HUNKYPAPA
BY: WILL RUSSELL Post-punk crew make their masterwork. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. With the wax barely cooled on Dogrel, Grian Chatten had already penned the title-track on this boss sophomore effort. A Hero’s Death, it transpires, is a different beast to Fontaines D.C.’s critically acclaimed debut album Dogrel. That much we can Continue Reading
BY: WILL RUSSELL – HOTPRESS 04.08.20 What The Butler saw Recording after a three-decade hiatus is a risky business, but the good news is that the 2020 version of The Psychedelic Furs do not disappoint. On Made Of Rain’s swirling opener ‘The Boy Who Invented Rock And Roll’, Richard Butler’s voice is as complicated sa ever Continue Reading
BY: WILL RUSSELL Garage hero Mike Skinner on The Streets’ comeback mixtape, creating his debut feature film, and how electronic music has changed over the past 20 years. volume is gedempt At the turn of the century, Mike Skinner single-handedly slew the UK music scene, gladiator that he is. His debut album, Original Pirate Material – created Continue Reading
Published in Hotpress on 25 June BY: WILL RUSSELL Side 4 Collective’s fantastic debut album We Burn Bright brings an eclectic array of Irish and international artists together. The bandleader is internationally renowned drummer Dave Hingerty. He recorded dozens of unusual drum patterns with the help of studio guru Anthony Gibney at Audioland Studios. Artists were then invited Continue Reading
Published in Hotpress on 24 June BY: WILL RUSSELL Brilliantly eclectic effort from Irish collective. Side 4 Collective is a wrecking crew of talents assembled by Dave Hingerty of The Frames. The roll call is meaty: Paul Noonan, Josh Ritter, Adrian Crowley, Joe Chester, Cathal Coughlan and Katy Perry’s musical director, Adam Marcello, are just some Continue Reading
Published in Hotpress on 8 June BY: WILL RUSSELL “In the rosy parks of England / We’ll sit and have a drink / Of VP wine and cider ’till we can hardly think / And we’ll go where the spirits take us / To heaven or to hell / And kick up bloody murder in the Continue Reading
Published in Hotpress on 11 May, 2020 BY: WILL RUSSELL Away baby, let’s go! No matter what befell revelers of the Second Summer of Love, wherever and whenever you partook in it, we’ll always have Screamadelica. Like the Stones’ Exile on Main St. it is a record to get lost in, a record where you can almost hear Continue Reading
Published in Hotpress on 23.04.20 BY: WILL RUSSELL As part of our ongoing ‘My Favourite Things’ series, Will Russell reflects on Gram Parsons’ iconic second solo album, Grievous Angel. My dog is called Gram Parsons. On the sunny day that I got married, I smoked a morning Cohiba at Gram’s grave in a remote part of New Continue Reading
BY: WILL RUSSELL Published in Hotpress on 06.04.20 Master of the Upsetter. I was supposed to be meeting up with Lee Scratch Perry this week on his UK Tour. He had responded to a piece that I sent him. We exchanged a few words and had arranged to meet after his show at the Brudenell Social Continue Reading
BY: WILL RUSSELL – PUBLISHED IN HOTPRESS ON 27 MARCH, 2020 Warning: Watching this movie is highly addictive. It was a good one, the summer of 1995. A summer of great weather, festivals, endless parties and fine wines all played out to a soundtrack of Oasis’ What’s the Story Morning Glory?, Pulp’s Different Class, Radiohead’s The Bends, Leftfield’s Leftism, Goldie’s Timeless and Continue Reading