Johnny Depp to play Hoxton gig with Babybird?

Yee-hah: hot goss from the London music scene… Spoonfed is reporting that one John Depp is to take the stage next month with “are they really still going?” indie act Babybird, ie Stephen Jones & co, they of the seminal and arguably-criminal You’re Gorgeous.  I daren’t imagine the female singalong if he joins in with that one.  If not, a fiver says Jones introduces him with a “Here’s Johnny…” – hahaha!  Ha!  Ha?  Hmm.  Anyway, the all-important details: the gig in question is Babybird’s scheduled appearance at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen on 14 November.  Much more here (the lusty comments alone make it worthwhile).

Al Cool & The Stranger Wines

Tickly guitars, a streaky-sounding singer doting over a mythical lady, a chanted and muddy chorus… can it get more East London? Al Cool & The Stranger Wines remind of a good few other bands, but at the same they possess a charming, spunky swagger all of their own.  Painting pretty worlds over catchy riffs,  Mr Cool’s voice is appealing – somehow naive and wizened at the same time – but it’s the dainty string quirks in Céline’s quiet moments that truly lift this song into quality territory.

What else of this sixpiece, they of the liquor-themed name and forthcoming slot supporting Django Django, their fellow Hackneyites?  Well,  not a lot.  Céline is the only song on the MySpace page, which otherwise specifies their London roots and names.  I guess we’ll all just have to go along to The Victoria early to find out some more.

Live date:
Fri 30 October – The Victoria, Mile End

Al Cool & The Stranger Wines on MySpace

MP3: Al Cool & The Stranger Wines – Céline (zSHARE)

Editors release album through Google Street View

This is pretty cool – Editors have embedded images and tracks on Google Street View to promote their latest album, In This Light And On This Evening, released this Monday past.  Click here to share in the fun.

Basically, if you access Street View through the band’s website, you can go on a virtual treasure hunt through sections of London. You have to scroll around and hunt for icons (an orange chevron, as in the screengrab above) that will (if you click on them) display a 360-degree picture of Editors and some fans in various night-time tableaux, and stream songs from the album meanwhile.  The record was apparently inspired by late-night London, and the scenes thus provide meaning for each song. 

It’s an excellent, innovative idea, and one that made me listen again to a band I’d cooled on.  Editors seem much more synthy and stripped down these days, and the music does indeed have a noctural, noirish quality. 

Editors on MySpace
Editors’ website

MP3: Editors – Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool (zSHARE)
Buy Editor’s In This Light And On This Evening here (Amazon).

Charlotte Gainsbourg releases title track from Beck-produced album

The majestic La Gainsbourg has made the title track from her forthcoming, Beck-produced album IRM available on the internet.  At 2:38, it’s fast and flippant, but still there are enough clues to make assumptions about the new album - a moody, electronic haze, with intense loops; wacky, puzzling lyrics; and a rather itinerant feel, complete with sudden ending, that strong contradicts the rounded pretty ditties of previous Gainsbourg fare.  That was pretty and fragile; this is malevolent, acid indie with a filthy attitude.  You can well sense the Beck effect, but I don’t think that makes the eventual record (now due out 25 January) any less intriguing. 

Some almost useless trivia: apparently Beck’s father, David Campbell, was one of the musicians employed by Charlotte’s producer.  Thanks to Battery In Your Leg for that one.

Update 01/11: I’ve also now got a great electronica remix of this track by Diskjokke – available below. 

Charlotte Gainsbourg on MySpace

MP3: Charlotte Gainsbourg – IRM (zSHARE)
MP3: Charlotte Gainsbourg – IRM (Diskjokke remix) (zSHARE)

London Live Dates – Mayer Hawthorne, Django Django, Soap&Skin and more…

Time for another run-through of upcoming London live dates worth a peek.  The amount of tempting gigs in the coming weeks and months is positively bountiful; each offering diversion and delight for the soul in this season of sunsets, Starbucks sessions and X-Factor.  

