Author: Sean Keenan

An observer first and foremost, Sean Keenan takes what he sees and forges words from the pictures. Media, critique, exuberant analysis and occasional remorse.

Crystal Bright & the Silver Hands: Muses and Bones

03/02/2012

“Where's your will to be weird?” ― Jim Morrison Crystal it seems, holds a better hand than most when it comes to music, playing a bewildering amount of instruments; accordion,...

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Colours: Drip Haze EP

01/02/2012

Amongst the many overstretched suspensions of disbelief that Trainspotting foisted upon the world at large, one of them was the wild-eyed, car-leaping, elegantly loquacious Scottish heroin addict. As...

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Ringo Starr 2012: Album Review

27/01/2012

Whilst in no way meaning to damn with faint praise (it's Ringo Starr, who would wish him ill?), there is little on Ringo 2012 that is deserving of great praise either. Nor does there really have...

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Raffertie: Mass Appeal

25/01/2012

Continuing to pick and choose from dance music's ever-expanding past for seams of inspiration, Raffertie's single most endearing talent as a musician is that he references without trapping...

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Interesting Times: SOPA

23/01/2012

Politics has rarely concerned itself with the intelligent. The art of persuasion is neutered by the intelligent person's demands for data. Where will the money for schools, libraries, hospitals...

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Trailer Trash Tracys: Ester

30/12/2011

Painful though it may be to recall, it was summer once. Cool drinks were sipped at pavement cafes, flesh was bared and balding scalps reddened and peeled in the light of the now-forgotten sun....

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DJ Food: The Search Engine

19/12/2011

This is the land, where nothing changes, the land of red buses & blue blooded babies, This is the place, where pensioners are raped, And the hearts are being cut, from the welfare state, Let the...

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Islet: Illuminated People

12/12/2011

Islet's Illumiminated People is awash with the self-indulgence of a band who have little to fear from the ignominy of failure. That's the official line at any rate. Famous now for not being...

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Oliveray: Wonders

09/12/2011

Geezer Alert! This review contains nostalgic revisionism. The under-thirties – oh ye of predictive texting and sleepful nights unbroken by groggy visits to the loo – will be baffled by...

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Sly and Reggie: Middle Class Dub (Vol.2)

05/12/2011

Pity the middle classes. Despised and reviled most vehemently by themselves, condemned by popular opinion to the dull political and personal flabbiness of the middle – in class, in attitude, in...

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I was always closer to rock´n roll (Nils Frahm)

25/11/2011

Interview with Nils Frahm 2011...

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Peter Broderick: Music for Confluence

21/11/2011

The somewhat fantastical world of Erased Tapes record making continues with Peter Broderick's Music for Confluence. After the happy accident in which Nils Frahm's efforts not to wake the...

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The Kinks in Mono – Retrospective

18/11/2011

Ten albums' worth, in mono. Is a Kinks retrospective more to do with to expiry dates on 1960s publishing contracts than with rediscovering lost classics? Because nobody needs to rediscover The...

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Orienteers – Album Review

17/11/2011

Sometimes simplicity is bliss. Orienteers are the heavy-lidded lords of a sweet, sleepy land of achingly pretty melodies, peaceful reflection and fuzzy warmth. They seem to need very little to create...

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Charlene Soraia – Moonchild

12/11/2011

Charlene Soraia's ability to split her voice into ultra-shrill harmonics is a talent. There was a chap a few years ago with an act entitled 'The Puppetry of the Penis' who was able to...

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Jimmy Gnecco – The Heart (X Edition)

11/11/2011

Any album by a band's vocalist going solo needs to justify its existence by revealing some sort of personal vision, some characteristic that wouldn't be found on work by the band. Searching...

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Jimmy Gnecco – The Heart: X Edition

01/11/2011

Any album by a band's vocalst going solo needs to justify its existence by revealing some sort of personal vision, some characteristic that wouldn't be found on work by the band. Searching...

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King Midas Sound – Without You

28/10/2011

King Midas Sound's Without You bathes in beefy bass. Dark, off-kilter bass music. Hyperdub Records are justifiably famous for it. Steve Goodman's London label has been dropping achingly edgy...

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Yann Novak – Presence

28/10/2011

Electronic music is now more ubiquitous than schoolboy garage rock bands ever were. And where schoolboy garage bands once plagued their classmates into spending Saturday evenings at church halls and...

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Kid Koala – Space Cadet

24/10/2011

Typical. You wait all year for an album playing on the sound of the internal mechanisms of the piano, and then two turn up within a fortnight.  On first impressions, Kid Koala's Space Cadet...

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DJ Food. Magpies, Maps and Moons EP & Live Review

21/10/2011

DJ Food – Magpies, Maps and Moons EP If nothing else, DJ Food provides NinjaTune with continuity. By now verging on the status of a legacy act, the item has been around as long as the label...

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Moodymanc Vs Jamie Finlay – People Circulate

15/10/2011

Development Music make much of their artists' Manchester provenance in the promotional literature accompanying this release. Even the artist's name really wants to be sure you know where he...

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Maguett – Twilight EP

14/10/2011

Brace yourselves, Moscow-based musical technician Maguett has been tricking about with a PowerMac between lectures and is about to unleash 'a brand new monument called IBM : Intelligent...

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Nils Frahm – Felt

10/10/2011

Pianists's fingers knurl and bulge with the same blunt mutantcy as freshly-dug jerusalem artichokes. Easy as it is to imagine the rigours on the hands of Prokofiev's yard-long keyboard...

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Real Estate – Days

06/10/2011

Real Estate. Even the name is dull. Recently signed to Domino records, Real Estate's second album – Days – is something of an anomaly in a label roster which boasts the freeform...

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Paul Catten – Themes and Variations for Strings and Electronics

30/09/2011

Paul Catten - Themes and Variations for Strings and Electronics...

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Macks Faulkron – Friends EP

26/09/2011

As much as sixties psychedelia has been artlessly plundered by last month's media darlings, Best Coast, it seems only logical that the 90s re-visioning of that movement be picked over in the...

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Stateless – I’m on Fire EP

31/08/2011

Symphonic electronica and beguiling voices – 'I'm on Fire' feeds the spirit. There really is a lot of range on this five-track EP. Hell, there's more range in each one of the...

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Jono McCleery – There Is

19/08/2011

Jono McCleery delivers a classic album in There Is. SBTRKT, Jamie Woon, hell, even Radiohead. The fan of beguiling male vocals set against beats is suddenly well-catered for. Jono McCleery's...

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Dalston Riot: DELS (featuring Roots Manuva) – Capsize

08/08/2011

As this review is being written, Tweetdeck's pop-up window appears repeatedly to comment on the Tottenham, now Dalston, and seemingly soon-to-be Hackney riots. The tweets range in their tone from...

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