Review: After Robert Grey's 1990 exit, Wire morphed into WIR, a project designed to wrap up their Mute Records contract with a stripped-down, sequencer-led approach. Graham Lewis took lead vocals while the band reworked their own back catalogue. A chance to reflect on what had been, as opposed to what was yet to be, WIR's lifespan was brief, with only a handful of shows and two conceptual events dubbed I Saw You In Clapham (April 1992) and Vienna (February 1993) rolled into the ensuing campaign. On the Vienna trip, they recorded a sprawling 25-minute session for Austria's ORF, curated by Peter Rehberg of MEGO fame, released by Touch in 1996. This 2025 remaster adds a fresh take on their darkest pop moment, 'So & Slow', reimagined in a live-inspired arrangement with a nod to Taylor Swift's re-recording style.
Review: Having celebrated his 50th birthday late last year, Ryan Adams has naturally been in an introspective mood. It makes sense, then, that the long-serving rock/country fusionist should offer up an album made up entirely of covers of songs by other artists that have in some way inspired him over the years. Generally gentle, with string-laden, largely acoustic arrangements, Changes features some genuinely brilliant interpretations - as well as some surprise ones. For proof, check his piano-and-strings wander through 'Panic' by the Smiths, a wonderfully heartfelt rendition of 'Don't You (Forget About Me)' by Simple Minds, a country-folk take on the Rolling Stones 'Sympathy For The Devil' and a lilting, poignant Prince cover ('When Doves Cry', which comes complete with extended harmonica solos and some genuinely lilting strings).
Review: Cologne-based Belfast boy Dominick Martin has been delivering deliciously good albums as Calibre for the best part of a quarter of a century, frequently departing from his trademark drum & bass sound to showcase his love of other sub-heavy and mind-bending sounds such as dub techno, ambient and dubstep. On Little Foot, his first album in two years and 22nd in total, he leans into this considered eclecticism. For proof, compare and contrast the tactile and dreamy 4/4 dub of 'Blame Dub', the dub-wise junglist bruk-up of 'Special', the mutant two-step delight of 'Ukrained', the angularm, sub-heavy UK techno of 'Threadvare' and the Mark Ernestus style spaced-out dub techno of 'Choosing Beggar'. And that's just CD1. A genuine triumphant from one of bass culture's most distinctive musical voices.
Review: While not the band's final album, there's a solid argument to be made that 1995's Worry Bomb was Carter USM's last hurrah - a top-ten set that marked the beginning of the end for the distinctive South London duo. This expanded 30th anniversary edition pairs a remastered version of the original album -which boasts typically gritty, soaring and powerful classics such as 'Young Offenders Mum', the punky 'Airplane Food/Airplane Fast Food' medley, the riotous 'Me & Mr Jones' and the introspective 'My Defeatist Attitude' - with a disc of B-sides and rarities and, most excitingly, a previously unreleased live album of their performance at the 1994 Pheonix Festival. Throw in a DVD featuring videos, Top of the Pops appearances and freshly recorded interviews, and you have an essential item for Carter fans.
Review: Throbbing Gristle co-founder and all round British experimental electronic institution, Cosey Fanni Tutti returns with 2t2, a new full-length set for release through her own Conspiracy International label. The new nine-tracker extends the tracked terrains of 2019's Tutti, blurring personal reflections on years of loss and upheaval into prosthetic electronic soundscapes. The record unfolds over two contrasting halves, one beat-driven, the other more introspective, yet it also keeps anchored to a certain ground point emphasising resilience and focus. Lead cut 'Stound' features overtone chanting, which Cosey describes as a way to channel inner strength: "allowing the sounds to permeate and soothe as well as create a sense of power."
I Can Never Say Goodbye (Paul Oakenfold 'Cinematic' remix)
Endsong (Orbital remix)
Drone:nodrone (Daniel Avery remix)
All I Ever Am (Meera remix)
A Fragile Thing (Ame remix)
And Nothing Is Forever (Danny Briottet & Rico Conning remix)
Warsong (Daybreakers remix)
Alone (Four Tet remix)
I Can Never Say Goodbye (Mental Overdrive remix)
And Nothing Is Forever (Cosmodelica Electric Eden remix)
A Fragile Thing (Sally C remix)
Endsong (Gregor Tresher remix)
Warsong (Omid 16B remix)
Drone:nodrone (Anja Schneider remix)
Alone (Shanti Celeste 'February Blues' remix)
All I Ever Am (Mura Masa remix)
I Can Never Say Goodbye (Craven Faults rework)
Drone:nodrone (Joycut 'Anti-Gravitational' remix)
And Nothing Is Forever (Trentemoller rework)
Warsong (Chino Moreno remix)
Alone (Ex-Easter Island Head remix)
All I Ever Am (65daysofstatic remix)
A Fragile Thing (The Twilight Sad remix)
Endsong (Mogwai remix)
Review: Robert Smith has always treated remixing less like revision, more like ritual i a habit that's followed him since his days in Crawley, West Sussex and then surfacing officially on the first Cure remix album, 1990's Mixed Up. This triple-disc release of reworkings from the band's latest LP Songs of a Lost World feels assembled with obsessive care, mapping out every possible mood lurking beneath the surface. There are club-ready flips, yes i Sally C, Danny Briottet and Gregor Tresher all push the rhythm forward i but they sit beside glacial pieces that feel more like haunted sketches than reworks. Mura Masa's take on 'All I Ever Am' is disintegrated almost beyond recognition, its vocal a flickering memory. Mogwai's 'Endsong' feels like the end of the world in slow motion. Even Chino Moreno turns in something striking i 'WarSong' morphs into a sludgy howl with heat-warped edges. But it's the sequencing that surprises: these aren't bolted together, but grouped in arcs, as though Smith were arranging the bones of an old idea into something still alive. Four Tet's version of 'Alone' is a high point i deeply textured but featherlight. Like all The Cure's output, what really matters is the feeling of being drawn somewhere, and Smith's hand never letting go.
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