YACHT
Aforementioned on this blog for a delectable Noah & The Whale remix, YACHT (the A is meant to be a triangle, but I’m in a hurry – thought I’d tell you for future reference, though) also put out some triumphant bum-wigglers, with fast beats and a firm ethos of fun and more fun.  Comprising Mr Jona Bechtolt and Ms Claire L. Evans, YACHT hail from Middle America and lace their electro pop with wacky samples, lyrical simplicity and, occasionally, delicious disco naffness.  They remind me of the evil, cool girl at school; you sort of resented her, but gee wouldn’t it have been good to be her friend?
Tues 13 October – Madame Jojo’s, Soho (tickets here)
YACHT on MySpace
MP3: YACHT – Psychic City (Voodoo City) (zSHARE)

Soap&Skin
After getting a little hype earlier in 2009, all’s gone a little quiet for the Austrian-born, Nico-covering Soap&Skin, aka 19-year-old Anja Plaschg.  It shouldn’t be; despite setting up tent in the very-popular ‘hauntingly beautiful’ field, and providing the mandatory soul-baring lyrics and indie chic, S&S has a becoming freshness to her frankness. Combining names like Greek Gods or words from a child’s make-believe language (Thanatos, Spiracle) and a healthy dose of Kate Bush-style chants, these are less songs than fickle, foxglove-laced cries for help. 
Tues 20 October – Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, Waterloo (details and tickets here)
Soap&Skin on MySpace
MP3: Soap&Skin – Spiracle (zSHARE)

Kurran & the Wolfnotes
This is part of a co-headline tour with the much less subtle Ex-Lovers for these London folksters, fronted and shaped by the hirsute Kurran.  I say folksters, but there’s also a real pop, fun element here; a lightness extremely rare in this doldrum-dwelling genre.  Listen out for Four Limbs and particularly new single Whatabitch; both combine pretty lyrics with a chirpy rhythm.  (Sidenote: can any sentence be more orally satisfying than “What A Bitch”?   Actually, yes apparently - this one…)
Thurs 22 October - Borderline, Soho
Kurran & the Wolfnotes on MySpace
MP3: Kurran & the Wolfnotes – Four Limbs (zSHARE)

Mayer Hawthorne
Looking like Mark Ronson but sounding like Aretha Franklin, 29-year-old Mayer belongs to the ‘I can’t believe that wasn’t recorded in the 70s’ set.  His delicate, drawling soul is almost Depression-era, in fact, full of seductive brass and percussion and jazz club languor. Background vocalists purr perfectly, and suddenly you feel everyone ought to be in sharp suits and velvet frocks.  Detroit-hailing, Hawthorne’s smoothness also makes him ripe for a remix, and guess who’s already filled his boots?  Marky Ronson, of course…
Tues 27 October – The Queen of Hoxton, Shoreditch (tickets here)
Mayer Hawthorne on MySpace
MP3: Mayer Hawthorne – I Wish It Would Rain (zSHARE)

Django Django
As The Guardian’s Paul Lester explains (note the hilarious press release quotes), defining Django Django, they of the cool-as-fuck streets of Dalston in East London, is no sinch.  But here goes: Skies Over Cairo sounds like a marching-beat on acid, or a funfair gone wrong; Storm’s more moddish, its vocals sung with a hint of disdain and its guitars howlin’ along like 70s blues; Love’s Dart is a drowsy sundowner with a clip-clop echo and Brothers Grimm lyrics;  Zummzumm has - oh sod it, just go and see them.
Fri 30 October  – The Victoria, Mile End (DD are headling a Shattered Satellite night – tickets here)
Django Django on MySpace
MP3: Django Django – Storm (zSHARE)

Ou Est Le Swimming Pool?
After I was rather mean about OELSP?’s faux French name, one of the band wrote me the nicest note: “Nice blog man. Thanks for writing about us. I thought we were in for a the grilling of our lives at the beginning there!!!” How cool and rather lovely is that?  I wish I could be so mature and glass-half-full.  Anyway, in no way because of this amazingness, I’ve come to like OELSP? a bit more in recent weeks - particularly the bold, big-beat and infectious electro-pop goodness of Dance The Way I Feel, which recently got the tub-thumping Armand Van Helden remix treatment.
Fri 30 October - Proud Galleries, Camden (with Amanda Blank and We Have Band) (tickets here)
Ou Est Le Swimming Pool? on MySpace
MP3: Ou Est Le Swimming Pool? – Dance The Way I Feel (Armand Van Helden remix) (zSHARE) (original available via previous post)

Red Eye Banquet – a London band remembered

This is supposedly to be a blog spending lots of its time telling you about NEW London acts – but instead, just this once, I’m going to tell you about an OLD band that I’m pretty sure are now long gone.  Nostalgia on an autumnal, drizzly Sunday – it seems appropriate, really.

