Astraba - Sink The Moon
Apart from this being a London band's debut there doesn't seem to be a lot of background to Astraba, which can feel suspicious for ones so fully formed, but they're a band who seem to have much in front of them, routed in layered psychedelia that shifts from Mazzy Star-adjacent wistfulness to spiralling surges, all still ethereal at heart and all that.
Augustin Bousfield - Baildon Space Station
Bradford's Bousfield is one of those musical polymaths who's been around in the firmament with hands in all sorts of genre's pies but has one big thing that could get him handshakes in most of Britain's pubs, namely that he wrote the theme to Deal Or No Deal. Much more recently he co-wrote and produced Saint Etienne's last LP I've Been Trying To Tell You and has just released his debut album Anymoor, a suburban synthpop cascade primarily involving keytars and off-beat moves liable to trip the unwary up as the melodies stutter, the kind of DIY small scale warped disco-not-disco-pop as exhibited by a single described as "Lovers walk the moor under a beautiful burnt sky as the ISS waves from above" and accordingly sounds more retro-futuristic than practically anything else around right now.
CIAO MALZ - Two Feel Tall
CIAO MALZ is Brooklynite Malia Delacruz and her debut EP Safe Then Sorry is out on distributors of high quality materials Audio Antihero on December 6th. The lead track is the kind of song that tries to skip sunnily along its guitar-pop way while covered by the visible dark cloud of confusion, introspection and self-worth, a kind of audio metaphor for how everything else wants to go at a much faster rate. Soccer Mommy would be the obvious touchstone, but it's unsurprising to find Elliott Smith is Delacruz's big influence.
Divorce - Antarctica
The Nottingham outfit's embrace of a countrified Americana that still finds an accessible enough hole for them to have toured with your favourite still extant corporate indie band of the late 00s. Yes, it's another summery track being released out here in late November, breezy guitar and crossing dual harmonies belying the dark, questioning heart of the lyrics that wouldn't disgrace The National, offset by metronomic drums, weeping violin and subtle pedal steel.
Emma-Jean Thackray feat. Reggie Watts - Black Hole
If there was anything more surprising this week than the repeat of the recently thought out of commission modernist jazz-funk polymath, it's that the only thing she's not responsible for bar the mastering on her first release in three years is a not entirely necessary interjection from the US comedian/beatboxer/general musical bandleader into the cosmic shuffling psych-jazz that nods equally at Roy Ayers and Parliament.
The Pill - Woman Driver
Getting ready for every new band tent next summer, Lily and Lottie's (and Rufus)' third two minute stop-start rager of high quality outlines, with no small amount of sarcasm, the titular related gender fender bender.
Sacred Paws - Another Day
Banjo! This is a new turn from Ray Aggs, and Ray Aggs has not been short of new turns across their thousand other projects, although it's actually their dad that plays it. Otherwise the first track from Aggs and Eilidh Rodgers' Scottish Album of the Year winning duo in five years retains their jerky post-punk special sauce, skipping, staccatoing and driving just as they always have whatever stringed instrument is at the forefront, just with a C&W tint emphasised when Aggs gets their reliable fiddle out in the outro.
The Wind-Up Birds - Guards
Leeds' highly experienced sardonic political post-punk firebrands, the group that taught Yard Act everything and James Smith will gladly tell you that, have a new single, searing guitars over Kroyd proselyting on moral panics and people in positions of privilege, all the usual good stuff.
Monday, November 25, 2024
Thursday, November 14, 2024
New sounds: 15/11/24
Autocamper - Summertime
Manchester by spiritual way of Dunedin, the janglepop revivalists (if it ever needs reviving, or indeed counts as one) have their calendar all wrong but their spirit absolutely in the right place, scratchy and jolting while borrowing The Clean's organ melodies.
HONESTY - TORMENTOR
Formed from the ashes of Eagulls, HONESTY really clicked for us seeing their front-projections and elusiveness heavy live set at Swn festival last month. Florence Shaw contributes to U R HERE, their debut album out February 7th, but there's nothing but the rocky undercurrent of post-punk about their sound, indebted much more to dark trip-hop, eddying synth waves that almost resurrect chillwave, glitchy IDM pulses and deep bass churn that gradually overwhelm in semi-restrained intensity.
John Glacier - Found
The London MC and producer has been doing interesting things for a couple of years now, culminating for the first phase in Like A Ribbon, out February 14th. The electronics fall over each other in stuttering beats and arpeggiated loops whilst Glacier's voice has the best female British rappers' sense of poetic misleading understatement.
