Hot on the heels of the release of their top twenty debut album One More Thing, Lime Garden closed their UK tour on Friday night with a sold out gig at Chalk. Support came from Ladylike (who are locals so also feature in the gallery below) and Ugly.
There was a shoutout to Chloe’s mum up in the balcony when they played Mother, quips about seeing the four coolest women on International Women’s Day, one of the friendliest mosh pits I’ve seen in a while, and, by all accounts, massive queues at the Green Door Store after they announced that’s where the afterparty would be.
This week Brighton Music Blog favourites Projector hit the road to promote their new album Now When We Talk it’s Violence. There’s a whole bunch of other tour dates (go check their website), but obviously the only one that really matters is their hometown gig, which took place at Green Door Store last night. It was everything you’d hope for and more – the album played through larger and louder than you’d have heard it at home, a mosh pit, band members removing layers of clothing, a Pixies cover, and fantastic support sets from Ideal living and Vincent Vocoder Voice. Go stream the album (or better still, buy it) today
Yesterday Lime Garden released their debut album One More Time. After a strong run of singles, of which only those released in the last twelve months feature on the record, and years of playing live honing their skills, they’ve come up with an accomplished collection of songs dealing with hope, humdrum and matters of the heart. Broadening their palette beyond guitar pop Floor and Pop Star casually toss in a bit of autotune, and Fears almost ditches guitars altogether save for a few riffs towards the end. The closing pair of tracks, It and Looking, strip things right back and remind us that it’s not parties every night. And then clocking in barely over half an hour it’s done, leaving us thirsting for more.
Promotion for the album kicked off last night with an in store at Resident (and an anecdote about how at a previous instore Chloe had asked Marika Hackman to sign a sanitary pad), followed by a launch party around the corner. A whole bunch of live dates are coming up including their biggest ever headline gig at Chalk on Friday 8th March, and no doubt a summer full of festivals
HAPPY NEW YEAR! When we first saw Van Zon supporting Flip Top Head last year we knew it wouldn’t be long before they were headlining gigs, and last night they did, playing their first bill topping gig at Green Door Store. If you missed it, they’ve got a whole bunch more shows coming up – check their instagram for details. Support came from Moon Idle, playing their modern take on trip hop, and Nina Kohout, whose layered vocal tracks definitely pushed our buttons. As usual, click through to view large
Earlier this week Flip Top Head topped the bill at a fantastic gig at the Prince Albert, joined by Brighton Music Blog faves The New Eves, and future stars Van Zon. It comes a few weeks after Flip Top Head released their latest single Alfred Street, which didn’t have a single launch at the time, so let’s shout about it now. Anyway, here’s a whole load of photos from the gig. Click through to view large
Last weekend was Mutations festival around Brighton, which we couldn’t make most of because of other weekend plans. But with a bit of last minute shuffling, we managed to get into ĠENN‘s set on thursday night at the Hope & Ruin – a last minute addition to the bill, and very fortuitous for us after we missed their gig at the Komedia last month. Of course we took our camera along, click through to view large
It’s been a bit quiet on the blog over the summer, as the local scene always gets quiet in festival season (although there has been a few gigs where we haven’t taken so many photos, which just ended up on our Insta feed). Gigs are firmly back now though, and last night saw the return of Nanocluster – Immersion‘s live night where they invite guests to collaborate for a week culminating in a performances at the Rosehill. As noted last night, it’s been four years since the last local Nanocluster (although they took the event to SXSW festival earlier this year), and it was a joy to see the event return. Last night’s guest was Cubzoa AKA Jack from Penelope Isles, who brought psychedelic guitar squalls to Immersion’s kraut based electronica, all accompanied by visuals that I assume were put together by Malka Spiegel, judging by the output of her personal Instagram feed, which featured emotive views of Brighton and beyond. There’s no word yet on when the next one will be, but hopefully it won’t be in another four years!
Last night ARXX played the closing date of their tour to promote new album Ride or Die with a hometown gig at Patterns, supported by Currls. We got there early and bagged a prime spot to take photos from:
Last week Memorials, Brighton’s newest supergroup, made up of Verity Susman (from Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (from Wire, It Hugs Back, and Better Corners) released a double album called Music for Film. We caught up with them when they were on the road launching the album to ask them a few questions about the band and the record, and took along our camera to the show at their Prince Albert (with the photos underneath the interview below):
Memorials is a new band, but you’ve both been working together for a very long time – I see that Verity played saxophone on the first It Hugs Back album almost fifteen years ago. Is there time you could point at when “Memorials” was born? If I remember right, It’s In Our Hands came out as Susman & Simms before being later released as Memorials.
