Bleeding Hearts Club / Recordings Profile

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Firstly, an apology from me. This was meant to be an interview with Chris Davies, Head honcho of Bleeding Hearts Recordings, and the man behind the long running Bleeding Hearts Club at the Albert. We met and had a good long chat over a few pints, with the intention of turning our conversation into a riveting article about what it’s like to run a label and how to start a successful night. But I forgot to press record. So all I have is my recollection, and none of great quotes which would have made it a much better read. Bleeding Hearts is still something worth writing about though – the night is going from strength to strength, and next Monday the label is putting out Thomas White’s third solo album – so there’s never been a better time to write about them. Anyway, enough with the apologies, and onto the article.

Chris Davies of Bleeding Hearts Recordings

Mid-way through the nineties, Chris Davies headed down to Brighton from the Midlands for a weekend, and ended up staying. He didn’t have any plans to become a leading figure in the local music industry but managed to just fall into running the city’s longest running nights and starting up a record label putting out records by some of the best local talent.

The first Bleeding Hearts Club was around nine years ago. Chris was working at Borders, and lots of his colleagues were musicians, so to provide them with a platform, The Bleeding Hearts Club was born. At the beginning, it never had any real agenda – the music policy was defined pretty much by the acts that were around at the time – but over time the night settled into an acoustic folk type affair. At times, it’s been completely unplugged without any amplification, and the only light coming from candles on the tables. Other times Chris has been a bit playful and put on bands who don’t quite fit the mould, to have a poke at audience members who are taking things a bit too seriously. His philosophy is that the music is there to be enjoyed, not over analysed. Respect the music and be quiet when the bands are on, but also respect everyone at the night who are there to enjoy things.

A few years ago, the night was in a creative trough, and feeling unappreciated (speak to any promoter in town, and they’ll tell you what a thankless task it is) Chris put the night on hold. You can’t keep a good man down though, and it was around this time that Bleeding Hearts Recordings was born. The first release was a compilation of some of Chris’ favourite acts who he’d put on, and in the past 18 months, there’s been an assortment of vinyl, cds and downloads from the likes of BirdEngine, King James, Mute Swimmer, and The Robot Heart. A few months into running the label, the nights restarted, after the realisation that an act could sound good on tape, but it’s how they perform and how they interact with the audience that really matters.

This month, Bleeding Hearts Recordings put out what deserves to be their biggest record yet, when they release Yalla by Thomas White (from Electric Soft Parade, Brakes and a million other Brighton bands). The album was recorded while Tom was bored and homesick on an extended break in Egypt (before last year’s unrest) and was never meant to get a proper release, but everyone who heard it was so impressed that they convinced him that it needed to be heard by the world. We’ll post up our review of the album at the weekend before it’s release on Monday. The first fifty copies (available through Rough Trade and Resident) come with a five track bonus EP, and if you buy the album through recordstore.co.uk, you can grab yourself a signed copy. There’s an instore gig at Resident on Monday, where they’ll be selling the album at a knock down £6.99 (back up to £9.99 the following day), and Thomas will be playing at the next Bleeding Hearts Club on 2nd April.

http://www.bleedingheartrecordings.com/

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Astro Physics @ Sticky Mike’s / Bitbin @ The Blind Tiger

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Friday night was a big night for gigs in Brighton. Biggest of the lot was the Maccabees homecoming gig, which will no doubt get quite a few write ups in the local press. I decided to head to a couple of other gigs which might not get so much media attention, but are no less deserving.

First up was the Road To Blissfields gig at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar. It was a bit of a battle of the bands type affair, with a winner from each of a number of towns in the South of England getting a set at the festival near Winchester at the end of June. I missed the first few bands, and turned up to a group whose lead singer had a mullet. Not the most auspicious entry. I only heard one of their songs before they left the stage to make for the act I’d come to see, Astro Physics. Astro Physics are a six piece hip hop collective, who are as much about the rest of the band as they are MC Skilf and singer Rachel Mosleh. They’ve been gigging a lot recently (and are supporting Derriere at the Blind Tiger next friday), and did a fantastic job of bringing the party to Sticky Mike’s. No idea what the results were, or if they’ve even been decided yet, but I’ll do my best to find out.

