August top ten

Posted on 02/09/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Here are the top tunes that were on the Brighton Music Blog stereo in August. As always, the diversity of the music being made in this city is impressive, from retro garage to chilled electronica and everything inbetween.

1) Spit Shake Sisters – Modern Drugs Make Aliens

Our most listened to track of the last month wasn’t a proper single, and was just put out to bring Spit Shake Sister’s output up to date following a change in personnel. Modern Drugs Make Aliens wasn’t even the lead song on the two track download. But nevertheless we’re big fans of this Hammond led hip swinger.

2) Electric Soft Parade – 1969

1969 is a popular year for songwriters. Serge Gainsbourg, Iggy Pop and, er, Bryan Adams have all taken advantage of writing about a year that recalls a time of free love, which also has a lot of rhymes. I’m sure the innuendo has nothing to do with it’s popularity. Now it’s Electric Soft Parade’s turn, putting out the summery guitar pop of 1969 as a free download from their label’s website.

3) Adolescent – Shy

Shy came out on an electronica compilation called Coast to Coast put out by Irish blog Believe In Sound. Call us biased, but in our opinion the Brighton track with the best thing on it. You can download the whole compilation for free on bandcamp.

4) Bon Iver – Wash (Foreign Skin remix)

Bon Iver’s not from Brighton, I hear you say. Well, no – but Flavia Aliverti, better known as Foreign Skin, is. We were won over by her set at Two Three Four at Green Door Store at the start of the month, and not long after this rather lovely unofficial remix turned up on SoundCloud and Bandcamp (see the links underneath the video on YouTube). Grab it before it disappears

5) The Hundredth Anniversary – Last Drive

The Hundredth Anniversary continue to put out high quality shoegaze, and Last Drive is no exception. Head over to the website they created to go with the track, play with the visuals, and download the track to listen to at your leisure.

6) The Raving Beauties – Oh Lover

At The Helm is a new Brighton based label from the guys behind Brighthelmstone promotions and Wildwood promotions, and the sunny Americana of Oh Lover is their first release

7) Phantom Runners – It Takes Me Away

We only heard this last week, but we loved it on first listen. We heard some very exciting news about who might be producing the Phantom Runners next EP, but we think it might be a secret so all we’ll say is keep your eyes and ears peeled.

8) Samuel Organ – E/\/\ER/\LD

The Physics House Band’s own label Kaleidoscope put out their second release this month, a three track solo EP called Y by Physics House Band member Samuel Organ. It’s not easy listening by any means, but neither is a lot of Aphex Twin’s output, which this track feels like it could be a natural heir to.

9) P For Persia – Uncanny Valley

Uncanny Valley got reviewed by Drowned In Sound, who described it as “a Twin Peaks remix done on an Atari by Fuck Buttons channelling their inner Kid606, before asking a bunch of shouty screamo kids to come in and do some vocals.”. They didn’t mention that it was just one track on a split EP with Speak Galactic, that the EP was called Aegis Arctic Alp, or that it was coming out on purple vinyl, all of which makes it an even more exciting prospect.

10) Flash Bang Band / Screw Come Loose

The second track in our top ten from At The Helm Records, Screw Come Loose, is the single that’s come out to promote the new Flash Bang Band album Bite Your Tongue. The album is out now and features some of their older singles (If You’re Driving and DananananaFreud). The launch party is at the Green Door Store on 15th September, where they’ll be joined by P For Persia and Clowns.

New Music – DrDr, Tiger Bite Fever, The Raving Beauties, Kill Moon, Adolescent

Posted on 12/08/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Here’s some new and upcoming music that’s dropped into our inbox recently that we thought we’d share with you.

First up is thew new DrDr EP – Drums Never End came out yesterday on Champion Records. They describe their sound as future bass, I’d say it was slightly garage-y vocal house. DrDr headline the first IntroJuice-ing at the Haunt on 22nd August which we wrote about in our last post. You can buy the EP on iTunes here.

