We have finally cleared out the backlog of great music and present some new episodes.
Episode 711 features music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Zola Jesus, Duster, Sangre Nueva, Dialect, The Bug, Cleared, Mount Eerie, Mulatu Astatke & Hoodna Orchestra, Hayden Pedigo, Bistro Boy, and Ibukun Sunday.
Episode 712 has tunes by Mazza Vision, Waveskania, Black Pus, Sam Gendel, Benny Bock, and Hans Kjorstad, Katharina Grosse, Carina Khorkhordina, Tintin Patrone, Billy Roisz, and Stefan Schneider, His Name Is Alive, artificial memory trace, mclusky, Justin Walter, mastroKristo, Başak Günak, and William Basinski.
Episode 713 brings you sounds from Mouse On Mars, Leavs, Lawrence English, Mo Dotti, Wendy Eisenberg, Envy, Ben Lukas Boysen, Cindytalk, Mercury Rev, White Poppy, Anadol & Marie Klock, and Galaxie 500.
Skolavordustigur Street in Reykjavík photo by Jon (your Podcast DJ).
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Cold Cave's embarrassing attempt at crossover success opens with "The Great Pan Is Dead," a dull, emotionally overwrought synth-rocker slathered in Wes Eisold's affected, fake British accent (he's from Boston) that sounds like a nu-goth approximation of the Killers. Cold Cave may be aiming to win over the synth-pop revival crowd, but the Killers are more popular than Cold Cave (and headlining sold-out arenas) for one simple reason—they write better tunes.
I wouldn't bother to complain about Cherish the Light Years, Cold Cave's second album, if I had not expected more from the band. I fell in love two years ago with Cremations, a collection of abrasive, lo-fi noise-pop sketches, demos and live tracks that was given wide release on Hospital Recordings (run by Prurient's Dominick Fernow, who also plays in Cold Cave). Cremations remains their most rewarding work—they signed to Matador soon after the initial release of Love Comes Close, their first full-length, which cranked down the volume and shone light on their '80s new wave influences. It was a risky move, but Cold Cave smartly balanced the noise and pop halves of their sound, and Love Comes Close was on target more often than it missed.
To be clear, I have no issue with a band recognizing its popular appeal and tailoring its material to commercial audiences. In fact, it can be a smart move for a band making appealing music to focus on its pop smarts and expand its fan base; it's been done well by too many synth-pop bands to count over the past 30 years. The trouble is that to succeed, a band needs to have great songs, not just reference sounds that are currently in vogue (or "influences," as bands typically call them).
On Cherish the Light Years, Cold Cave's Xerox machine is in good working order. They lean heavily on New Order and Depeche Mode blueprints, shitting out synth presets and clunky melodies at every turn, but their songs are nowhere close to as smart or creative. These songs are faceless, lacking a sense of personality, and hardly original; they would sound at home if played by any '80s revivalist act on the indie circuit. Granted, the album is essentially focus-grouped to reach fans of such music—its best song, "Confetti," is the aural equivalent of the band crossing its fingers for a FADER Magazine cover story—but will alienate fans of Cold Cave's previous work as a result.
As icing on the cake, the mastering job on Cherish the Light Years is beyond horrific—all traces of sonic detail squashed together in the mix, equalized and compressed to infinity; everything pushed completely into the red for maximum impact at radio. Cold Cave's album is as much a victim of the last decade's loudness war as, say, Britney Spears' latest will be (the difference being that Britney will actually get radio play, so has a better excuse for botched mastering). All said, Cherish the Light Years reminds me how disappointing it can be hearing a once capable band make a bid for crossover stardom without writing a proper batch of songs first.
Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai have made some of the most intense, exciting and intriguing electronic music of the last 20 years, mostly apart but they came together as Cyclo. ten years ago with a terrific self-titled album. When the follow up landed on my doorstep recently, I was expecting something great and got something unexpectedly better than I hoped for instead. Their debut was only a warm up, a training session. id is the real deal. Combining Nicolai’s hard yet yielding rhythms with Ikeda’s lust for ear-bending sounds, the duo has created a stunning album that aims to fuse their music (and their concept of music) with the visual arts.
Sonically, id is flawless. Although divided into 11 tracks, it feels like one long progression. Beats are persistent, omnipresent but they crack and falter repeatedly only to flow again as if nothing happened. The rhythms are interesting but at the end of the day they are pretty much standard beats.
