The Physics House Band – Horizons / Rapture

Posted on 11/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Physics House Band have announced their debut release. Despite the impression you might get from it’s name, Horizons / Rapture isn’t a double a side, but a twenty-six minute long six track “psychedelic excursion” (their description), none of whose titles are either Horizons or Rapture. It’s coming out on 15th April on Blood and Biscuits records, who put out Tall Ships’ album last year.

It’s available to pre-order now over on the Blood and Biscuits website on cd or 180mg vinyl in a variety of packages ranging from just the album up to a deluxe package where you get the LP, the CD, a T-Shirt, a poster and a set of Liner Notes.

To whet our appetite, the band have put out a video for Abraxical Solapse, which features on the album, and also appeared on the recent Sea Monsters 3 compilation:

Full track list is:

Side A
1. ObeliskMonolith
2. Abraxical Solapse
3. Hollow Mountain

Side B
4. Teratology
5. The Spectral Beyond
6. Titan

Van Coeur

Posted on 10/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Tonight was a charity gig in the tiny but packed Komedia Studio Bar.

Animal Magic Tricks aka Fran Donnelly is responsible for the best cover on that album of covers by Willkommen and associates, commperre Birdengine’s Heads off Dogs. She was ably abetted tonight by Jason Williams and kicked off the evening with some far out experimental sounds with a mix of strange electronic oscillations, keyboards, bleating saxophone and her lovely vocals, ending with a version of Love Hurts sounding like it had been sucked out of a David Lynch movie soundtrack. It was all kind of entrancing.

Headliners Van Coeur are a band built out of members of a number of really excellent local acts (Good Morning Captain, -A +M, 21 Crows) and play mood-enhancing drone-laden doom-folk-rock. When it was quiet it was loud, when it was soft it felt hard. The songs sounded strong with good lyrics, and musically this was a really impressive set – although I felt they could have done with co-opting Fran from Animal Magic Tricks to sing and let the guys concentrate on their twin-guitar attack.

Van Coeur (below) can be found on bandcamp http://vancoeur.bandcamp.com

The New Union at the Green Door Store

Posted on 09/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Yesterday The New Union supported The 1975 at the Green Door Store. It’s the first time we’ve caught them in a few months and in that time they’ve been working hard on new tracks up in studios in London. You can hear the effect of working with a producer – Richard Jackson now uses two mics to bring more depth to the vocals, there’s more reverb all round making their sound even bigger, and where last year a New Union gig would be half an hour of urgent adrenalin filled songs there’s now some slower numbers too. The New Union are growing up and sounding bigger and better than ever.

click on the pics below to view larger:

The Self Help Group: the new Fleetwood Mac?

Posted on 08/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

The Self Help Group launched their album ‘Not Waving, But Drowning’ at the Prince Albert pub last night, ably supported by Fiona Sally Miller.

Fiona Sally Miller hasn’t been seen out and about much over the last year which is a shame as she’s one of the most engaging singer-songwriters around town. Simple little riffs set the scene for her personal songs sung in a warm voice that engrosses you like a hug. If you see her on a support bill, make sure you get there early. At this gig she was accompanied on some songs by a cellist, and gave an outing to her old goldie ‘I’m Going to miss you smiling at me like that’.

Mark Bruce

The Self Help Group album launch was a bit of a party for family and friends friends, starting off with them getting the whole audience to turn around to watch their video Needles played on the back wall. The launch got even more shambolic, with the band talking as much between themselves as to the audience, losing the banjo on one song and limiting their nervous wit to a strange bit of banter about their song about Birds. Not women, the ones with wings. Odd thing to say to any audience, let alone a Brighton one.

But we needn’t have worried. The thing about Self Help Group is the music, beautifully played, and Mark Bruce’s excellent songs, and the gorgeous twin vocals of sisters Sarah and Clara Wood. The thing is, this is just a truly great band and once they get going you forget about the fluff and hesitation and just get swallowed up by this wave of really wonderful fol rock Americana.

The album is very good indeed. Reviews refer to that Laurel Canyon soft-rock early-70s sensibility but if there’s one band they remind me most of it’s possibly Fleetwood Mac, with the charming female vocals, some sweet guitar and meaty rhythm section but mainly that wonderful mix of west coast Americana with English self-aware folk-blues.

Mark Bruce joked about the lack of happy songs last night – the album is full of songs about death and murder and stories of grim times – but the thing is they don’t sound depressing these songs, they are heart-warming and rich stories that bear repeating. And they have a song about murmuration. What’s not to love?

The final song Sand was a perfect ending, with its closing refrain of

“You must take the steps towards what you want and make things better“

sending us home with a lovely inner-glow.

Clara Wood-Keeley

You can order the album via the Union Music Store here or any good record shop (it’s one of Resident’s picks of the week this week).

