April 2011
71 posts
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New Music: Niki and the Dove - The Fox
Perfect? Song of the year? ‘The Fox’ deserves these kind of superlatives because it’s perhaps the finest combination of glossy pop and genuine inventiveness that you’re likely to hear for some time. So much so that it’s almost intimidating. Many trusty sources have been hailing this as one of the above for a while now; besotted with Malin Dahlström’s inventive...
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New Music: Gold-Bears - Record Store
Sometimes bands just want to let go and have fun, pour their hearts into their music and make the best attempt they can at the whole ‘music’ business. Gold-Bears strike me as a band that subscribe to this philosophy 100%. The lead single from their album ‘Are You Falling In Love?’ is a four-minute, carefree, noise-pop gem that sounds a bit like The Pains of Being Pure at...
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New Music: The Skeleton Dead - Lock The Doors
The Skeleton Dead are exposing their sinister side: “Send me out, lock the doors, tonight I won’t be locking horns but slitting throats, from ear to ear, behind the cash register”. Tom Sharples takes on the persona of a neighbourhood killer, with his “wicked grin”; dying to get outside and wreak havoc. It’s not long ago at all since we first featured this...
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New Music: Regina - Jos et sä soita
Many people’s disputes with Pains of Being Pure At Heart stem from the fact that it’s all a little bit too wishy-washy; lyrics meaningless; too much onus on escapism and very little else. Perhaps it’ll help to hear something similar but in a different language entirely. Then, when listening to Finland’s Regina, we can get taken to this nostalgic, shoegaze-heavy space and...
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New Music: Michael A Grammar - Keep Me Awake....
Michael A Grammar cropped up the first ever MFM podcast, coming off like one of most dark, gloomy acts you’re likely to encounter for some time. And yet in this remarkable offering, ‘Keep Me Awake. Reprise’, there’s the slightest hint of euphoria. A simple, Deerhunter-like building of atmospherics eventually morphs into a more simplistic but ultimately breathtaking coda;...
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New Music: Chad Valley - Fast Challenges
Just in case you missed it via. every amazing blog, Chad Valley has unveiled a track from the forthcoming ‘Equatorial Ultravox’ EP and it might just represent the sound of the summer when we take Weeknd-R’n’B jams out of the equation. ‘Fast Challenges’’ synths are positively blasting out from the layers of the sun, Hugo Manuel’s instrument-like...
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New Music: Vadoinmessico - Curling Up Your Spine
With the kind of sun-kissed pop song that is a timely reminder that summer is getting ever closer, Vadoinmessico have set out their stall in fine style. ‘Curling Up Your Spine’ is slightly reminiscent of ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion-era Animal Collective (mainly because the vocals have a serious Panda Bear thing going on). There’s an album in the can, and this uplifting...
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New Music: Vetiver - Can't You Tell
Following up on 2009’s ‘Tight Knit’, Andy Cabic aka. Vetiver brings forth a more mellowed out version of his former self. Reminiscent of ‘Souljacker’-era Eels, ‘Can’t You Tell’ gives indication of the forthcoming ‘The Errant Charm’ being a chilled out, idyll collection of songs. Sparse, rich melodies infuse this mid-tempo number, making...
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May Album Pick: Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea -...
Brighton post-hardcore merchants Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea have always made their best attempt at making unpredictability into an art form, and their long-awaited debut album (due for physical release next week) finds them striking an excellent balance between discordant noise and bare-bones melody. ‘Lush’ is not a word you’ll find in this quartet’s dictionary,...
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MFM004 - Music Fan's Mic Podcast - 27/04/2011
Hosted by Jamie Milton Wave your flags, get the Pimms ready; this weekend we’re being told to be as British as possible. What’s most important however is the fact that we’ve got two bank holidays in a row over in a remarkably sunny England. Make the most of it. The tracks below have a celebratory feel but also have sweet fuck all to do with the Royal Wedding. It...
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New Music: Embers
Sweeping and melodic, Manchester’s Embers profess to sharing a love of the cinematic, and listening to their material it is easy to see where this has permeated their music. Indebted to post-punk but not merely content to imitate their influences, these two songs, available for download below, are grandiose and brooding in equal measure. If you’re a music fan seeking drama and...
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EP: Daughter - His Young Heart
It’s difficult for me to forget the time I watched Laura Marling play songs on my battered television set. It was off the back of a promising EP but it more than set in stone the hope that she’d take off to bigger places. Admirably, Elena Tonra aka. Daughter has managed to summon similar promise within a few listens to ‘His Young Heart’. It’d be fairly foolish to...
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New Music: Petrels - Silt
Meet Petrels. His debut album is called ’Haeligewielle’, an album title so convoluted that I have only just now become able to type it out in one go. Whatever about its tongue-twisting moniker, the album is a cracker, a mixture of post-rock, ambient and drone that never fails to put melody first. It’s this approach that makes it such a delight to listen to. Some...
