July 2010
91 posts
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Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
Words: Gareth O’Malley
Arcade Fire are nothing if not ambitious. The Canadian septet’s third album features all of 16 tracks, and clocks in at 64 minutes long. You might already be thinking that ‘The Suburbs’ is going to be difficult to digest, but it’s nothing of the sort.
Combining accessibility and inventiveness, the album flows brilliantly, despite sounding on...
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Sky Larkin: Kaleide
Words: Gareth O’Malley
Consistency. It’s becoming an increasingly rarer thing in music, and that’s something that can’t be ignored. I’ve lost count of the number of bands whose career trajectory has gone like this: decent-to-good debut leading to mediocre-to-awful second album leading to fall into obscurity and eventual split.
It’s something that’s...
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basicnature:
Y O U
C O U L D
B E
H O N E S T
...
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Manic Street Preachers' 'Postcards From A Young...
(It’s Not War) Just The End Of Love Postcards From A Young Man Some Kind Of Nothingness The Descent (Pages 1 & 2) Hazleton Avenue Auto-Intoxication I Think I’ve Found It A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun All We Make Is Entertainment The Future Has Been Here 4 Ever Don’t Be Evil
Nice. Twelve tracks, so eleven opportunities for better songs than ‘(It’s Not War)...
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WatchAUDIOVISUALS: Calories - FFWD Keeping to our routing of one Calories-related post a day, here’s the video for ‘FFWD’. It’s the third track on new album ‘Basic Nature’, a subject of our writing yesterday. [Thanks to DiS]
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Soundcloud: The Drums - Book Of Stories
If you’re yet to invest in the debut Drums album, let the record’s highlight insist that you do.
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EP: Under Alien Skies - Powder
words: Jamie Milton
Every so often, amidst the stampede of summertime songs that define a season but slowly step aside, there stands an offering of real longevity, a song that will sit by your side for many a summer; many a season. ‘Fyodor’ is as much a winter song as it is a summer one; as much a log fire as it is a glow of the sun. But there’s something peaceful and calming...
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Watchyvynyl:
WU LYF - i got dem wu wu busted teef spitting it concrete like the golden sun god
Emmanuel Fabien just tweeted at a bunch of us that we needed to watch this video. Yeah, we needed it. Incredible stuff.
Good luck finding any info on these dudes. They may be from Australia or ‘nu babylon’ or somewhere, but its not clear. They have a penchant for wiping away any definable...
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Introducing: Little Loud
Words: Gareth O’Malley
If you’re a producer, there is no better way to make your presence felt than by getting some remixes picked up. Even better if your first few remixes include some heavy hitters.
Brighton’s Will Phillips, working under the moniker of Little Loud would know all about this. He’s not been in the game for long, but the man’s already spruced up Au...
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WatchAUDIOVISUALS: Caribou - ‘Sun’ Taken from the immaculate album ‘Swim’.
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Samplings: Calories - Basic Nature
Words: Gareth O’Malley
This one came pretty much out of nowhere. (Read: I hadn’t been keeping up at all) Calories’ new record, ‘Basic Nature’ has surfaced, however. Due for release on Setpember 13th, you can get all the info here.
While you’re at it, you can also hear a few tracks from the album. The four songs that have been made available for streaming at...
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Initial Thoughts: Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
Words: Gareth O’Malley
Where is the chase, and how do I cut to it? Right then. New Arcade Fire. This is cause for celebration, especially so because I’m just going to come out and say that ‘The Suburbs’ is better than ‘Neon Bible’ by a country mile. Not that that would be hard. I’m not complaining, though; the 2007 sophomore record is good, but...
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Stream: Grinderman - Heathen Child
|To be released on Mute. Sept 6th.
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Stream: Manic Street Preachers - (It's Not War)...
Set to appear on ‘Postcards From A Young Man’ unless they find another book of Richey Edwards’ lyrics.
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Crystal Castles: Baptism
Words: Gareth O’Malley
When you think about it, there are actually a good number of viable singles on Canadian noiseniks Crystal Castles’ second self-titled album, which is why I honestly believe the wrong song’s been picked as the third track to be lifted from the record.
‘Baptism’ doesn’t have the out-and-out pop sensibilities of a track like...
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Live: Wild Nothing (Brighton Audio - 24/07/10)
words: Jamie Milton scribed for MusicOMH Looking at the sparse, parted crowd attending tonight’s gig, you assume that a substantial amount of Wild Nothing’s demographic audience have buggered off elsewhere. Shoreditch, to be precise. 1234 festival, a buzz-band congregation, is a one day-event you’d have expected to see Jack Tatum and co. billed for. And it clashes with...
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Best Coast - Crazy For You
words: Jamie Milton scribed for MusicOMH Bethany Cosentino, until recently, was part of an obscure California-based psychedelia outift called Pocahaunted. Although to some extent, they rose to popularity, it’s incomparable to the success that Cosentino has harbored under the more streamlined pop direction of Best Coast, in the space of just over a year.
And when you compare the two acts,...
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The Coral - Butterfly House
words: Ben Blackburn Eight years on from their first and critically acclaimed self-titled album, and a guitarist down, ‘Butterfly House’ marks a significant revival in The Coral. After releasing the rather pedestrian ‘Roots & Echoes’ in 2007, this was shortly followed by ‘The Singles Collection’ the following year. At this point many, including myself, believed The Coral were...
