The next major release from XL will be the new Gotan Project album - Lunatico, and it’s one I’m really looking forward to. Their last album proper, La Revancha del Tango in 2001 was a real slow-burner for me. I picked it up in a second hand shop but it wasn’t till my wife [...]
If I was forced to choose which current XL artist was my favourite, I’d probably have to say Devendra Banhart. I’ll not bother with the bio details, suffice to say born Texas, raised Venezuela, now LA-resident. Discovered by Michael Gira who put out his first album Oh Me Oh My…. Since then he’s done [...]
Well, The Raconteurs fairly rocked The Vinyl Factory (underneath Phonica Records) in Soho last night. For the short time they played anyway. The XL bash was pretty good. Free food, free booze and good sounds for a couple of hours did the trick nicely.
Arrival and hasty grabbing of beers was soundtracked by a playback [...]
First up on XL week is be your own PET. There’s been a lot about these Nashville teenage punks around since they burst onto the scene last year, but now the time of reckoning has come and their eponymous new album is out today. And it’s a lot better than I expected. I was expecting [...]
This week is XL week on The Daily Growl. For no real reason expect that there’s been a load of good stuff on this label over the years, and no doubt they’ll continue to keep up the good work. That, and I went to one of their promo events tonight which previewed some of [...]
Simple as that. The other week, superstar DJ Ashley Beedle took time out from his usual house DJ sets and X-Press 2 work (when is that new album coming?) to lay down a set of classic reggae for Rob Da Bank’s Blue Room radio show. It’s good. Here it is (just sorry about [...]
Whatever happened to The Avalanches? The other week I put on their classic 2000 album Since I Left You, and wondered, six years down the line, what they’re up to now. So I did some quick research, and here’s an update for you, so you don’t have to go looking yourself…
1. The new album [...]
It was listening to the new Coldcut album Sound Mirrors that reminded me (as if I needed it) how great Willie Hightower is. Jon More and Matt Black cover the old Joe South song ‘Walk a Mile in My Shoes’ with assistance of Robert Owens on vox. As I said then, good though this [...]
Not all the good bands are at SXSW at the moment, you know. One that should be treading the board of next year’s festival though, should be Lucky Soul, once their star begins its inevitable rise. I only heard about them last week, but have become quickly hooked by their catchy indie meets Motown and [...]
I was pretty pleased the other week to hear that M Craft is back. “Was he ever here?” I hear you say. Well, he was, briefly, back in 2004, when I managed to see him three times in the space of a few months. In that time the East London-based Aussie singer-songwriter released [...]
