The New Union at the Green Door Store

Posted on 09/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Yesterday The New Union supported The 1975 at the Green Door Store. It’s the first time we’ve caught them in a few months and in that time they’ve been working hard on new tracks up in studios in London. You can hear the effect of working with a producer – Richard Jackson now uses two mics to bring more depth to the vocals, there’s more reverb all round making their sound even bigger, and where last year a New Union gig would be half an hour of urgent adrenalin filled songs there’s now some slower numbers too. The New Union are growing up and sounding bigger and better than ever.

click on the pics below to view larger:

The Self Help Group: the new Fleetwood Mac?

Posted on 08/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

The Self Help Group launched their album ‘Not Waving, But Drowning’ at the Prince Albert pub last night, ably supported by Fiona Sally Miller.

Fiona Sally Miller hasn’t been seen out and about much over the last year which is a shame as she’s one of the most engaging singer-songwriters around town. Simple little riffs set the scene for her personal songs sung in a warm voice that engrosses you like a hug. If you see her on a support bill, make sure you get there early. At this gig she was accompanied on some songs by a cellist, and gave an outing to her old goldie ‘I’m Going to miss you smiling at me like that’.

Mark Bruce

The Self Help Group album launch was a bit of a party for family and friends friends, starting off with them getting the whole audience to turn around to watch their video Needles played on the back wall. The launch got even more shambolic, with the band talking as much between themselves as to the audience, losing the banjo on one song and limiting their nervous wit to a strange bit of banter about their song about Birds. Not women, the ones with wings. Odd thing to say to any audience, let alone a Brighton one.

But we needn’t have worried. The thing about Self Help Group is the music, beautifully played, and Mark Bruce’s excellent songs, and the gorgeous twin vocals of sisters Sarah and Clara Wood. The thing is, this is just a truly great band and once they get going you forget about the fluff and hesitation and just get swallowed up by this wave of really wonderful fol rock Americana.

The album is very good indeed. Reviews refer to that Laurel Canyon soft-rock early-70s sensibility but if there’s one band they remind me most of it’s possibly Fleetwood Mac, with the charming female vocals, some sweet guitar and meaty rhythm section but mainly that wonderful mix of west coast Americana with English self-aware folk-blues.

Mark Bruce joked about the lack of happy songs last night – the album is full of songs about death and murder and stories of grim times – but the thing is they don’t sound depressing these songs, they are heart-warming and rich stories that bear repeating. And they have a song about murmuration. What’s not to love?

The final song Sand was a perfect ending, with its closing refrain of

“You must take the steps towards what you want and make things better“

sending us home with a lovely inner-glow.

Clara Wood-Keeley

You can order the album via the Union Music Store here or any good record shop (it’s one of Resident’s picks of the week this week).

Oh, and our interview with lead Groupie Mark Bruce is here https://brightonmusicblog.co.uk/2013/01/28/interview-with-the-self-help-group

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Review and Photographs by Jon Southcoasting

Spirit of Gravity / Sarah Angliss / Green Door Store 7/2/13

Posted on 08/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Spirit of Gravity have been putting on experimental electronica nights in Brighton for over ten years, but this is the first that we’d made it along to. The headliner caught our eye – Sarah Angliss, who is a third of Spacedog, playing a solo set

Bela Emerson and Carolina Diaz

We missed opener Embla Quickbeam, and arrived just as Bela Emerson was starting her set. While the musical performance was solo cello, Bela was joined onstage by Carolina Diaz, who provided interpretive dance sporting a blazer worn back to front and long hair tied at the front rather than the back, designed to unsettle. Bela Emerson’s music was quite the opposite. What was initially experimental washes of sound, using loops and effect pedals to build up harmonics morphed over the course of the set into a more ambient mode. Harmonics became more sparse and a little discordant, more effect pedals were used to make the sound less like a cello, and the instrument was played in a non-standard manner to bring out new timbres. To create such a soundscape using just one instrument was truly a fantastic achievement.

Sarah Angliss

Headliner Sarah Angliss was using the gig as an opportunity to showcase new material, and to rework some older songs. Some electronica acts play their sets hiding behind a laptop, but Sarah had a stage full of additional equipment. Most visually notable were her robots, made with 1930s puppets. To the left of the stage was a life sized disembodied puppet head called Hugo, which looked around during the set, and whose mouth opened and closed during spoken samples, and just in front of her keyboard was a smaller puppet called Wolfgang who was about 12″ high and drummed along with the beats. Aurally, the most impressive piece of kit was the huge theremin, set up so instead of varying the pitch and volume of a standard tone, it controlled samples instead. There was also a bell organ, played by via the laptop rather than traditional methods, obviously. The result was a much more interesting and engaging take on electronica, with additional elements brought in which enhance rather than distract from the performance.