Astro Physics

After a quick pint between gigs, I then headed over to The Blind Tiger Club, where Tru Thoughts latest signing, Anchorsong, was headlining. Live, Anchorsong was much more dancey than on record, pumping out a great set of stunning, deep, bass heavy tunes. I was there for the support though – I am meant to be covering local bands, after all. Thanks to their late licence, the Blind Tiger can put bands on after the main act. I’ve known Matt Hodson, who turns into Bitbin onstage, for a few months, but as a photographer rather than a musician – tonight was his live solo debut, but he’s been putting out some lovely electronica himself through his website (you can download his recent Alias EP here). There’s a lot more to his set than watching a man prod a laptop – he was accompanied by some beautiful visuals, and for one of his songs he even played his bass with a violin bow! It was a very accomplished debut, and I’m sure it’s only going to be a matter of time before he’s headlining his own gigs.

Bitbin

 

Bleeding Hearts Club again

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It’s that time of the month. First Monday. 

Bleeding Hearts Club featured in this blog not so long ago, but seeing as it’s a regular monthly event upstairs at the Price Albert in Trafalgar Street, and inevitably excellent, it is not that surprising that it features again.

This month we had four acts, each playing about four songs each and some excellent sounds from the house DJ in-between.

First up was the bizarre yet memorable King of Cats, a man in shorts who went from quiet twee to slash-and-burn hardcore within a verse of a song. He also did something very strange with a second microphone which gave him the ability to detour into these strange sonic interludes which made him sound a bit lie, er… well, a king of cats. He also had some CDs for sale, in home-made sleeves shaped like underpants with a picture of female genitalia on the front. 

It was never going to be a normal night.

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Next up was Al Chamberlain, apparently playing only his second ever gig. A little shy and self-depreciating he played a series of charming songs telling stories of love and adolescent innocence which completely charmed the audience. 

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He was followed by Lux Harmonium, a sometimes two piece with – you guessed it – a Harmonium, but also some of the most exquisite guitar-playing by Devonian Luke Jones which just got better and better as their set progressed. Fortunately, the night’s host Chris Davies called Luke back for a fourth song which was absolutely outstanding. Worth the pittance of an entry fee alone. Wish I’d remembered what it was called, but you can buy a CD and no doubt it’s on it. 

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Finally, headliners Fire Eyes played – drum machine, guitar and violin fronted by some quirky vocals. Apparently slightly under-rehearsed they strung together an assortment of sort of Mazzy Star influenced songs, battling with their equipment but managing to fascinate and rounding off a fine evening.

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There was the usual candles-on-tables, a joke from a Christmas cracker that was as stale as old cheese, and something about every record label  that wasn’t the Bleeding Hearts record label being rubbish. Suffice to say, we all went home very very happy. 

Lovely.

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Photographs by Southcoasting

The Woo!Worths at Tic Toc Café

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Tic Toc Café in the lanes have just recently started on putting small quiet gigs on Friday nights, and last night the Woo!Worths played a couple of acoustic sets. I was quite surprised when I heard about it – surely you can only fit about thirty people into Tic Toc anyway, before you even think about trying to squeeze a band in too – but I think it might just be Brighton’s newest best intimate venue.

The Woo!Worths

The Woo!Worths core of Rich, Steve and Jo are normally joined by other musicians when they play live, but they kept things to a minimum to respect the space constraints and the quieter atmosphere in Tic Toc. While they played to their smallest audience for a while, the crowd tucked into the café’s simple continental menu (I can recommend the boeuf bourguignon). The band played several sets over the course of the evening, allowing time for diners to make their orders without disruption, and played most of the songs you would have heard if you’d seen them at all – according to their facebook, they’d rehearsed twenty six songs!

The night had a lovely atmosphere – the staff at Tic Toc are incredibly friendly, and there was a lovely rapport with the audience, thanks to being so close to the band. They’re putting on live music every friday night, and I’ll definitely be back for more at some point soon.

Tiny Dragons “Phantoms in the Night” single launch at the Prince Albert

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It’s the 29th of February – a day that only comes around once every four years. Hopefully it won’t be another four years until the next Tiny Dragons single, because it’s very good stuff indeed. To celebrate, they’ve put on a night at the Prince Albert.

Support came from Meatloaf at Marys, who I managed to miss, and Alice Amelia, who is a local singer songwriter. She’s got a fantastic voice and is a tremendous pianist – I was reminded of Little Boots funtimes videos she posted to youtube, or to when I saw Marina & The Diamonds live and rest of the band left the stage and Marina just played piano and sung solo for a few songs. There’s great potential there, which I reckon could be found by broadening the sound a bit more – it’s hard to keep people’s attention just with piano and voice, and even just someone else providing a bit of bass or percussion could make all the difference.