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New Music: Spector - Never Fade Away
There’s something implicitly stylish about Spector; from the name to the smart attire to the compression of synths, brooding vocals and spiralling guitars. Fred Macpherson of Blood Royale makes up a part of the band and the charming ‘Never Fade Away’ was exposed only yesterday by Abeano. Macpherson’s experience is plain to see, for this is a remarkably confident but...
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EP: Charlie's Lego - Looselybasedonfictionalevents
As the old song goes, it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it. This kind of thinking definitely applies when you’re in a band. There’s no need to be marvellously inventive, you just have to know what you’ve got and do all you can to make it work. If you don’t, at least make it sound like you do. Charlie’s Lego, a four-piece from Dublin,...
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April Album Pick: tUnEyArDs - w h o k i l l
Out Now on 4AD When an album is as kinetic and infectious as ‘w h o k i l l’, it’s a little intimidating. Sure, opener’s ‘My Country’ is more instant than anything on ‘Bird-Brains’ by some stretch, but Merrill Garbus encompasses a style of freedom, lack of caution and excitement that many other artists don’t come close to. In actual fact, you,...
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New Music: Chad VanGaalen - Sara
Only this morning the rich, sweeping tones of Chad VanGaalen fluttered by, two songs into Jon Hillcock’s latest New Noise Podcast. The day also seems to end with a take from the forthcoming fourth full-length ‘Diaper Island’. A sparse, whistle-led number, ‘Sara’ is a rousing clash of chanted vocals and de-tuned acoustic guitars. [JM]
[Diaper Island is set for...
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New Music: Flock of Dimes - Prison Bride
Some song’s hooks grab you within a single second. ‘Prison Bride”s is one of them. Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak has ventured into the frightening solo territory and she’s grasped it all with ease. Under the moniker of Flock of Dimes, she’s created a frantic, loop-heavy, gung-ho heavenly drone of a song; a near-constant hook is ever so often interrupted with tightly-knit...
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April Album Pick: You Animals - Crimes, Creeps &...
This album was always going to be good. You Animals rose from the ashes of Komakino after all, and found they didn’t need many new songs because the foundations of their long, long, long-awaited album ‘Crimes, Creeps & Thrills’ had already been laid down. There’s plenty of Komakino material on offer, but regardless of where it’s all come from, it’s what...
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WatchAudiovisuals// Team Me - Dear Sister Norweigan import Team Me manage to bring the feel-good out of the most miserable. This video, comprised of suspiciously dressed folk running on the spot in a spacious, sunny sports hall, makes me yearn for my school P.E. days to have been as similarly ridiculous. The song itself isn’t mere happy, clappy pop; its final, climactic minute takes your precious...
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New Music: The Middle East - Hunger Song
Consider, for a moment, how lucky we are that The Middle East are still around. They split and stayed inactive for eight months after releasing a mini-album, ‘The Recordings of the Middle East’ in 2008. An abridged version of this (i.e. an EP) surfaced in 2009, and thankfully the Australian collective (who do not have very much, if anything, in common with this Canadian one) decided...
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New Music: Mammal Club - Hang
I put on the ‘Au EP’ knowing absolutely nothing about Mammal Club. The first couple of tracks seemed steeped in post-rock, thick with brash guitars: likeable but not groundbreaking. And then ‘Hang’ came on; sifting through the crowd, coming on strong like a more refined, less out-there Everything Everything. Guitars work in loop patterns above quickly-applied percussion...
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News: Hold Your Horse Is release live album to...
Well now, isn’t that nice. To go towards funding the recording of their debut album (which definitely looks set to be out before year’s end at this rate - joy), Hold Your Horse Is follow up their rather excellent single ‘Forgive And Forget’ with a live album. Yes, you read that right, already. It’s not the usual way to go about things, but we’ve had a listen...
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May Album Pick: And So I Watch You From Afar -...
‘This Is Our Machine And Nothing Can Stop It’ was the title of ASIWYFA’s debut EP. At the time it may have seemed like an idle boast, but four years on it has proved prophetic. The Northern Irish group’s meteoric rise has seen them transformed into a veritable juggernaut. Nothing can stop them, indeed - and the fact that they’ve created an album that not only equals...
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New Music: Fixers - Crystals (Memory Tapes Remix)
It’s true that Fixers could get burdened with comparisons to this and that; their Oxford contemporaries, any other British band who meddle with both guitars and synths. But if anything can separate them from a less interesting bunch, it’s this Memory Tapes remix. A blending of the chorus of a choir, tribal percussion and Dayve Hawk’s signature synthetics shouldn’t work...
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MFM003 - Music Fan's Mic Podcast - 20/04/2011
Hosted by Jamie Milton Today’s rather talkative podcast is interrupted by musings on why summer is so difficult for me, why vinyl is beautiful and worth every penny and why politics revision isn’t much fun. For this, I apologise. Nevertheless I’ve evened things out by including some ruddy wonderful tracks - the best selection to date, I’d say!
