Over the years Heavenly Records have put out some of my favourite records from the likes of Saint Etienne, Beth Orton, Doves and Toy. Today Wytches signed to the label too, putting out new single Gravedweller, which being given away as a free casssette to the first fifty people through the door on their upcoming tour, stopping at Northampton, Liverpool, Hitchin, Bedford, Cambridge, Reading, London, Tunbridge Wells, Southampton, Cardiff, Bristol, Birmingham, Leicester (sadly there’s Brighton date). If you can’t make it to any of those dates (or you don’t think you’ll be one of the first fifty through the door), you can grab the track (and it’s b-sides) as a free download.
Last week Fear of Men posted up the first teaser of their upcoming album – an anonymous video mysteriously entitled 3/2 lit only by candlelight with a simple vocal line sung in the near dark by Jess. It turns out 3/2 was a date, and now that it’s the 3rd of February detailed news has come out. Their debut album will be called Loom, and will be released on 21st April on Kanine Records, with a deluxe limited edition vinyl edition being released for Record Store Day. The opening two tracks Alta and Waterfall are currently streaming at Gorilla vs Bear, and you can pre-order the album at fearofmen.co.uk. The full tracklisting is: Alta / Waterfall / Green Sea / Vitrine / Tephra / America / Seer / Luna / Descent / Inside / Atla.
Something else that’s caught our eye thanks to this fantastic poster is an upcoming gig from The New Union – ever ones for strong artwork. They’ll be playing at Bermuda Triangle on Friday 7th March and will be supported by The Hundredth Anniversary and Fickle Friends. Tickets are a mere four pounds in advance.
With December being a quiet month for new music and with us being a bit busy with our end of year round up, we thought it would be an idea to combine the new music we heard December and January for our Top Ten this time around.
1 Fickle Friends / Swim
In the middle of winter, Swim was exactly what we needed to hear to be reminded that it won’t always be cold and grey.
2 IYES / Crazy in Love
Beyonce released a new album, so IYES shared their cover of her most popular tune with us.
3 GAPS / I Know It’s You
GAPS second single I Know It’s You came out in early December but it’s been on heavy rotation since then round these parts, along with its B-side Inside Your Head, getting a bit more interest thanks to the fantastic Foreign Skin remix.
4 Curxes / Avant Guarded
Avant Guarded is another of December’s single releases, which came easy listening YouTube teasers, drums which could be used as sonic weaponry and a video featuring the band wearing budgerigar heads. Obviously.
5 Do You Feel What I Feel Deer / Golden Future
Do You Feel What I Feel Deer quietly split up midway through 2013, then snuck out their gorgeous album Beat Glorious Heart before Christmas when they thought people weren’t looking. By then it was too late to appear in our end of year round up, but it would have done if we’d heard it sooner. It’s difficult to pick out one track, because the whole record is lush, but we’ve put up album closer Golden Future to listen to here.
6 Ital Tek / Golden
By the time we had blogged about Ital Tek’s free Christmas giveaway Golden a few weeks ago it had already reached its download limit. Thankfully for everyone who missed it, it’s been reuploaded, so go and grab it while you can!
7 Calico / Nightowl
Calico put out their first single Night Owl right at the end of November, after we’d put together our November top ten list. We haven’t enjoyed anything this cinematic and funky since David Holmes’ soundtrack stuff.
8 Kins / Opsimplistic
We wrote about Kins single Aimless and went to the launch party at The Hope back in November last year, but what we didn’t spot at the time was that the track – and a brand new B-side Opsimplistic – had been uploaded to Soundcloud. The B-side is just as good as anything on the album and definitely deserves a bit more exposure.
9 Thomas White / Go Your Own Way
Last year Electric Soft Parade’s Thomas White covered the whole of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Alex White covered Steely Dan’s Katy Lied. They’re both very good indeed.
10 Gudjohr / I Built A Home
Some sunny guitar pop to round off our top ten, which we only got hold of last week.