Laundromat Chicks - Sunburn
Another summery song released just as the weather changes from autumn to winter? What's going on? Our favourite Viennese return with what might qualify as a countrified shuffle that flirts with the dreamiest of acoustic indiepop, occasionally sticks the fuzz pedals on just to remind you what they can do, then lapses into a quick anthemic coda just because. Third album Sometimes Possessed is out on 24th January... and they're coming over to the UK at last! Only confirmed gig so far is The Great Escape, which presumably means one tiny show full of VIP wristband holders, something in London and nothing else ever because nobody outside the south-east is allowed to enjoy any good things any more.
Man/Woman/Chainsaw - EZPZ
The sort of title track from their debut EP Eazy Peazy is as good a place as any to get into M/W/C's command of lift-and-separate dramatics (although if you blanche at Brixton Windmill bands exhibiting strings-laden melodrama indebted to Isaac-era Black Country New Road, you're going to hate what's coming soon), uplifted by Lola Cherry's shifting martial drumming.
Mary In The Junkyard - This is My California
Another Swn highlight, the trio's new single is more straightforwardly ethereal and sepia-toned nostalgic than the 'Big Thief at the Windmill'-style recent This Old House EP, but straightforward is its own concept when songs shift and express unease like theirs do.
Minor Conflict - Glue
Newly signed to the rarely less than fascinating PRAH Recordings, Bristolians Minor Conflict have that classic synth/bass/harp power trio line-up, vocalists Natalie Whiteland and Josh Smyth swapping lines before launching into a fascinating tapestry of abstract poetics, occasional sprechgesang, wordless chorale, angular bursts reminiscent of labelmates Pozi, jazzy percussion and delicate, well, harp. Who knows what it will all mean when Parallels EP is released on January 24th.
The Orchestra (For Now) - Wake Robin
So, as we were saying, Brixton Windmill bands exhibiting strings-laden melodrama indebted to Isaac-era Black Country New Road. Spectacular opening the Mountain stage as Green Man Rising winners and subject to the traditional whispered hype based on that one bloke who puts full sets on YouTube, there's seven of them, their debut single crosses the eight minute threshold and is a tumbling riot of dramatically intricate violin and piano flourishes and polyrhythmic drumming outbreaks in multiple movements, even, from languid to impassioned.
Manchester by spiritual way of Dunedin, the janglepop revivalists (if it ever needs reviving, or indeed counts as one) have their calendar all wrong but their spirit absolutely in the right place, scratchy and jolting while borrowing The Clean's organ melodies.
HONESTY - TORMENTOR
Formed from the ashes of Eagulls, HONESTY really clicked for us seeing their front-projections and elusiveness heavy live set at Swn festival last month. Florence Shaw contributes to U R HERE, their debut album out February 7th, but there's nothing but the rocky undercurrent of post-punk about their sound, indebted much more to dark trip-hop, eddying synth waves that almost resurrect chillwave, glitchy IDM pulses and deep bass churn that gradually overwhelm in semi-restrained intensity.
John Glacier - Found
The London MC and producer has been doing interesting things for a couple of years now, culminating for the first phase in Like A Ribbon, out February 14th. The electronics fall over each other in stuttering beats and arpeggiated loops whilst Glacier's voice has the best female British rappers' sense of poetic misleading understatement.
Laundromat Chicks - Sunburn
Another summery song released just as the weather changes from autumn to winter? What's going on? Our favourite Viennese return with what might qualify as a countrified shuffle that flirts with the dreamiest of acoustic indiepop, occasionally sticks the fuzz pedals on just to remind you what they can do, then lapses into a quick anthemic coda just because. Third album Sometimes Possessed is out on 24th January... and they're coming over to the UK at last! Only confirmed gig so far is The Great Escape, which presumably means one tiny show full of VIP wristband holders, something in London and nothing else ever because nobody outside the south-east is allowed to enjoy any good things any more.
Man/Woman/Chainsaw - EZPZ
The sort of title track from their debut EP Eazy Peazy is as good a place as any to get into M/W/C's command of lift-and-separate dramatics (although if you blanche at Brixton Windmill bands exhibiting strings-laden melodrama indebted to Isaac-era Black Country New Road, you're going to hate what's coming soon), uplifted by Lola Cherry's shifting martial drumming.
Mary In The Junkyard - This is My California
Another Swn highlight, the trio's new single is more straightforwardly ethereal and sepia-toned nostalgic than the 'Big Thief at the Windmill'-style recent This Old House EP, but straightforward is its own concept when songs shift and express unease like theirs do.
