Evolve 2015

Necromonkey is the collaboration between drummer Mattias Olsson who was part of the founding members of swedish band Änglagård, of which he left in 2012, and keyboardist David Lundberg from Gösta Berlings Saga. The two first met in 2008 while working on Gösta Berlings Saga's second album Detta har hänt and thought about working together. 2010 saw the begining of the writing and recording for their first album Necroplex in Olsson's Roth-Händle studios in Stockholm. Their vision was not about making an Änglagård meets Gösta Berlings Saga kind of album but instead focusing on something new which will reflect everything they love in music. Necroplex was released in 2013 and showed how fertile this duo is, making an album deeply rooted in modern electronic but still incorporates a huge amount of acoustic and electric instruments. Olsson and Lundberg both handle most of the instruments, aided by a big line up of session musicians. The two didn't wait long before releasing a second album, A Glimpse Of Possible Endings is already finished and due to be released in 2014.

Sonar and their mesmerizing/infuriating (choose depending on your perspective) music exploded on a unsuspecting world with Cuneiform's release of their album, Static Motion, 2 years ago. An instrumental rock quartet consisting of 2 guitars, bass and drums, they are a progressive, post-minimal, instrumental band from Switzerland. Their name stands for SONic ARchitecture, alluding to their intention of creating polymetrical soundscapes and highly structured aural spaces. Sonar's music is played live without any sequencers, loops or computers using a minimum amount of equipment: 2 guitars, a bass guitar, 3 small amplifiers und a basic drum kit.

Battles' John Stanier, Ian Williams, and Dave Konopka always sound psyched to play together, but never more so than on their first entirely instrumental album, La Di Da Di. While vocals – first provided by Tyondai Braxton on their early work and by a host of collaborators on 2011's Gloss Drop – might have seemed necessary to humanize their experimentation, they're not missed on the band's third full-length. If anything, removing them gives the trio's ideas to generate sparks the way they did on Mirrored (particularly on "Tricentennial," which recalls the mischievous alien anthems of their debut) while keeping Gloss Drop's immediacy. Battles' mix of muscular drums and riffs and heady melodies and electronics has never sounded so liberated, whether on "The Yabba," a thrilling seven-minute excursion that sounds more like seven one-minute songs strung together, or on the relatively serene "Luu Le," which uses the same amount of time to close the album with a sun-dappled suite. Here and throughout La Di Da Di, the band sounds mercurial but not chaotic, with an interplay that ebbs and flows like creativity itself.

This all original album contains Zach Day''s personnel flavor of modern blues with jazz harmonies laced throughout. "We live in a society that is ever changing. Music must evolve to maintain relevance. Blues is no different. This idea does not mean that we abandon the roots that so many great bluesmen throughout history have planted, but we use what they have imparted us to grow. Blues as any other music is ever being Redefined."~ Zach Day

Some artists, once settled on a sound that suits them, are content simply to plough the same unimaginative furrow year after year, album after album. Whether it’s complacence, in the knowledge that their loyal fan base will continue to dip into their pockets, a lack of the talent and inspiration necessary to evolve or (in cases such as Stereophonics) both, more often than not these meat and potato acts slowly fade away into irrelevance with the passing of the years. It’s refreshing, then, to listen to Foam Island, the latest release by London-based duo Darkstar, so clearly is it the work of people willing to take risks to move their music forward.