The band is Red Eye Banquet.  In 2006 they were hotly-tipped – see this BBC gush – and boasting a good presence on the London live scene, and a record release via Blissfields Records.  But in 2007 they disappeared off the radar; no news, no shows, nada.  And that it seems is that – the official website is dormant, Blissfields Records is gone, the MySpace page was last logged into in mid 2008 (although the blog had someone log in earlier this summer) and any internet hit is ancient.

It’s sad – REB were never a great band in my opinion, but rather a good band blessed with some great songs.  Their style was richly, admirably and perhaps too-ambitiously varied: covering love ballands, rap and thrash to name but a few genres.  The lyrics were simple tales with bigger meanings, or simply endearing and starkly honest love letters.  Singer Michael Shearer had a good voice, and the rest of the band could definitely play.  So what went wrong?

I saw the quartet live twice and the one problem I had was that their sets didn’t really reflect their MySpace sound.   Live, REB played a lot faster and noisier than on record, the gigs much more rock-dominated than I had anticipated, especially more melancholic songs like Wanda.  Perhaps it was nerves and/or an intent to captivate the crowd – it must always be easier to make more noise than less – but whatever the reason, I wonder if it was this intense performance style that eventually hindered REB. If you saw them live and liked the noisiness, on record the band might be disappointingly sedate; do it the other way round, like me, and you wonder if you’ve overestimated that so-appealing mellowness.  Neither scenario is a positive one for the band.  Be it slow, weird, upside down or behind an ugly vocal catheter, I always think performers should perform similar to their recorded sound.  Too many bands fall into the trap of playing faster, rockier sets live than their music necessitates.

I was particularly upset by this in REB’s instance because they didn’t even play my favourite song of theirs, Myfanwy.  It remains to this day a scintillating tune and mainstay on my iPod: simultaneously a tale of young lovers in a Welsh coastal village, of a confused chappie, and (perhaps relevant to my thoughts earlier) of the pressure on REB to do this and that – in this case fake tans and hip hop.  I’m ever compelled to scream along to it, face clenched in effort, and my neighbours terrified.  And each time I hear it I’m a little sadder about REB’s apparent demise.  Those boys had talent.

If anyone has news of them, or thinks I have them completely wrong, do please write in and put me right.

Red Eye Banquet on MySpace

MP3: Red Eye Banquet – Myfanwy (zSHARE)
MP3: Red Eye Banquet – Wanda (zSHARE)

Awesome Tapes From Africa: paying my respects

Yesterday, finally making a links page, I included Awesome Tapes From Africa, a brilliant blog run out of Brooklyn, where the guy uploads old vinyl of unheralded or little known African acts. 

Without exaggerating in the slightest, this is a website that single-handedly made me appreciate African music.  Before this, all I had heard was clips during BBC sports videos or tribal dance numbers in Bond films.  But ATFA is a Pandora’s Box of magic: log on and you can spend hours listening to rap, rock, hip hop, dance, folk and anything else, courtesy of every African country from Libya to Lesotho. 

The site is here: Awesome Tapes From Africa

But meantime, here are five of my absolute favourites downloaded from the site:

MP3: Dynamike – Les Raisons De Ma Colere (zSHARE)  Senegalese rap, beautifully understated and mellow, to the tune of Paul Simon’s 50 Ways To Lose Your Lover
MP3: Fernando Moutchatcha – Moutchatcha (zSHARE)  I doubt this is the right name, but who cares – so funky, so fluent, so good
MP3: Geoffrey Oryema – Makambo (zSHARE)  A sleepy daydream, a death spell, a piece of poetry
MP3: Franco & T.P.O.K Jazz – Mario (zSHARE)  Franco’s apparently a Congolese legend; this is sublime jazz-funk
MP3: Mustafa Ouaadou – Track From Les Maitres De La Chanson Amazigh (Live) (zSHARE)  I listened to this in Fez once, and it was perfection: so Arabic and mysterious, and neverending like the city’s medina…

What I particularly love about all of these songs is that I can’t understand the lyrics in any of them – although I still sing along, pretending like an idiot to know the words, and make up my own meanings and scenarios.  The fact that I love them regardless  of lyrical comprension, though, means it must simply be about the music; about the sheer power and pull of good music, and the common, magnificent thrill that comes with hearing any example of it.