Sarah’s next performance in Brighton will be an event called Horlicks and Armageddon, held in an old Cell under the town hall as part of the Fringe in May. There will also be a 7″ released on Ghost Box records, and there’s an album in the offing too.

New Music

Posted on 06/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve had a roundup of the new music that’s dropped into our inbox, so time for an update.

First up is Impellers main man Ed Meme, who’s roped in the vocal talents of Myles Sanko for his first solo slab of 7″ vinyl on a track called Oh Yes I Will, which is coming out on classic funk label Breakin’ Bread on 25th February.

We’ve already mentioned Luo today, in our Weekend Gig Picks. His new EP Antidote is available as a free download, and is three tracks of lovely, jazzy, glitchy, electronica. And it’s free.

The last track of the Luo EP features the vocal talents of Jacko Hooper but In Angers couldn’t be more different from Luo. This is haunting sparse folk:

Raven also have the lyrics to their tune popping up in the video for Sounds Like Home, which puts a spin on rock by adding occasional glitchy 8-bit electronica, which gets reflected in the video:

Because of the snow the other week we missed Tiger Cub at Sea Monsters, so we’re happy to give their new single Little Rope a mention:

Gudjohr picked a funny time of year to put out an EP with an opening track entitled Summertime. Don’t be put off though, because Memories of Once Known is five tracks of lovely gentle lilting folk, which is available for free over at bandcamp.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 06/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Another weekend, another blog post flagging up our pick of the Brighton Bands playing live this weekend.

Our call for Thursday night is the launch of the Self Help Group‘s debut album Not Waving But Drowning. The gig at the Albert has been sold out for a little while, so well done if you’ve got a ticket. Tomorrow night is also the next Spirit of Gravity night at the Green Door Store, headlined by Sarah Angliss (who’s also a member of SpaceDog). There’s talk of robots, and that’s enough for us.

On Friday night Nick Cave is allowing an audience into his last rehearsal before he goes on tour. Resident Records, The Quietus and a few other places held competitions to win tickets. We were unlucky so we don’t even know where it is but it’s definitely the hot ticket of the night. We’re hoping to see The New Union at the Green Door Store, who are supporting the 1975 – that’s another sold out gig though, sorry!

Saturday night we recommend that you pay a visit to the Physics House Band’s regular night Kaleidoscope at Sticky Mike’s. Physics House Band aren’t performing – they are playing next weekend though, at the next Source New Music Night – but Sam is DJing and live music comes from Luo, who we like so much we’ve seen them twice this year.

Black Black Hills – Far from my Arms

Video

This is the brilliant beautiful new song from Black Black Hills.

I wasn’t expecting this – a soulful mournful love song, imbibing the spirit of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds but very much its own. Really gorgeous. Go listen.

And go download here http://emailunlock.com/blackblackhills/far-from-my-arms

Brightonmusicblog.co.uk

Posted on 04/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

We’ve decided to have a bit of a spring clean around here. The most obvious change is our new header. While the old one said Brighton, it didn’t really say music. And we’ve also invested in the .co.uk domain, rather than just having the blog in WordPress.

Aside from that, everything is still the same. All the old blog posts are still there, and all the old photos, it’s still the same people writing the posts, with the same enthusiasm. Keep your eyes peeled for more blog posts later this week.

Crayola Lectern – The Rise and Fall of… taster

Posted on 03/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Crayola Lectern’s debut album will be hitting the shelves in April this year, and to whet our appetite, he’s put a couple of tracks from it up on his Soundcloud. My other half reckons Slow Down sounds like Mary J Blige’s No More Drama, something which I imagine would amuse Crayola Lectern no end.

Bent Cousin – Everybody’s Got One

Posted on 03/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

I’m not the only person who’s noticed that the music press only seems to look backwards these days. The biggest news this year so far has been the return of David Bowie, today twitter is awash with news of a new My Bloody Valentine album, more than twenty years after Loveless nearly bankrupt Creation records, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this week’s number one is the new single by Pulp, who peaked in the mid-nineties. That’s not to say that all of these records won’t be great, but isn’t it all just a bit safe? And isn’t it a bit sad that the bands being pushed today are the same bands being pushed to their parents generation? What happened to rock and roll being about rebellion?

