Automatic Writing

Automatic Writing are channelling the spirit of early 80s, avant garde electro. Think Gary Numan or David Bowie, with a touch of Wild Beasts on acid and you are there. Modern Art (mp3) deviates into pounding hard house beats, not too dissimilar to Pendulum in their angry, metal phase – a bit of an oddity. These are densely textured tracks, where vocals serve more as an additional timbre than to provide any intelligible lyrical interpretation of the music. It oozes cool, and with their use of triangles and genres such as ‘nachtmusik’ and ‘future pagan’, I can imagine, if not already, that they will be a hit in Shoreditch.

The Tricks

The Tricks‘ Remember Me is precisely the kind of song SOIWT typically steers away from: we like obscure, unfashionable, long-odds weirdsville, whereas this is quite-obvious, mainstream and a surefire success.  But, dammit, like the man who can never quite give up the fags, I can’t quite resist this one.  It’s a bit of a pop-rock gem and, secretly, I want to jig to it all day.  Don’t anyone tell Harriet…

Lux Lisbon – Your Heart is a Weapon the Size of your Fist

Lux Lisbon is the child of Northerner, Stuart Rook. This child has been set up for some knocks. He’s a bit on the chunky side, dressed in clothes a bit too small for him and he likes to write poetry, dishing out his feelings on a plate. He goes up to girls in the playground and tells them they have ‘such a pretty face’, only to be laughed off the hopscotch court. He’s a prime victim for bullies, being tripped up in the corridor, having poster paint penises painted on his back and gets chased home from school. At least grandpa Tom Robinson of 6 Music fame cherishes him dearly, knowing that soon he shall blossom into a strapping young man. And that day has come. He has shed his puppy fat, grown a pair (of balls) and has become that edgy (still slightly weird) kid who’s actually alright. And this, my friends, is Your Heart is a Weapon the Size of Your Fist (mp3).

Both weird fat kid and his cooler incarnation, sexed-up teenager, will be performing tonight at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town – get yourself along to make sense of this slightly mental analogy.

Tom James Parmiter – the album

We raved about Tom James Parmiter‘s elegant electronic compositions a while back, and now a whole darn album’s arrived.  You can buy it from Zube Records; re-listen to the blissful Kyoto Dreams, below, to get a sense of the trippy, minimalist majesty lying in store.

French Kissing – Wild Woman / Love Is For

Dear summer: listen up, and listen well.  French Kissing have released (via Croque Macadam) a pair of giddy, slacker-pop gems in the shape of double-A side Wild Woman / Love Is For.  It’s a surf-tinged record crying out for rolled-up tee shirts, Ambre Solaire, louche behaviour at late-evening barbecues and sunset Saturday joints in the park.  It’s crying out for all of these things, but we can’t do them because you won’t arrive.  Please hurry up.  Thanks, yours sincerely, Some Of It Was True! x

Monday Music – 14 May 2012

Monday Music’s the one weekly post wherein Some Of It Was True! drops its London-only rule.

Waskerley Way – Sista

An electro shanty with one motherlicker of a build-up, Sista opens with some Underworld-esque revolving swishy noises before breaking into some 6/8 –  a bit Leftfield (in both senses), and from there, it just intensifies to some brilliant electro noise. This geordie producer gets extra points for pioneering the feline-influenced genres ‘meowgaze’ and ‘catwave’. Cracking.

Mozart Parties – Memory Thunderstorm

Picture vast landscapes with rolling hills, trickling brooks, cobbled lanes and a load of sheep, then give it a flouescent, Warhol wash and pop some fairylights on those sheep, and you’ve got Mozart Parties’ Memory Thunderstorm.

Milagres - Glowing Mouth

Everyone is so SO keen to compare Milagres to other bands. The comparison that upsets me the most is that to Coldplay. WHAT DO YOU MEAN? Shut up! Glowing Mouth is proof of far more intelligent stuff, with the perfect balance of textures from keys and percussion, and Kyle Wilson’s incredibly expressive voice, which with ease floats into falsetto, almost like he’s reading you a bedtime story. Chris Martin and his merry men could not do this. What does Paul Lester know anyway, right? (Aside from most things about music.)

Beat Culture – Useless

Most 17 year old chaps are busy trying to get served in watering holes, or get in lady holes. But not producer Beat Culture. Nope, he’s on his second album, and just starting to perform live sets. Useless is his latest creation, which I stumbled upon by recommendation of Blackbird Blackbird on Facebook. Its a dreamy, electronic work, with lots of clinky metallic sounds and high, child-like vocals. If desperation, like probably a lot of his peers, is getting him nowhere, producing this kind of magic is most certainly going to get him laid. It sounds like I’m offering. I’m not.

A.P. Witomski - Ambulance

Arnaud Witomski’s Ambulance is sex. The kind that struts into the room, dressed in tight lurex leggings and a flouncy shirt, and starts rubbing his groin on your leg. Sure, you’re bemused (your parents sat across the living room are choking on their bourbon biscuits) but you know what, it’s fine, you sort of like it and are quite happy to go along with it until he gets tired and gives up. Weird sexy moments aside, check out Arnaud’s latest album Transmissions.

Saul Ashby

Saul Ashby looks like a heartbreaking, leg-shaking rock ‘n’ roller, not too dissimilar to a young John Lennon (well, the one portrayed in ‘Nowhere Boy’). His music is hearty; his latest release Debutantes packs a punch, sounding a bit like a polished Babyshambles, and Runaway Hearts (mp3) is an upbeat ballad. He says ‘It makes me smile that I can publicly spill my guts whilst people drink and dance to it’. Hmmm…If these tracks are anything to go by, those are rather squeaky clean guts, which is good news for the caretaker. Debutantes is released on the Fly 2 label (FLY, the former, died) on Monday 13 May (aka. tomorrow).

Siren

Not content with being a professional skateboarder, the now-London-based Stefan Niedermeyer is now Siren, a full-time pop musician working with ex-Metronomy (Ash Workman) and Arcade Fire (Craig Silvery) producers.  If that makes you sick, prepare to be sicker.  Because.. somehow, the bugger’s only 21.  It gets worse too: his minstrel music is sodding good.  Jesus.  There’s the bouncy The Surrender, a duet with Lucy Rose that’s like a modern German remake of French yéyé, and then the darker, more angular Buckets of Blood, alt-pop cooked so right.  As if to hammer all this home once and for all, the latter’s video (excellent, surprisingly) features Siren skating over London landmarks.  Just when I thought I’d achieved a lot today, too…

Ruby & The Rib Cage

The titular Ruby, header of this London fivepiece, has a voice that soars, magnificent and true, and yet tarnished, hinting at previous setbacks, at a lively life, at a pain channeled to wisdom.  These thrilling vocals are the water on which elegantly sails Ruby & The Ribcage‘s stop-start indie rock; a fulsome, often glorious, sometimes solemn, always engrossing sound that must be stuffing excellent when heard in an intimate live venue.

Night Angles

Don’t worry, say Night Angles (newly signed to Tender Age), the police are coming, complete with ’80s movie-style slow-mo sirens.