Sweeping The Nation presents... Doesn't Your Balloon Ever Land?

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Last April we unveiled We Make Our Own Mythologies, a handpicked selection of artists representing the cream of newish UK talent who we'd been writing about over the previous few years, raising literally a few pence short of £190 for charity.

Sixteen months on, we thought it was time to update the selection. Presenting Doesn't Your Balloon Ever Land?, twenty-five fresh selections harvested from talent we've praised on these blog pages, stylistically and fidelity wayward as you'd expect, some exclusives/rarities. It's available on a pay what you want basis with a set minimum of £3, and all proceeds will go to Macmillan Cancer Support, the charity that provides practical and advisory support for cancer sufferers. May we extend very grateful thanks to the artists and their representatives who helped out and generously donated tracks, with particular thanks to the labels Alcopop!, Brainlove, House Vs Home, Melodic, Philophobia Music, Popty-Ping and Robot Needs Home.

Onwards...



Her Parents - Win The Lottery, Kick The Fuck Out Of Your House
Kicking off with an exclusive advance track from debut album Physical Release by an offbeat twisted punk band featuring members of Dananananaykroyd, Internet Forever (qv) and Stairs To Korea.

Runaround Kids - Lesser Loved
TWirily melodic guitar pop running atop a knife edge from the other great Wakefield trio, taken from the Runaround Kids Vs We Are Losers split 12" EP on Philophobia Music.

Heavy Petting Zoo - Deathproof
Fiery, fuzzy lo-fi coiled spring garage rock from Swansea youths who've earned Yeah Yeah Yeahs comparisons.

Standard Fare - Dead Future
Sheffield's smart janglepop titan trio, "the best and most loveable aspects of indie guitar music" according to the Sunday Times, offer a track from most recent album Out Of Sight, Out Of Town (Melodic Records)

Just Handshakes (We're British) - Cut And Run
Exclusive new song from the effervescent janglers with a twist, offering sweet summer pop with hidden depth.

This Many Boyfriends - Just Saying
A recent offcut by the wry, quasi-ramshackle NME-endorsed funpoppers ahead of their debut album, due in October and produced by the Cribs' Ryan Jarman.

Fashoda Crisis - Hunting The Poor For Sport
A preview of the Jowls Of Justice EP, due in October, from the vituperative Southend trio who, to quote themselves, "play from the bottom of their twisted, blackened tumourous little heart"

Amateur Historians - The Party And The Aftermath
From their very recent debut EP New Homes/New Hopes, Belfast's contribution to the Pavement-to-Johnny Foreigner lineage of indie rock pulled into exciting new shapes.

Screaming Maldini - Life In Glorious Stereo
Expansive pop geometry from the sextet's forthcoming debut album, full of choral flourishes, trumpets and strings.

T.O.Y.S - Mirror
Yet another northern trio, landing somewhere between lo-fi garage and motorik freakbeat as led by organ and fuzz bass, this track from a forthcoming EP on Odd Box Recordings.

Maybeshewill - Спутник-2
A B-side from recent sessions of glitchy, turning monumental confident post-rock from the Leicester instrumentalists.

Mowbird - And We Have A Winner
An as yet unreleased swirling psych-twang slacker odyssey from much admired Wrexham band who play Green Man this very weekend.

Joanna Gruesome - Pantry Girl
A cut from the recent self-released EP by slackers who simultaneously recall the British and American early 90s arms of shoegaze and noisy college rock.

Anguish Sandwich - So Gone
And yet more music that falls short of high fidelity. Reverberating quietly efficient while still cracked Pixies-ish riffs, this is from last year's No More Cows EP.

Nature Set - Avalanche
A Sheffield micro-supergroup injecting pop with undefinable menace while still capable of filling an indie dancefloor. From the If I Crawl, You Crawl EP on Dufflecoat Records

Spectral Park - Filler #54
Luke Donovan, who is Spectral Park, is working on his debut album but dropped off this rough offcut, a miniature of almost literally warped bedroom radiophonic psychedelia.

Napoleon IIIrd - The Hardline Optimist (Radio Version)
A mildly reworked new mix of a track from the constantly inventive 2010 album Christiania (Brainlove Records).

