Anushka are back with a new single and tour. Atom Bombs is being released on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Records on October 13th and comes with a dub mix and a some remixes, including the NameBrand Sound remix featured here. To support the release the duo are out on tour, playing at Audio on thursday night (2nd October).
On Thursday Fear of Men kicked off their first headline tour of the UK, which is also the last round of promotion for their album Loom. Last week they also put out a video for album track Tephra, directed by the band themselves, which shows the effigy created for the front cover of Loom being burned to ash, also marking the end the band’s links to the album. The band have already played Norwich last night and are also taking in Leeds and Manchester this weekend, with the tour concluding in London at Concrete on 2nd October.
Our pics from of Fear of Men, and support The Hundredth Anniversary, are below the video.
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Dog in the Snow‘s new single was launched at the Green Door Store on Wednesday this week. Africa came out this week on Tidal Wave records, and you can listen to it on Soundcloud. Our pics from the gig, including shots of support Momotaro, are below.
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On Tuesday this week we headed down to Latest Music Bar where Cate Ferris launched her new Disappear EP. The gig was the first date of her own tour before she heads out for one last tour as part of Dizraeli and the Small Gods (where she’s also the support as well as being one of the Small Gods) – you can catch her again in Brighton at The Lantern Fayre on The Level on 4th October and there’s a full list of tour dates on her facebook page. In the meantime the EP is available on bandcamp, priced at three pounds for a download of the four tracks or a fiver for the cd:
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On Saturday night we headed down to the Prince Albert to see Clowns – one of Brighton’s best live bands, but who we hadn’t seen in over a year. In that time they’ve been lying low and finishing off their long awaited album. Hopefully we’ll be able to give you more details of that very soon indeed, but until there here’s what our camera saw:
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There’s an excellent week of gigs ahead in Brighton with some of the best local bands gracing some of our stages, and we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t give you a heads up about them.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) Cate Ferris launches her new EP at Latest Music Bar. Disappear was crowdfunded (with pledgers already having received their downloads), and now the EP is getting a full release. Support comes from Moughrabi and Bird.
Dog in the Snow’s new single Africa is out today, but the launch party is at the Green Door Store on Wednesday. Also on the bill are Brighton Music Blog favourites Momotaro and Winston & Goldstein.
Fear of Men kick off their first headline tour this week with a hometown gig at The Hope on Thursday. To mark they event, the band have put up a new cover onto Soundcloud, of Ty Segall’s Sleeper. Get there early and you can also catch The Hundredth Anniversary who are opening the evening’s proceedings.
Friday night is the next Spectrum event, run as a partnership between Brighton Dome and Resident. This month’s night is headlined by Gazelle Twin, whose new album Unflesh is released today. The whole night is being billed as an Anti Ghost Moon Ray showcase and Gazelle twin is being joined by her labelmates Bernholz and Great Pagans.
Finally, on Saturday Lutine play a show at St Laurence Church in Falmer village. Lutine’s debut album White Flowers was recorded at the church and is released on Monday 29th September. Support comes from Bela Emerson.
It’s ten days since our last new music post, and the music has been flooding in.
First up is the new single from Fickle Friends. For You is currently Hype Machine’s most blogged about track, so we’re a few days behind the curve with this one. That’s what happens if you take ten days between new music posts I guess. For You is another fantastic 80s influenced pop tune, following on from their previous singles Swim and Play.
J Tropic are Fickle Friends’ labelmates but Love Up is more r’n’b than pop. J Tropic’s three track debut EP is out on Duly Noted records on 27th October.
Human Touch by Gazelle Twin got a premier on The Line of Best Fit last week, and is taken from her upcoming album Unflesh, out next Monday. Gazelle Twin headline the next Spectrum Music Night at the Dome Studio Theatre next Friday night. The whole evening is a showcase for Gazelle Twin’s label Anti Ghost Moon Ray, and also has Benholz and Great Pagans on the bill.
We haven’t been slow off the mark with all of the tracks we’re posting – Champion Fever‘s latest offering is hot off the fresh, only appearing online this afternoon – VolcaNO is four minutes of uplifting electronica
Next week, Cate Ferris launches her new EP. Disappear is already available for people who supported her pledge campaign, but is getting a full launch at Latest Music Bar on Tuesday. Here’s the title track:
We posted about the upcoming Levellers album a few weeks back and shared the collaboration they had made with Billy Bragg. They’ve now shared another of the new collaborations of their old tracks which feature on their new best of, this time working with Imelda May on a new version of Beautiful Day:
Dark Train are a new Brighton duo who make dark brooding synth pop. Here’s their latest track Sing To You. If you like what you hear, Dark Train are supporting Return To The Sun at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar next thursday:
Transformer have a new three track EP out entitled Feel The Beast. XLR8R offered a free download of the track Deepak from the EP, but here’s the title track:
We hadn’t rushed to write anything about the new Salt Ashes single If You Let Me Go because the PR email we got told us that it wasn’t out until October. However, a few clicks around the internet has told us that the single is actually out already on iTunes, and has been for a couple of weeks. Oops:
The last track we’re featuring today is something guitar based, from the debut EP Empiricism from Brighton based alternative rock band Rory Indiana. The EP comes out on September 26th. So far the only track out there from the EP is Sanctuary, which you can hear below:
Brighton Music Blog favourites GAPS have got a new four track collaborative release with multi award winning British-Japanese producer Maya Jane Coles. It’s some of the most exciting new music to come out of Brighton recently, and just the excuse we needed to catch up with the Rachel and Ed over a coffee:
GAPS
Brighton Music Blog: So, you’ve got a new release out. Is it a single or an EP?
