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The words criminally underrated are, erm, criminally overused in music criticism but if ever an artist deserves a wider audience in these days of windswept singer/songwriters it’s Steve Knightley. Sadly the 'folk' tag in the UK is still the kiss of death in marketing terms but Knightley is about as far removed from the faux-finger in the ear folk as punk was from prog rock, so if you’re the sort of person who likes your music current and your songs to actually say something (and say it well, with myriad verses and not just repetitious choruses), check this and Knightley’s other band Show Of Hands out.


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Given the fact that we’re all ancient here in the TM-Online bunker we tend to find most acts championed by those spotty tykes at the NME all a little too ‘heard it all before mate’ for our tastes, but occasionally they get behind something us old farts can dig as well, and all you ‘80s fans out there will find much to love about the latest guitar-noiseniks Kubichek! You’ll hear shades of early U2 and James, hell, let’s pin our colours to the mast and call it melodic angular post-punk racket draped with a heavy purple curtain of glacial post-rock guitar noise, ‘Start As We Mean To’ in particular is positively sky-scraping.


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Call it hard house, call it techno, call it industrial, we’ll even concede that you might call it electronica if you’re of an American persuasion, but if you’re into thudding, acid fried music which makes you dance like a monkey on a hotplate then you’re gonna love the latest from K-Nitrate. Fashionability be damned, genres be damned (in fact it was the idiotic genre-fication of dance music which helped sink it), if, like us, you miss the days when performers worked on dark stages with torches strapped to their bonces and you flung yourself around euphorically for hours on end then this is just the legal flashback you’re looking for.


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Hailing from New York before becoming a fixture of the Boston folk scene in the mid ‘90s, Jess Klein’s career path was interrupted by a five-year break from recording in the early part of this decade. As no regular reader of TotalMusic-Online will have failed to notice, the folk-tinged singer/songwriter is not a quantity that’s in short supply right now, but the consistent quality of City Garden suggests that Klein could well find renown on a crowded scene. Kicking into gear with the emphatic third (title) track, the album goes on to mix whomping folk-rock with intimate acoustic reveries to impressive effect .


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The Faithful will be reassured to heard that Jaz Coleman still roars like a man who has spent his life gargling rocks, and then forgotten to spit ‘em out, the patented Joke ‘driving a heavily laden lorry full tilt at a wall’ blunderbuss racket (a racket which Tool, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails certainly ‘borrowed’ from) is still intact, guitarist Geordie Walker injecting what spiralling melodies are to be found in this volcanic stew, Youth replacement Paul Raven and drummer Ben Calvert providing the reliable rumbling bedrock upon which such heavyweight building blocks are constructed, so no surprises, but no wimping out either.


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Britpop may be about as welcome as a dose of herpes on a first date right now but never underestimate the power of a right good punchy melodic sing-a-long. Think Supergrass, The Small Faces or even early XTC – ‘Eddies Gun’ could easily have issued forth from Andy Partridges Swindon abode back in the late 70s - and you are in the general stylistic area. Add to that the twist much of the music press are getting their knickers in over the Kooks (especially on stage) right now and you can pretty much rest assured you will be hearing a great deal more from these bright young Brighton residents during 2006.


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Korn
See You On The Other Side (Virgin)

The first album Jonathan, Munky, Donkey and Winky (those last two may be wrong) have recorded for their new label Virgin and their first new material since 2003's Take a Look in the Mirror, further refining their rap metal blueprint into Mazza Manson meets Nine Inch Nails territory and on the whole it works pretty well. Lyrically Mr D is still a bit of a whinger, complaining about politics (he’s not keen), religion (he’s not keen) and sex (he is keen but a bit of a misogynist), this is gen x nu-metal however and moaning is as necessary as the clonking great grooves, so no huge surprises but Korn ain’t treading water either.


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Kraftwerk
Minimum-Maximum (EMI)

Anyone lucky enough to have caught the German electro-pop pioneers’ on tour last year will attest to the power of the Kraftwerk live experience. While we await the full bells-and-whistles DVD account later in the year, this double CD – recorded largely at concerts in Eastern Europe – provides a thrilling sortie through their back catalogue, with several performances improving on the originals. The Man Machine now throbs with a window-worrying urgency, while the gleaming Numbers/Computer World sequence shows that the band has clung onto the architects’ plans for our old friend, house music. Bloody marvellous


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Mark Knopfler & Dire Straits
Private Investigations: The Best Of (Vertigo)

Everyone wants one, very few people ever manage to get one and most that do then spend the rest of their lives having to live up to having had one, we refer of course to the ‘era defining album release’. Thriller, Jagged Little Pill, Cracked Rear View or Knopfler and Co.’s Brothers In Arms, massive albums which then defined everything to follow, which in Kopfler’s case meant some lovely material from solo albums like Sailing To Philadelphia and The Ragpicker’s Dream getting overlooked, something this package happily rectifies proving his later, more or less unknown, material sits more than happily alongside the big stuff.

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The Kills
No Wow (Domino)

Possibly even sparer than well received debut (2003’s Keep On Your Mean Side) No Wow finds Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince once again crafting scuzzy rock racket from little more than tight leather trousers and badly applied lippy – oh yeah, and a drum machine. Think of a sparce Velvet-esque White Stripes fronted by PJ Harvey and you’re not a million miles wide of the mark, and although things do begin to tend towards the one dimensional by the close of play, this is still a belting racket and with a little judicious use of the skip control No Wow becomes a nie on perfect 20th century blues album.


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King Creosote
Rocket D.I.Y (Fence/Domino)

Displaying a lyrical wit worthy of fellow countryman Ivor Cutler, Kenny Anderson, the man behind King Creosote – and guiding light behind the Fife based Fence Label – follows up his 2003 release (Kenny And Beth’s Musakal Boat Rides) with more 21st century folkadelica, or as Anderson himself describes it ‘songs with relatively few chords’, further insisting that ‘if a part can't be recorded in one take’, it should be dumped for ‘something simpler’. The consequence of this spare approach is a wilfully lo-fi but beautifully intimate record that makes you smile, gently rock in your seat and thank the lord for musical luddites.


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