The draw of id is the nature of the sounds which bring to mind Ikeda’s exploration of data as a sound source over the last few years. The range of sounds seem to be limited to beeps, blips, and electronic interference but there are surprising depths to this palette. Part of this comes from the mastering (or to be more precise the lack of mastering for reasons explained below). The dynamic range is huge, the frequencies go from the ultra low (I was listening to this in my car and my mirrors all pulsed to the beats) to I assume to inaudibly high. The music is electrifying; at points I get a serious case of shivers down my spine as the sounds pummel my auditory cortex into submission.
Yet it is not Ikeda and Nicolai’s intention to make merely an album of glorious sounds. Not one millisecond of id had been composed with a final sound in mind. Instead, each sound was chosen for its appearance on an oscilloscope as Cyclo have intended the album to be listened to while simultaneously watching the output of an oscilloscope being fed the audio. They have left the audio deliberately unmastered, as mastering (and MP3 compression) would destroy the images they had assembled. Unfortunately, oscilloscopes are the kind of instruments that tend to be difficult to find in normal life (despite my best efforts). It is frustrating to be listening to an album when it is intended to be absorbed as a synaesthetic blend of visual and audio art. Granted, Ikeda and Nicolai have a "publication" planned that will present the visuals but it is unclear whether this will be a printed publication (which would miss out on the audio) or a DVD (which is probably how this should have been released in the first place).
Despite the annoyance of not being able to obtain access to an oscilloscope, id is an incredible album. I have a lot of time for both Ikeda and Nicolai but even as a long-term fan, this has been a total joyous shock to my ears. To have the complete picture (pun intended) would be perfect but in the meantime, the audio alone is more than enough to occupy me. Of course, if anyone reading this knows of a good (free) oscilloscope program for Mac, please let me know!
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has been a key figure of the underground music scene for over 30 years. A cult artist in prepunk and post-punk groups Throbbing Gristle (1975 to 1981) and Psychic TV (1981 to present), he is considered to be the father of industrial music and a pioneer of acid house and techno. Not content with breaking new ground in music, Genesis has also used his position at the limits of society to challenge the very fundamentals of biology.
Transformation is, indeed, central to his life. He became a she to resemble his beloved Lady Jaye, now deceased. With peroxide hair, full lips and gold teeth, Genesis does not go unnoticed. A unique life, modeled on his other, Lady Jaye, who remains an integral part of himself. Without subscribing to any movement but living life as the ultimate experiment, he has made his body a work of art.
A kaleidoscopic collection of moving surfaces, composed of interviews (Orlan, Peaches, Peter Christopherson), role plays, concerts and his day to day life, comes together to paint a multi-faceted profile of this pioneer of industrial music and in doing so, exposes the abundant yet inherently elusive nature of his creativity.
Boyd Rice may well be the only person alive who's been on a first name basis with both Charlie Manson and Marilyn Manson. His career has spanned more than three decades, during which time he has remained at the epicenter of underground culture and controversy. Rice first came to prominence in the 70's as one of the founders of the genre known as Industrial Music, and soon gained a reputation for live shows that were deemed the most abrasive, minimalist and loudest concerts ever staged (his shows regularly clocked in at 130 decibels, whereas a jet plane taking off was a mere 113 decibels). As early as 1980, he was already hailed as The Godfather of Noise Music.
Since then, Rice has extended his creative pursuits to numerous fields, even lecturing at The Massachusettes Institute of Technology, despite being a high-school dropout. "My life", says Rice, "is a testament to the idea that you can achieve whatever the hell you want if you posess a modicum of creativity, and a certain amount of naivete concerning what is and isn't possible in this world. I've had one man shows of my paintings in New York, but I'm not a painter. I've authored several books, but I'm not a writer. I've made a living as a recording artist for the last 30 years, but I can't read a note of music or play an instrument. I've somehow managed to make a career out of doing a great number of things I'm in no way qualified to do".
Larry Wessel's documentary, ICONOCLAST is a 4 hour long tour de force, 6 years in the making; an in depth expose of Boyd Rice's life, career, and personal obsessions. No mere documentary, ICONOCLAST is more of a roller coaster ride through the fevered mindscape of one of the most controversial and unique artists of the modern age.
Jackamo was a pretty odd and uncompromising album, but some insightful person at Atco still managed to see commercial potential in it and Annie wound up with a major label record deal.  Unfortunately, that partnership did not get a chance to flourish, as Atco dissolved before her completed follow-up album could be released.  In fact, that album still hasn't been released.  Undeterred, Annie returned to On-U Sound and recorded Short and Sweet (1992), a very fun, accessible, and dance-friendly effort that ironically seems like it could have been wildly successful if it had had a major label's promotional budget behind it.
