"The anoraks would really like this one, and so do we. On this second compilation of Bristol artists, Sink and Stove Records have provided a truly, fittingly eclectic sample of the area’s current scene; artists such as Billy Mahonie, Bronnt Industries Kapital, Mole Harness, and Manyfingers, cover the instrumental area on this sampler, with a diverse sonic mélange ranging from Mogwai/Explosions in the Sky-type sounds, on the verge of Four Tet-esque electronica. Notably, Deloris wins over with ‘May Your Last Day Be Your Best Day’ and its haunting electric guitar, and melancholic vocals echoing the late Elliot Smith, whilst label-head Benjamin Shillabeer’s own band (shameless self-publicist, eh?) The Playwrights make a case for more aggressive terrain, boasting the snappy punk drumming and quirky brass of ‘Welcome to the Middle Ages.’
Mellow and introspective, and punctuated with a bit of classy rock spice, Sink and Stove do an excellent job of sampling their local mignons. And if 21 tracks of fascinating music from one mere town is any indication, then Bristol is evidently intent, and successful, in shifting some severe musical boundaries." - Rockfeedback

"Bristol’s formidable Sink and Stove records celebrates it fourth birthday this year, a label that’s fast gaining a reputation as one of the leading exponents currently trawling the underground’s fine seam of quality sounds. Each release under the careful supervision of Ben Shillabeer is carefully tendered to, infrequent the output and release rate may be but then quality is something of an art that you have to be precious with so as not to dilute the end result. Having graced us with two of the best albums of last year, Gravenhurst’s ‘Flashlight Seasons’ and the awesome debut ‘Good beneath the radar’ from the seasons hotly tipped Playwrights (both of whom incidentally feature within), ‘The Hospital Radio Request List Volume 2’ serves not only as a sharing of the birthday cake spoils but as a double pronged showcase of labels passionate ear for a good tune and a hitherto broadside shot to their rivals while serving as a timely shakedown for the majors.
Lovingly packaged to include a detailed 24 page booklet along with 21 of the most crucial sounds around all for the measly price of a brace of CD singles there really is no competition or excuse, is there?! Not solely restricted to showcasing the labels roster, ‘Hospital Radio’ offers out the invites to friends, associates and whosoever out there has given cause to impress upon the community so among the shopping list of talent you get Losing Today house favourites the spikey Lomax, the critically underrated Dudley Corporation who serve up the skewiff Pavement-esque ‘3rd Song’ which you’ll be happy to note is not from their must have album ‘In love with….’ which we’ve enjoyed so much that I guess a review is long overdue. The eminent Mr John Parish kicks in with the wah-wah crazy ‘Speed of Life’ that kinda sounds like Eric Clapton on LSD doing his best T-Rex motifs with the strains of Morricone hiding in the shadows playing peek-a-boo, and my God its been far too long since we heard anything by ex Codeine Chris Brokaw the feint enchantment of 1999’s ‘Tricks of trapping’ by Snares and Kites still burns, here we find him in acoustic mode recorded live and sounding quite dandy for the experience neatly falling into the gentle cascade of the National’s quite sublime ‘Wasp’s Nest’.
So something for everyone as I think the saying goes, from shimmering aural sound-scapes (the magnificent emotionally rugged Mole Harness) blending superbly with loon pop (War against Sleep in strangely fine fettle doing crooked campfire blues), add in a little post punk in the capable hands of the awesome Billy Mahonie, the beautifully etched pastoral serenity of Caroline Martin and what sounds like some recently found ancient heirloom of a recording from the classically nimble RLF, haunting stuff albeit sweetly sombre.
Elsewhere Morning Star edge their bets with the rhythmically bountiful incandescent pop of ‘Rainboland’, a band whose album ‘My place in the dust’ still, like most albums befitting the description classic, manages to occasionally find its way onto the Hi-Fi nearly three years since its original release. And really how could we not get by doing a review from Sink and Stove without mentioning the Playwrights’, ‘Welcome to the middle ages’, well what can you say, can these lads kick back side or can they kick back side, the last word in post punk grooviness, take my word for it. Best cut of the bulging bunch though is, by a short nose, Sj Esau’s ‘Queezy Beliefs’ which comes across like a more lightened Black Heart Procession and will blow you away regardless whether you have taste or not, ones to watch methinks. Essential stuff in a word (or two, as the case may be)." - Losing Today

"Bristol label Sink and Stove have been releasing quality indie rock records for four and a half years now, giving voices to the kind of innovative, groundbreaking artists that would otherwise get swept up in the major label mud. In an age where indie labels have roughly the same lifespan as butterflies, it's good to know that there are a few willing to take on the corporate ogre. Because the second in the 'Hospital Radio Request List' series features the kind of life-affirming noise that would give a major-label MD a minor heart attack. Angular art-punks Lomax weigh in with the ace 'The Bodies of Journalists', while Billy Mahonie offer up the kind of sweet and subtle sonic rock that has made them such an overlooked gem. Elsewhere indie stalwarts The Legend! confirm that a chunky man singing a cappella about girls and stuff can still sound like the most vital thing on earth, while blue-collar alt.country rockers The National make a deliciously primal rumble. Run, corporate pig, Sink and Stove are coming to get you!" - New Musical Express

