Spiritualized And

Presenting 15 of the year’s best tracks, by Elvis Costello, Cat Power, Idles, Ry Cooder, Kamasi Washington and more!

This 5xCD box set from Cherry Red offers a compelling look at shoegaze's prime era. Still in a Dream takes a wide trawl approach to its genre, which has upsides and downsides. As with Rhino’s goth box A Life Less Lived, shoegaze is generously interpreted to include antecedents and formative influences, which bulks up the quality.

Pablo Honey in no way was adequate preparation for its epic, sprawling follow-up, The Bends. Building from the sweeping, three-guitar attackRadiohead that punctuated the best moments of Pablo Honey, Radiohead create a grand and forceful sound that nevertheless resonates with anguish and despair – it's cerebral anthemic rock. Occasionally, the album displays its influences, whether it's U2, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., or the Pixies, but Radiohead turn clichés inside out, making each song sound bracingly fresh. Thom Yorke's tortured lyrics give the album a melancholy undercurrent, as does the surging, textured music. But what makes The Bends so remarkable is that it marries such ambitious, and often challenging, instrumental soundscapes to songs that are at their cores hauntingly melodic and accessible. It makes the record compelling upon first listen, but it reveals new details with each listen, and soon it becomes apparent that with The Bends, Radiohead have reinvented anthemic rock.

World Serpent is the fourth album from London producer and composer Misha Hering, under the Memnon Sa banner, and the debut release on Hering’s own Holy Mountain imprint, a new label dedicated to very special productions from Misha’s now reputable studio of the same name in East London. It is released in partnership with specialist Metal record shop and label Crypt Of The Wizard.
World Serpent is an album in the classic sense of the word, a 40 minute, psychedelic document of deep exploration, high drama and gleaming production…