Over the years, The Inciters have worked hard at injecting a real energy into a soul based sound. The ten piece band’s blend of Northern Soul coolness and mod friendly punch has thrilled audiences since the 90s, and one listen to this double pronged digital release makes it very clear why.
Category Archives: Album & EP Reviews
TULIPOMANIA – Dreaming Of Sleep
The word “alternative” gets bandied around a lot in the music world. It’s used to describe all kinds of guitar based music – even stuff that’s found its way into the mainstream long ago – but there are still plenty of genuinely alternative bands out there. It would be hard to consider the dark moods of Decommissioned Forests, or the strange jazz meets metal noise of Kilter as anything but. Tulipomania are another act who’ve wilfully taken their own musical path within a truly alternative niche, rarely concerned about commercial success.
ROBOTS IN LOVE – Gossip In Your Head Remixed EP
In September 2023, Robots In Love returned with a new single, ‘Gossip In Your Head’. The track presented the New Zealand dark pop band’s sound in the most effective way possible, by blending a love of old school electronica with a more modern production values. More importantly, they made a potentially cold sounding arrangement really spring to life with the help of a very inviting vocal, and the end result occasionally sounded like Dubstar colliding with something further within the alternative pop realm. Meatier than La Roux, but poppier than Garbage, it was very much the sort of single that deserved to bring the Robots a new wave of fans.
DEAD FEATHERS – Full Circle
The first Dead Feathers album – 2019’s ‘All Is Lost’ – introduced the world to a solid blues rock/heavy psych band. With a sound indebted to the last gasps of the 60s and steeped in a classic riffs, the record’s ten songs explored a darker tone and shared arrangements which sometimes sounded like Jefferson Airplane’s moody cousin (‘At The Edge’), as well as hinting at an admiration for the slow and vaguely psychedelic blues of Savoy Brown (‘Smoking Gun’). It even wheeled out some brilliant fuzzy fare (‘Horse And Sands’) and a heavier riff or two in a nod to the mighty Black Sabbath (‘Cordova’). Although never as lavish sounding as the best Ruby The Hatchet works, it was one of those records that guaranteed enjoyment for fans of the style, wherever they chose to drop the metaphorical needle.
DARKNESS IS MY CANVAS – White Noise
When it came to promoting their full length debut ‘White Noise’, Finnish prog metal band were taking no chances. The first digital single appeared almost a full year before the album itself, and they subsequently drip fed their potential fans different tracks over the following months. This was no hit and run PR campaign. What’s more, in an effort to attract a variety of ears, they ensured those early digital singles covered a lot of musical ground. It was a campaign that worked. For those who didn’t enjoy the melodic metal of ‘Drown’ – an In Flames meets progressive metal workout – there would be the epic ‘Inverted’, a tune where the band abandoned their metal stance and embarked upon a very unfashionable 70s sound. Hey, if that were good enough for Opeth, going massively retro could work for others, and in the case of this massively uncommercial single, it proved a master stroke for Darkness. If anything, it was that unexpected shift which genuinely stoked up the excitement for the album itself.