Minor Conflict - Glue
Newly signed to the rarely less than fascinating PRAH Recordings, Bristolians Minor Conflict have that classic synth/bass/harp power trio line-up, vocalists Natalie Whiteland and Josh Smyth swapping lines before launching into a fascinating tapestry of abstract poetics, occasional sprechgesang, wordless chorale, angular bursts reminiscent of labelmates Pozi, jazzy percussion and delicate, well, harp. Who knows what it will all mean when Parallels EP is released on January 24th.
The Orchestra (For Now) - Wake Robin
So, as we were saying, Brixton Windmill bands exhibiting strings-laden melodrama indebted to Isaac-era Black Country New Road. Spectacular opening the Mountain stage as Green Man Rising winners and subject to the traditional whispered hype based on that one bloke who puts full sets on YouTube, there's seven of them, their debut single crosses the eight minute threshold and is a tumbling riot of dramatically intricate violin and piano flourishes and polyrhythmic drumming outbreaks in multiple movements, even, from languid to impassioned.
Tuesday, November 05, 2024
New sounds: 5/11/24
Chemtrails - Miss Anthropocene
A straggler of a track, soon to get a 7" release, following The Joy Of Sects and ahead of a tour is another bugged-out glam stomp that expresses a desire to turn into a whale to escape TERFs and maybe uniquely for pop namechecks the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Fruit - Racehorse Deathwatch
The north-east sextet have been called "a morose and angry John Cooper Clarke fronting Mogwai". Well, that's as maybe, but it's far more in tune with your favourite modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks. What stands the track out from the vats of modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks is their post-Slint capture and release shifts, explosions of compressed noise dallying with sudden time signature changes and divebombing down to minimalism.
M(h)aol - Snare
Losing a charismatic frontperson would kill most bands, but M(h)aol have adapted since Róisín Nic Ghearailt left just over a year ago - they've also shed their bass player since then - with drummer Constance Keane taking over as vocalist. In fact the new single ties in with the change in that way, being about the gendering of instrument learning coupled to nervy, awkward Krautrock-adjacent off-beats and hypnotic noise.
Snõõper - Relay
Snõõper couldn't help but be one of our highlights of this year's End Of The Road Festival (a lot of fun, thanks), what with the prop-adorned, crowdsurfing, all-hyperenergy speed-punk assault like a vaguely more approachable Melt-Banana or Polysics. Ahead of a new tour they've dropped what for them counts as a ballad, merely quite fast for most of the time while still all razorblade bass and stabbing riffs.
Tunde Adebimpe - Magnetic
No sooner have TV On The Radio reformed for live dates next year - we note they're in the UK over Green Man weekend - than Adebimpe announces an as yet release date-free solo album on Sub Pop. Ironically the first single reaches back to imperial phase TVOTR in their Dancing Choose/New Health Rock/oh alright then Wolf Like Me in its buzzing, digitised insistent beat and Tunde's full commitment preacher's voice.
A straggler of a track, soon to get a 7" release, following The Joy Of Sects and ahead of a tour is another bugged-out glam stomp that expresses a desire to turn into a whale to escape TERFs and maybe uniquely for pop namechecks the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Fruit - Racehorse Deathwatch
The north-east sextet have been called "a morose and angry John Cooper Clarke fronting Mogwai". Well, that's as maybe, but it's far more in tune with your favourite modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks. What stands the track out from the vats of modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks is their post-Slint capture and release shifts, explosions of compressed noise dallying with sudden time signature changes and divebombing down to minimalism.
M(h)aol - Snare
Losing a charismatic frontperson would kill most bands, but M(h)aol have adapted since Róisín Nic Ghearailt left just over a year ago - they've also shed their bass player since then - with drummer Constance Keane taking over as vocalist. In fact the new single ties in with the change in that way, being about the gendering of instrument learning coupled to nervy, awkward Krautrock-adjacent off-beats and hypnotic noise.
Snõõper - Relay
Snõõper couldn't help but be one of our highlights of this year's End Of The Road Festival (a lot of fun, thanks), what with the prop-adorned, crowdsurfing, all-hyperenergy speed-punk assault like a vaguely more approachable Melt-Banana or Polysics. Ahead of a new tour they've dropped what for them counts as a ballad, merely quite fast for most of the time while still all razorblade bass and stabbing riffs.
Tunde Adebimpe - Magnetic
No sooner have TV On The Radio reformed for live dates next year - we note they're in the UK over Green Man weekend - than Adebimpe announces an as yet release date-free solo album on Sub Pop. Ironically the first single reaches back to imperial phase TVOTR in their Dancing Choose/New Health Rock/oh alright then Wolf Like Me in its buzzing, digitised insistent beat and Tunde's full commitment preacher's voice.
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