Tiger Bite Fever got in touch with us back in July, but their Love Is Strange EP isn’t out until 22nd August, so we’ve held off posting about it for a little while. Tiger Bite Fever are made up of Stuart Wray from Gentleman Starkey and vocalist Amy Tinsley, who have started making soulful Americana together. The band are also launching their EP on 22nd August, but they’ll be at Latest Music Bar

Here’s some more American flavoured music, this time from The Raving Beauties with their sun drenched debut single Oh Lover, which is out today on new Brighton label At The Helm. You can buy the track via Amazon.

Black & Blue serves things up with a bit more attitude than the other tracks in this post. The new single from Kill Moon is out today apparently, although we can’t find anywhere to buy or download it right now. Kill Moon are back at the Green Door Store on 26th August.

Finally, we have Shy by Adolescent, which appears on a compilation out a couple of weeks ago called Coast To Coast put together by Irish based music blog Believe in Sound. Shy is a gorgeous sparse piece of electronica, peppered with lovely vocal samples. You can download the whole compilation on bandcamp here.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 01/05/2013 by brightonmusicblog

May’s a funny months for gigs. One one hand it’s quite possibly the best month in the year – The Great Escape comes to town and there’s so much going on for Brighton Festival and Fringe. But on the other hand there are so many distractions that a lot of bands lay low until there’s a chance that they’ll be heard. So even though this weekend is a Bank Holiday, things are starting to look a little bit thin on the ground.

On Thursday night Rich from Heliopause is putting on a gig at the Hope. His own band and Ingrid Plum act as support from Canadian Ingrid Gatin. Meanwhile, at Sticky Mike’s, BrightonsFinest are putting on Fragile Creatures.

Be Nothing promotions are celebrating their second birthday on Friday night at the Blind Tiger. There are five bands on the bill headlined by Girl Band, with local representation from Tourist and Adolescent.

Our pick for Saturday night is another gig at the Blind Tiger – Brighton’s King Porter Stomp are joining forces with Bristol’s First Degree Burns for what promises to be a fantastic ska / hip hop collaboration.

Brighton Digital Festival : Sound Screen headlined by Nordic Giants

Posted on 24/09/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Last night we paid a visit to another Brighton Digital Festival event. We’ve got another two events in our diary in the next week too, so look out for reports on them.

Caveman Genius

Sound Screen was an audio visual event put on by Pop Up Brighton at the Pavilion Theatre, pairing up electronic acts with visual artists. Electronic acts make some of the most exciting music, and as even Deadmau5 pointed out this summer, quite often the live performance just involves them pressing play in Ableton. All of tonight’s performers do a lot more than just sit behind a laptop, but all were enhanced with the addition of visuals.

Pact

The event opened with Caveman Genius – a one man act who plays live drums alongside his lush downbeat electronica. I’m loathed to use such an outdated phrase as Trip Hop, but it’s probably the words that describe his music best, and it’s meant as a compliment. Next up was Pact, whose sound was far more suited to the dancefloor. Unfortunately, the Pavilion was in a seated configuration last night, so I don’t think he was truly appreciated. It would be good to see what he could do at 2am in a club rather than 9pm in a theatre. The last act before the interval were the slightly more laid back Adolescent, who played as a whole band setup. Alex Parish was the focus, who controlled the electronic side of things and occasionally took to the drums, while the rest of the band added shimmering guitar and bass

Adolescent

The headliners of the night were the fantastic Nordic Giants. If you haven’t heard them yet, you must. If you haven’t seen them live yet, you’ve missed out. Musically, they’re post-rock, as emotional as Sigur Ros, with the quietLOUDquiet of Mogwai and the politics of Godspeed you Black Emperor. Visually, the band make so much more of an effort than anyone else – body paint with nightmarish masks, strobe lighting, and award winning films from Shorts International, with the vocal for each track given a separate backlit section on stage. It all makes for arguably the best live performance in Brighton, and it was frustrating that they only got a half hour set, at only their second live performance in town this year.