Today, MYYTHS put out their new release TYNSTNAD. The album features seven tracks of brooding, sparse and haunting ambient electronica, rolling at a funereal pace throughout. It’s dark, and heavy going but incredibly effective. If a record could give you nightmares, then this is it.
You can see the video for the track Lone here, and catch the band live at the Prince Albert alongside Dog in the Snow and Foreign Skin on 6th March at the Prince Albert.
Things on the gig front in Brighton are still rather quiet, so this weekend’s gig post isn’t quite the usual bumper affair.
There are a couple of gigs which have caught our eye – Carnival Collective at the Blind Tiger on Friday Night, and Chris T-T at Bermuda Triangle on Saturday Night – but the one thing that we really really like the look of this weekend was Green Door Store’s Third Birthday. Has it really been three years? They’ve got five bands playing on Friday Night, two of which are local talent. Slum of Legs (on at 10pm) and Theo Verney (on at 12:15) join three London bands and a whole host of DJs who have hosted club nights there. The fun kicks off at 9pm, and it’s all free.
Despite it being only the first week of January we’ve already got loads to share with you. A couple of the tracks are ones that passed us by a little bit over Christmas, but 2014’s new music is appearing already
When we picked up on Ital Tek‘s latest Soundcloud upload Golden, it was being given away as a free Christmas download. It looks like the download option has now gone, but it’s still there to listen to, and it’s still a great track:
Ancient Times new track Healer is brand new though, just being posted up in the last twenty four hours. It’also been picked out by Fake DIY to feature in today’s Neu post.
Samuel Organ from Physics House Band continues to be one of Brighton’s most prolific musicians, this time collaborating with Caveman Genius for a new three track EP for download called Dune Drug Rituals
Finally, at the end of last year Aashton put up the first track from his free download EP1, in advance of a full EP called Show You out soon on Lounging Records. All U Need is up now as a free download, with the promise of another track from the EP1 being uploaded soon.
Pretty much every interview we post up undergoes a bit of editing of sorts, sometimes to cut out duplication in what’s been said, or maybe to move around the order of the discussion to give things a bit more continuity. Every now and then things get edited out because you think that your interviewee might be throwing in little white lies to see if they’ll get published, and so it was when I spoke to Thomas White of the Electric Soft Parade around the time he put out his solo album Yalla. At the end of the discussion, after we’d both had a few drinks, I asked him what he was up to next – “I’m doing a cover of the whole of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours” he said with a smile on his face. “I’ll send it to you”. I’ll admit to having been a bit dubious about the idea of someone who has a seemingly constant flow of new ideas covering a whole album and I didn’t hear any more until Idiots got released last year. “Ha!” I thought at the time, “I was right not to include that bit”.
He who laughs last laughs longest though, and on their recent mini-tour a couple of limited edition cds appeared on the merchandise table – As well as Thomas’ version of Rumours, Alex White has made a full album cover of Steely Dan’s Katy Lied. Both albums are very faithful reproductions rather than reinterpretations of the originals, pretty much note for note what was played on the seventies classics, and both are now up on Bandcamp:
Happy New Year! We’re kicking off 2014 with one of the very first releases of the year. Fickle Friends debut single Swim is out today, also featuring on Killing Moon’s new compilation New Moons volume one. The track is just over three minutes of 80s tinged pop – a welcome distraction from hangovers and filthy weather.
So, our final box in our Advent Calendar is filled by IYES, who have barely been going a year yet are more than worthy of our top spot. Right from the first moment we heard them, when Lighthouse appeared on Soundcloud, we knew that IYES were something special. Since then there’s been a few more tracks that have appeared from them this year – a more upbeat number called Glow, a Balearic instrumental called Daddy, a cover of Beyonce’s Crazy in Love and their debut single ‘Til Infinity. The production on each of these has been spot on, as has their timing – holding off on playing the new single until it was ready to be released, and not releasing it until the time was right where they could get a good buzz behind it. And what a buzz it got, getting over 2,400 likes on Hype Machine, nearly 150,000 plays on Soundcloud and coverage from all the major music sites – The Line of Best Fit said “You know you’ve found a beauty when melodies rattle around your head after just one listen”, and This is Fake DIY described it as “pristine pop skewed to the point where it’s pushing boundaries”. Look out for IYES in 2014, we think you’ll be hearing a lot more from them.
Our penultimate choice in our advent calendar is the band who brought out our favourite album of 2013. Back in the spring, Thomas and Alex White released the Electric Soft Parade’s first single in over six years with Brother You Must Walk Your Path Alone, which was followed up by the widely acclaimed album Idiots, which we called as Album of the Year on pretty much first listen. It’s difficult to pick out just one track, because everything on the album is so well crafted – apparently over thirty songs were rejected as not being up the high water mark that the band had set – but it’s breezy Summertime in My Heart that got the most spins, the perfect accompaniment to warm, blue sky days we had this summer.
We’ve got a seasonal round up for you this week, with festive tunes put out by local artists, some modern takes on traditional tunes, some new compositions. Hopefully this will get you all in the festive spirit:
Catherine Ireton – Christmas My Baby Is Blue
Jacko Hooper – Silent Night
Crayola Lectern – SFXmas
Nick Hudson – I Forgot About Christmas
Laish – Silentish Night
The Boy Who Kicked Pigs – The Christmas Song
Becky Becky – Bells Ringing (Xmas again)
Chris T-T – A Child Is Born (Chris T-T’s previous Christmas tunes are also up on Bandcamp)
Thomas White – White Christmas
Curxes – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Us Baby Bear Bones – Santa Claus is Coming To Town
Accepted wisdom is that if you combine electronic music with folk, you get folktronica. Most of the time you do (and Le Juki’s album Capillaries was a fine example of this), but GAPS have broken the mould with the first few singles. Instead of glistening electronica, GAPS use bigger beats more suited to the dancefloor. Their debut was a double A side – Keep You backed with the track we’ve chosen for our Advent Calendar Cascade. Of all of the tracks we’ve picked throughout December, Cascade is arguably the most Brighton – It starts quietly with nothing but the sound of seagulls and acoustic guitar before the beats and the keyboards kick in, building up hypnotically throughout the track.
I got the tip off about Momotaro from the Green Door Store zine which first appeared in August, where they were featured as the local band to watch. At the time they had a busy Soundcloud page, now cleared up in advance of their album due early next year. Their sound is dubby reverb drenched electronica with laid back vocals, shown off best on Reverie, the track we’ve picked for the advent calendar, which you can grab as a free download by signing up to their mailing list. They’re also an interesting live band – instead of tucking the drums at the back of the stage, each of the three musicians are given equal prominence and as many samples are triggered by the electronic drum kit as they are by the rest of the band who alternate between keyboards, guitars, and drum pads of their own. If the album is as good as what we’ve heard already, then 2014 should be a great year for Momotaro.
Brighton Music Blog 