Oh, and our interview with lead Groupie Mark Bruce is here https://brightonmusicblog.co.uk/2013/01/28/interview-with-the-self-help-group

****

Review and Photographs by Jon Southcoasting

Spirit of Gravity / Sarah Angliss / Green Door Store 7/2/13

Posted on 08/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Spirit of Gravity have been putting on experimental electronica nights in Brighton for over ten years, but this is the first that we’d made it along to. The headliner caught our eye – Sarah Angliss, who is a third of Spacedog, playing a solo set

Bela Emerson and Carolina Diaz

We missed opener Embla Quickbeam, and arrived just as Bela Emerson was starting her set. While the musical performance was solo cello, Bela was joined onstage by Carolina Diaz, who provided interpretive dance sporting a blazer worn back to front and long hair tied at the front rather than the back, designed to unsettle. Bela Emerson’s music was quite the opposite. What was initially experimental washes of sound, using loops and effect pedals to build up harmonics morphed over the course of the set into a more ambient mode. Harmonics became more sparse and a little discordant, more effect pedals were used to make the sound less like a cello, and the instrument was played in a non-standard manner to bring out new timbres. To create such a soundscape using just one instrument was truly a fantastic achievement.

Sarah Angliss

Headliner Sarah Angliss was using the gig as an opportunity to showcase new material, and to rework some older songs. Some electronica acts play their sets hiding behind a laptop, but Sarah had a stage full of additional equipment. Most visually notable were her robots, made with 1930s puppets. To the left of the stage was a life sized disembodied puppet head called Hugo, which looked around during the set, and whose mouth opened and closed during spoken samples, and just in front of her keyboard was a smaller puppet called Wolfgang who was about 12″ high and drummed along with the beats. Aurally, the most impressive piece of kit was the huge theremin, set up so instead of varying the pitch and volume of a standard tone, it controlled samples instead. There was also a bell organ, played by via the laptop rather than traditional methods, obviously. The result was a much more interesting and engaging take on electronica, with additional elements brought in which enhance rather than distract from the performance.

Sarah’s next performance in Brighton will be an event called Horlicks and Armageddon, held in an old Cell under the town hall as part of the Fringe in May. There will also be a 7″ released on Ghost Box records, and there’s an album in the offing too.

New Music

Posted on 06/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve had a roundup of the new music that’s dropped into our inbox, so time for an update.

First up is Impellers main man Ed Meme, who’s roped in the vocal talents of Myles Sanko for his first solo slab of 7″ vinyl on a track called Oh Yes I Will, which is coming out on classic funk label Breakin’ Bread on 25th February.

We’ve already mentioned Luo today, in our Weekend Gig Picks. His new EP Antidote is available as a free download, and is three tracks of lovely, jazzy, glitchy, electronica. And it’s free.

The last track of the Luo EP features the vocal talents of Jacko Hooper but In Angers couldn’t be more different from Luo. This is haunting sparse folk:

Raven also have the lyrics to their tune popping up in the video for Sounds Like Home, which puts a spin on rock by adding occasional glitchy 8-bit electronica, which gets reflected in the video:

Because of the snow the other week we missed Tiger Cub at Sea Monsters, so we’re happy to give their new single Little Rope a mention:

Gudjohr picked a funny time of year to put out an EP with an opening track entitled Summertime. Don’t be put off though, because Memories of Once Known is five tracks of lovely gentle lilting folk, which is available for free over at bandcamp.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 06/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Another weekend, another blog post flagging up our pick of the Brighton Bands playing live this weekend.

Our call for Thursday night is the launch of the Self Help Group‘s debut album Not Waving But Drowning. The gig at the Albert has been sold out for a little while, so well done if you’ve got a ticket. Tomorrow night is also the next Spirit of Gravity night at the Green Door Store, headlined by Sarah Angliss (who’s also a member of SpaceDog). There’s talk of robots, and that’s enough for us.

On Friday night Nick Cave is allowing an audience into his last rehearsal before he goes on tour. Resident Records, The Quietus and a few other places held competitions to win tickets. We were unlucky so we don’t even know where it is but it’s definitely the hot ticket of the night. We’re hoping to see The New Union at the Green Door Store, who are supporting the 1975 – that’s another sold out gig though, sorry!

Saturday night we recommend that you pay a visit to the Physics House Band’s regular night Kaleidoscope at Sticky Mike’s. Physics House Band aren’t performing – they are playing next weekend though, at the next Source New Music Night – but Sam is DJing and live music comes from Luo, who we like so much we’ve seen them twice this year.

Black Black Hills – Far from my Arms

Video

This is the brilliant beautiful new song from Black Black Hills.

I wasn’t expecting this – a soulful mournful love song, imbibing the spirit of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds but very much its own. Really gorgeous. Go listen.

And go download here http://emailunlock.com/blackblackhills/far-from-my-arms

Brightonmusicblog.co.uk

Posted on 04/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

We’ve decided to have a bit of a spring clean around here. The most obvious change is our new header. While the old one said Brighton, it didn’t really say music. And we’ve also invested in the .co.uk domain, rather than just having the blog in WordPress.

Aside from that, everything is still the same. All the old blog posts are still there, and all the old photos, it’s still the same people writing the posts, with the same enthusiasm. Keep your eyes peeled for more blog posts later this week.

Crayola Lectern – The Rise and Fall of… taster

Posted on 03/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Crayola Lectern’s debut album will be hitting the shelves in April this year, and to whet our appetite, he’s put a couple of tracks from it up on his Soundcloud. My other half reckons Slow Down sounds like Mary J Blige’s No More Drama, something which I imagine would amuse Crayola Lectern no end.

Brighton Music Blog

Monthly Archives: February 2013