The All Golden - Bright And Early
Hitherto unreleased sunkissed pastoral psych-pop instrumental from Pete Gofton (J Xaverre, George Washington Brown, Johnny X)'s latest project.

Fire Island Pines - Oh Therese
Luxuriantly sophisticated maxi-pop from Wadebridge, Cornwall sextet whose kitchen sink small package melodramas has garnered venerated Smiths/Pulp comparisons.

August Actually - Another Fucking Love Song
An as yet unreleased slice of delicately wry folk-pop.

Katie Malco - Sad Eyes
Fife-originating, London-based, lyrically sharp acoustic pop with an optimistic aura. Produced by the co-writer of Snow Patrol's Run, this, from last year's Katie Malco And The Slow Parade EP.

Backyards - Statues
The album's ninth act from Yorkshire, from this February's If You're Scared EP comes an atmospherically complex, heart on sleeve dynamism that emotively carouses into lush strings.

LookiMakeMusic - I Don't Make Threats, I Make Promises
From splendidly titled EP Hate Me For A Reason, Let The Reason Be Hate, the wordy Birmingham 'post-indiepopcore' types hover between emo (in its original meaning), mathrock and post-LC! elaborate underground.

Haiku Salut - Vowels As Clear As Church Bells
Baroque, neo-post-rock, folktronica... whatever, it's three women of Derbyshire exploring avant-orchestral languid instrumental soundscapes. This is from last year's How We Got Along After The Yarn Bomb EP.

Internet Forever - 3D (Body In The Thames Anaglyph mix)
And to finish, the shadowy remixer/producer reworks a track from the splendid debut album of this year from the twee-noise trio of repute.



That link to that album again: Doesn't Your Balloon Ever Land?

Sweeping The Nation presents... We Make Our Own Mythologies

This album is no longer available

Released to coincide with STN's sixth birthday on Friday - we're organising a gathering of fans along the Mall in central London to mark the day - We Make Our Own Mythologies (click through the picture, which is Alex Hale's singular handiwork) is our first proper compilation of the sort of British bands we've expended far too much effort on promoting for no other reason than we think you, the discerning audience, should be listening to them. We're selling it through Bandcamp on a pay-what-you-like basis with a set minimum of £3 (or each track is 50p). All the money made after Bandcamp and PayPal take their cuts will go direct to Macmillan Cancer Support, providing care to improve the lives of people affected by cancer, an organisation that provided invaluable help to my family in the last couple of months of last year.

Twenty tracks therein, including a number of exclusives, demos and rarities, very generously donated by artists and labels concerned upon our request, and we publicly and graciously thank them all. We didn't ask for any sort of umbrella theme or stylistic levelling off, so this is a bit wayward and idiosyncratic as far as charity compilations go, but you'd expect nothing less from us after so long. Let's have a quick rundown.


Johnny Foreigner - Who Needs Comment Boxes When You've Got Knives
One of the bands we've been proud to say we've sometimes over-keenly followed from early on, and we know they know about us too. Taken from You Thought You Saw A Shooting Star etc., their EP from the end of 2011 on Alcopop! Records.

Ace Bushy Striptease - EchoeseChoesecHoesechOesechoEsechoeS
Birmingham's excitably wonky lo-fi kids offer an exclusive track from their third album, The Words That You Said Are Still Wet In My Head, to be released some time in late summer/autumn. They're currently touring with The Middle Ones and will be playing Indietracks.

Well Wisher - Babe Issues
Well Wisher are from Manchester and are reminiscent of that Kinsella-aided wave of math-post-hardcore bands Chicago spewed out over the mid-90s, all spidery guitars, collapsible rhythms, strident vocals and emotive self-regard. This comes from a forthcoming split 7" with Canadian fellow travellers Polina.

Kidnapper Bell - Falling And Laughing
Three spikily intricate Birmingham-based bands in the first four! Kidnapper Bell have been around for three or four years now developing their sturdily livewire, almost poppy explosive powderkegs of jumping post-post-punk. This is taken from their recent limited edition double A-side.

