New Music

Posted on 05/03/2015 by brightonmusicblog

Another week, another new music roundup. Ten tunes for you this week, two of which have been posted before, but are worthy of another mention, but we’ll tell you about them when we get to them.

Our first track is by The Go! Team, whose new album The Scene Between comes out at the end of the month. If you pre-orer the album you’ll get instant downloads of What D’You Say, which you can hear below, Blowtorch, which we featured last month, and the album’s title track.

Glass City Vice‘s new single Landslide comes out next Monday. If we’d have been a bit more on the ball on following up from the mail we had from their people we’d have been able to tell you about their gig supporting Dry The River at the Concorde on tuesday night, but at least we weren’t so slack that we missed telling you about their headline gig at The Hope & Ruin on 15th April.

Black Honey have put up new track Madonna which is coming out on a double A side single on 6th April. It’ll be backed with another new track Spinning Wheel and will be released on Duly Noted Records.

Black Fields new single Monster came out last friday. It’s currently available to download for free on their bandcamp page.

David Bennett sent us the video for his new track Atoms the other day, which shows David playing all of the instruments, as he does on the track itself.

Mustang Japan is taken from High Tyde‘s upcoming Fuzz EP, out next Monday. The band are off on tour later this month, starting off with a couple of dates at the Haunt where they’re support Peace at their sold out nights.

Luo and Monoman are a couple of Brighton artists who have tracks featured on a new compilation put out by Brighton label SmallPrint. We’ve featured one of Luo’s tracks here (they have two tracks on the compilation) but you can download Eidolon and the rest of the album for free via the SmallPrint facebook page.

Mount Bank‘s Island Life EP is also out next Monday. We posted up Everything Is Glass from it a few weeks back, and here’s another track – Summer Camp (Anenon Remix). You can pre-order the EP on iTunes here.

Finally the two tracks that we’ve featured before – We first wrote about Glow by IYES back in November last year, when it was scheduled for a released in December. Things got pushed back, but it’s finally out now. You can watch the video below or buy the track on iTunes here.

Last, and by no means least since it headed up February Top Ten, is the video for Demob Happy‘s Young & Numb. When we posted the track last month only the audio stream was available, but since there’s now video too it’s worth re-sharing.

Album news – Curxes / Verxes

Posted on 04/03/2015 by brightonmusicblog

Brighton Music Blog favourites Curxes have announced details of their debut album Verxes. It’s coming out on 4th May on download with a single entitled What You Want appearing shortly beforehand. The full tracklist is below the video for Further Still, one of a number of the bands earlier singles which appear on the album.

X
Haunted Gold
Avant-Guarded
What You Want
XX
Further Still
Ghosts
Noise Pollution
XXX
Spectre
Run From the Funeral
Animal
XXXX
Valkyrie
Pure To Last
XXXXX

February Top Ten

Posted on 02/03/2015 by brightonmusicblog

Is it March already? February shot past, but there was still plenty of great music out there. Here’s our pick of the bunch, counting down from Demob Happy’s Nirvana-esque Young & Numb:

1 Demob Happy / Young & Numb

2 Mount Bank / Everything Is Glass

3 Remi Miles / Under Light Symphonies

4 IYES / Simmer (live)

5 Lionbark / Amongst The Many

6 Salt Ashes / Raided

7 The Fiction Aisle / Soon Enough The Morning Comes

8 Conrad Vingoe / Fail

9 Caveman Genius / My Ford Sierra Needs an Oil Change

10 Record/Start / Rock from Afar

New Music

Posted on 24/02/2015 by brightonmusicblog

When I sat down last night to put together this week’s new music post I didn’t think it would be quite as big as it has turned out, which is why it’s taken me an extra day to post it up. In the last eight days we’ve heard about a dozen new tunes that we need to share. Good work Brighton musicians!

First up is the new tune from The Fiction Aisle. Their first proper single will be with us at some point, but in the meantime the band have put up the mournful Soon Enough The Morning Comes:

We’ve written about a few of Salt Ashes previous singles, but none have sounded as dancefloor friendly or well produced as Raided:

Silence Myself is a marked change for Fable, whose previous releases have been much noisier and intimidating, where her latest offering is beatless with just a soft synth backing. You can catch Fable playing live at the Prince Albert on 18th March. supported by Fragile Creatures.

Monoman‘s beats have been augmented with the vocal talents of Molly Burbridge on his latest track Untouchable. Head over to Monoman’s Soundcloud page to hear another track they’ve recorded together called Orion.

