Tyrannosaurus Dead released their new EP last friday, called Lemonade, after the title track. The band haven’t strayed too far from their lo fi shoegaze sound of their previous releases, but have spent a bit more time working on the production, bringing things closer to the band’s vision of their sound. The EP was recorded at Lightship95 – a studio on a boat in the East End of London earlier this year.
To celebrate the launch the band played a free gig at the Green Door Store, which must almost be a home from home for them these days. Support came from Gum (who were also on the bands recent split-release cassette), Poledo and Ides.
The Lemonade EP is available to buy through Tyrannosaurus Dead’s bandcamp page:
Not every event in Brighton can boast an Amy Winehouse impersonator as compere, but then not every event is Club Berlin, a new live night at the Jive Monkey which had it’s second outing this week. If an Amy Winehouse impersonator is a bit drunk and can’t remember all of the words to the likes of Rehab or Valerie, does that ruin the experience or make it more authentic? And was the drunkenness part of the act?
As I arrived, Dominic Von Trapp from Sweet Sweet Lies was performing a solo acoustic set. Accompanied on ukulele and guitar, Dom sang a host of tracks, most of which were familiar from his band’s album The Hare, The Hound & The Tortoise. The songs stood up well – the songwriting is solid and Dom’s distinctive voice and delivery is one of the things that makes Sweet Sweet Lies special.
Next up was Jennifer Left, also playing with a pared down band to fit onto the tiny stage. No bass or drums this time around, but she was joined by her guitarist and incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist Helen, who played keyboard, trumpet, accordion and xylophone. Jennifer Left looked more like a pop star than ever, with her heavy eye make up and cool new bob making her look like a dark haired Dusty Springfield. To cope with the reduced set up the band played up the jazzier elements of their songs, which worked especially well on their cover of New Order’s Temptation, and rounded up with a preview of their new single due in October which I’m sure we’ll be writing more about nearer the time.
Finally we had Call Me Jolene, who appeared the most band-like with guitar, bass, drum and vocals, but were still reduced in numbers. Rather than play a stripped down set as the other bands had, they played to a backing track – rather disconcerting when a piano track starts playing mid-song with no keyboard player on stage! Despite the presence of ex-Gene frontman Martin Rossiter on bass, Call Me Jolene are very much about Sophie Pointer: her vocals are the centrepiece of each of the songs they played and she was the only member of the band to engage with the audience. The songs themselves are slick adult rock songs, one pitched as a future James Bond theme, and another pitched as Jolene’s response to Dolly Parton’s song that the band took their name from. Some of the band’s songs I’ve heard on Soundcloud have a bit of a country feel, but this wasn’t especially evident live – I’d love to hear more of that coming through.
Club Berlin returns to the Jive Monkey on Thursday 20th Sept and features IDC, Bela Emerson, Das Fenster and Saffron Reichenbacker.
We’ve come across a few videos in the past week or so which I thought I’d share. First up is Dear Michael by Fragile Creatures, which we wrote about back in June. They’ve finally got a video to go with their debut single. Next up is House of Hats with their next single Rivers Will Run. We interviewed them about their previous animated video not long ago. Then we’ve got the video for the new King Porter Stomp single which is out on Monday. Finally, we’ve got a new offering from King of Cats. We meant to write about his cassette that came out on Reeks of Effort a little while ago, but somehow got a bit distracted:
Back in February at Sea Monsters, Speak Galactic were one of the bands that really stood out for us – the intensity and the amount of ideas all fighting to be heard in their music are what all bands should strive for.
Nearly six months after they first caught our attention, Cupboard Music are releasing a new single and album by the band. The single, Precautionary Measures, is out on download right now, available to buy through Cupboard Music’s bandcamp page.
Things start off with woozy space age pop, but before long this is joined by arpeggiated keyboards, clattering drums, thick bass and multi tracked vocals. After a rather frenetic first half, things calm down for a bit before everything comes together again for the rather intense last minute.
Precautionary Measures demands to be listened on headphones or a stereo with decent separation: the tracks in each channel are just slightly different, as though they’re different takes of the same recording and background sounds bounce around from left to right. This doesn’t detract from the track though, and if anything makes it more engaging, making you listen to it closer to work out just what it is that’s drawing you in.
Precautionary Measures precedes the album Severed, which comes out on 24th September, on limited frosted 180gm heavyweight vinyl and slighly less limited download. The band are having a launch party at Fitzherberts on 15th September, supported by Us Baby Bear Bones and Plurals.
Back in January, I only gave I am Ampersand’s debut single “20 Seas, 4 Oceans” a passing mention in a blog post with a few other videos that were around, which is a travesty because it’s fantastic – four minutes of sunshine psychedelic folk pop. Matt Hainsby’s second 7″ is just as good. Holding the Negative up to the Light crams in even more ideas that it’s predecessor without losing any of the charm. And being the sucker for nice packaging that I am, I can only say good things about the translucent orange vinyl that it’s pressed on, and the screen print that comes tucked into the sleeve.
