Author: monkjackblog

Jack Rose has raised future-house from the dead with his cover of the modern club classic, ‘Overdrive’. It’s a song he’s lucky to release after the interference of… g-g-g-ghosts? Jack, best known as the host of the Amazon TV series Ghost Hunting with Jack Rose, was searching for the spirit of Great Train Robber Robert […]

Working the last nine years as a homeless-charity choir director will teach you first hand about the healing power of music. ‘Sing It Out’ isn’t just Sam Chaplin’s latest single but all his lessons for how to reach people through song, packed into four and a half minutes.  Sam wanted his song to create “the […]

Rory & The Island have cracked the cocoon of lockdown and switched styles to deliver a warm and bubbly disco-pop hit. The track, Donna Don’t Take My Summer, shares DNA with some of the vocal tracks from Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories. Rory’s falsetto playing atop casual, Nile Rogers-like strumming patterns and breezy drums.  It’s […]

From the outside metal can feel like a difficult, insular community to engage with. It’s assertive, subgenres spawn subgenres (you better know the differences), even some album covers are totally indescifrable.  But scratch the surface and you realise audiences the world over flock to it for the same reason as every other outsider genre – […]

When you’ve been rocking as long as Alan Mair, you learn a thing or two. He first appeared as bassist for ‘The Beatstalkers’ (“Scotland’s first-ever pop stars”) before joining power-pop outfit ‘The Only Ones’ in 1978. His new hit is an accumulation of all that and more. ‘Eyes to the Sky’ keeps up the dreamy, […]

Industrial music is a fractious, varied genre under which you can find discordant walls of noise as well as Gary Numan. What unites it, isn’t just a brash attitude, but a keen sense of experimentation. Purple Glass show both on this tune.  Lacking the chunky, droning synth of their 2018 EP, ‘Blood Stained Glass’ (which […]

I’m always disappointed by bands with misleading names. Seven Purple Tigers – featuring not a single big cat playing bass – may be the worst offenders yet. Still, they’ve put out a stunning tune in ‘One Night’s Promises’: tender, shimmering, indie-rock tailor-made for midnight listening. Lead singer Austin Horne delivers a wonderful croon. His delivery […]

‘Nemesis’ is a brooding piece of cyber rock that flirts with both spy and sci-fi sensibilities. Punt Guns have aimed for a cinematic sound, and Nemesis oozes it. Lyrics are sparse, but the impressive tones from the two-pieces baritone guitar and six-string bass do enough talking. Foreboding, you could imagine it being a staple on […]

A Flock of Seagulls: unfairly branded as a one-hit-wonder with a novelty haircut. In fact, their self-titled debut album formed a benchmark for British New Wave. Optimistic, melodic, and with a futuristic grandeur, it was a departure from the punkier acts of the US towards a more emotional sound that would grow into the New […]

In the past few years, waves of women (perhaps freshly motivated by the success of #MeToo) have risen to reclaim their space – at work, at home, but maybe nowhere more notably than online. Aurelia Dey is an artist doing just that. As the world locked down and everyday life went virtual, she made the […]