On Friday night we braved the rain and headed to the Green Door Store where despite the weather, Milk & Biscuits pulled in a full house. Here’s what our camera saw (click on the pics to view large)
We’ve got a bumper New Music post this week, with seven new tracks to share. First up is Lion Bark with a video for their track Longhorns, which originally appeared on Soundcloud back in November:
We mentioned Foreign Skin’s remix of the new GAPS single I Know It’s You last week, but that was just a preview (which we updated when the full remix got posted), and we like it so much that we thought we’d give it another mention:
Fickle Friends are having a launch party for their debut single Swim tonight at the Green Door Store. In advance of that they’ve posted up a remix of the track – Soundcloud describes it as the Paperwhite remix, but we’re not sure if that’s just a name that they’ve given it or whether paperwhite is an act without any presence on the internet as yet:
Lonesome Heights new single is out on 8th February. It’s nearly four minutes of fresh indie guitar pop and it’s called Come out Swinging. The band will be supporting Wave Pictures at the Green Door Store, which happens to coincide with the release date:
Half Hour Hotel have put up a new song onto Soundcloud. The anthemic indie track is called Warcry and you can grab it as a free download via the band’s facebook page. Half Hour Hotel will be supporting The Boxer Rebellion at Coalition on 4th February.
Last year we wrote about Alexandra King’s band Limbic System. She’s now got a new project called Cleff and you can see their first video Restart here:
Finally we have the video for Bodies, the new single by Woodland Blue, which you can buy on iTunes here.
Lawry Tilbury III aka Birdengine has a small red label that dangles from his guitar with the word ‘Happy’ inscribed on it. I now know that ‘Happy’ is the name of his guitar. Not that you can label his music, so maybe it’s doubly ironic.
Brighton-based Birdengine hasn’t been playing live much of late so it was a real treat to find him and Happy in the tiny Komedia Studio Bar, supporting the American touring songsmith Samantha Crain for a Melting Vinyl gig.
It’s hard to believe it’s been two and a half years since the The Crooked Mile was released, one of the best albums to emerge from the psych-folk scene. Not a happy record, it’s full-to-the-brim with melancholy imaginative gothic folk tunes, from which the sublime Ghost Club was a stand-out tonight. We were also treated to the stunning Heads off Dogs from his first album released on Drift records, and a number of new songs involving increasing use of a loop pedal which helps add a fuller sound to the trademark Birdengine pluck and strum. We were also treated to a charming jazz interlude thanks to the previous owner of one of the Birdengine guitar pedals, with Lawry’s usual hesitant interaction with the audience forming a kind of obscure sub-genre of rapping. Maybe.
It was good to see Lawry back in action, and a new album will hopefully start to emerge shortly.
Samantha Crain is touring to promote her new album Kid Face, which is well worth exploring – one of three excellent female songwriter’s albums released over the last month and which I’ve been enjoying this week (see also New Yorker Nicole Atkins’ excellent Slow Phaser and Brightonian Sharon Lewis’ classy Roses at the Top, more of which some other time). The small studio bar made for a lovely intimate venue and hopefully Melting Vinyl will use it more.
In an effort to be a little more on the ball than last week we’re posting up our Gigs of the week on Monday night. As it happens, we need to this week because there’s a lot of great gigs to mention, a few of which have already cropped up in these pages.
We posted up about BirdEngine supporting Samantha Crain over the weekend. That’s happening on Tuesday night at the Komedia, and we’ll be along to cover that.
On Wednesday night, Metronomy play a one off date at The Old Market to warm up for their European tour taking place in March. Their new single is the title track from forthcoming album Love Letters is out on 11th March, and has a video directed by Michel Gondry.
Talking of new singles, Fickle Friends are holding a launch party for their debut single Swim at the Green Door Store on Thursday night. There’s a remix of Swim which we’re going to be sharing with you very soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
There’s two gigs on Friday night that we’d be seen at (and hopefully with a bit of planning we will be spending a bit of time at both). Milk & Biscuits gig at the Green Door Store has been in our diary for a while. They’ll be supported by labelmates Octopuses and Prince Vaseline. Meanwhile down at the Blind Tiger it’s the first Les Enfants Terribles of the new year and it’s got a slightly different format for 2014. The night will run from 9pm-2am and now has DJs as well as local bands. This month Transformer, Dog in the Snow, Normanton Street and NYX all play live.
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Last, but by no means least, on Saturday night Momotaro are holding their album launch Second Side at the Green Door Store. The band gave us a copy of the album when we interviewed them last week and it hasn’t left our stereo. See you down the front, and maybe at the afterparty at the Eddy.