Krak Krak, featuring ex Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster‘s drummer Rob Ling released their debut EP Burnt At The Stake yesterday on Sonic Anhedonic records. Here’s EP opener War on Us:

Bones is the new single from Object Object. In the band’s bio, they claim to be influenced by 80s New Wave and Fleetwood Mac, which you can hear coming through on the track:

Lion Bark are giving away their new track Amongst The Many as a free download over on their bandcamp page. If you’re a fan of guitar pop, then this is for you. Lion Bark headline the newly refurbished Hope & Ruin (formerly just The Hope) on 21st March.

Last friday Record / Start put out their debut single on Post/Pop records. Rock from Afar (featured here) is backed with Followay, and is available over on the Post/pop bandcamp page. Hopefully that’s just a typo on the price of the digital download though!

IYES cover of Beyonce’s Crazy in Love first appeared in December 2013, but it’s been given a new lease of life with a remix by Ben Pearce which turned up online last week:

Talking of remixes, earlier this year Moulettes put out their single Glorious Year. Champion Fever‘s remix wasn’t put out with the single, but he has shared it with us as a free download on bandcamp:

One more remix? How about Ambassadeurs reworking of Marvin Gaye‘s classic Let’s Get It On. Ambassadeurs is playing live this saturday at the Green Door Store, supported by Foreign Skin.

Rory Indiana‘s Empiricism EP came out last September but was promoted with other tracks at the time. This week the band, who are already in the studio hard at work on their next release, put up a video to the EP’s title track:

New Music

Posted on 18/02/2015 by brightonmusicblog

Here’s our mid-February new music round up. Since it’s only been a week since our last post, it’s a much more manageable chunk of tunes than last time!

Demob Happy have posted a new tune to coincide with news of the European tour that they’re heading off on next month. Young & Numb takes the band off to a heavier place than some of their previous releases, but there’s still plenty of melody in there. It comes out as a single later this year on Milk Parlour Records. The tour takes in Belgium, Denmark and Belgium before heading all around the UK, finishing off with a hometown gig at The Haunt on 24th April. A full list of tour dates is available on the band’s website.

Mount Bank premiered their new track Everything is Glass on The Fader last week, and now it’s publicly shared on soundcloud we can post about it too. It’s taken their upcoming EP Island Life, which is out on Donky Pitch on 9th March. Things start with glassy synths and a simple piano motif, with percussion and reverb building as the track goes on.

Yesterday Bentcousin tweeted at us to give us a heads up about their new track Time Will Tell. This is the band at their simplest – just Amelia (or at least, we couldn’t hear Patrick on the track), accompanied by an acoustic guitar:

Jolta‘s PR people have sent us four emails in the past five days about their debut EP Sunset Surrender, so they’re obviously keen for us to write about it. Sunset Surrender is also the name of the lead track, three and a half minutes of guitar and organ driven rock’n’roll, and comes out on Republic of Music on 6th April:

Last, but by no means least we have have Under Light Symphonies by Remi Miles. It’s taken from an EP of the same name which is out now and is a lovely breezy pop song to help you get rid of the thoughts of winter:

New Music

Posted on 10/02/2015 by brightonmusicblog

We’ve been a bit rubbish on the New Music front in the past few weeks – it’s actually been over two weeks since our last roundup of what’s popped into our inbox, and consequently we’ve got a rammed post for you.

We’ll kick off with the new single from The Go! Team, announced today and out on 6th April. Blowtorch is the first proper single the band’s upcoming album The Scene Between, which you can pre order on iTunes with free downloads of the single and the title track. They’ve also announced their a gig in London in June featuring most of the original line up, but we’re going to keep our fingers crossed that they also announce something a bit more local at some point.

IYES have got form for knocking out demo tracks which blow most other bands finished product out of the water, and their latest offering Simmer is no different:

Our slackness in writing new posts means that we didn’t get to tell you about Bad for Lazarus‘ show at the Green Door Store timed quite nicely with the release of news of their upcoming single 7 Minute Itch which comes out on 16th March on 1-2-3-4 records. Don’t worry if you missed them though – their next hometown show is at Bleach on 13 March.

Last week Battery Operated Orchestra put out not one, but two new videos for their new EP. The EP is headed with album track Wishlist, alongside two remixes and new track Kakehashi-san:

We’ve also recently heard from Jacob Brant about his new EP Trawler. The lead track, featured here melds ambient and folk, while other tracks on the EP veer towards electronic post rock:

Next up is Caveman Genius, with the brilliantly titled My Ford Sierra Needs an Oil Change. Top notch sample led electronica:

We’ve written about the new Time for T EP already, but we haven’t posted up the video which has just come out for the lead track Long Way Home, filmed by Kenny McKracken, who’s shot and videoed more Brighton bands than you can shake a stick at. The band’s next Brighton date is on 4th March at Green Door Store, then on 3rd April at the Gladstone.

