Monday Music – 23 January 2012
Brother Reade – Lucifer
As dark, dense and sweet as treacle, this dubby, reverb-drenched muttering from LA hip-hop duo Brother Reade is best suited to antisocial hours – until 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the morning… (track six below)
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Damu – Ridin’ The Hype (Feat. Trim)
It’s 8am and you’re still at the party listening to some sexy, glitched-up haze rap by Manchester’s Damu. The drugs are wearing off, the vodka’s disappeared, the girl you fancied left hours or days ago and you should really go home, but there’s a world of dog-walkers, daylight and milkmen waiting out there, a world of demands and Anadin, and you dont want that, not yet, not yet..
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The Big Pink – Hit The Ground (Superman) (Forest Swords remix) (mp3)
I’m not so sold on TBP’s return-song, but hell do I love this remix by Liverpool producer Forest Swords. It sees anguished shrieks sound incongruously over a pleasant piano beat.
The Big Pink – Hit the Ground (Forest Swords Remix) by FilterMexico
Maria Minerva – Ruff Trade
A sunny, soothing, swirling song (for best results, play loud via head/earphones) about a horrid subject. The triviality makes it easier to consider the issues at stake, though, or so it seems to me.
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Nicholas Jaar – With Just One Glance (Feat. Scout Larue)
In a secret room, a woman sings slowbeat laments so piningly sorrowful that the walls themselves get teary.
Nicolas Jaar – With Just One Glance by Hunt&Track
Carey Mulligan – New York, New York
From Steve McQueen’s Shame, not only is Mulligan’s super-slow, jazz-lounge version of the Sinatra classic elegant and daring, but it helps form a revelatory scene in a generally oblique film. It’s featured in the trailer below, while the full version’s here.
Ghost Eyes
One day I say super-significant things, and speak surely of potential holidays, meeting friends, Valentine’s Day, plans. Then another day, soon after, I feel I’d rather be alone, that I’m not as besotted as I should be, that I’m not sure at all. Why? I don’t know. The answer is impenetrable: a language I don’t speak, a key under a too-heavy rock. The answer is the core of these shadowy, compelling songs by rising London stars Ghost Eyes. All I know is how stupidly sorry I am for the pain caused.
Phantom Mountain (Minotaur Shock remix) by GHOST-EYES
Ghost Eyes - Little Pill (mp3)
Django Django return
After a two-year silence, Hackney psych-rockers Django Django finally have a new, self-titled album due, on 30 January. The three songs below give some idea of what to expect. A penchant for discord apparently remains present and correct, such are varying styles of Waveforms and Drumforms‘ trance-laden atmospherica and Default‘s chirpy, radio-friendly hooks. That latter song also appears to foretell more of a mainstream appeal; this from a band whose furious anthems previously made for unconvinced first-time listeners and the hardcorest of devotee fans. The new stuff sounds excellent either way, and one thing’s for sure: what with this return and the imminent release of Django Unchained, Tarantino’s much-anticipated western, ‘Django’ is set to be one of 2012′s buzzwords.
Django Django – Drumforms by Django Django
Recoil: Wilde
Last night in the Old Queen’s Head, normal rules didn’t apply. During a wondrous, spellbinding set by Wilde – aka Ollie Briggs, recently featured here – the Islington institution’s upstairs room was packed, but Logic clearly hadn’t made it. It was obvious by how Wilde was the first act on stage, and yet instead of the mandatory sparse room, he had a packed, attentive audience. And then by how, despite this being a London gig by an unheralded act, there was hushed wonder rather than an irritating volume of drunken chatter.
I couldn’t have been further from irritation. Wilde’s offbeat folk stylings and pleasingly crazy-structured songs sounded just as good in the live arena. His lyrics were clear and revelatory. But it was his voice that got me. He sounds so honest, so dazzlingly pared down and clear, like an exposed nerve. At times I actually shook at the purity of it.
Everyone, from the pretty blonde looking near-hypnotised at the front to a curly-haired guy practically climbing onto my sofa in his enthusiasm, appeared to be in the midst of a similar rapture. ‘Whoas’ were whispered to equally wowed neighbours; an enchanted gape became the vogue expression.
This aura was encouraged by the room’s door staying shut, thus drowning out the mundane noise from the ground floor. But when that door was unfortunately left open towards the end of the gig, the sense was of a bubble burst: minds wondered, chats recommenced, text messages were read and replied to, chips were summoned from the kitchen. Normality had been depressingly restored.
Uh-oh. Not so quick, said Wilde. Authoritatively he hushed everyone, before reeling off two final, faster songs, just as moving but with extra oomph. It worked. Phones were set down and catch-ups re-postponed; a silent awe once more took firm hold. It felt righteous: this was a very special talent that needed hearing, and it was being heard.
Colours – Drip Haze 7″
Check out this stately, slumberous rock number, the title-track from London band Colours, part of a three-track 7″ due out on Marshall Teller next month. It’s a limited run of only 250 vinyl presses, with a bonus MP3 thrown in for good measure. (via SEXBEAT)
Colours are also playing a couple of good-sounding gigs imminently: supported by Crushed Beaks at The Drop on Saturday 28 January, and then a free-entry release-celebration night, with help from Dignan Porch, at the Shacklewell Arms on Friday 2 March.