At this point in her career, Annie was starting to seem like a diminutive female David Bowie, boldly reinventing herself with each new album.  Having already passed through her "noisy and disturbing" and "eclectic, leftfield dub songstress" phases, Short and Sweet marked the beginning (and end) of her "urbane dance diva" period.  One of the reasons that this album works so well, however, is that Annie and her prodigiously talented collaborators Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald (Tackhead/Dub Syndicate) did not treat their foray into dance pop as slumming.  Instead, they demanded "said musical form to rise to their high standards."  Sure, there are some thumping beats, fake horn stabs, and unapologetically big, radio-friendly choruses here, such as on "Watch the World Go Bye" and "Going For Gold," but the songs are among the catchiest and most scathingly witty that Annie has written and the music is generally pretty funky and punchy.
Annie's talent as a singer clearly evolved a lot in the five years between Jackamo and Short and Sweet, as she effortlessly uses dynamic shifts to give her words maximum impact.  In fact, most of my favorite parts of the album are the breathy or conversational asides ("you look like you've been kissing, dear, the wrong end of a hammer") rather than the hooks.  This is the first album in which Annie's personality seems to survive the transition into song undiluted.  No matter how toothless or straightforward a song initially seems, there is always at least one very amusing or clever bit that injects it with a charisma that is hard to resist.
The only real misfire is the shallow vamping of "Give It To Me," whose sole lyrical content consists of variations of the title.  Even then, however, it is difficult to totally write-off: it could be taken as a snarky parody of sultry pop (an interpretation that is bolstered by lines like "give it to me forthwith").  Still, the accompanying music is pretty uninspired.  That song is the exception rather than the rule though–this is a very solid batch of songs.  There are at least two or three of them that probably would have been hits if the music world were a totally level playing field and even the less accessible moments still boast quite a bit of personality and sharp wordplay.
I was definitely caught a bit off-guard by how much I enjoyed this album, as it is easy to picture a twelve year-old girl happily doing the Roger Rabbit in front of her mirror to catchier songs like "Going For Gold" or "I Think of You," but the actual content remains very intelligent and funny throughout.  There's also quite a bit of heartache and darkness lurking beneath the breezy, bouncy surface, as the album was written during the dissolution of Annie's marriage.  That undercurrent finally manages to force its way to the fore for the album's finale and centerpiece, the steadily escalating and cathartic "If Cain Were Able," a piece that remains one of the clear highlights of Annie's discography (especially once the bass and drums finally kick in).  That might be the only conventionally great song here that I can listen to with no cognitive dissonance issues, but the rest of the album boasts quite a few killer guilty pleasures (seriously guilty–I think some of the beats here could be reasonably described as "new jack swing").  I'm glad Annie went elsewhere stylistically after this album, but this is a very inspired, charming, and entertaining one-off effort and an illuminating vision of what early '90s pop could have been.
Eleventh Dream Day has got to be one of the most well-adjusted bands ever, loosely holding together for over two decades despite never quite achieving the level of success they deserved and sharing members with Freakwater and Tortoise.  More remarkable still is how well they've continued to evolve and remain vital after all this time, as 2006's Zeroes and Ones ranked among their best efforts. Riot Now! picks up right where that album left off and continues EDD's late career momentum beautifully, sounding very much like a great rock band at the top of their game.
For some reason, it took a very long time for Eleventh Dream Day to register on my radar and I always mistakenly thought they were a shoegazer band.  They most definitely aren't and I was definitely missing out.  Though Riot Now! is not quite as raucous as its title suggests, Rick Rizzo and the gang deliver a very solid album of muscular, no-frills, straightforward rock that not many people seem to know how to make anymore.  These songs all have a very "classic" feel to them, sounding like they could have been recorded at any time over the last 20 years.  A lot of that has to do with Rizzo's passion for Crazy Horse, but Eleventh Dream Day doesn’t sound retro or imitative.  Instead, they just sound immune to trends, despite being clearly informed by both punk and indie rock.
