Benjamin Shaw has been a relatively prolific recording artist over the past ten years, releasing a number of albums which flit between bedroom lo-fi and glitchy ambience (check out Goodbye, Cagoule World and Guppy for a good cross section). He's not one for the relentless touring life though, and earlier this year he performed his first concert in 5 years at donaufestival in Austria (all the more random as Shaw lives in Melbourne, Australia these days).

A new album from Frog is always something to celebrate, but this latest effort sees the band in a time of flux. The flux being the loss of a member. And when your band only has two members to begin with that's a pretty big deal. So whilst Tom White departed the combo and moved to the UK, Danny Bateman was left in the US without a drummer or a job. A 1979 MX5050 tape machine seemed to be the answer to this predicament, which Bateman used to piece together this "solo" record (but one which is still under the Frog banner).

Live at Kulak’s Woodshed was recorded in a "bizarre and enchanting studio space in Valley Village" around the time of the release of Cloud's last album Plays With Fire. When you first listen to this album, you may wonder why Tyler Taormina is so intent on telling the audience that the upcoming set was designed for a standing audience, rather than the seated one he's been presented with. You may even wonder why the 41 second spoken intro has been included on this album (which only has 6 tracks in total). It all becomes pretty clear once you get to around about the track 3 mark though.

Cloud (aka Tyler Taormina) is back with his third album, and it's a return to the glorious glum Lo-Fi of his debut Comfort Songs, which was crowned the BEST album off 2013 on this very website. It's been 3 years since Cloud's more polished and hopeful second album Zen Summer, and i'm not sure what has happened in between but it makes for a dark and beautiful record. Plays With Fire opens with a healthy dose of feedback which rings throughout the entire song, offering a distant-dreamlike undercurrent to an otherwise standard acoustic number.