Flamingods – Away
Ever tempted to go travelling? To cancel your credit card, grow a silly beard and live out of a rucksack for nine months? If so, you’d best listen to this free new album by London act Flamingods (previously featured here) – it’s all about being brave enough to leave the western world behind, and make for somewhere exotic. It’s also absolutely ideal for listening during that bit of a house party where you sit with strangers around a mesmerising bonfire, sharing wholesome joints and beaming pointlessly.
Deptford Goth – Time
Deptford Goth‘s track Time is stupendous – a druggy, fuzzed-up cry for health, a desperate injection of Benzedrine that fails to quieten the voices, a beautiful swim in a percussion sea that’s tinged with the knowledge of its impending end, a lov– yes, yes, you’re thinking, but where the duck is this song?? I want to listen to this hot sauce while you froth on about it!
Well you can’t. Or rather, you can, but not here. The only place that you can on the internet, as far as I know, is Tim Noakes’ October playlist for Dazed. I heard it there, but can’t find it elsewhere – no Soundcloud, no YouTube, no diddly, no squat.
Why not, I wonder? Presumably for reasons of economics. The track is from Deptford Goth’s four-track debut EP, Youth II, available via Merok, and the other three tracks from that CD are all variously spread around the net, meaning they are listenable and even potentially rippable, without purchase - and if the entire album was so, sales might possibly dip. So best to keep one track back. I can respect that, as much as it’s a shame for this particular blog.
One more thing, though – that same four-track EP is £6.99. Whoa! I mean, okay, I get that a) musicians make little money from releases these days, so it’s wise to maximise profit; and b) Deptford Goth is fabulous – but still, whoa! £7 for four tracks for a not-that-established artist is undeniably a lot. Still, at least you can decide in advance, with Tim Noakes’ help, if you like each amd every track now…
UPDATE! As per Deptford Goth’s comment below, the EP is available at an entirely-bargainalicious £2.49 on iTunes, here. Why is it so much costlier on Merok? Because that’s on vinyl. I’m a dunce, basically.
Wilde
Formerly known as Ivan Ink, the irritatingly-talented Londoner Oliver Briggs is now recording as Wilde. From forthcoming album Before I Am come two folksy songs: the speckled All Eyes, sad and prettily sincere; and the gloomier Black Stars, a beautiful, resigned lament, or the sonic equivalent of a frank diary entry, penned under an old anglepoise one winter afternoon as the light fades outside.
Ollie has two gigs this week: the first tonight at the The Bull & Gate in Kentish Town (more here, or flyer below), and then on Thursday (here) at The Old Queens Head.
Diagrams
Singing in an unflappable, often-deadpan style, Tunng frontman Sam Genders returns as leader of new London project Diagrams. Together with musician chums, he sings over jaunty, Metronomy-esque maths-rock riffs and, in the case of Tall Buildings (the first track below), glorious peaks that are more like cascades than choruses. These two songs come from debut album Black Light, released today, and if you like them there’s good news: Diagrams are playing the Lexington, with support from the fabulous Fairewell, on Wednesday.
Monday Music – 16 January 2012
Monday Music is the one post wherein Some Of It Was True! abandons it’s London-music focus to go global…
Creep – Animals (Feat. Holly Miranda)
The third single from Brooklyn duo Creep (two girls, both called Lauren), this is as good as their first and most-famous, Days. That one saw them collaborate with The xx‘s Romy from some indie grind; this time the equally ephemeral Holly Miranda is roped in, and the tempo shifted to a spectral pop, with both rock and r’n'b overtones, but the catchiness and bold production values remain. Next up is a song with Grimes; SOIWT has actually run out of saliva.
The Shrieks – Coldest One (mp3) (Brighton band #1.)
I listen to this and visualise grainy Super 8 family footage, with children running around at giddy speed, parents eating ice creams, first bicycle rides, dads winking lustily at mums, grandparents smiling soporifically in an armchair, brothers chasing sisters with a hosepipe, a frisbee being thrown, laughter, grazed knees…
Great Bays – Numb (Brighton band #2.)
“In the second half (…) I looked around. The trees around the park were perfectly still as if time had stopped, as if every second of the afternoon were held in a single moment: Steranko frozen in his running, his feet barely touching the grass; Carlton bent down tying his shoe, the breeze rippling his shirt; the muscles straining in someone’s leg; players jumping for the ball, their feet suspended in mid-air, the goalkeeper’s hands rising above their floating hair; the ball hanging over them like a perfect moon. And everything around us: the crease of the corner flag, the wind-sculpted trees, the child’s swing at the top of its arc, the water of the drinking fountain bubbling towards the lips of the woman bent down to drink, the cyclist leaning into the curve of the path, a plane stalled in the sky, someone’s thrown tennis ball a small yellow planet in the distance.” – from The Colour of Memory, by Geoff Dyer. (via Don’t Die Wondering)
Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention – Trouble Every Day
Sometimes you watch the news and it’s all bad; consistently, constantly grim and depressing – climate change, wars, stabbings, corruption, sinking cruise ships, tsunamis, disease – and you think where will it end?…
Youth Lagoon – Afternoon
… but then you hear this piece of beauty, off the Idaho band’s new album, Year of Hibernation, and it’s like an affirmation of life, and maybe everything’ll be okay somehow.
