Today Esben & The Witch announced a tour with Thought Forms and Teeth this autumn, taking in London, Leeds, Liverpool, Leicester and three other places not beginning with L, including their hometown – they play Sticky Mike’s on 13th October.
Alongside the tour announcement the band have also put out a video to Iceland Spar, which is the first track on Wash The Sins Not Only The Face. It was all filmed on Super 8 while they were on tour earlier this year. The band say “We see the song itself as the rallying cry at the start of an expedition so setting it to the images of our trip seemed wholly appropriate”
For this week’s gig picks, we’ve got tie-ins with two different festivals and some local media big hitters putting on gigs, as well as a few other odds and sods.
You may have heard that Brighton Digital Festival is on in town at the moment and as part of that Pop Up Brighton return with their Sound Screen event, bringing together local bands with international visual artists. On Thursday night at the Corn ExchangePhoria, Luo and The Hundredth Anniversary play to a backdrop of visual collaborations that the bands and video artists have been working together on for the last six weeks. Meanwhile Time for T headline at the Hope for Brightonsfinest, with Gypsy Switch, Paper Hawk and Prisoners Cinema also playing, and Monsters Build Mean Robots and Spacenoid are on the bill at Brighton Noise / Nice Weather For Airstrike’s Industroika gig at the Prince Albert.
On Friday Night Lloyd Williams and Ellie Ford launch their debut release at St Mary’s Church, Black Rooster Black Shag headline the Prince Albert, and Bad for Lazarus play Sticky Mike’s.
Saturday night is the third of The Haunt and Juice Brighton’s short run of weekly gigs. This week they have Them The Sky, Garden Heart, and Paper Hawk on the line up. It’s also the first of this month’s two Source New Music Nights (they’re hosting another on 20th as part of Brighton Digital Festival). This one is curated by Wildwood Promotions and is headlined by Alex White’s Interlocutor, with Red River Dialect, Octopuses and Herb Denton’s Last Dime playing too. Finally, it’s the Over The Moon Festival’s pre-party at the Blind Tiger, with a line up that includes Eagles for Hands, Mitch Wade Cole, Platypi, Eone and Murder He Wrote.
Here are the top tunes that were on the Brighton Music Blog stereo in August. As always, the diversity of the music being made in this city is impressive, from retro garage to chilled electronica and everything inbetween.
1) Spit Shake Sisters – Modern Drugs Make Aliens
Our most listened to track of the last month wasn’t a proper single, and was just put out to bring Spit Shake Sister’s output up to date following a change in personnel. Modern Drugs Make Aliens wasn’t even the lead song on the two track download. But nevertheless we’re big fans of this Hammond led hip swinger.
2) Electric Soft Parade – 1969
1969 is a popular year for songwriters. Serge Gainsbourg, Iggy Pop and, er, Bryan Adams have all taken advantage of writing about a year that recalls a time of free love, which also has a lot of rhymes. I’m sure the innuendo has nothing to do with it’s popularity. Now it’s Electric Soft Parade’s turn, putting out the summery guitar pop of 1969 as a free download from their label’s website.
3) Adolescent – Shy
Shy came out on an electronica compilation called Coast to Coast put out by Irish blog Believe In Sound. Call us biased, but in our opinion the Brighton track with the best thing on it. You can download the whole compilation for free on bandcamp.
4) Bon Iver – Wash (Foreign Skin remix)
Bon Iver’s not from Brighton, I hear you say. Well, no – but Flavia Aliverti, better known as Foreign Skin, is. We were won over by her set at Two Three Four at Green Door Store at the start of the month, and not long after this rather lovely unofficial remix turned up on SoundCloud and Bandcamp (see the links underneath the video on YouTube). Grab it before it disappears
5) The Hundredth Anniversary – Last Drive
The Hundredth Anniversary continue to put out high quality shoegaze, and Last Drive is no exception. Head over to the website they created to go with the track, play with the visuals, and download the track to listen to at your leisure.
6) The Raving Beauties – Oh Lover
At The Helm is a new Brighton based label from the guys behind Brighthelmstone promotions and Wildwood promotions, and the sunny Americana of Oh Lover is their first release
7) Phantom Runners – It Takes Me Away
We only heard this last week, but we loved it on first listen. We heard some very exciting news about who might be producing the Phantom Runners next EP, but we think it might be a secret so all we’ll say is keep your eyes and ears peeled.
8) Samuel Organ – E/\/\ER/\LD
The Physics House Band’s own label Kaleidoscope put out their second release this month, a three track solo EP called Y by Physics House Band member Samuel Organ. It’s not easy listening by any means, but neither is a lot of Aphex Twin’s output, which this track feels like it could be a natural heir to.
9) P For Persia – Uncanny Valley
Uncanny Valley got reviewed by Drowned In Sound, who described it as “a Twin Peaks remix done on an Atari by Fuck Buttons channelling their inner Kid606, before asking a bunch of shouty screamo kids to come in and do some vocals.”. They didn’t mention that it was just one track on a split EP with Speak Galactic, that the EP was called Aegis Arctic Alp, or that it was coming out on purple vinyl, all of which makes it an even more exciting prospect.
10) Flash Bang Band / Screw Come Loose
The second track in our top ten from At The Helm Records, Screw Come Loose, is the single that’s come out to promote the new Flash Bang Band album Bite Your Tongue. The album is out now and features some of their older singles (If You’re Driving and DananananaFreud). The launch party is at the Green Door Store on 15th September, where they’ll be joined by P For Persia and Clowns.
We had big plans for Friday night – we were going to head down to the Blind Tiger for Les Enfants Terribles which I’d read was an early gig, then catch Yumi & The Weather headlining Juice FM’s night at the Haunt. But then it turned out that the Juice night was an early gig too which put pay to that plan. We also wanted to pop into Brighton Electric on the way home for their all night, but that didn’t seem like such a great idea with work in the morning.
So we only made one of the three gigs we wanted to, but it was a good one. My New Favourite Tribe have only just put out their first single, but judging by the rest of their set there are great things to come. I would probably have enjoyed Salt Ashes set more had it been a PA in Audio at 2 o clock in the morning, but what a voice! I’ve been wanting to see Bent Cousin since I first heard them earlier this year and they didn’t disappoint. They’ve got catchy songs which work even better live than the recordings, and on top of that they’ve got heaps more charisma that most local bands.
Saturday night was more of a success, mainly because we had much more achievable ambitions for the evening. We only wanted to see the one band – The Space Agency – who were launching their new single Bombay Potatoes at the Horse and Groom in Hanover. The Space Agency are another band who’ve been on my wish list of bands to see for a while, and they were fantastic. I don’t get to write about Surf Rock nearly enough on the blog, and the band – who also rotated instruments midway through the gig and played a set as their alter ego The Get Smashed – had talent and tunes in great abundance.
Here’s out pics from the gigs. Click through to view large:
Brighton Music Blog 