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Wavves - King Of The Beach
words: Jamie Milton scribed for MusicOMH The best means of leaving your critics dumbfounded is through an act of sheer excellence, one that arrives completely out of the blue. Wavves (Nathan Williams) has repeated the act of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’s’ Jamiroquai dance, David Beckham’s career revival following a 1998 World Cup sending off; he’s risen from the dead, making...
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mpfree: Hold Your Horse Is - You Show Up
words: Jamie Milton photo credit
Hold Your Horse Is amaze us with their angst-ridden, gung-ho, straight-up rock music. Signed to the ever consistent Big Scary Monsters, and contemporaries of Brighton’s Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea, of whom we featured not so long ago, they give us every indication that they’re going to make a name for themselves with ‘You Show Up’.
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mpfree: Owen Pallett - Lewis Takes Off His Shirt...
words: Jamie Milton photo: Graydon Sheppard Since establishing itself as a force to be reckoned with earlier this year, Owen Pallett’s ‘Heartland’ has fast become one of the most long-lasting albums of the year, one that I personally cannot help but come back to.
CFCF’s remix of ‘Lewis Takes Off His Shirt’ helps things by adding a summer charm to an otherwise...
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mpfree: Still Corners - Endless Summer
words: Jamie Milton London’s Still Corners have created something of considerable beauty, comparable to the finer, slender to the touch moments of Blonde Redhead, within one of their first releases. Precious, ethereal vocals open with the line “listen to the tide, it pulls us in”, whilst reverbed pounding drums enter and a climactic chorus fits in one gallant synth line after...
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AUDIOVISUALS: Neon Indian - 6669 (I Don’t Know If...
Stop motion gets a new home. The finest take off ‘Psychic Chasms’, rising star Neon Indian’s debut album.
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Featured: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club honour The...
words: Jamie Milton
As part of the celebration for Dr. Martens’ 50th Anniversary, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club were asked to contribute a cover of a song that most reflected the spirit of Dr. Martens over their flourishing 50 year period.
BMRC chose The Pogues’ ‘Dirty Old Town’ with a stripped-down acoustic rendition of Shane MacGowan and co’s cult classic. ...
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Mercury Prize 2010: Who to opt for
words: Jamie Milton
In what many critics are agreeing upon being a ‘safe’ list of nominations for the Mercury Prize, one shouldn’t bet against the most experienced man in the list winning the whole thing. Paul Weller’s attempt to modernise a dated sound was resoundingly successful and warrants his nomination. We at MFM were delighted in seeing Wild Beasts, the xx, Foals,...
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mpfree: Cut Copy - Where I'm Going
Melbourne has a lot to offer. Fine coffee, great record stores and Australia’s most infectious group. Cut Copy are huge in Aus and I wasn’t aware of this until I traveled there from February to May this year, soundtracked by Triple J (the country’s premier radio station, and one that plays similar stuff to BBC 6 Music).
Where I’m Going won’t damage popularity,...
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Welcoming...Under Alien Skies
words: Jamie Milton
Many artists, when they begin, make no bones about where their influences come from. Bowie adored the Rolling Stones, Coldplay took obvious reference to Radiohead and Prestatyn duo Under Alien Skies are fans of the multiinstrumentalist Owen Pallett. So are we. But the two co-editors of MFM have yet to seek a making-music interest together and even if we did, we’d never...
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I Am Kloot: Sky At Night
words: Emmy Droege For those wondering if I Am Kloot’s most recent album will finally bring this Northern band the accolades it truly deserves, the answer is ultimately indefinite. Let’s just say it stands more of a chance than the band’s prior efforts… As underrated as all those previous albums (four to be exact) may have been, ‘Sky At Night’ is a more...
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Aqualung: Magnetic North
words: Jamie Milton scribed for MusicOMH Magnetic North is a “back-from-the-brink” record, in Matt Hales’ words. In 2007, the singer-songwriter announced his retirement to a London audience unprepared for such news. Since then, Hales’ bold statement has lost sustainability with the simple fact that the man is still writing songs, albeit from a new base in sunny...
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R.I.P. Grammatics
Words: Gareth O’Malley
Three words accurately sum up my reaction to the news that Leeds’ Grammatics are splitting. Those three words are: Absolutely. Fucking. Devastated.
Does it come as a surprise? Well, yes and no. We saw the writing on the wall after Emilia Ergin left last November (to be replaced by Lindsay Wilson), but not for a second did I anticipate anything like this....
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Soundcloud Treat: Best Coast - Crazy For You
Thanks to Brilliantly Different, you can stream Best Coast’s fuzzy, scuzzy, oh-my-golly debut in its entirety. Fifty times. Or more. But not less.
Best Coast: Crazy For You LP Stream by brilliantlydifferent
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Delta Spirit : History From Below
words: Jamie Milton scribed for MusicOMH One guitarist down since the release of their 2008 debut Ode To Sunshine they may be, but San Diego’s Delta Spirit have retained an instinctive sense of rhythm and drive that makes everything they produce infectious on the ear. This makes perfect sense: four of their five members used to play drums for other bands. Stick-holder Brandon Young can...
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Cut Copy Return
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Uv (Not) Been Robbed (We're Perfectly Serious)
Words: Gareth O’Malley
Rejoice, for this has just shown up on Bandcamp:
For those of who you who haven’t been following, that there is the new EP from Entrepeneurs, AKA Adam Crisp, a former Elle Milano-er who’s now off doing his own, glitch-pop, thing.
All the action is going on here, where you can listen to each track (full previews!) and then buy it for whatever the hell...