Swans - To Be Kind

Posted 2:07pm Sunday 25th May 2014

Rating: A+ Since their inception in the 1980s, experimental rockers Swans have attracted many superlatives: biggest, loudest, darkest, heaviest. To many folk, Michael Gira and company epitomise music as an extreme experience. Whether percussively punishing as they were in the ‘80s, or gothic Read more...

2013’s Best Tracks

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 6th October 2013

1. Sigur Rós - BrennisteinnThe opening number of the Icelanders’ gothic and gorgeous seventh LP Kveikur is a masterpiece of the juxtaposition of light and darkness. Trembling with volcanic basslines and glimmering with Jónsi’s peerless falsetto, “Brennisteinn” is the finest song both of Sigur Rós’ Read more...

2013’s Best Albums

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 6th October 2013

2013 has seen some fantastic releases in the music world, from sonic veterans returning to the game after a long absence to new artists making waves with their impressive debuts. To celebrate another great year for music, Basti Menkes gives you his favourite albums and songs released this year. Read more...

Lorde - Pure Heroine

Posted 4:26pm Sunday 6th October 2013

Rating: 4.5/5 No matter how many times I hear the Lorde story, it never fails to amaze me. In 2008, Ella Yelich-O’Connor was just another North Shore 12-year-old. After a video of her singing at a school talent show made its way to Universal Records scout Scott Maclachlan, she was Read more...

Kings Of Leon - Mechanical Bull

Posted 2:29pm Sunday 29th September 2013

Rating: 3/5 What a strange tale the Kings Of Leon story has been. Though ever-adored by the British music press, it wasn’t until album number three, their magnum opus Because Of The Times, that they broke into the mainstream consciousness. Even after several monster hits and two more albums – Read more...

The Weeknd - Kiss Land

Posted 1:47pm Sunday 22nd September 2013

Rating: 2/5 An arsehole. A genius. Troubled. The second coming of Michael Jackson. Abel Tesfaye, known better by his stage name The Weeknd, has been called many things during his young career. After dropping his first mix-tape House of Balloons in early 2011, claims that the Canadian would Read more...

Forest Swords - Engravings

Posted 1:47pm Sunday 22nd September 2013

Rating: 4/5 In the infancy of the twenty-first century, electronic music is really establishing itself as an unorthodox medium of expression. As the grind and excess of EDM declines in popularity, so grows acclaim for more reserved styles of electronic music. Among these new, more calculated Read more...

Blue Jasmine

Posted 1:47pm Sunday 22nd September 2013

Rating: 4/5 Forty-eight years since Woody Allen’s film debut What’s New Pussycat? and the reedy-voiced director is still bloody going. His latest film, Blue Jasmine, was promised by early reviews to be one of the best of his career. Though I doubt I’ve seen even half of his work, Blue Jasmine Read more...

Lustmord - The Word As Power

Posted 1:51pm Sunday 8th September 2013

Rating: 5/5 Dark ambient is a genre drenched in imagery of the ancient, the gothic and the biblical. Its blacker-than-black noises are derived from the vaults of industrial music, stretched into barren wastes and yawning abysses of sound. Often dark ambient songs are long and slow, crushing Read more...

Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks

Posted 1:51pm Sunday 8th September 2013

Rating: 4/5 My, hasn’t Trent Reznor been busy? Between side projects, scoring films, raising sons and insulting fans over Twitter, the 48-year-old prince of industrial has somehow found the time to make another Nine Inch Nails album. I’ll admit to feeling ambivalent when Hesitation Read more...

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Basti Menkes

Music Editor 2015