2020 was a strange time. It’s easy to reduce all of it down to a banal sentence or two – and it’s amazing how soon we all do, and have done – but, wow, it was pretty weird. Anyway, this post isn’t about all of that. September 2020 was the first time that I heard…

‘You were struck by lightning, walking in the rain to your car / and when you awoke, the lightning left a beautiful scar‘ So begins the immaculate Lichtenberg Figures: Sunflower Thieves’ second single of 2022, arriving hot on the heels of January’s I Don’t Know Why, and November’s Sirens. As well as being a great…

About two months ago I exchanged a few emails with the rather brilliant Chi Limpiroj, otherwise known as the London-based songwriter/purveyor of exquisite dreampop: Dunebug. I’d discovered her music sometime last year and had contacted her regarding the possibility of anything new being on the horizon. As luck would have it, yes, she was finishing…

What a band. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the last year of covering new music it’s that there’s a staggering amount of great music out there just mooching along under the radar. Even so, every once in a while you still find yourself taken aback by the sheer brilliance of something that lands…

It’s been a few months since I (and many others) fell hook, line, and sinker for Genevieve Miles’ last release – the brilliant Magic Man / Sad Song – and so it was a pleasant surprise to find a new track tucked away in my inbox this week. Nicer still to find that it’s another…

Since starting this blog I’ve yet to encounter another piece that has kicked, screamed and fought as much against being compiled as this one has. Thwarted by a comedy of errors ranging from unseen emails languishing in junk folders – with both parties wary of sending potentially irritating follow-ups – to delays caused by two…

The release of Midlight’s debut single, Sink to the Level, last August marked them out as a band with something truly special going on. It was a track with a sense of atmosphere so thick and heavy that I wrote about it as a ‘living, breathing, constantly shifting organism’. Following this came the equally impressive…

There are a few key artists whose names when mentioned as influences usually draw me towards something that lands in my inbox. Three of those most likely to elicit a response are Radiohead, Beck, and Neil Young. On the occasions that something turns up with one of these words orbiting around it, it can often…