Conrad Vingoe‘s new album Tomorrow, Then is out on 2nd March. It’s preceded by the single Fail which came out on 26th January and has a fantastic stop motion video, with a launch party at Otherplace (which we think might be the Basement) on 5th March:

Aniseed Treats new single is one that’s probably sitting in our inbox for quite a while – sorry guys. We haven’t missed the launch party for Glue though – that’s on Thursday 19th February at Sticky Mike’s.

We also got told about the new Devil in Detail track a few weeks ago, but on top of that, Giants was a few weeks old by the time they told us about it. It’s taken from their second EP Goodbye Red Admiral which came out in December:

It’s very hard to categorise edityourhometown‘s new track Suddenly … Ghosts! – over the course of four minutes the cram in so many different genres they defy classification. You’ll just have to listen to it yourself and try and work it our:

Finally we have some lo fi sadcore from Butterfly House who have a new album out called By Ghostlight which has such jolly track titles as One Day You’ll Be Dust and God is Laughing at Me. Here’s the Arab Strap-esque The Lush:

Gigs we’ve spotted

Posted on 03/02/2015 by brightonmusicblog

Right now, with the evenings going sub-zero it might not seem too appealing to get off the sofa and into town for some live music. We’ve seen a few upcoming gigs which will hopefully change your mind though, starting off with a couple from newly refurbished venues:

You might have noticed that right now The Hope is covered with scaffolding and has been closed for a few weeks. on 12th February it reopens as The Hope & Ruin, And Riots Not Diets are hosting their opening party, with Shopping, The Soft Walls and Keel Her setting the bar for what’s to come.

Another venue which has just had a facelift is The Martha Gunn on Upper Lewes Road. Not traditionally known for gigs, it seems that’s to change in their newly reincarnated form. This Saturday (7th February), Becky Becky headline, supported by a stripped down Fiction Aisle, for a free gig put on by the Flash Bang Band affiliated F=KX.

Fiction Aisle are also support for The Academy of The Sun‘s gig at The Old Market on 19th February. Nick Hudson’s most ambitious project to date have played a few low key gigs so far, but Nick has a history of turning his bigger gigs into events not to be missed.

Fiction Aisle aren’t on the bill for the welcome return of The Bleeding Hearts Club, but it’s surely only a matter of time since Bleeding Hearts put out Tom White’s solo Yalla album. The Bleeding Hearts Club has left it’s old home of the Prince Albert and has relocated to a new home at The Rialto Theatre on Dyke Road, with Gary Goodman, The Hornblower Brothers, Tandy Hard and Mudlow playing on 16th February. After this month, they’ll be back every second monday of the month for the rest of the year.

Another regular night which is making a return soon is The Harvest Sessions, which are restarting on 4th March at The Komedia, coming back with a bang with Luke Sital-Singh, Jacko Hooper and The Standard Lamps.

The following night Della Lupa launches her new single Storm of Swallows at One Church. Not content with just playing a gig, the evening also comprises an art exhibition by Beth Steddon who provided the artwork for the single, a dance performance from the dancers who choreographed the video, and support from Ellie Ford, Summa, and Kwil.

January Top Ten

Posted on 02/02/2015 by brightonmusicblog

We didn’t do a top ten at the end of November. It had been a quiet month, and we were gearing up for our top twenty that we posted in December. Both months had a few great tunes that are too good to pass up though, so this month’s top ten has a few tracks from the end of last year too.

1 The Go! Team / The Scene Between

The Go! Team are back! Our top spot is the lead track from the band’s new album also called The Scene Between, out in March on Memphis Industries.

2 Anneka / End of It

End of It only features Anneka’s voice, but the layers and the textures and the harmonies demand repeat listens.

3 GAPS / She Bears a Flower

GAPS latest release came out right at the end of November last year sounding like some a futuristic remix of an Elizabethan childrens folk song.

4 Ambassadeurs / Forever

Forever is the lead track from Ambassadeurs latest EP out last month. Ambassadeurs play a gig at The Green Door Store at the end of the month, supported by Foreign Skin.

5 The Fiction Aisle / Blue

We liked Tom White’s new band’s first proper track so much that we got it into our end of the year round up, even though it hadn’t been in one of our top ten posts. Since we’re catching up on November here it would be wrong of us to omit it.

