Heliopause / The Lumo Tapes

Posted on 06/05/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Once upon a time there was a three piece band from Belfast who made rather nice dreamy folk music. Then main protagonist Richard Davis relocated to Brighton, and found that being in a band where your bandmates are on a completely different landmass was a bit tricky. For a while, Richard tried his own thing, putting together layers of sound on his laptop, calling his new project Lumo. He played a few gigs which were mostly improvised, and got approached by Brighton label Precious Metal, who have started putting out releases on cassette.

When Richard agreed his original thought was two put out two longer tracks of about ten minutes each, with one on each side, but things grew and grew. Guitarist Niall Harden had also moved to Brighton, and they couldn’t turn their back on Chris McCorry who was still back in Belfast. The release would be as a new, bolder, more ambitious Heliopause, and instead of two tracks, a whole album’s worth of material was recorded.

The result is the Lumo Tape. It’s recognisable as the old Heliopause, but the songs are bigger, richer and more atmospheric. Guitars are run through numerous pedals making them distorted and fuzzy. Electronica generated on the laptop twinkles and burbles in the background. Layers of reverb are added to the songs making the whole sound much warmer – like Sigur Ros with intelligible lyrics remixed by Kieran Hebden.

The album was launched at an intimate gig at Brighton Electric Studios on Saturday 5th May. Support came from local electronica act Krill, and Before Machines, a post-indie band who are old friends of Heliopause’s from Belfast.

Only fifty cassettes have been produced, which went on general release at the gig. Soon they’ll be taking some to Canada – the band are performing at this year’s NXNE festival in Toronto in June.

http://preciousmetal.bandcamp.com/

music

Emma Gatrill album release

Posted on 06/05/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Emma Gatrill (of Laish, Sons of Noel and Adrian etc) launched her first solo album ‘Chapter One’ in the beautiful environment of the Church of Annunciation last Friday night. The quirky but holy surroundings perfectly suited Emma’s hushed yet accessibly moving harp-based songs. The album is really lovely and well worth checking out – available now from the Willkommen label http://www.willkommenrecords.co.uk/shop/releases/emma-gatrill-chapter-i

Support acts on Friday came from two local acts I had not seen before – the Steve Aston Trio who played some beautiful jazz-based guitar in the style of Django Reinhardt (whose name I surprisingly spelled correctly at the first attempt!), and the opener who was the amazing Nick Edward Harris, who managed to play some extrordinary songs on the guitar using some impressive slapping and tapping and quite original ways of playing that instrument. Both supports are also well worth catching if you get the chance.

Beat Express raising funds to perform at the Irish Performing Arts Festival

Posted on 03/05/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Beat Express are a local band with a difference – they’re the UK’s first all learning disabled band. They’ve been going for ten years, and are supported by Carousel – a Brighton charity which works with disabled people and the arts. Earlier this year, they submitted a song to a competition where the prize to play at the Irish Performing Arts Festival & European Song Festival in Cork which is an international performing arts festival for people with disability, and not only have the band been invited to play but they’ve also been invited to host a workshop.

Beat Express

This is all very good news, but taking a band to a festival is a lot more expensive than you or I buying a ticket to festival and jumping on the train. Factor in disability and the fact that the festival is in a different country, and the costs mount up. To help with all of this, the charity have set up a crowdfunding page to help give the band the support they need.

Here at the blog, we wish all local bands every success, but I’m sure you’ll all agree that seeing Beat Express doing well would be something special.

New Fear of Men Single

Posted on 01/05/2012 by brightonmusicblog

It seems like forever since Fear of Men put out the debut 7″ Ritual Confession last year. It’s probably been barely six months, and in that time one of their early cassette released tracks, Doldrums, appeared on the Sea Monsters 2 compilation, but now the band are just about ready to put out their next single.

Green Sea is coming out on limited 300 only 7″ on June 18th on Sexbeat records, backed with another new track called Born, which they claim is “hook laden”. If you want to hear what Green Sea sounds like before then, you can because they’ve put it up on Soundcloud:

If you want to hear what they sound like playing it live, then they’re playing at the Great Escape Festival, Friday 11th May at 9.30pm at Queens Hotel, and they’re back again supporting Best Coast at Coalition on 21st June. Of course, there’s no guarantee that they’ll actually play the new single, but I can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t.

The New Union supporting Clock Opera at Green Door Store

Posted on 30/04/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Before last night’s gig I’d had a listen to The New Union on soundcloud and what caught my ear was the slick production. Great studio production isn’t a guarantee of a great live performance though, so I was impressed by their display supporting Clock Opera. All dressed in black, the group gave the impression of a band with a unified look, rather than just four guys who happened to be on stage together. The songs were well written, obviously well rehearsed, and sounding tight. If anyone was looking for Brighton’s next big guitar pop hope after The Maccabees, they need look no further than The New Union.