Codex Leicester - Hey Hey Hot Legs
Across the Midlands to... well... Leicester, and a band whose demos, all tightly wound post-hardcore guitar abuse with a restless art-metal twist, have been exciting many a cutting edge radio DJ.

Stagecoach - Ice Age
From 2009's We Got Tazers! EP, an example of the much touted London-via-Surrey outfit's knowledge of the best route through dishevelled, compact power-pop.

Honour Before Glory - A Beautiful Reminder
Exclusive track from recent sessions by the new project of Whiskas, who you'll know best from ¡Forward Russia! and who now trades in reverberating, fractured atmospheric soundscapes with heartfelt songwriting at its core.

Her Name Is Calla - Pour More Oil
From last year's stunning debut album proper The Quiet Lamb, a stately, unhurried march towards the flames building from delicacy to a bloodletting of strings, brass and cathartic cries.

Rumour Cubes - At Sea
An EP out last October in small physical quantities, from which this comes, proved a tantalising enough introduction to a soaringly cinematic six-piece who deal in ebbing and flowing textures, led by strings, undertowed by electronics.

Under Alien Skies - Slew
We've been banging on about the Prestatyn duo for a while now, because every release fascinates with the way it perambulates around hazy washes of harmonies, effects and hovering beats. This previously unreleased track layers their usual blissed out vocals on more distorted terrain to unnerving effect.

Stairs To Korea - Josiah's A Writer Now (demo)
Having just released everything he's put out so far on Little Fractures EP, Will Vaughan's newest material starts off like a fight between a ragged rock band and a wall of amateur electronics and only gets less explicable, and thus more good, from there.

Moscow Youth Cult - Sakura Sakura
The Nottingham-based duo play live alongside cut-up video of bizarre sci-fi films and their music is a bit like that too, skew-wiff electro beats and loops producing a kind of 8-bit electropop the charts wouldn't recognise.

The Japanese War Effort - Pool Attendant
From an EP called Surrender To Summer that had an almost only rumoured about release last summer but will be reissued properly by Song, By Toad soon enough, Jamie Scott feeds hazy summer melodies into a broken electronic forcefield and attempts to form a strain of oblique storytelling out of the remnants.

King Post Kitsch - Walking On Eggshells
Another recent addition to Song, By Toad's splendid stable, a mysterious Glaswegian only publicly known as Charlie attempts to carve a path between lyrically astute classic melodicism and hotwrired electronics on this from last year's Monomaniac EP.

Japanese Sleepers - Whistler's Breath
From last month's Little Victories EP, released by Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation, Japanese Sleepers are equally from Nottingham and, yeah, Sheffield and merge folk-tinged, tenderly reflective indie - Bobby Wratten should be jealous - with just off-centre melodies and electronic rhythms.

My First Tooth - Silent Spring
Another Alcopop! product, Northampton's My First Tooth specialise in melancholy, almost summery folk-pop with a heartaching undercurrent. There is banjo plucking. There are uplifting wordless chorales. This is taken from last year's album Territories.

Ralegh Long and the Primary 3 - The Trees of The Field
Taken from sessions for an EP to be released later in the year, an example of the directly expressed ideas and enigmatic melodic reconstruction that's seen Long compared to Robyn Hitchcock and Darren Hayman.

The Sound Of The Ladies - The Only Girl Who Would Ever Break My Heart
In his downtime Martin Austwick is Martin The Sound Man, resident third wheel on the award-winning Answer Me This! podcast. He's also an actual qualified quantum physicist. And as you can hear here he's also a lyrically wry and expansive singer-songwriter.

Daughter - Run (demo)
Daughter is Elena Tonra, a 19 year old from north London with an acoustic guitar, a sweetly acidic, vulnerable yet commanding voice and a poetic bent, deeply resigned to vicissitudes of love and caring. The Communion people are already behind her and she's just released the His Young Heart EP.

Shy And The Fight - Living
Finally, an exclusive track from a forthcoming EP, Written about a band family member's fight against cancer, from Chester's heartfelt hookworthy hoedown folk-country septet, recently heard on the Jack Wills advert of Daily Mail fame.


We Make Our Own Mythologies - buy now for at least £3