"Epitomising the spirit, and sometimes the sound, of punk rock, Bristol's Sink and Stove label offers accommodation to artists such as Nicolas 'Gravenhurst' Talbot and PJ Harvey mentor John Parish, who have chosen to maintain their independence. The quality here is surprisingly high and the price is right: 21 tracks for a fiver savagely undercuts the iTunes store. The sound of thrashed or strummed guitars predominates, with judicious bursts of glitch technology giving the DIY ethic a 21st-century twist, although the strongest offerings are defined more by their wit and ingenuity-as in the uproarious street poetry of The Legend! and some irresistibly cute keyboard variations by a man called Mole Harness." - The Telegraph

"It's a mystery how sweet little labels like Bristol's Sink and Stove survive fiscally, but aren't we lucky that they do? 'File under uneasy listening', they suggest, but the compilation is by no means as cacophonous as that would indicate. It's just a load of creative acts (21 in all) operating on the fringes of commerciality. What to they have in common stylistically? Virtually nothing. Here, you'll find pop-rock, post-rock, punk rock and a load of other spurious categories, but what's so great about Sink and Stove is their refusal to be blinkered about styles of music. What's more, their quality control seldom slips, so that picking standout tracks would be invidious; none is less than excellent. Congratulations, guys, and don't stop!" - Logo

"I didn't know that the ill and infirmed had such good taste in music. I will keep this in my own personal library just to live with it some more and understand something about this collection, but for the purposes of the here and now and delivering to you my take on it, I will say that Sink And Stove, distributed by Cargo Records, have a good and full checklist of bands and that this collection is really great covers a lot of the g-spots of my senso-sexo-muso-organ. Out of 21 tracks by various artists, The Playwrights, 31 Knots, Gravenhurst, Morning Star, Chris Brokaw, Caroline Martin, RLF, and John Parish immediately put the turbo boost on whatever it is that they're all independently doing, and together with a host of other mostly quality independent artists, Hospital Radio never sounded better." - Playlouder.com

"It's always hard to know the best way to review a compilation. Do I highlight the more known bands, even though this may be at the expense of the less-famous in need of exposure? Select tracks at random and discuss those? Prepare an in-depth analysis of every song in blatant ignorance of the prescribed word- count? Or just cobble the above approaches together in rhetorical 'how should I best review a compilation album', make it look like I've selected a bunch of tracks at random, and hope that I get away with it? Decision time, I suppose. Let's see how it goes. Track 20. Lomax – 'The Bodies Of Journalists'. London's answer to the whole post-punk revival. I feel guilty that I didn't write about Lomax enough last year. Their album rocked, they kicked ass live and if anyone ever dares tell you that England hasn't produced a band that can out-punk-funk New York, then 'The Bodies Of Journalists' should shut them up pretty sharpish. Track 1. The Playwrights – 'Welcome To The Middle Ages'. You know when bands tell you that they've changed, that their old material no longer reflects how they sound or the direction that they want to take? But then, when you hear the new material, you often can't tell the difference? Well, when The Playwrights say that they've changed, they mean it. If their debut album, 'Good Beneath The Radar' was the pastoral post-folk art-rock equivalent of The Auteurs' 'New Wave', then 'Welcome To The Middle Ages' has made the jump from 'Showgirl' to 'Light Aircraft On Fire' in one easy step. If you compare all the essential ingredients, it's the same band, with the same sound. Only now, they're darker and more menacing. Track 6. Knowledge Of Bugs – 'Passage'. Autechre played on acoustic guitars. Track 4. Gravenhurst – 'Stillwater'. Beautiful, fragile, mournful yet full of hope. A voice that quietly asserts itself and wins over your unconscious before your conscious mind has had time to realise that you will still be listening to Gravenhurst years from now, because music this expressive will never age. The band that will make you forget that Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith ever even existed. Track 5. 31 Knots – 'Last Minute Director'. The Check Engine rewritten by Arcwelder and played by Franz Ferdinand. Track 13. Billy Mahonie – 'We Totally Almost Died'. Soft, gentle interlocked guitars predictably, yet satisfyingly, build into a crescendo of screaming white noise abuse, before becoming tranquil once more.Track 10. John Parish – 'Speed Of Life'. David Bowie's Berlin years recreated by an 11-piece band with six guitarists. Track 21. The Legend! – 'The King Of Hobart'. Old men that should know better proving that they don't, ranting about the meaning of punk-rock while sounding like Animals That Swim suffering from Alzheimers, with a guitar that is threatening to drop out of tune at any moment. Somehow, it's utter genius. Track 2. Bronnt Industries Kapital – 'Western Front'. The other other side of Gravenhurst's Nick Talbot. Oppressive and brooding, like DJ Shadow being played through a barely tuned radio. Music that should form the soundtrack to a Chris Morris spoof documentary based on J G Ballard's 'Atrocity Exhibition'. That worked. Just about. But I believe that a closing statement is in order. 'The Hospital Radio Request List' evokes bands as diverse as the Fire Engines, Gang of Four, the Monochrome Set, To Rococo Rot and Tom Waits, often in the space of one three-minute song. Not only that, it proves that it's possible for articulate, passionate and very highly proficient bands and labels to operate on their own, away from the vagaries of major label politics and scene-mongering. One day soon, albums like this are going to be hailed as the blueprint for a new independence. I'm looking forward to it already." - New Noise

