i hate the sound of guitars

The backstory (since you probably weren’t paying attention): Hussalonia is basically one dude writing, performing, recording, and releasing willfully eclectic music; he’s been at it for a while and he’s gotten really good at all aspects of it. 2010 started as the “Year of Hussalonia” with a new album/EP every month, including lotsa awesome [...]

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Sounds like Joy Division for once not because of a gloomy baritone voice, but because bass and guitar parts recall Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner. Also sounds a bit like the instruments were at one of a tunnel, and the recording equipment was at the other. Some of this is hooky and/or pretty enough to [...]

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The confusingly named L’essentiel is split into two halves: “Champ” (field) is 14 tracks culled (and remastered) from Holden’s previous releases; “Hors-Champ” (off-screen) is another 14 previously unreleased tracks. I suspect some, like a cover of The Smiths’ “The Boy With the Thorn In His Side,” were left off earlier albums because they simply didn’t [...]

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Much of the foundation material for this experimental instrumental recording was a real pipe organ in a real church. Since I’ve been been listening a lot lately to Julianna Barwick’s almost-a-cappella recording The Magic Place and the new Mogwai album, there’s a temptation for me to think of this as a third point defining a [...]

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The Hussalonia Founder generally puts a strange spin on each of his many recordings. The main gimmick here is that the original guitar and vocal guide tracks were erased after the overdubs were done, with a new vocal recorded responding to the overdubs. As the founder describes it, the process leaves “a void at the [...]

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A fascinating album that evokes the breadth of Harvey’s catalogue — she makes some use of the fragile, high register she first explored on 2007’s White Chalk and there are vestiges of the percussive guitar attack that drove her earliest albums — but ultimately sounds like nothing else in it. In “On Battleship Hill” her [...]

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I’m breaking a cardinal rule to write about Darren Hayman (ex-Hefner)’s January Songs project before it’s actually finished, so you have a chance to snag a handful of the tunes in their brief free download window, coz, frankly, owning this album could be a bit expensive for yanks at the Bandcamp going rate. But if [...]

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It was just about a month ago that I became aware of the self-described “pop music cult” Hussalonia, and since then I’ve listened to Hussalonia songs about 350 times. Even more surprising, I’m showing no signs of getting sick of them.
Partly this is because Hussalonia is really good*, partly it’s because they (mostly just he [...]

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Friday’s performance was just the tonic for folks who’ve seen Robyn Hitchcock numerous times in the past. The setlist was primarily drawn from his magnificent first (mostly) acoustic album, 1984’s I Often Dream of Trains. He was accompanied by recent frequent accomplice Tim Keegan on guitar and vocals, and (former member of The [...]

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I had just enough leftover affection for Kay Hanley’s 90’s act Letters to Cleo to check out the previews for her new record, even though the only thing I remember about her solo debut Cherry Marmalade is that I felt like I didn’t need to hear anything on it twice. I’m really glad I gave [...]

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