The New Union

April Juice FM New Music Night at The Haunt

Posted on 29/04/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Another month, another Juice FM night at The Haunt, and another three Brighton bands who are all completely new to me. Where do they find them all? I guess it’s probably the endless demos they get sent because they’re the local radio station. But they certainly do a good job of picking great bands for their regular nights.

First up were Tigercub, who distracted me with double denim and a haircut last seen spotted on Dave Hill from Slade in the 1970s. A late start meant that their set of rock stompers was over far too soon.

Tigercub

Having thought after the first band that the night would be a rock night, Holy Vessels mixed things up by kicking off their set with a song with a very predominant banjo. It was their only track that used banjo, but it was a strong statement of intent for their half an hour on stage, which mixed up country, rock and Americana and was a far more melodic affair.

Holy Vessels

Once upon a time, post-rock was noisy and angular, but then Sigur Ros came along and made it all a bit twee. thedealwasforthediamond hark back to the way it was, sounding like Mogwai at their loudest, or Rothko with the bass leading proceedings. thedealwasforthediamond turned things up to eleven, and quite literally blew the audience away. I was quite glad I had ear plugs in my bag!

thedealwasforthediamond

Words & Music by Saint Etienne, Conversation by Pete Wiggs

Posted on 28/04/2012 by brightonmusicblog

The premise of Brighton Music Blog is nice and simple – write about bands from Brighton. So what am I doing interviewing Saint Etienne’s Pete Wiggs? The band have a greatest hits called London Conversations, and London Belongs To Me from Foxbase Alpha came 19th in Time Out’s 100 best London songs last year. Surely I can’t be branching out so soon? Don’t worry. The blog is still dedicated to Brightonians – Pete Wiggs is a Hove resident these days, so I caught up with him over a pint or two at his local to talk about moving away from London, his new album, and making remixes for a new generation of artists.

Saint Etienne on Brighton Beach (photo (c) Elaine Constantine)

It’s funny because even now we still do interviews where people ask me my favourite London haunts. I’ve been down here for four years now. I still feel like a tourist now and again here. We’d always intended to move down here at some point, and now I can sometimes go a couple of weeks without going into London. I suppose it’s easier with internet – you can bat things around. Continue reading →

Hatful of Rain – Way up on the Hill

Video

Lewes is not too far, is it?

Anyone who follows the Brighton folk scene will probably have come across the excellent Hatful of Rain. This great local folk band have now recorded an album which is coming out via the Union Music Store in Lewes, and if this first song is anything to go by it will be a fabulous thing. The album is out at the end of May.

Live and Unsigned

Posted on 25/04/2012 by brightonmusicblog

This Sunday sees the regional final of the Live & Unsigned competition taking place at Hove Town Hall. Live & Unsigned is a national battle of the bands competition, judged by some heavy hitters within the industry, and a fair amount of competition – over the past five years, they’ve had over 50,000 entrants. The prizes are pretty impressive too – finalists get to play at the O2, and the overall winner gets a whole load of press, and the opportunity to tour and play at festivals, with big cash investment made into the band too.

Three of the acts in the regional final have got in touch to flag up the event to me, and to get to this stage, in view of the numbers involved, is a pretty mean feat. Fingers crossed for Jetpack Elastic, Emy Lou Harris, and quAckhouse.

Emy Lou Harris

links:

soundcloud.com/emyloumusic
soundcloud.com/jetpack-elastic
www.youtube.com/user/quAckhouse

Track by Track walk though with Amongst The Pigeons of their new album “Get Amongst it”

Posted on 25/04/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Amongst The Pigeons have just released their new album Get Amongst It. I caught up with them in their pigeon shed / recording studio to do a track by track walkthrough of the album:

FutureDeadRockStars

With this track, the first 20 seconds was the fadeout sound on the first album. I really like the idea of taking that same sound to open up this album. All the titles came about from things other people have said, seeing things that people were saying on twitter or facebook or just conversations that friends were having. This track came about from my friend Si – we were having a conversation on twitter, and he was saying one of the things that all musicians should aspire to be is a future dead rock star, I think we were talking about the whole age 27 thing, and Kurt Cobain, and everything. This track only works as an opener, because it’s quite a slow song, it builds up, and it’s a bit ploddy for the first couple of minutes but it was one of those songs where I just kept coming back to it again and again, and I couldn’t not have it on the album. It’s a real headphone album – there are little bits that are coming in one ear, and looping over. I get really into just fiddling around with sounds for hours and hours and getting lost in the little bits of what I do. Continue reading →