Have you downloaded the new track that Munich are giving away yet? Because if you haven’t, you ought to. We gave it a re-tweet last week, but it deserves a post all of it’s own, because it’s such a great track. It starts off with beautiful cascading guitars, like Doves or Vampire Weekend on a good day, but like all the best Munich tracks it morphs into a huge epic tune by the end. A true anthem for the summer!
Congratulation to Kovak and Heliopause, who are representing Brighton at this year’s NXNE festival in Toronto. This might not sound like a big deal, but there are only ten bands from the UK out of the 780 who are playing (and here’s something for the people from The Great Escape to think about – about half the bands playing are from Toronto)
Heliopause are performing here:
14th June – 10pm Czehoski
15th June – 4:15pm Six2Seven
15th June – 10pm Cameron House
Kovak are performing here:
15th June – 10:00pm El Mocambo
16th June – 7:00pm The Mod Club
Hope it all goes fantastically!
After spending the last few months honing their sound, today Fragile Creatures unleash their debut single onto thje world today, released digitally through DNVMusic.
The single is a double A-side – Dear Michael is laid back, shuffling indie pop with organs, brushes on the drums and lush harmonies. She Makes Me Nervous is a more up-beat affair, and off kilter stomper which switches tempo between verse and chorus. The video for the single isn’t out there just yet, but I’ll update the blog when it is.
Fragile Creatures have just been to Normandy to record their album, which they’re hoping will be out by the end of the year. Between now and then, they’re playing at Latest on 29th June, Brighton People’s Day on 14th July, and if recent activity has been anything to go by, dozens of other dates too.
Back in April The Moulettes had their single launch at The Marlborough. Two months on, it’s about time they actually released it. Held back by a combination of trying to tie things in with their multitude of festival appearances, and pressing plant delays caused by bank holidays, Sing Unto Me finally hits the shops next monday.
Sing Unto Me is the lead single from the Moulettes new album The Bear’s Revenge. In a bit of a departure from most of their tracks, lead singer Hannah Miller takes on guitar rather than ‘cello duties, but the overall sound is very familiar – tight female harmonies sung in the round, and a folk rhythm section made up of guitar, fiddle, bodhran, and any other bits of percussion that come to hand as well as double bass from Ted Dwane from Mumford and Sons.
Being the generous sorts they are, the single comes with a bumper six tracks – as well as a single edit, there’s a remix, a cover by fellow Brightonians The Muel, and a handful of b-sides including live favourite Are You Going Away To Sea, which is probably the track that made me fall in love with them in the first place.
The band are going to have a very busy summer. If you happen to be at any of the following festivals, I heartily recommend you go and see them:
It was a British Bank Holiday, therefore it must be raining. It seems to be raining nearly every time I go to the Haunt. But last night it was definitely worth braving the weather, as new-in-town promoters TEA put on Com Truise with support from Anneka, who’s a local artist who we haven’t written about on the blog yet.
Com Truise
Com Truise was fantastic, filling the room with big crunchy beats. But Seth Haley, as his mum calls him, isn’t a Brightonian so let’s devote the rest of this blog post to the support. There’s a chance you may have heard of Anneka already – She’s collaborated with the likes of Falty DL, Starkey, Ital Tek, Vex’d and Blue Daisy on records that have been all over BBC 6Music, Radio 1 and XFM, and now she’s starting to perform on her own.
So many solo female electronic artists get compared to Bjork, and often it’s a very lazy comparison on the journalists part and one that doesn’t tell you a great deal about the artist either, so let’s refine it a bit and then justify it: Anneka’s music sounds like Bjork’s around Post / Homogenic – Music that would sound as good on the dancefloor as it would on the radio, or through headphones. The sound is heavy on the bass, but the rest of the musical spectrum isn’t ignored, nor are melodies or song structures. Vocally, Anneka isn’t so much like Bjork – she doesn’t attempt the vocal acrobatics or growls – but her voice does have strength, warmth and character.
Anneka
In a live environment Anneka didn’t just hide behind her computer and augmented the those sounds with live vocals, extra keys and percussion making for a far more interesting experience, and the sound setup in The Haunt deserves a mention for sounding so good – loud but without being overbearing. In her short twenty minute set as well as half a dozen of her own tunes Anneka also covered PJ Harvey’s Electric Light, using the original as a base, transforming PJ’s simple mantra into something epic:
Anneka is definitely an act to watch out for. Go and see her somewhere with great sound sooner rather than later because before long, if there’s any justice, she’ll be too big for anywhere in Brighton.
https://www.facebook.com/annekamusic
Brighton Music Blog regulars will know by now that we’re big fans of the Bleeding Hearts Club, Brighton’s first-Monday-of-the-month regular source of below-the-radar excellent new music. Yesterday was the June edition, and being a bank holiday, Chris decided to start an hour earlier and turn the night into a Jubilee-concert-alternative union-jack-free mini-festival featuring six (count ’em, six!) acts, with headliners Junior Electronics.