Alice Amelia

Despite only having three members, Tiny Dragons are a perfectly formed band. Unusually singer Lizzie also takes on bass duties. And they play accessible rock that’s a bit funk influenced. I need to turn this around now though, because my description so far sounds like a female fronted Level 42. Musically, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers are a better comparison, although having a female lead changes the dynamic a lot. The beating heart of the band is Lizzie’s deft bass playing and her huge, soulful voice. There’s a lot more going on with Jim’s guitar playing than you’d expect too with subtle use of delay and reverb to create a much bigger sound, while Marcus holds together the rhythm section on drums and provides backing vocals. Tiny Dragons have got a great sound, are brilliant musicians, and also played a set of really strong songs too. Definitely a band to watch out for.

Tiny Dragons

A New Old Venue for Brighton

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After seemingly years of inactivity, Academy Music Group are in discussion with Council planning officers to kick start the process of bringing Brighton Hippodrome back to being a music venue. AMG took over the lease to the run down Grade II Listed theatre in Feb 2007 after the building was bought by Cheval Properties following forty years of it being a Mecca Bingo Hall, and it has remained empty ever since.

The venue started life as an ice rink back in 1897, but that didn’t last too long and it was converted into a theatre just after the turn of the century, playing host to the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Max Miller, Laurence Olivier, Laurel & Hardy, Gracie Fields and Harry Houdini (Thanks Wikipedia!). At it’s peak it packed in 4,500 people despite it’s official capacity of 3,000. After the second world war the theatre declined in popularity and started hosted more music concerts in an effort to widen it’s appeal. In 1964 both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones played there but the theatre closed it’s doors the following year, re-opening as a bingo hall in 1967. It was given Grade II Listed status in 1985

Academy Music Group run 24 venues across the country, and are probably best known for Brixton Academy. I’m hoping that they keep the Hippodrome name – out of the venues they run twenty are called Academy although a few have retained their original names. There won’t be any escape from heavy branding though. At the moment, all of them are plastered with O2 logos everywhere, after a few years of them all being badged as Carling venues.

The intention is to convert it to a 2,000 capacity venue – less than when it was a theatre, but that’ll probably mean more room for bars, a bigger stage area, and more fire escapes, which probably weren’t so much of a priority a hundred years ago. This is roughly the same capacity as the Dome, but the Hippodrome would be pitching for a much younger audience – a quick scan over the gigs on at the Dome in the next few months shows the likes of Joan Baez, The Chieftains, Suzanne Vega, Joan Armatrading and Don McLean coming up. The Concorde 2 only has a capacity of 600, and the Green Door Store only 250, so the Hippodrome wouldn’t really be in competition with any existing venues.

There’s a bit more info in the full story in the Argus.

Shrag at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar

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Last night, Shrag kicked off the first date of their tour to promote their new album Canines (due for release in May). It’s a double headliner tour with Tunabunny and to celebrate there’s a split single with each band taking on a side of the 7″. Shrag’s track is Tendons in the Night, which you can watch the video for here:

 

None of the supports were from Brighton, so I’ll rattle through them quickly – Dogtooth are the new project from Shrag’s original Canadian drummer Leigh Anne Walter, who’s teamed up with singer-songwriter Kate Gerrard, and the Metatrons were like a day-glo version of Shrag. If you didn’t know that co-Headliners Tunabunny were from Athens, Georgia you could have guessed from the opening song which sounded an awful lot like one of their hometown’s most famous bands (and I’m not talking about the B52s here). Over the course of their set though they ended up sounding a lot more like the Breeders, and that was no bad thing at all.

Dogtooth, The Metatrons and Tunabunny

Shrag arrived onstage later than advertised, which is kind of inevitable with four bands on the bill, and wasted no time in treating the audience to a set which was mainly made up of tracks from the upcoming album, with only a handful of tracks from 2010s Life! Death! Prizes! Last month, Shrag posted up a new track called Chasing Consummations which hinted that the band might be maturing a little – while they might be developing on their recorded output, live they were still just as full of energy, and the banter inbetween songs was anything but mature. After forty five minutes which had me sold on the new album, the band were off, without an encore.