"I always feel bad about reviewing compilations. There are always so many tracks, too many bands to mention. I end up feeling guilty, knowing the disappointment of being a part of something and seeing others mentioned in dispatches whilst you are seemingly forgotten, left on the fringes. It’s not really a good feeling. But that’s just the way it is with compilations I guess, and it’s inevitable that with, say 21 tracks and bands, as there are on the Sink And Stove Hospital Radio Request List Vol 2, some will end up out in the cold. It’s almost inevitable too that with compilations there will simply be some cuts you warm to less than others, some too that you will be more than tempted to skip or program out of your playlist… It’s to Sink and Stove’s credit then that not once during this 21 song spread do I feel that temptation. The quality is universally high across the entire collection and at times reaches peaks that most labels must surely dream of. One of those peaks is of course courtesy of The Playwrights. Their ‘Welcome To The Middle Ages’ is the clearest evidence to date that the Playwrights are treading in the footsteps of the once mighty Wolfhounds, are taking their claustrophobic suburban dynamic frustrations in new and fine directions. It’s the kind of sound that Franz Ferdinand are making in their dreams. Deloris meanwhile make the kind of sound that I make in my dreams. I’ve mentioned previously about the genius of Australia’s awesome Deloris, and if you still haven’t picked up a copy of their magnificent second album The Pointless Gift, then you need to put that right straight away. Deloris are making the kind of expansive, expressive sound that some used to call post-rock; the kind of supple impressionistic sound that recalls the heights achieved by Tortoise or Ui in their early days, but with perhaps more focus on diffracted folk than abstracted funk. Whatever, Deloris continue to fascinate, and one can only hope that Sink And Stove have it in their powers to release a new album of their genius at some point in the near future. And speaking of genius, who should follow Deloris on this collection but the very wonderful Nick Talbot in his Gravenhurst guise. Most will know by now that the ever vigilant people at Warp have signed Nick, pushing his achingly lovely Flashlight Seasons album blinking into the light once again. Flashlight Seasons is a beautiful breath of a record, a hazy electronic-acoustic folk sound that sits by the riverside with July Skies and the Durutti Column, dreaming of gentler times in pasts and futures. And that’s the magic of the sound of Gravenhurst; it effortlessly bridges old and new, fashions structures that sway in the breeze, totems to the gentle revolution. Elsewhere on the collection there are ace contributions by a host of other names, known and unknown: Billy Mahonie with another magic slice of post-folk-rock that could sidle down the avenue hand in hand with Deloris; The Dudley Corporation with a take on the blueprint Swell sound of yore; Caroline Martin’s exquisite off centre take on singer songwriter chic; Lomax’s madcap hardcore yelp on the fabulously titled ‘the bodies of journalists’. And ending it all is the return of The Legend! with ‘The King of Hobart’, in which the estimable Everett True rants impressively about punk rock over a sharply focused guitar and drum backing that recalls the likes of an anaemic Sleater Kinney (and hey, that’s a fucking great compliment!). It’s a great end to a great collection; proof it were needed that Sink and Stove is maybe the finest ‘new music’ label in the UK at the moment. Out Monday 28th May. Start queuing at the record stores now." - Tangents

"Acting as the launch pad for various Bristol bands currently pressing flesh in the big league (Chikinki and Gravenhurst for starters), this showcase is a philanthropic gesture of S&S: a bit like opening their front door to more burglars. There's much of value to pick through here, and it's not all as ferociously intimidating as The Playwrights' explosive opener 'Welcome To The Middle Ages'. Caroline Martin's 'Blame', for example, would feel at home in a Radio 2 late slot. The cinematic grandeur of John Parish's 'Speed Of Life'; the envelope-pushing rumpus of Morningstar's 'Rainboland' and War Against Sleep's arch cabaret turn 'The Story Of Adam' shine bright." - Venue