I missed the opening act unfortunately, the early start being challenged by the grumble in my stomach, but got there in time to hear Danny Kendall singing his heart out. Danny was formerly of legendary Brighton band La Frange.
La Frange always wore their francophilism on their stripey t-shirt’s sleeves. Danny was followed by a visitor from the real France, Polyanna (not the Aussie rock band!) who was playing solo, stopping off at the BHC as part of a small UK tour. Isabelle Cassier (for it is she) has a beautiful voice and sings her songs in English, songs about old rockers and working in a factory and other things and was generally lovely.
Next up was local legend and (as one music magazine recently put it) “national treasure” Mary Hampton. If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing Mary play live, then you’ve been seriously missing out. This time, she had just a short set of three songs, one of which was a long acapella folk story song and the last of which the gorgeous Honey in the Rock from her beautiful album Folly was worth the entry price alone. One day I live in hope of Mary playing a two hour Springsteen-length set, but for now anything will do.
Penultimate act was the Celloist-singer (and former guitarist in James and Sharkboy…) Adrian Oxaal who played the BHC only recently but made a welcome return. His two John Martyn covers were spellbinding, the combination of Adrian’s deep hesitant vocal and his melancholic cello combining beautifully. He also played two of his own songs which were also fine moving numbers. Rarely seen live these days, it’s marvellous that the BHC provides opportunities like these.
Finally, the headliners Junior Electronics came on stage and gave me a WTF moment, as strange electronic rhythms started nervously blurting out from a Moog synthesiser. Not what we have come to expect from our Bleeding Hearts. But gradually the songs started to take shape and the sound settled down into an interesting shape, and this listener began to ‘get it’. The final song was a joy, sounding as much like 60s sunshine pop as murky space-rock.
Junior Electronics are the brainchild of Joe Watson, his solo project when not playing keyboards for Stereolab and featured Mary Hampton again (playing a brightly coloured toy electric piano and occasional vocals). They have two albums out which are worth checking if you like post-rock electro-pop.
And finally – here’s compere Chris Davies saying good night, until next month’s Bleeding Hearts Club.
Good night Chris.
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It’s not often you get to see a band’s debut gig. But then it’s not often that a band doesn’t play their debut gig until after their second album is released, as Time & Space Machine did last night. Time and Space Machine is Richard Norris’ band based project – a twin brother to Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, his psychedelic remix / re-edits project with Erol Alkan. The records are mostly Richard’s own work (with a little help on drums), but for their debut gig, they’d grown to a five piece.
Richard Norris / Time and Space Machine
If you haven’t heard the new album Taste The Lazer, it’s mostly psychedelia, with a bit of krautrock and garage thrown into the mix. Live they gave the impression of being the band Oasis could have been – if only they’d taken LSD rather than cocaine and listened to the Beatles later albums rather than stopping somewhere around Rubber Soul – or maybe they were a bit like current music industry darlings Toy if their record collection wasn’t just experimental German records from the early seventies. While it’s mostly instrumental, there is a smattering of vocals across their work. In Richard’s own words “sometimes it sounds like Crosby, Stills & Nash, sometimes it sounds like we’ve just come back from the pub”. According to people I was with, things might have sounded a bit better if they’d had decent vocal monitors onstage.
But you don’t go and see Time and Space Machine for the vocals – it’s all about the amazing accompanying visuals, the swirling hammond, the really tight drumming and the great musicianship that never strays into showing off. The band left the stage after an hour that went far too quick and didn’t come back for an encore, leaving us wanting more. Hopefully it won’t be long before they’re back.
Legendary Brighton rock band Celebricide returned to the stage for a one-off gig, six years after they went into hibernation following the release of their debut album and effectively disappeared from the scene. A real shame, as on Thursday night’s showing they are still amazing and hopefully this won’t be the only time we see them.
Lead singer Tim Leopard started the evening in dark shades that made me think of Andrew Eldritch and Sisters of Mercy, but musically the band had a lighter touch and more variety. Dave Hughes on keyboards and Steve Barber on guitar were constantly inventive, the shadowy presence of Chris Anderson (now Crayola Lectern) on bass and the powerhouse of Emily Powell on drums never let up the rhythm.
Fly magazine called them “Elegant psychopaths… a lethal cocktail of Pulp, Roxy Music and The Fall. With literary lyrics about blackmail, contract killings and ruined lives…” Well, yes there’s an oddness and an aggression which is full on and confrontational but their new wave gothic rock belies a humour and self-depreciation which is also endearing.
Support came from Clowns. If you haven’t seen this Brighton band yet then you really ought to – they produce a really tight full-on garage-rock sound, and in Miles Heathfield (ex-Poppycocks) have a lead singer prone to prowl the stage and terrify audiences. Although tonight they omitted the Clown costumes that would occasionally appear at early gigs and even neglected to play their anthemic ‘She Says I’m A Clown’, they were really quite brilliant with an unrelenting driving snarling rhythm and beat from start to finish.
Their single is out on one of this blog’s favourite Brighton labels ‘Bleeding Hearts Recordings‘ and is well worth seeking out.
(All Photographs by Jon Southcoasting)
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