Some Of It Was True! – where we’re at…

One thing about music blogs is that you hear a lot about the music, and little about the music blog.  To remedy that, and just because it seems like a decent idea, here’s an update on how this particular blog is going:

I’ve spent much of today finally pulling together a Links page – it’s over there on the right.  The rest of the afternoon involved me trying to work out how to get a plug-in music player on this site.  And failing.  See, because this is a free WordPress blog, such things are simply not possible, unless you’re incredibly a) clever, b) sneaky and c) techie.  I only score 1/3.  So for the same reason that I can’t have mp3s actually on the site, nor video, I’m prohibited from having a plug-in player, allowing you to listen to what I think is currently ace.

The very obvious solution to this is to start paying for a site.  And I think I will do that – I need to sit down with a more tech-minded friend of mine for some help in doing that, and transferring content and pages across as seamlessly as possible, but it should hopefully happen inside the month.   Once accomplished, hopefully this blog can kick on and become much more energised.

Why didn’t I do that in the first place?  Well, mainly because I have a history of starting projects, and then abandoning them.  I was determined not to do that with this blog, but didn’t quite trust my determination enough to stump up money right away.  I do now; I’m pleased with how the blog has progressed, and confident I can keep steadily improving it.  Right now it averages about 1,000 unique visitors a week, not too bad after four months and some change.

As for me, I’m sickeningly busy – besides this I work a 9-5.30 day job in PR, write film reviews, do some freelance journalism, work in a nature park and play football.  All of which leaves not-nearly-enough time for this blog and all it entails – trawling the web, listening carefully to hundreds of tracks, signing up to millions of newsletters, and on and on… That’s why I sometimes go quiet for a few days, and why I’m not too hot with correspondence.  All that said, I am happy – I have an amazing girlfriend, for the first time in my life really, and I have two legs, eyes and ears.  Sometimes I forget that stuff, and how lucky I am to have them in London.

If anyone has any wisdom, complaints or simply words of support/disgust, please do write in – for a blogger, there’s nothing better than hearing from people reading your stuff.   Otherwise,  I hope everyone reading this is well – and sincere thanks for coming to the site.  On we go…
Richard.

PS:  I’ve received the new Vampire Weekend single – it seems alternately frillier and fuller than previous VW fare, and generally makes me feel all warm and wintry.  Until I find out about Horchata, that is.  As the lyrics suggest, it is a drink, but in no way is it Christmassy or anysuch: in fact the Spanish tipple is best served cold in summer.  It’s made from barley, almonds, rice and sesame seeds.  Ew?  Ew.  Who says I couldn’t write a cookery blog?  (Thanks Wikipedia)

MP3: Vampire Weekend – Horchata (zSHARE)

Vampire Weekend on MySpace
Buy Vampire Weekend’s second album, Contra, from 11 January at their website.

The Grants – beautiful and unsigned

Chill-out rock: not a term you hear often, and not a genre ever recognised.  But it’s by far the simplest way I can find to describe the elegant melodies of The Grants, about the best new band I’ve heard this year.

Hailing from Liverpool, the fourpiece produce aching, earnest epics that flicker like musical paraffin lamps.  Forlorn bass sounds and tissue-soft drums cosy around the thrillingly tender guitar notes and Chris Grant’s gorgeous vocals – sometimes rich and wholesome, sometimes timid, echoey and ethereal.  Subjects coverered include  gangs and violence (on Our Story), yet the style is ever lyrical, and graceful.  Not for nothing did Alan McGree label Grant’s songwriting “something akin to Nick Drake writing songs on a council estate”.  With lines like “I don’t accept that / Refuse to accept that”, and the prolonged sense of self-doubt and righteousness, it’s also something like Dickens meets Arthur Lee.

