found here. The site says Endless Void is “a surprisingly poised, brutally honest debut,” noting that “there’s […]
Aquarium Drunkard Includes Zachary Cale and Color Green Among The Best of 2022
Aquarium Drunkard has included Zachary Cale‘s Skywriting, which we serviced to radio this year, among its top albums of the year. The record is Cale’s “best, most powerful album since Duskland convenes a full band to put a cosmic, psychedelic gloss on his introspective songs. “Come on Easy” shimmers with layered guitars and pulses with motorik drums, a rupturing lick […]
Exploratorium and Savage Republic Are In The Pipeline
Pipeline Instrumental Review, a print magazine, has reviews of the new Independent Project Records releases from Bruce Licher – Exploratorium, an ambient solo work recorded in 1997 and originally released in 2006, and Savage Republic‘s Africa Corps Live at the Whisky A Go-Go 30th December 1981. On Exploratorium, the zine writes, “Licher stretches the roles of guitars and bass to create an a […]
Q104.3 Interviews Pluralone
As Q104.3 New York notes, “Josh Klinghoffer has been more than a little busy since leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers in late-2019.” In addition to being the man behind Pluralone, Kinghoffer has helped Eddie Vedder write and record his solo album, toured as part of Pearl Jam and Jane’s Addiction, and collaborated with Morrissey and Iggy Pop. In a recent interview with the station, Klinghoffer spoke about all […]
New Music From James Yorkston, Nina Persson, and The Second Hand Orchestra
On January 13, 2023, James Yorkston, Nina Persson and The Second Hand Orchestra will release The Great White Sea Eagle, the follow up to James Yorkston and The Second Hand Orchestra’s The Wide, Wide River – a Guardian Top 10 Folk Album of 2021. The record didn’t start life as a follow up; in early 2021, Yorkston began visiting his studio […]
Westword Tips Its Hat To Savage Republic
Westword has a review of the new Savage Republic live album, along with some shade for people whose 80s alternative library is limited to a couple of tee-shirt bands. Africa Corps Live At The Whisky A Go-Go 30th December 1981 is “noisy, minimalist, and percussive as hell. The guitar melodies are reminiscent of East Bay Ray’s spacey surf-music contributions to […]
The Guardian Gives Mary Halvorson Five Stars
In a five-star review, The Guardian writes that Amaryllis and Belladonna are “new landmarks in Mary Halvorson’s already inimitable discography.” Both are at radio now from Nonesuch Records. According to the Guardian, the Macarthur Foundation “Genius” grantee is a “singleminded original.” Amaryllis “exposes avant-funk, fast bass-walking jazz, jubilant brass choruses and slow-sighing rumination to eloquent improvising… Belladonna is quieter, but it still buzzes with contrasts. […]
Razorcake Reviews Four IPR Releases
Razorcake has reviewed a grip of Independent Project Records releases, including the Source compilation. Razorcake says that “any fan of interesting art and music would find a lot to love here.” Read that review here. The zine has also reviewed the label’s recent re-releases by the “blissfully hard to categorize” Shiva Burlesque, here; Half String, “sounding like a precursor to the majority […]
