BarryGruff Playlist November 2015

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Your regular monthly round up all the blog action, in a nice, neat and handy playlist of tracks featured throughout the month.

November was another busy one, with introductions to A.S. Fanning, exmagician & New Cardinals. There were excellent new singles/EPs from Avid Walker, Anderson, Public Service Broadcasting, Ulrika Spacek, Daniel Avery, CaStLeS, David Harks & Manor. And we had tunes from Globelamp, MMOTHS, Coves, Hinds & Tuff Love ahead of their respective, new and forthcoming albums.

Oh, and there were two new episodes of ‘Millions Like Us’, Justin Beats & I’s new music podcast extravaganza for 604now (if you missed them, check ’em here). You can also subscribe to ‘Millions Like Us’ on iTunes & Podcast Republic or find us on Facebook & Twitter.

Well then, that’s that for another month – listen to BarryGruff’s November 2015 playlist below. Enjoy!

 

Globelamp – ‘San Francisco’

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Globelamp, aka Elizabeth Le Fey, released her new album The Orange Glow a few days back.

Out through Psychedelic ThriftStore Recordings and produced by Joel Jerome, the new record follows her sublime 2014 debut, Star Dust, and The Orange Glow‘s first single ‘San Francisco’, and it’s a doozy. As is le Fey’s signature, she embraces a myriad of genres and influences which permeate this mystic, blissful and potent psych-folk. Le Fey’s sound is saturated with cascading melodies, unpredictable and off-kilter time changes and spirited vocals; creating a dreamy, spaced-out and somewhat disorientating quality. Lush, gorgeous and utterly eccentric psychedelic folk music from le Fey; looking forward to getting to grips with the new record.

You can check out ‘San Francisco’ below and you can stream The Orange Glow in full via Noisey and purchase the album from Psychedelic ThriftStore Recordings.

 

BarryGruff’s Albums of the Year 2014

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So, it’s that time of year again, yeah, it’s favourite albums of the year time. Loads of great music this year, some old faces and plenty of new ones too but for those of you who care, here are my 25 albums of 2014. Enjoy!

25. Second Storey – ‘Double Divide’

24. Beach Day – ‘Native Echoes’

23. Globelamp – ‘Star Dust’

22. Sex Hands – ‘Pleh’

21. The #1s – ‘The #1s’

20. Attaque – ‘ON LY YOU’

19. Shit Robot – ‘We Got Love’

18. Mowbird – ‘Islander’

17. Oh Boland/Me & My Dog – ‘Delphi’

16. Jamie T – ‘Carry on the Grudge’

15. Pharoahe Monch – ‘PTSD’

Following on from his 2011’s W.A.R, comes fourth solo LP, PTSD (aka Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), a loose-concept album which sees Pharoahe Monch speaking as a weary independent warrior against the industry machine and dealing with the struggle of the black male experience in America. It’s dense, raw and sometimes painfully raw, as he relives harrowing memories of his struggle with addiction, depression and suicidal thoughts. It’s all draped with his familiar top-notch storytelling, cavernous vocabulary, thought-provoking rhymes, precise delivery and thought-provoking metaphors, placing him right up top of the current hip-hop pile.

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Introducing: Globelamp

Listening to Globelamp, aka Elizabeth Le Fey, is a full on sensory overload as the free-flowing sound meanders here and there, through an imaginative kaleidoscopic world of bewitching splendour.

A myriad of genres and influences permeate this mystic, blissful and potent psych-folk. Le Fey’s sound is saturated by a dreamy, unpredictable and spaced-out quality, marked by a lo-fi hiss and an off-kilter, dizzying and disorientating quality. She has found perfection in imperfection if you will and in doing so, created some unbelievably special songs. Beneath Le Fey’s free-flowing folky psychedelia there are heartfelt and stirring tales of betrayal, pain and simmering sense of anger. Her words are given added weight through her spectacular and spellbinding voice which seamlessly slides through the gears from soft and gentle, to soaring and powerful, with what feels like the utmost of ease. None are more stirring or inspired examples of this style than ‘Breathing Ritual’. Sounding as though it was recorded in wind, the noise is snatched away before returning just when it seems it is lost as De Fey voice soars above this swirl of unpredictability. ‘Warrior’ offers a softer, more delicate yet just as magical trip. A gentle strum combines with a hiss of fuzz allowing her voice to take centre stage, and as with elsewhere on her debut LP, Star Dust, illustrates just how good a songwriter she is. A beautiful, spellbinding and serene-yet-altogether unusual collection of tracks.

Globelamp’s debut LP Star Dust is available from bandcamp and all you have to do is ‘name your price’.

Photo by Sarah Cass