Tuesday, July 31, 2012

August Actually - Werewolf

Having started as lost at sea dreaming landlubbers, Nottingham's August Actually have developed into playful folk-pop storytellers. On the A-side of their new single, out tomorrow, they sound like a budget Decemberists, alert semi-funky beats and wandering violin decorating the pastoral tackling what they describe as "the dual themes of supernatural transformation and love".



Nature Set - Avalanche

This third release in all from the Sheffield indiepop supergroup-of-sorts - Reenie from the Long Blondes plus members of Slow Down Tallahassee and Navvy - coasts on distorted bass menace, single note analogue keyboard melodies and jittery rhythms to create something familiar while enthralling, pop with a slithery knife-sharp edge. Avalanche is the lead track on If I Crawl, You Crawl EP, of which there are very few copies left.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Tell It Slant - Break Your Bread

Can't tell you much about Tell It Slant other that they're a duo from London, but going on this demo there's something texurally interesting about them, Leo Kent's Tunde Adebimpe-esque baritone vocal rising grandly above a lively layered patchwork of synth wooziness.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Fashoda Crisis - He's Got Gills

Responsible for one of our favourite things of last year and with a full EP set for October, Fashoda Crisis resurface with viciously focused ire and Albini-like razorwire bass sound on label compilation Now That's What I Call Cognitive Dissonance Volume 1, alongside Rumour Cubes and, er, lots of other new bands we haven't had time to listen to yet.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Free Swim - Records In The Basement

Free Swim, which is essentially one Paul Coltofeanu, have been around for a few releases - Folly Of Youth is a fan, as we recall - and we pick them up at their She Dreams In Lights EP. This lead track courses in darkly bouncy art-pop before slowly transmogrifying into a cinematic, washed out haze, as if Felt had listened to latter Mercury Rev. Oh, and the live bassist wears a giant panda suit onstage.



Thursday, July 19, 2012

We Three And The Death Rattle - Hey Detonator!

WTATDR set guitars to primal blues churning kill and man the controls to the heart of the sun, taking its crew to the edge of sanity. We've been writing about them on and off since October 2010, it says here, yet they've only just got round to a debut single proper, which if you're quick you can download for free.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The World Service - Katherine

Featuring a couple of former Kiara Elles, one of The French Defence and a Pulp biographer, The World Service nod to Belle & Sebastian by way of the first flowering of mid-80s indie (June Brides, say) in their breezily deep melodies. And then the third track on this sort-of-EP* recalls Piano Magic. Plenty to go at here.

(* It's actually a download-ticket for a heat of the Futuresound competition they're playing at Leeds Cockpit. Which is, um, tonight.)

Monday, July 16, 2012

Tall Ships - Gallop

Back from a wet and wild weekend at 2000 Trees to something new from one of its absolute highlights, ahead of the 8th October release of debut album Everything Touching. An about-face from their technically rich skyscraping, a big stomping beginning transmutes into self-searching about ageing against youth against something that to us sounds quite Smiths-like and by its end builds into something with rousing arms-aloft potential without ever becoming anything as obvious as an anthem.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

T.O.Y.S - Uptight

Our Indietracks review will be up on TLOBF within days, but for now these were our big discovery of the festival, a Leeds-based trio, two of whom were in the Manhattan Love Suicides, who with a distorted keyboard as lead instrument purvey a kind of lo-fi motorik where Neu! do New York post-punk revival. They have a six track CDEP out through Dufflecoat.

Thursday, July 05, 2012

Yr Friends - My Summa In Ibeefa

Stage three of the perennially red final reminder challenged Alexei Berrow's bedroom introspecti-lo-fi, yr friends am shit at poetry, goes a slightly odd direction and makes sense of that George Pringle namecheck in Elegy For Post-Teenage Living. Laptop sampled beats and spoken word stories about memories of feeling out of place in party zones and with girls, essentially.