This is an album that is stronger than the sum of its parts, as I am fairly unmoved by the actual lyrical content of the songs: Rizzo tends to write about everyday life's existential struggles and frustrations with a great deal of metaphor and symbolism (trees, driving, satellites, tall men, etc.) that didn't quite connect with me.  It is probably possible to read a lot more into his songs than I did though.  Conversely, it is also possible to enjoy the album on a completely different level by taking all of his words quite literally ("man, this guy sure hates trees!").  Still, the lyrics are intelligent and Rick doesn't try to fake 20-something self-absorption and angst, which I very much appreciate.  The secret to this album's success lies more in its details.
For example, Rizzo is a pretty great guitarist (coming from someone who doesn't particularly like guitars).  He doesn't open up very often, but when he does, his solos add quite a bit to the songs (particularly the anthemic outro of "Tall Man").  They're generally pretty simple, but it seems like he means every single damn note.  Also, there is a deliberate messiness and snarl to them that would make Ira Kaplan or J. Mascis proud.  Another great thing about this album is just simple mechanics: these guys have an impressive mastery of dynamics, space, and structure.  If there is a cool bass line, like in "Maybe This Time," then it is given the necessary room to stand out. This band simply knows exactly how to construct a good, memorable song.
My favorite part of Riot Now!, however, is the fact that drummer Janet Beveridge Bean contributes energetic backing vocals to nearly every song.  It's not that her and Rizzo lock into heartbreaking harmonies or anything.  Instead, it's the fact that even the drummer is excitedly singing and shouting along with the whole damn album: it feels like the whole band is wholeheartedly into every single one these songs.  The whole album was recorded in mostly single takes too, which adds still further to the sense of vibrancy and immediacy.  That aesthetic suits the band very well.
The band isn't afraid to take chances either, as the ballad-like "Away With Words" is quite a departure.  I'm a little bit conflicted by it, as some of Bean's early backing vocals are "atmospheric" and "ethereal" in a somewhat clumsy way (like when she just bursts in with a prolonged "la").  That might have been a poor mixing decision rather than a poor aesthetic one though. However, once the song starts to gather momentum, her vocals become pretty wonderful and essential: she begins by providing a vulnerable-sounding echo to Rizzo's voice, then builds to a ghostly trill beneath the very soulful guitar solo crescendo.  It ultimately ends up turning into quite a good song.  Notably, it is completely uncharacteristic for me to love a song mostly for the backing vocals and the guitar solo, but that is the case here.  This is a historic moment.
The standout song here is probably the jangly "Divining For Water," but this is the kind of album where nearly every song could be a released as a single.  I know a lot of people swear that Prairie School Freakout or Lived to Tell are the albums to get, but Riot Now! makes a damn strong case that Eleventh Dream Day is in the midst of a second (and possibly better) golden age.
Lived to Tell will be pretty hard to top though...
I try to avoid using the word "challenging" in regards to music—it is typically either a dumb exaggeration, or simply untrue. In this case, however, "challenging" is not only entirely appropriate, but perhaps an understatement. Ehnahre play dissonant, cerebral music that is rooted in death metal, but also throws the rulebook out the window; their latest album is all the more appealing for its inaccessibility.
Admittedly, I don't find myself at all engaged by traditional death metal, which is perhaps why I find this album so refreshing. Taming the Cannibals is, at its heart, an avant-garde death metal album. It downplays the standard tropes of the genre—masturbatory guitar playing, tired blast beats, Cookie Monster vocals—and replaces them with a number of twists and unexpected developments.
The first song, aptly named "The Clatterbones," kicks off with a drum solo reminiscent of a free jazz percussionist playing maniacally on a skeleton. When the guitar riffs come in, they are not virtuosic statements of aptitude, but atonal, slow motion riffs reminiscent of Khanate's first recordings. Intense segments are surrounded by empty space and creepy ambience, courtesy of C. Spencer Yeh's screeching violin and Greg Kelley's trumpet. Any semblance of traditional, structured songwriting is cast aside in favor of improvisational drum playing (truly the album's anchor) and static, black-ambient meltdowns between songs. The vocals are not merely a tribute to Sesame Street's foremost cookie enthusiast; they sound genuinely anguished, tormented.
I have hardly any complaints about Taming the Cannibals: the only thing that strikes me as out of place is the brief, spoken-word segment that closes "Foehn (Lullaby)." Otherwise, Ehnahre sound like they are playing by their own rules throughout the album, charging headfirst through seemingly improvisational songs that draw from death, black and doom metal, yet end up sounding like only themselves. This is metal at its most deconstructed, unconventional and challenging—a big "fuck you" to conventional death metal and, perhaps, any type of traditional heavy music.
