Anti Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Nu-school jazz talent Alfa Mist drops another album for the US label Anti, for what has been described as his most fully-realised and emotive project to date. Following up 2021's Bring Backs and a spate of EPs put out since then, Variables leans further into abstract conceptual jazz, neo-soul and hip-hop territory, through uniquely resonant, broken instrumentals and gloomy rap features. The album seems to veer between stressful, beat-centric urgency and blue, sleep-deprived comedown moods. The main throughline, though, is its unparalleled musicianship; there really isn't much topping it.

Review: Four years on from Brutalism, The Drums has been on a journey to where it stands now - a solo project for Jonny Pierce. The sharp, catchy indie rock hooks remain fully intact as Pierce takes us deep into his background and self-described "cult-like" upbringing. From the cover to the confessional lyrics, it's an achingly personal record which veers from uptempo to intimate and tender, all orbiting around Pierce's arresting voice and undeniable gift for writing a beautiful song. 'I Want It All' is the anthemic lead single which sets the tone for the album, pressed up here as a three-sided album with an additional 15-minute piece entitled 'Track 17' on the fourth side.

Review: For Fleet Foxes, there'll be no clock-burning or heartelt 'omming' round Stonehenge this winter, as Robin Pecknold and co. present their latest album 'A Very Lonely Solstice', for all the hurt hearts out there freezing away alone in this festive quarter. Pecknold resonates; all tracks on this LP were recorded at the pinnacle of the artists' own solitude, during a live-streamed event performed on the winter solstice of 2020 just days after COVID restrictions in New York tightened. Coming to CD, black and limited white vinyl, songs from every classic Fleet Foxes album, From Helplessness Blues to Crack-Up, are reimagined acoustically here, as Pecknold's voice resonates through a lonesome yet gripping chamber space.

Review: Fleet Foxes & Resistance Revival Chorus performed 'Can I Believe You' on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert before this two-track release made its way to us. If that sounds like a pretty cheap way to record a single fear not, the pre-recorded footage juxtaposed the band's frontman, Robin Pecknold, singing alone with the clips of him and full band, joined by the Chorus, in St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church, Brooklyn, New York. And it's the latter segments that have made their way onto this release.

As you can imagine, then, there's a very full sound at play here, with the title number growing into a grand piece of rolling, anthem folk indie. By comparison, 'Wading In Waist-High Water' brings the focus onto the Chorus rather than the group and removes the traditional chart structure, leaving us with a beautiful choir piece that's the strongest of the pair here.

Review: Offering fuzzy grunge-pop with doses of shimmering synths and emo angst, Ned Russin co-fronted Title Fight before halting in 2018, after which he began playing music as Glitterer. Now a full band, Glitterer returns with Rationale, combining 90s grunge, capital-R riffs a la The Stooges and a keyboard lead motif that gives self-deprecating melodrama. After relying more on synths for the entirely solo, home-recorded Glitterer LP in 2017, Russin involved collaborators on the crunchier Looking Through the Shades in 2019, and this trend heard him move towards driving indie rock grit with 90s influences, continued on 2021's Life Is Not a Lesson and now Rationale. Russin has a unique voice to boot, not instinctively a shoegazey spectre, instead more of a belting tenor, but this proves a beautiful combination.

Review: Experimental jazz outfit High Pulp have picked dup plenty of fans from day one. Most of them have been waiting around eagerly for a debut album and finally it has arrived. Pursuit of Ends arrives via Los Angeles's ANTI- Records and finds this group of self-proclaimed outsiders in fine form as they brig their own unique, rule breaking approach to jazz. It is a record of freeness and rawness with defiant sounds, liberating grooves and elements of everything from punk to electronic music, hip hop to shoe gaze and rock. It is well versed in traditional jazz but very much has its eyes set on a future sound, Sublime.

Review: A long-loved love child of the 4AD-Domino constellation, heart throbbing Californian songwriter Cass McCombs rocks up to Anti- (sister label to Epitaph), continuing his streaking succession of albums with Tip Of The Sphere. Providing a ninth solo LP in total, this latest record keeps up with guitarry-and-garrish themes of Mangy Love (2016), however richly purporting melodic songs that paint wheatgrass imagery of stretching plains, distant cross roads, and beachside trails to the rivermouth. With fingerpicking expertise to reflect both John Fahey (and Chris Isaak in parts) jangly pianos from a far western saloon making their way into "Absentee", alongside a pinch of Neil Young's soul ("Prayer For Another Day') . With flashes of Alan Vega and Martin Rev to be heard in "American Canyon Sutra" too, to more hippy Buddha Bar vibes in "Real Life" thanks to them tablas, there's always a safe place with Cass.