Normally a lot of our posts are looking back – to gigs that we’ve been to, or to music that’s been put up online. Today we’re being a bit more proactive and telling you about two things coming up soon. The first is a gig – Next Tuesday, Melting Vinyl are bringing Samantha Crain to Brighton with BirdEngine in support. Samantha Crain, new label mates to Brighton’s Fujiya & Miyagi having just signed to Full Time Hobby, is touring to support her expansive yet intimate new album Kid Face, and is playing at the Komedia on 28th January. We’ll be there early for to make sure we don’t miss local support BirdEngine, who has promised to include tracks from his upcoming album in his set.
Our other preview is of a remix that’s due to hit soon. GAPS new single I Know It’s You hit the shelves on 9th December last year and a video of a remix by Foreign Skin has been posted, previewing around a minute from the full track which is due very soon. We’ll post up the full thing when we see it but until now here’s a taster of what’s to come:
Yesterday the best New Music festival in the country made its first line up announcement. The Great Escape Festival, taking place from 8th-10th May this year, released a list of over a hundred names, including a good representation of local talent. Royal Blood, Theo Verney and Yumi & The Weather are in there, as well as honorary Brightonians (by virtue of their Source cover feature) Traams. There’s still a chance to apply – Artist registration is open until the end of January, and more details can be found here.
Here’s the full list of acts announced so far:
AMBER RUN / ANDY SHAUF / ARC IRIS / ARTHUR BEATRICE / AS ANIMALS / AUTOBAHN / BABY IN VAIN / BABY STRANGE / BEARD OF WOLVES / BEAUTIFUL BOY / BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE / BLACK CITY LIGHTS / BLAENAVON / BROKEN TWIN / CHARLI XCX / CHERUB / CHLÖE HOWL / CIRCA WAVES / CLEO T / COURTNEY BARNETT / D/C / DARK FOR DARK / DARLIA / DENAI MOORE / DIVE IN / DOLOMITE MINOR / DOOM SQUAD / DOUGLAS DARE / DUNE RATS / ELLA EYRE*/ EROTIC MARKET / FABIENNE / FAT WHITE FAMILY / FEMALE SMELL / FEMME / FLUX PAVILION LIVE / FLYTE / FTSE / FUTURE ISLANDS / FYFE / GIANNA LAUREN / GINGER AND THE GHOST / GLORY GLORY / HANNAH GEORGAS / HERMITUDE / HOLY STRAYS / HSY / HUMAN PYRAMIDS / JAAKKO EINO KALEVI / JAY ARNER / JEREMIAH JAE / JEREMY NEALE / JUNGLE / KELIS*/ LABYRINTH EAR / LEON T PEARL / LONELY THE BRAVE / LOVEPARK / MAJOR LEAGUES / MARIKA HACKMAN / MATTHEW AND THE ATLAS / MAX MARSHALL / MICKEY LIGHTFOOT / MONEY FOR ROPE / NEW DESERT BLUES / OLIVER WILDE / ORVAL CARLOS SIBELIUS / OY / PAWWS / PHOX / POWDER BLUE / REJJIE SNOW / ROSIE LOWE / ROYAL BLOOD / RUSSIAN RED / SAINT RAYMOND / SAMARIS / SATELLITE STORIES / SEPTEMBER GIRLS / SHOPPING / SHY NATURE / SIN COS TAN / SLAVES / STUBBORN HEART / SUNDARA KARMA / THE BONY KING OF NOWHERE / THE CREASES / THE CROOKED BROTHERS / THE DARLINGTONS / THE OSCILLATION / THE SCENES / THEO VERNEY / TOVE LO / TRAAMS / TRAUMAHELIKOPTER / TRAVIS BRETZER / WET / WHITE LUNG / WILSEN / WOMANS HOUR / YOUNG SUMMER / YOUTH MAN / YUMI AND THE WEATHER
Somehow we’ve lapsed back to posting about our Gigs of the Week on Wednesday, but it’s a quiet week this week with not too many gigs to tell you all about. Next week is looking busier, and I promise a bumper post much earlier in the week.
The most interesting gig we’ve seen isn’t wholly a gig – it’s half gig, half film. To celebrate the launch of the new Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis, Dukes @ Komedia are holding a special event on Friday night, showing the film then hosting a folk gig in the Komedia studio bar downstairs featuring Cate Ferris, StevieRay Latham, James Riley and Lewis Todhunter. Also on Friday night, Oh Captain are hosting their video launch at the Green Door Store.
Moving onto Saturday night, Dirty Weekend in Brighton are launching their new single at Latest Music Bar, and Neon Saints Brass Band are playing at the Gladstone.
Brighton Music Blog 