Sonically, the closest forbears are perhaps Echo & The Bunnymen and Glasvegas, as McGee notes, or perhaps The Verve.  But The Grants have a much more haunting, languid tone than those acts, able to bring a serene peace to any room.  McGee’s projection of fame, first in March 2008 and later at the start of this year, haven’t materialised for some reason.  But his backing of the wrong horse is our gain, with The Grants still cheap to see whenever they play London.  This is one time where (musical) beauty doesn’t come at a cost.

MP3: The Grants – Our Story (zSHARE)
MP3: The Grants – The Rules (zSHARE)

The Grants on MySpace 

REEEMIX: Florence, Fool’s Gold, Temper Trap and Noah & The Whale get the treatment

I don’t know masses about dance music, but I do have an opinion or two on remixes – formed while listening to the The Remix, a terrific show on Xfm, and dating back to the time when CD singles had four remixes and a radio edit as B sides.  I think a good remix – much like a good cover - is one that takes a song in a different direction; progresses it somehow.  Conversely, a bad one is a remix that does little to a tune, simply changing the ambience slightly, or perhaps speeding it up a tad.  There’s no black and white in my mind, but I definitely see the brilliance of some remixes while despairing of others.

I write all this because a surge of interesting ones have landed in my in-tray recently.  Here’s a run-through with some brief thoughts, and the download links, including the original song for comparison’s sake:

Fool’s Gold – Surprise Hotel (Phaseone Remix)
I loved this song as it was, meaning Phaseone’s reworking takes some getting used to.  The funky beats of the original are buried beneath a distorted rubble of samples, a forlorn organ refrain, a strange shouting man with a Latino accent, breaking glass and slams of cymbals.  The effect is almost to neuter the original, substituting its lightness and charm for weirdo darkness. But what darkness: an engrossing, elegant and very inventive piece of trance. (NB: Michachu & The Shapes have also remixed this song recently)
Remix MP3: Fool’s Gold – Surprise Hotel (Phaseone Remix) (zSHARE)
Original MP3: Fool’s Gold – Surprise Hotel (zSHARE)
Phaseone on MySpace

Florence & The Machine – You’ve Got The Love (The xx Remix)
Not so much a remix as a cover of Florence’s own recent cover, but one featuring samples from Flo’s cover.  Make sense?  Probably not.  (It’s actually even more complicated still, as musicaddiction explains.) Basically, Oliver and Romy from The xx sing the Candi Staton verses (“Sometimes I feel like throwing…”) in typically glum style, and then the chorus consists of F&TM’s “You got the..” and “I knowww” vocals being echoed. All of which makes for an unusual sum of parts that I don’t think quite gels togther.  But it’s certainly more creative than Florence’s own cover, where she simply sang the song exactly as Candi, but just better, with some token Joanna Newsom-style harps.
Remix MP3: Florence & The Machine – You’ve Got The Love (The xx Remix) (zSHARE)
Original MP3: Florence & The Machine – You’ve Got The Love (zSHARE)
The xx on MySpace

The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition (Alan Wilkis Remix)
One of the year’s biggest records is given the techno treatment here, Wilkis draping echoes and a shower of lively keyboard effects around Dougy’s lavish vocals. It’s very well done and would likely to famously in big dance clubs given the chance.  But ultimately what I like about this song is the Temper Trap part, not anything the remix added; it’s like a hip hop song when you love the sampled chorus, but not the rap before and after it.  You might as well just plump for the original.
Remix MP3: The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition (Alan Wilkis Remix) (zSHARE)
Original MP3: The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition (zSHARE)
Alan Wilkis on MySpace

Noah & The Whale – Blue Skies (YACHT Remix)
A bit like the aforementioned Ms Newsom, Noah & The Whale are an act I’m always intrigued to see remixed just because their sound is so far from dance – meaning the remix has to be quite a departure.  This is admittedly one of their funkier songs, but still YACHT perform wonders on a minimalist slant: adding in a distorted vocal here and a buzzing digital beat there, and retaining a lovely chill-out feel throughout.  (NB: The Twelves have also remixed this song recently)
Remix MP3: Noah & The Whale – Blue Skies (YACHT Remix) (zSHARE)
Original MP3:  Noah & The Whale – Blue Skies (zSHARE)
YACHT on MySpace