Since his 2006 debut full-length and 2007's Untrue, which stand as two of dubstep's crowning achievements, Burial has been relatively quiet, releasing a pair of collaborations with Four Tet and Radiohead's Thom Yorke in nondescript packaging. His new 12" on Hyperdub is a formal breaking of silence, then—his first solo work since Untrue.
A-side and title track "Street Halo" sports deep, eerie swaths of bass, ambient crackling, a clicking two-step rhythm, and Burial's inimitable signature—a disembodied, soulful vocal floating in and out of the mix. It sounds tailor-made to soundtrack a walk through a dim alley lit by flickering streetlights, coated in a fresh layer of rain. While that is no surprise, the mood is offset by the track's quick, danceable shuffle—upbeat by Burial standards—that fondly brings to mind "Unite," his arresting, overlooked cut exclusive to the Soul Jazz compilation Box of Dub.
The first B-side, "NYC," would have sounded at home on Untrue. It follows the template carved out by immediately memorable songs like "Archangel" and "Raver," featuring a R&B-tinged female vocal loop pitched up like a chipmunk, pleading its cause in ghostly chipmunk echoes ("Didn't you know... this is love?") over a gentle, shuffling rhythm. It is by no means a departure from Burial's core aesthetic, and it sounds ridiculous on paper—but it is positively spellbinding.
The second B-side, "Stolen Dog," initially recalls the melody of Corey Hart's hit "Sunglasses at Night", then dives into less embarrassing territory along the lines of Burial's debut LP—a widescreen, ambient-dub soundscape with a pair of warped, unintelligible vocals. It seems cut short at six minutes, though, and I would have preferred it to sprawl out perhaps twice as long. More than the other two tracks, "Stolen Dog" sounds like Burial toying with his well-established sound, trying to figure out how he can push the boundaries of his work. (Hint: probably not by sounding like "Sunglasses at Night.")
As usual, Burial paints with an subtle, distinctive palette of sounds. I admire his strict quality control, and his music remains so strikingly unique that he need not deviate much from his blueprint laid down in the past. Here's hoping Street Halo is the prelude to a new, full-length LP later this year.
On one of Nigel Ayers’ most recent musical efforts, his dissent against the nominal powers of church, state, and corporate enterprise are channeled into a chilled out, sinsemilla infused, studio session. These are protest songs without many words. This is a soundtrack for a revolution against reality itself. While Jah is not praised anywhere on the album, the spirit of liberation which is so much a part of ska, reggae, dub, and their children is apparent everywhere. It is obvious Nigel has studied the form. The tunes have been built from a solid blueprint of sub-bass beats and propulsive riddim. The reverberations, echoes, and background sound washes are subtle and complex. By washing off the grime he occupies a niche not emitted by diurnal producers.
Even though the resinous beats have been percolated through bong water they play at a slow, back and forth tempo standard to dub. The emphasis on the beat makes this work a sister or cousin to albums like Autonomia or Collateral Salvage. Undercurrents of friction and dirt swim just below the digital surface. The weird chirps and humorous samples are quirky and true to Nigel’s broad ranging style. These fuzzy textures, added to the usual stock, are what make this dubplate special unique.
The gentle tap of hi-hats starts things off on "Emissions in Control Dub," then a cogent bass line slinks in just before a steep upward synth glide. Stiff brass–or are those Tibetan thighbone trumpets—haunt the otherworldly background, gradually screeching into over-driven banshee wails. The real pleasure here for me is over the half-way point when I am teased for a brief moment by blustery break-beats. On "Every Day Is Sunday" there is a great background ambience coming from what could be old MIDI programs or just plain old Casio keyboards. It gives the song a sunny playroom atmosphere, of light passing in through a window and illuminating the floating bits of dust. The timbre of the tones reminds me of Robert Ashley’s work on Superior Seven.
On "Bodmin Parkway (Disintegrated Public Transport mix)" I am back in Nigel’s home territory, literally. The focal point in this scorching mix is a field recording of a woman's voice announcing arrivals, departures, rules and regulations through the loudspeakers at the Bodmin Parkway rail station. On "Levitation Dub" a nice and furious melodica or keyboard riff creates a quick air of buoyancy. In "Energy Crisis Dub" there is a twangy de-tuned guitar break which sits well with the soda fizz bubbles, bubble wrap pops and metallic bass phrasings. I am impressed not only by these rather quick moments that tend to happen in his songs, which give the whole an added flourish, but of the economy of beats. Nigel has been creating music from loops for a very long time (even creating three sample libraries for Sony Creative Software). He is a surgeon with the use of the loop.