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WatchSTREAM/// Times New Viking - Dancer Equired
How about a stream of the second album from the American noise-pop trio? They may have cleaned up their sound a tad, but otherwise it’s business as usual. In other words, there’s plenty to enjoy here. Fourteen songs squeezed into less than 32 minutes: to say the least, ‘Dancer Equired’ doesn’t outstay its welcome, but it...
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New Music: Shells
The ‘Pastels’ EP comes on strong like today’s rays of sunshine forcing their way through the windowpanes. Khalid Rafique, who goes by the name of Shells, doesn’t seem to believe in rough edges. This is forceful (albeit gently-applied) electronic music, full to the brim with ideas. The title-track to the EP is defined by rich synthetics and glitchy, almost sand-paper-like...
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New Music: LightGuides - Midget Gems
It’s no secret that the Alcopop! Records roster looks stronger now than it has for a while. While it may have lost a few great bands along the way, it has swelled considerably in recent months and continues to put out top-notch stuff. As recently as last Monday they snapped up Glasgow trio LightGuides, a band who are set to release debut single ‘Old Bucket Seats’ next month and...
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New Music: Our Lost Infantry - I Love You, Sandra...
There aren’t many new bands we can think of who have so far released songs so different to each other that you’d hardly think they were all by the same band. Our Lost Infantry are definitely one of them, however. They’re refusing to be pigeonholed. I’ve thought I had them pinned down numerous times already, but their new songs (a double-A-side pay-what-you-like digital...
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New Music: Husky Rescue - Snowfall
Here’s one band who don’t care for the law of diminishing returns. Last year saw Finland’s Husky Rescue produce their finest album to date in the form of the dazzling ‘Ship of Light’, and now they return with a song that has eclipsed that entire album without so much as trying. As immediate as that album’s lead single, ‘We Shall Burn Bright’,...
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EP: Johnny Foreigner - Certain Songs Are Cursed
The idea behind the route Johnny Foreigner have chosen to go down in exploring the impact music has on the lives of its listeners is an interesting one, and while it is only hinted at in this ten-minute, four-song EP, I reckon there will be plenty more where that came from in future. ‘Certain Songs Are Cursed’ is what one might call a ‘primer’ for their third album, due...
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WatchAudiovisuals// Bon Iver - Album Preview
This short, easeful preview is the perfect introduction to Bon Iver’s first full-length since the monumental success of his debut and the subsequent work with Kanye West, the ‘Blood Bank’ EP, etc. The melody that meets the art on the wall is predictably beautiful and it whets the appetite big time.
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New Music: Napoleon In Rags - Empty Promises
When you’re a new band, the trick is to write something that will get you noticed immediately, and Swindon quartet Napoleon In Rags’ new single (out May 16th on their own label, NIR Records) is just that sort of song. It’s a straightforward song that excels because of its immediacy and drive, formed of a soaring guitar hook and energetic drum lines. Tipping a hat to early...
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April Album Pick: Panda Bear - Tomboy
Out Now - Paw Tracks The release of Panda Bear’s ‘Tomboy’ has been notably weird. You don’t follow up a record like ‘Person Pitch’ with scattered single releases, indefinite album release dates, the album’s tracklisting being revealed on a message board. It leaves you feeling grotty before you press the play button: And yet with ‘Tomboy’, all...
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New Music: Whirl - Leave
As far as shoegaze is concerned, you can make all the noise you want, but if there isn’t a melody in there to make things owrthwhile, you’re as good as lost. California’s Whirl know this better than anybody, and as a consequence, melody comes first for them. All the typical things are all present and correct on ‘Leave’: pounding drums, indecipherable vocals and...
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April Album Pick: Bill Callahan - Apocalypse
Out Now - Drag City
When Bill Callahan titles his album ‘Apocalypse, when he lists countries that America has sent soldiers to, when he sounds completely down and out, that’s us, as the listener, misreading what he’s saying. It’s difficult to judge Callahan, particularly in ‘America!’ where the shoots of electric guitar sound like bombs dropping on the ground...
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New Music: Husband - Love Song
Europe is spreading its arms a little wider this year, encompassing acts from unlikely locations. Keep Shelly In Athens were a small blimp in the screen, but the only act many have discovered from Greece in absolute years. They argue that Greece itself has a burgeoning music scene but you’d be more inclined to agree with Husband, if they said Bologna’s was more exciting. We’ve A...
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April Album Pick: Holy Ghost! - S/T
[Out Now - DFA]
LCD Soundsystem will obviously never pass the torch, but now that King James Murphy has abdicated from the throne there will be plenty of competitors for his crown. Step forward Holy Ghost!, whose hotly-anticipated debut has finally been unleashed. It’s very definitely worth the wait, too. The duo teased us with their sublime ‘Static On The Wire’ EP last year,...