Verity: We can remember the point exactly – it was when we were offered a gig, and at that point it seemed fairly essential to start a band! We had released It’s In Our Hands a single with no intention of playing gigs, but one thing led to another, and we wanted to have a slightly snappier name than Susman & Simms, which sounds to us like a firm of provincial solicitors.
Matthew: We’ve worked together for 15 years on various projects, but this is the first time we’ve worked on something together where we’ve had a proper chance to focus on it. 8 years or so ago we played at Café Oto in London together, as a trio with Steve Beresford, completely improvised, with Verity on sax and me on modular synth, live processing/sampling, and some of this probably informed some of the things we’re exploring now, but combining this with our love of songwriting.
After It’s In Our Hands, which is a jangly pop song, there was There Are Other Worlds, which featured on a Duophonic cassette and is almost komische in it’s sound, then Tramps which goes in much harder. Did you want to get a wide range of styles out in the first few releases to show your breadth as a band, or were these some of the most obvious singles? Which of these is closest to the “Memorials” sound?
Verity: the Duophonic cassette track (There Are Other Worlds) was written specifically for that release, because we were going to play with Stereolab and they asked all the bands on that night to contribute a track to the tape. We decided we wanted to write something new for it, as we are huge Stereolab fans and wanted to do something special for it, and then that ended up coming out before the film-related albums and singles. The label chose the singles – it’s quite hard to stand outside your own and choose what might appeal most.
Matthew: There Are Other Worlds was the first thing we’d recorded outside of music for film, so in a way it probably hints more at what we’d get up to without any outside influence from film directors.
Verity: We’re part way through recording a new album – of non-film music – and it’s a bit of a mixture of everything we’ve released so far, but jumbled up and spewed out in one big vomit of new music. (Matthew says that’s gross).
The latest single Boudicaaa which came out a few weeks ago is a celebration of notable women throughout history, who may or may not have been lesbians, and was used as the closing music for the film Tramps, the soundtrack to which forms part of the album. The other part of the album is music from the film Women Against The Bomb, which is about the protests in the 80s at Greenham Common. Is celebrating women who have been misrepresented or understated throughout history a central part of the band? How important to you is it that you can use the platform that you have to share this message? Do you think that in the twenty first century, with the role of historians not being confined to old white men so much, that history books might better reflect what actually went on in the past?
Verity: all of those songs were written for the films they soundtracked, so their impetus came from the films. But at the same time, I’m a feminist and that influences me in all walks of life. I definitely think the women of Greenham Common and the movement they created there should be much better known, especially among younger generations who weren’t around at the time, because they were so innovative in their direct action and that is really inspiring for activist-minded young people. Films like Women Against The Bomb are great for bringing this women-centred history to new audiences.
The album “Music for Film: Tramps! & Women Against the Bomb” is out on double LP – is it one disc for each soundtrack or has the tracklist been ordered to make it work better as a whole album? Are all the tracks on the album from the film, or are there extra tracks that were written alongside the soundtracks?
Matthew: it is one disc for each soundtrack – they stand alone as separate albums, as do the films, which were made by different directors. Both albums were individually worked on and sequenced to make them the best listen that we could manage as an album from start to finish. To keep costs down, so we weren’t charging vinyl fans extortionate amounts in the shops, we packaged both together as a double LP.
We’re speaking to you on your first tour – what can people expect when they come and see you live? One of the highlights at your Lewes Psych Fest gig earlier this year was Verity managing to play two synths AND saxophone at the same time.
Verity: we played in Bristol last night, and someone wrote online after that we are like “Stereolab’s evil twin” – I’ll take that description!
Matthew: we play music from both released soundtrack albums, and new material from the album we’re working on at the moment. Between us both we play far too many instruments at once for a two piece!
The various parts of Music for Film are available in the shops, or through the band’s Bandcamp page (which also has a cassette of additional material for sale which won’t be in the shops)
Hopefully everyone has now recovered from The Great Escape. Here’s a few shots from the local bands I saw – as always I only saw a fraction of the bands I wanted to, but I did catch Heights at Unbarred Taproom, Hanya at the Hope & Ruin, Sleeper at the Mesmerist, Penelope Trappes at St Mary’s Church, My Life Story at the Black Lion, Trip Westerns at the White Rabbit, and Hutch and Helen Ganya on the TGE Beach Stage. I’ve already picked up a Super Early Bird ticket for next year too
Last week Memorials, Brighton’s newest supergroup, made up of Verity Susman (from Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (from Wire, It Hugs Back, and Better Corners) released a double album called Music for Film. We caught up with them when they were on the road launching the album to ask them a few questions about the band and the record, and took along our camera to the show at their Prince Albert (with the photos underneath the interview below):
Brighton Music Blog 