There are two reprises in this collection of songs. The last track being the dub of "Escape from Religon." It is this version I am most enamored of. Not only does it escape from the often stultifying influences hovering around organized belief systems, it escapes the gravity well of Earth and moves into an extra-solar orbit, a fitting place to leave me in the end. I look forward to a second volume of In Dub.
"Hearing that our 2009 Paris show was to be in small space called Le Klub, I admit being unable to stop a smile spreading across my face. During the soundcheck in another Paris club years earlier, a record label representative was experiencing problems over a guest list at the door. Filled with anger, he burst into the hall ranting and cursing in Parisian pidgeon English..... “THIS KLUB IS FUCKEEENG!” Those words instantly entered Dots-mythology – an utterance used to let off steam in the face of frustration on the road (and always with a French accent). Legendary Pink Dots played a two-night residency at Le Klub, and the utterance was never needed. The first night was an intimate affair, while the second, which drew a weekend crowd, felt like a rock show in a shoebox. It was this second night that was filmed by Johanna Barda and her camera team." --Edward Ka-Spel.
Coinciding with the Legendary Pink Dots’ 2011 European tour (which includes a night in Paris) comes this live DVD. The performance took place on November 13, 2009, in an intimate Parisian nightclub, with a lineup featuring Edward Ka-Spel, Silverman, Martijn de Kleer and Niels van Hoon. Raymond Steeg worked the soundboard.
The first 200 copies come with a limited edition set of five postcards, and are available exclusively from Soleilmoon, Speakerfire and The Terminal Kaleidoscope.
Over the last few years, Sheeran has been developing her craft as a solo performer. Occasional CD-R and download releases, along with regular live performance have shown her skills as a songwriter and a performer to be constantly increasing. Therefore it comes as no surprise to me that her debut album is absolute perfection. Every time I think that it has reached a peak, I am greeted with an equally good, if not better, song immediately afterwards.
As Lust of Pig & The Fresh Blood has been plagued with production hiccups and is now appearing months later than expected, to finally hear this album after watching it slowly form on the stage and through Sheeran's Pledge Music campaign is a treat indeed. It is an expansive, layered and finely crafted work; each of the songs becoming its own fairy tale world. Sheeran utilises a range of instruments to create ever-changing backdrops for her songs. From ukulele to singing saw all the way through to glass-like electronics, she has made a collection of music that is continually exciting and each listen reveals another facet of her talents. On "Sally Please Don’t Go," Sheeran already uses enough musical ideas that would make an interesting album let alone a single song and she manages to keeps up this level of creativity for the length of Lust of Pig & The Fresh Blood.
"The Fresh Blood" forms a focal point in the album, Sheeran's vocals taking on their most lyrical and magical form yet: "Today I saw the world/Through a hole in the floor." The eerie implications of the words are matched by a haunting melody on an acoustic guitar that slowly gets enveloped by gurgling haze of electronics and drums. All the while, Sheeran seems to stand poised in the center of this seething music, her voice coming through clearly despite its gentleness. Elsewhere, "It's Been a Long Day" takes seemingly benign lyrics but casts them in a bewitching and slightly sinister light; Sheeran invites you to rest in her arms but her inflection suggests that you might never be released.
Some familiar names appear throughout Lust of Pig & The Fresh Blood, many of whom are related to Fovea Hex (of which Sheeran has been a staple part since their first EP). Clodagh Simonds lends her voice to "An Apple for You" and strings appear courtesy of Cora Venus Lunny and Kate Ellis, rounding out the music beautifully. However, at no point does Sheeran's music sound like just an offshoot of Fovea Hex. Evidently her own ideas have been brewing for some time (a song called "I'm Sorry Son" first appeared on one of Sheeran's Sketches CD-Rs before becoming "Walk Out With Me" here) and the guests appear purely on Sheeran's terms. They add to the music but never overpower the songs with their own styles.
From all that I have heard of Sheeran prior to this, I had a strong inkling that she had a stormer of an album in her somewhere but for it to arrive fully formed so early in her career is a pleasant surprise. With any luck, this is only the start of a large back catalog. I imagine a lot of people will pick this up via the Fovea Hex connection but I honestly feel that Sheeran has fostered her own talents to the point where she deserves all the recognition for herself.