Review: If you thought Moor Mother's 2021 album Black Encyclopaedia of the Air was good - and it was a genuine triumph - wait until you hear this follow-up. In summary, Jazz Codes takes her impossible-to-pigeonhole personal style - a mixture of smoky trip-hop beats, heady ambient sounds, jazz instrumentation, thickset aural textures, crackly samples, soul vocals, spoken word monologues and trippy effects aplenty - and takes it to the next level. While the album features a dizzying array of guest vocalists and musicians (a complete list of which would run to several pages of A4), it never sounds like anything other than a Moor Mother album. It's her widescreen Afro-futurist vision, executed to perfection. Don't sleep!

Review: Camae Ayewa AKA Moor Mother has long talked about wanting to work with an orchestra, applying her verbal Afro-futurism and free-jazz experimentation to the classical domain. She recently did just that, delivering a grandiose live interpretation of her ninth album, The Great Bailout, alongside the London Contemporary Orchestra. It makes perfect sense: while the album itself is not fully orchestrated, it's a conceptual work dissecting the British slave trade, slavery and colonialism. Musically, there are two central focal points: her spoken word vocals and the beautiful singing of Lonnie Haley. These two vital voices weave in and out of sound worlds rooted in dark ambient, lo-fi hip-hop beats, free jazz instrumentation, out-there samples and clandestine aural textures. It's naturally raw, moody and weighty, but more importantly it's also a genuine masterpiece that deserves your attention.

Review: Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa) delivers her latest album of import, The Great Bailout, using ironic economic terminology to satirise the British slave trade and its subsequent elision by the history books. A collaborative project that expands her original experimental hip-hop horizon, the likes of 'GUILTY' and 'ALL THE MONEY' hear new instrumental contributions from both canonical jazz artists and fresher faces, be they Lonnie Holley in the former camp and Mary Lattimore and Alya Al-Sultana in the latter. Moor Mother's revision is critical, calling out hidden ballasts such as the V&A Museum as purveyors of historical violence, while indulging a well-thought-out palette: no sound or texture is used here without careful thought as to its signification, whether wateriness to evoke the sense of drowning, or muted cacophony to recall the storms endured by victims of the trade in ships' hulls.

Review: It's 13 years since Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous died suddenly, leaving behind a glittering legacy in indie rock and a shocked, devoted fan base. As it transpires, he had nearly completed his fifth album when he took his own life, and was in fact midway through recording with Steve Albini at Static King at the time. Now his brother and sister-in-law have finally found the right way to honour his legacy and bring this nearly-lost album to light in the most respectful way possible. For those who have been missing Linkous' unique, resplendent songwriting in the years since his passing, this is an unexpected and sure-to-be-treasured treat.

Review: When a revered artist leaves this world too soon, they always leave behind a web of unanswered questions, and that's especially true of Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous. When he took his own life in 2010, he was midway through recording his fifth album with Steve Albini at the legendary producer's Static King studio. It's taken some time in the wake of the sudden loss, but finally Linkous' brother Matt and sister-in-law Melissa found the right way to approach finishing the project and presenting it in honour of the Sparklehorse legacy. For the fans who were left wondering what might have been, this is a hugely significant means of closure for a modern day great of US indie rock.

Review: Bird Machine is the upcoming posthumous album by Sparklehorse, the indie rock project of American musician Mark Linkous, who died by suicide in 2010. The album was intended to be his fifth, following 2006's Dreamt for Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain. Finalised with the help of producer Steve Albini in 2009, one might be able to predict - not least in characteristic Sparklehorse fashion - that this is a full compendium of melancholic, folk-country croons and drawls, with added sprinklings of noise and lo-fi. Completed by Linkous' brother Matt, and sister-in-law Melissa, an eerie quality permeates the entire release with the above context in mind.

Review: Tom Waits's Closing Time turns a hard-to-believe 50 years old in 2023 and as such gets the usual special reissue treatment. This indie-only clear vinyl version comes half-speed mastered for extra loudness and clarity so is the best possible way to listen to the landmark album. It is one that for the first time shows a real blend of the jazz, blues, and folk styles that Waits would eventually become so well known for. It also includes his famous cover of 'Ol' 55', singles like the heartbreaking 'Martha' and delightful acoustic folk of 'I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You.' This is the first time this album has been reissued as a double, so do not sleep.

Review: Waxahatchee is emerging, butterfly like, from a cocoon that has kept her safe for most of her career. There was nothing ugly or hidden about Katie Crutchfield's older output. But it was intimate, quiet, thoughtful, vulnerable and, at times, almost a little nervous. At least some of those adjectives became irrelevant with the last LP, Saint Cloud, and now she follows up that ten-foot-tall 2020 triumph with Tigers Blood, continuing in a similar vein. Having significantly increased the size of her audience with the preceding, infinitely rousing record, Crutchfield simultaneously looks to please those newcomers and win even more over here. The tracks are similarly open armed, proud and accessible, but the razor sharp songwriting - dealing with everything from trying to stay still without being bored, to self doubt - has lost none of its impact, and the instrumental arrangements have arguably never been stronger.