Rachel: It’s an EP.
Ed: <Puzzled look>
BMB: You don’t seem sure about that Ed?
E & R: <laughter>
E: I was wondering myself which it was! Yeah. It’s an EP.
BMB: How did the collaboration with Maya Jane Coles happen?
R: It’s sort of a long story but basically I met her years ago in Brighton at a party at my house and she was really sweet. She said she was a DJ, and we chatted about music and then that was that. Then a few years back before we’d even formed GAPS I saw her headlining a festival – it was so nice to see that someone you met randomly has done really well – so I sent her a message on Facebook and got back in touch. When we had our first single I cockily sent it to her to see if she’d be interested in doing a remix. There’s not that many people that I thought would be good for our sound, but she was always someone I’ve always had in mind. It was a bit out of our ballpark with us being totally unknown but she was really sweet and liked what we were doing but was too busy at the time, but was keen to hear more about GAPS and was interested to see if I wanted to do some vocal stuff with her. That was last summer.
BMB: What was the process for writing? To us they sound a lot like GAPS tracks that have been produced by someone else.
R: That’s exactly what they are. I didn’t do anything different to what I do with Ed. I sat in my bedsit and wrote and recorded it and then Ed took the stems, treated them, made them sparkle, and then we sent them onto Maya. So instead of Ed going to work on the production, they went to Maya instead.
BMB: So they’re basically written by you but produced by her?
R: Well, it’s half and half, a bit like me and Ed really. I wrote the initial idea, but obviously she has written all the production and the extra lines in it that you hear. So the guitar and the vocals are me and the rest is her.
BMB: How long has the writing process been going on? I saw she posted up your track Inside Your Head on her Soundcloud six months ago. And you haven’t had anything out this year and she hasn’t had any singles out this year.
R: It’s been really natural and organic really. We decided to do an EP together around Christmastime and I wrote my parts around February / March, then she was really, really busy so from then it was down to her having the time to work on them because she’s away every weekend and she has her own remixes to do. So it got written, then she did her bit, then it’s come out almost as soon as it was finished. It’s been quite fast moving in that sense.
BMB: And it’s out on Maya’s own record label I/AM/ME where your previous releases have been on Sexbeat on 7”s.
R: Sexbeat are friends of ours and they put our singles out to allow us to get music out there and still keep a lot of control over our music, which is what we wanted to do, but the EP was always going to be with Maya and down her routes.
BMB: Have you got any live dates coming up?
R: We haven’t got any in Brighton at the moment, but we’ve got a show at Servant Jazz Quarters on Tuesday 28th October so we’re looking forward to that.
E: It’s our first London headline.
R: Well, it’s our first paid London headline, so they’re advertising it as our first headline. So this is our first opportunity for Londoners to buy tickets and see us, which is cool for us. And we’ve got someone from Brighton supporting us who we both love called Lloyd Williams, who’s a brilliant folk musician.
BMB: Which leads nicely onto our last question which we ask everyone we interview. Are there any other Brighton bands you’d recommend?
R: Lloyd Williams is amazing. You should check him out.
E: We’re quite excited about bringing out the folk influence. It’ll be quite nice to get a folk guitarist play and then have us play afterwards. I think the two will fit together quite well, even though what we do is quite electronic there’s a folk influence there.
R: The scales that he uses are similar to ours, and he loves drone, I love drone, so we’re singing from the same hymn sheet.
E: Do you know Eagles for Hands? We’re big fans and good friends with him. He’s doing very well for himself. He’s played at a couple of gigs of ours before and we’re trying to work with him in the future.
R: Another band that I’ve seen twice this week is Thieves by the code, and they sound a bit like Megadeth, but they’re amazing, really tight. Beautiful riffs. They’re just putting an album out in October. You should look out for them.
In Dark, In Day is out now via Beatport and gets a general release across other digital platforms next week.
There was sad news amongst the music press today of the death of Robert “Throb” Young from Primal Scream. The band were famously Brighton residents for many years, although haven’t been associated with the city since Bobby Gillespie moved away, and today the Guardian reported that Throb passed away at on Tuesday in Hove. Throb hadn’t been a member of the band since 2006, when he took a sabbatical which he never returned from. Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes put out a statement saying:
“We have lost our comrade and brother Robert Young.
A beautiful and deeply soulful man.
He was an irreplaceable talent, much admired amongst his peers,
In the words of Johnny Marr “Throb with a gold top Les Paul -unbeatable”
He was a true rock and roller. He walked the walk.
He had “Heart & Soul” tattooed on his arm and I’m sure on his heart too.
He once said to me “When we go onstage it’s a war between us and the audience”
He never let go of that attitude.
Our love and thoughts are with his sons Brandon and Miles and their mother Jane, his wife Rachel, and his immediate family.”
Today the Phantom Runners revealed the new video for their track On The Run, taken from their recent Relevance EP, produced by Huey Morgan. The video ropes in their fans and was recorded on location in Brighton. Can you spot the venue it was shot in?
Phantom Runners’ Relevance EP is out now available via iTunes.
Brighton Music Blog 