Negative is a tune of two halves – in the first half of the song, the vocals are accompanied by acoustic guitars and strings and then at around a minute and a half the song crumples then revives itself with effervescent analogue synths which bubble along and bring a completely different dynamic to the second half.
I Am Ampersand’s album is due later in the year on the Great Pop Supplement label. On the strength of his first two singles, it should be a corker!
A-level results are out today and if you’re considering studying for a future in the music industry, be that on or off stage, then the local choice ought to be BIMM (or Brighton Institute of Modern Music as nobody calls it). They’re celebrating their tenth birthday this year so to celebrate and to show people what they can produce, they’re putting on an afternoon of music in Churchill Square. Four bands are playing:
If you’re interested in their courses as well as hearing live music they’re also holding an open day at their main building where you can meet staff to ask questions and see the facilities. There’s more info at www.bimm.co.uk/brighton
For the second single from their album However Did The Wolf Get in, Sparrow have teamed up with Your Explosion My Mind for a split 7″. Sparrow’s Move shares vinyl with Your Explosion My Mind’s Eyeball Kick.
Both singles have separate iTunes releases, with Move being backed by with new track Shut, and Eyeball Kick forming part of the five track Under a Heavy Sun EP. Click on the titles for the iTunes links and watch the videos below, or buy the 7″ from Resident (or online here):
Charming video by her sister for this song ‘Sparrow’ from the new Woodpecker Wooliams album due to drop in September. It’s called ‘The Bird School Of Being Human’. Can’t wait!
Curxes new single Spectre is out this week, and it’s brilliant. A fantastic slice of dark, soaring electro pop. If you don’t believe me, then click on the soundcloud link below. And then once that’s convinced you, go and buy it on iTunes. It comes with a remix by Strangers which makes it even more industrial and angular.
If you want the record on vinyl, you can buy it through their website or you can pop over to Southsea, where it’s being sold in a Pie shop. Obviously.
Last December, House of Hats released their eponymous “House of Hats” EP, and decided to make a video for the track This Love. The band have made a fantastic animation for it, in collaboration with film maker Finn Hopson, which only got released to the world last month. I caught up with Finn and James, Alex and Rob from the band to find out how it all came about, and why it’s taken so long to appear.
The first version of the video was made at the time of the EP by James, who plays guitar and has also designed of all of the band’s artwork so far. It was shot on an iPhone and everything was hand drawn and captured and assembled using traditional stop motion methods. James tells us “It had a shakey quality to it, which was very charming but it didn’t have a quality that matched the music, really”.
Finn Hopson’s day job is profession filmwork, doing everything from video editing for TV, to making animations for corporate clients. Around the time the orginal video was made, Finn had made a time-lapse video and showed Alex. He was impressed, and showed Finn James’ original iPhone effort and asked if Finn could do anything for them. Finn said “Why not? I’ll take your little things, I’ll move them around, I’ll have it done next week!”. Things took a little bit longer that though.
When Finn asked for the James’ artwork from the original version, he got an envelope stuffed with hundreds of cut out figures, each meticulously labelled, some still with blu-tack on them, and a seventeen page email of notes detailing exactly how everything works! James says “I didn’t know how detailed Finn wanted things, so I told him exactly”. Finn counters “What I said was ‘could you write down roughly where you’d like things to happen?’ and you had it word for word all of the way through all of the lyrics, syllable by syllable!”, to which Rob adds “That’s James through and through!”.
Finn explains “I tried to do it stop motion in my camera originally and try and do it frame by frame with stills, and I got a little way into it and after about a day I realised that you shoot 25 frames a second worth of stuff for a few seconds and suddenly you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of photos all of which need a little bit of fiddling and then exporting and then putting together into a movie and then if it’s wrong you have to go back and start again from scratch. So I did that a few times and realised that I should do it differently.”
The final version starts off with stop motion – the book opening at the beginning is put together shot by shot, but from that point on it becomes scans of the illustrations laid out in a virtual 3d environment, treated and processed and sprinkled with Finn’s magic touch to make it look less synthesised. “Where there are faces it’s often not just one face but a scans of multiple faces blended together digitally” Finn says. “Where the original iPhone version had one tree, I was given free reign to use multiple versions of these to embelish to the world in the video, but everything you see is from James’ original drawings”.
All this leaves us with one unanswered question – why are we only seeing the video now? The reason is that the band’s next single is coming out next month and the PR agency they’ve got working for them asked them to hold it back to help with the push for that. We’ll be writing more about that in a few weeks time. In the meantime, you can buy This Love and the rest of the House of Hats EP from iTunes here.
Brighton Music Blog 