6 David Harks / Odyssey

We loved Open Arms, also taken from David Harks’ Lomo EP but shared much earlier in the year, as soon as we heard it but Odyssey was much more of a slow burner working it’s way under our skin until we couldn’t stop listening to it.

7 Tyrannosaurus Dead – Flying Ant Day

Tyrannosaurus Dead were the first band we ever interviewed on the blog, so it’s great to see their debut album (also called Flying Ant Day) finally released.

8 Seadog / Transmitter

Seadog’s Transmitter EP was launched at the end of December, while most of us were busy being distracted. The physical release is due in the springtime, but you can grab the EP now if you head over to Bandcamp.

9 Phantom Runners / Laserbeam

Laserbeam is a free download from Phantom Runnerscover on Soundcloud. Hanging out with Huey Morgan (who’s produced their last few tracks) is obviously rubbing off – this is the most laid back thing they’ve done.

10 Man Ray Sky / Ether Song

Finishing up with the title track from an EP from December, Ether Song is four minutes of breezy guitar pop.

GAPS at the Prince Albert photo gallery

Posted on 27/01/2015 by brightonmusicblog

Last night we braved the cold to head out to the Prince Albert where GAPS played a hometown gig following their recent mini tour. Since the last time we saw them they’ve gained some rather lovely visuals which meant they were standing in the dark – that we got any photos of the band was something of a miracle. They’ve also written an awful lot of new material too which has broadened their sound while still operating within the bands existing premise of folk + electronica, now taking in breakbeats and some trouser shaking bass. Support came folk troubadour Lloyd Williams who did some very clever things with a guitar, a banjo and a floor mounted accordion. Here’s our pics, click to view large:

Kristin McClement launches ‘the Wild Grips’

Posted on 26/01/2015 by brightonmusicblog

Kristin McClement launched her new album ‘The Wild Grips‘ on Saturday night in Brighton at the One Church on Gloucester Parade, the latest in a long line of incredible music from the Willkommen Records stable.

Support act Benjamin Benedict, a solo Ben Rubinsteain – lead singer with Mariner’s Children, had a bit of a cold which made his reverbed vocals sound a lot like one of those early 60s English pop singers favoured so much by the likes of Joe Meek. That was no bad thing. Supporting Willy Mason also seemed to rub off on Ben. He started off a bit snuffly and hesitant, but showed the strength of his songwriting and singing in the last three songs.

Benjamin Benedict

But this was really all about Kristin McClement, whose album ‘The Wild Grips‘ has been a long long time coming. Song ‘Planks’ was a highlight of the first Willkommen Collective compilation way back in 2009, but little McClement music had emerged since then, despite her regularly venturing forth to play live in a variety of formations, lately most commonly as a two-piece with drummer and backing vocalist Julian Owens. Now her long-awaited debut is out in the world, recorded with Christian Hardy of the Leisure Society who featured on keyboards here in an expanded live band.

Kristin McClement

McClement’s set began with her solo, playing the beautiful mournful ‘Mouthful of Shells’, then she was joined by drummer Owens for ‘Planks’, another stunning song. This is the mainstay of her live performances in normal times, but for the remainder of the set her stage support grew to feature Christian Hardy, three quarters of Eyes and No Eyes as well as multi-instrumentalist Emma Gatrill and the aforementioned Owens, allowing the rich sounds of the album to be re-created live.

The ‘The Wild Grips’ is an extraordinary collection of mournful yet beautifully crafted and poetic songs, with McClement’s deep resonant voice dominant throughout. Songs like ‘Hoax of a Man’ and the aforementioned ‘Mouthful of Shells’ are particular favourites, but the whole work is genuinely quite special. There’s the lost princess spirit of the alt-folk heroine Sibylle Baier in the intimate cool of the songs, but enriched with the talents of the Willkommen collective the musical depth of the playing comes into finer focus. Julian Owen’s percussion and backing vocals are particularly noteworthy, as was the playing of the gritty soulful celloist Becca Mears.

The main set ended with the Drink Waltz {‘Drink with me’) in which the audience were asked to join in the poignant chorus, not easy given the awkward flow of the words but achieved with aplomb. Then the band returned for an encore of the album’s title-track , a deeply elegant and personal song. Perhaps not an obviously uplifting way to end a show, with its dark lyric, but the band lifted the gloom and filled the large Baptist church hall leaving the audience mesmerised and happy.

Kristin McClement

Listen to the opening track ‘Blackfin Gulls’ below

The album ‘The Wild Grips’ can be ordered via bandcamp at https://kristinmcclement.bandcamp.com/