Music

As sure as the cold begins to bite and darkness takes big gulps out of the afternoon, the Umeå Jazz Festival arrives full of warmth to portend a season of bonhomie and deliver in the meantime plenty of great music. Now in its 59th edition, the festival - established by Lars Lystedt in 1968 and boasting over the years...

Brandon Seabrook has already delivered one of the best records and record titles of the year through the curious yet evocative Hellbent Daydream. A slower burn which captivated me as winter bit and springtime beckoned, the album featured an uncanny blend of spumy coast-hopping surf rock, steely and pensive chromaticism and spindly hoedowns where his banjo led the dance,...

From the first spectral shudder of the sub-bass Oblique by Ghost Dubs summons a stream of comparisons from Drexciyan submersibles to the dub minimalism of Basic Channel. On the album opener 'Low Times' there is also some Kraftwerk and their 'Hall of Mirrors' or 'Showroom Dummies' and even a bit of gamelan percussion mixed up in the DNA. Most...