Bent Cousin have also noticed, and have fired off a rather direct missive on their website. It’s a very refreshing viewpoint to see a new band reject the status quo. Bent Cousin are twins, whose claim were born a decade apart only bears scrutiny when you see that they were born either side of midnight at the very end of the eighties.

Bent Cousin

Despite their disdain of musical dinosaurs, Bent Cousin aren’t that punk or wilfully obscure. The opening track of their new EP/mini-album bentpaperboy is a simple happy folk song, acoustic guitars with a Lily Allen vocal. Second track Slade reminds me of The Wedding Present, but doesn’t overstay it’s welcome clocking in at barely two minutes. I Quit You reminds me of The Pipettes, with close harmonies and sassy vocals. F.O.R.G.E.T. is frankly brilliant, sounding like a mash up of Orange Juice and Kenickie – hip swaying guitars, a white soul voice indebted to Edwyn Collins backed with female gang chanting. It was around this point on my first listen to the EP that Bent Cousin weren’t quite as scattershot as the first few tracks suggested and might actually be quite good. Glittery Joe made me smile with it’s tale of drunken pranks, fuzzed up guitars and doo wop oohs. The best is saved until last though – on I Think I Like Your Girlfriend More Than You the band take an unexpected Bossa Nova turn, and sad lyrics about a rubbish boyfriend.

I think I like Bent Cousin a lot more than a lot of other bands out there at the moment.

You can order Bent Cousin / Everybody’s Got One from the Team Love web shop. Bent Cousin hold the launch party for their single at Sticky Mike’s on 14th February.

Luo and IYES at the Prince Albert 30/1/13

Posted on 31/01/2013 by brightonmusicblog

We haven’t even reached the end of January yet, but 2013 is already looking like a great year for new musical discoveries from Brighton. There’s two bands who I hadn’t heard before this year who are already shaping up to be firm favourites – to find two bands in what’s normally quite a fallow month is good, but to find them both on the same bill at a gig was irresistible.

Luo

One of the great things about Sea Monsters was that you got to see so many bands in such a short space of time. This meant reduced turnaround times between them, and shared setups, which meant an element of compromise with the sound. That’s not to say that the sound was bad, more that it could probably have been improved if each band had the time and opportunity to set things up exactly as they’d want. Luo impressed us when they opened at last Saturday’s One Inch Badge vs One Inch Badge – they obviously impressed OIB too, who’ve put them on again so soon after the festival. The sound last night seemed bigger and more brutal – the soporific melodic washes of guitars were still there but caught you unawares by growing like post-rock monsters. Some later songs toyed with time signatures reminiscent of Physic House Band’s modern take on jazz. The beats, which kick off once you’re lulled into a false sense of security, seemed more brutal. In short, Luo confirmed the conclusion we came to at Sea Monsters that they were definitely a band to keep an eye on this year.

IYES

Anyone who’s anyone is talking about IYES and Lighthouse – their demo which has appeared online to huge acclaim. Give it a quick Google and you’ll see over 11,000 results. Most of those pages don’t give you much more than a link to Soundcloud though, and some gushing words about how Lighthouse reminds the writer about the XX but better. Some of them mention that the band are from Brighton, and some mention the IYES are a two piece, made up of Czech singer Melis Soyaslanova and singer and multi-instrumentalist Josh Christopher. Onstage last night they were joined by an additional guitarist to help create their shimmering widescreen pop vision, leaving the duo to focus on the song side of their tracks. Despite their Facebook page only being created in February of last year, IYES look and sound like a fully fledged band. Behind his laptop and with a guitar strapped to him, Josh looks like a re-boot of an eighties pop star, somewhere between one of the Goss brothers from Bros and Chris Lowe from Pet Shop Boys. Melis took the simpler option of a leather jacket over a dress but still looked every bit the pop star. Already the band have plenty of material for a solid half hour set, drawn from the spectrum that ranges from alternative ethereal alt-pop to chart friendly synth pop which if things continue on their current trajectory will have IYES uniting the underground and mainstream before the year’s up. Melis’ vocals complemented the sound perfectly, carrying the melody or dropping to barely a whisper. The big surprise was the power, strength and control of Josh’s voice which only came out at some of the more epic moments. It was good to see it used subtly at the right times. There were a few gremlins at the beginning of the set which led to a false start, but nothing unforgivable and they soon got going again. The gremlins came back just before the final track leaving the laptop silent, so for a finale we were treated to an acoustic version of Lighthouse which sounded just as strong as the original – a testament to the band’s fine songwriting talent.