Shrag

The split single is being sold on the tour, but can be bought from the usual places (Well, Resident have it on their website)

Album Review : Sweet Sweet Lies / The Hare, The Hound & The Tortoise

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If you were to trace the genealogy of the music I love, you can follow pretty much everything I listen to now back to a cassette I had in my youth back in the early nineties. It had two albums, one on each side, as was the way back when home taping rather than illegal downloading was killing the music industry. If you left the house you didn’t go with an iPod with forty or fifty albums, you went with the tape that was in your walkman. And if you didn’t get around to changing the tape that often, you ended up listening to the same albums over and over, which meant that the music left a very strong impression. On one side of the tape was Happiness by The Beloved, but this review has got nothing to do with that. On the other side was an album of alternative country-folk tinged indie, with clever lyrics, predominantly about breaking hearts and drinking. My first listen to the Sweet Sweet Lies album took me right back.

The passage of time hasn’t been especially kind to The Wonderstuff, whose album Never Loved Elvis (and consequently their other albums too) meant so much then and continues to mean a lot. Thankfully Sweet Sweet Lies have carefully skirted around some of the Wonderstuff’s biggest issues. Lead singer Dominic Von Trapp isn’t an a annoying gobshite like Miles Hunt, and since the nineties are long gone no one in their right mind would dream of dressing like a Grebo (I’ll let you google it) – the band have opted for the complete other end of the spectrum and dress in suits for their stage wear, making them a strong contender for the smartest band in town.

My second visit to The Hare, The Hound & The Tortoise gave me a completely different perspective. I’d had the album on repeat on my iPod and it started up two thirds of the way through. While openers Capital of Iceland and Overrated Girlfriend might have given a first impression of a band of upbeat fiddles and guitars, and Winter of Discontent hints at more flamenco / mariachi direction with it’s trumpet and Spanish guitar, there’s a lot to be gained by sticking around to listen to the rest of the album too, where genres – square pegs trying to fit into round holes at the best of times – drip away to reveal songwriting in the classic style. Tracks like No-one Will Love You (Like I Do) and Too Drunk To Love are more likely to recall The Divine Comedy or Gene, both in their vocal style and intelligent lyrics (in fact, Sweet Sweet Lies supported Martin Rossiter on a recent solo tour). Singing duties are split between the two songwriters Dominic Von Trapp and Michael Hayes, with Dominic’s distinctive style, more crooner than modern pop star, making you truly believe that he would readily drink you under the table then steal your girlfriend.

The high quality of the songwriting as well as the consistency, strength and dark humour in the imagery in the lyrics throughout put Sweet Sweet Lies not just head and shoulders above most other bands in Brighton, but everything else that’s on offer too. This is an incredibly accomplished debut that the band should be truly proud of.

The Hare, The Hound & The Tortoise by Sweet Sweet Lies is out now on Something Nothing Records, and the Brighton launch for the album is at the Jive Monkey on Steine Street on 24th February.

New Kidda Single – Together Again

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Next monday (27th Feb) sees the release of Together Again – the latest single from Kidda’s fantastic Hotel Radio album.

Also in the single package are remixes of the track by Detboi and Black Dots, as well as a remix of Hanging Around by Destruction, which you can take a listen to here:

 

Album review : The Galleons

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When I wrote about The Galleons a few weeks ago after they played at the Brighton Folk night at The Brunswick, they were just waiting for their album to come back from being pressed. Now it’s arrived and ready to be heard by the world.

The Galleons eponymous debut long player is a warm, gentle folk-pop excursion. Over the course of a dozen tracks Ben Brockett and Beth Chesser harmonise and swap melodies over electric and acoustic guitars and pianos, reminiscent of Tunng but without the quirky electronica. Opener “The Eagles on your Eyelids” is one of the best showcases for Viktoria Mutore’s piano, which runs throughout the album, setting their sound apart from so many folk bands who stick to guitars.

The whole band play on all of the tracks, and I can’t help thinking that perhaps every now and then a more minimal stripped approach might have helped, giving a less-is-more quality to some songs, and giving the whole album a bit more colour.

This is a minor gripe though, and there is variety across the tracks, from jaunty up beat numbers like The Lion’s Den and Happy as a Lamb, to quieter tracks like The Moon & The Gate and closer Seven Hours. If you want to hear more, their next gig is at The Hydrant on Wednesday 14th March. There’s a taster of a few of the tracks on their website, where you can also buy the album.