Back in March, The Physics House Band put out the first release on their new label kldscp (named after their regular Kaleidoscope club nights held at Sticky Mike’s). It was a seven track compilation of local electronica, and the standout track for us was the blissed out beats of Foreign Skin’s Hoi Sum. Hoi Sum means happy in Cantonese – Flavia Aliverti was born in Hong Kong – and the track is certainly devoid of any negativity. Best enjoyed on a hot sunny day with a cool drink close to hand.
A Lily’s Lupa EP came out last month on Love Thy Neighbour, and it’s lead track – The Sparrow In the Lemon Tree – is absolutely gorgeous. Layers of lush strings, harp and delicate vocals interweave with quietly burbling electronica of the gentlest tracks in our list. You can catch A Lily live next Friday (12th) when they’re on the bill at the Green Door Store with Asgeir and Farao.
Day two of our Advent Calendar is one of Brighton’s finest live bands. Black Black Hills put out two singles this year and we’ve picked out the hip swaying rock’n’roll of Red Cabin.
As well as being a great song, Red Cabin has a fantastic video. We’ll let you watch it to work out just what makes it that little bit different. Things have been a bit quiet from in the Black Black Hills camp of late – no gigs since Playgroup festival and no social media updates since August. Hopefully there’ll be some more music from the band in the new year.
Somehow, suddenly, it’s December – That time of year when music magazines and websites take stock of the year gone by. Like last year, we’re not going to post up our whole list in one go. That would be far too easy. Instead we’ll be posting up one track a day, building up to our highlight of the year.
The first box in our advent calendar is a Brighton Band we don’t know a great deal about. We do know that we loved their debut single Goddess of War. The band were filming the video for their next single last weekend, so we look forward to seeing that very soon.
So, the presents are opened, Christmas Dinner is eaten, and all that’s left is to watch the Sound of Music with the family for the umpteenth time. But if that’s all a bit too much, here’s a look back at our Advent Calendar, with every day collected together in one handy blog post:
Our first proper blog post of 2012 was about Fujiya & Miyagi. They had recorded a version of Your Silent Face for a cd of New Order covers given out with the February edition of Mojo magazine. While it might look like we’re spending all our time writing about Brighton music, secretly we’re huge New Order fans on the side, so the chance to slip some New Order into the blog was most welcome.
In February we spotted Matt Hainsby swapping his bass for an acoustic guitar onstage at the Bleeding Hearts Club under the name I Am Ampersand. He was the third member to join the band and “Fujiya” and “Miyagi” had already been grabbed, so he was left with the “&”. A few weeks later the ultra-limited but utterly brilliant 20 Seas 4 Oceans 7″ came out on the legendary Great Pop Supplement label. It came with a hand-made wood print. It’s got lyrics about a mer-man. The intro sounds a bit like an unplugged version of Spirit In The Sky. What more could you possibly want? Another great 7″ followed in the summer and a few weeks ago he rounded off the year with Grave Goods, an album of quirky psychedelic folk songs that you wouldn’t have expected from a member of Fujiya & Miyagi a year ago.
Matt Hainsby isn’t the only member of Fujiya & Miyagi who’s been involved with extra-curricular activities this year. David Best has teamed up with Sammy Rubin from Project Jenny Project Jan to form Omega Male, who also put out their album in November. Where Grave Goods wasn’t immediately recognisable as an album put out by a member of Fujiya & Miyagi, there’s no mistaking Best’s inescapable vocal style on Omega Male. Tucked at the end of the album was one of our favourite tracks this year – the incredibly gorgeous Buildings Like Symphonies, which combined with I Am Ampersand’s 20 Seas 4 Oceans, was the clincher for placing them so high in our list.
Today you might be thinking “How come there’s only a few days left but even more acts who’ve had great write ups on the blog?” or maybe you’re thinking “what’s going on with more than one act being in the description? Surely that’s cheating!”. Both are very good points. We’ll put our hands up and admit that when we were putting together our end of year list there were more than 25 bands we absolutely had to write about, and so for the last few days we’ve combined a few of our favourite acts in order to squeeze a few more people in. It’s also got around our dilemma of what to do about bands who’ve collaborated.
Nordic Giants first put Shine – sung by Cate Ferris – on their A Tree As Old As Me EP back in 2010. It’s such a great track that they re-recorded it this year and put it out as a standalone single. It’s got a fantastic b-side too – the Martin Luther King sampling Together. In theory, their live shows shouldn’t really work – bombastic post rock played just by two people, without the aid of any of their vocalists (they’ve worked with a different singer for each of their tracks). In practise, Nordic Giants are one of the best live bands in Brighton. but they don’t hide behind laptops, instead playing guitar / drums and piano / trumpet, stripped to the waist wearing masks and body paint, illuminated only by strobes during the louder parts of the songs. They play to a backdrop dark short films, and project video of the vocalists for each track into a separate box. If you haven’t seen them live yet, then do whatever you can get to get a ticket for the next time they play. They recorded their album earlier this month in Wales, and we can’t wait until that surfaces at some point next year.
Cate Ferris is someone else you really must see live. There are plenty of people who sing, play guitar and use loop pedals, but no one else who does it all so well and makes it all look so effortless as Cate, nor is there anyone else who’s so down to earth and warm in her performances. Seeing Cate play live is a complete joy, in her songs, her musicianship, and in the wonder she generates in the room. Her “Deep breath ready get set GO!” Ep was great too, proving that her live performance can translate into recorded material.
Cate also lends her vocal talents to folk / hip hop supergroup Dizraeli & The Small Gods, and Dizraeli’s wordplay definitely warrants a mention. The band had a single out in the latter part of the year – Never Mind – and around the time of it’s release we tried to catch up with Dizraeli to talk to him about it, but our diaries never managed to match up. It could end up as Brighton Music Blog’s great missed interview. Or maybe we’ll just have to make sure we catch up next time they’ve got something for us to write about instead.
Today’s post was meant to be a celebration but I fear it’s going to be a bit of an obituary. I wrote a lot of the Advent Calendar blog posts before November was even up but held off writing about Shrag because I had a ticket for the Riots Not Diets Christmas Party at the West Hill Centre that they were headlining on the 8th of December. I heard a rumour before hand which was confirmed by the band at the gig – it was probably their last time they would play Brighton.
What a bombshell – I had no idea it was coming. This year’s album Canines had been lauded across the music press as their finest yet, and gave us three fine singles – Tendons in the Night (which was a split single with touring partners Tunabunny), album lead track Show Us Your Canines in the Night and and the glam stomper Devastating Bones. While the singles were Shrag’s most muscular yet the rest of the album showed a band who’d finally found a maturity in their sound. The New Order-esque breakdown in the middle of On The Spires of Old Cathedrals gave us the shivers every time we heard it and album closer Jane With Dumbbells was majestic.
Things felt a bit different at the last gig. Helen finally looked a bit older and less like a child, and there was something a bit less indie about Steph. Maybe I was just projecting, knowing that in a few weeks time (there’s one last gig in their Diary, at Fortuna Pop’s Winter Sprinter in London) they won’t be part of Shrag any more. Maybe the band know that they haven’t got anything to prove any more. Maybe they were just drunk. Who knows.
What I do know is that in these quarters Shrag will be sadly missed. They’ve put out some fantastic records over the past few years and played some great gigs. They leave us with one final single put out as part of the Where Its At Is Where You Are singles club. Unseasonal Thoughts melds spiky guitars with 80s synths, and might just be the best thing they’ve ever done. At least they’re going out on a high.
We first started pulling together our end of year list back in October. By that point in the year, you’ve got a pretty idea about who you feel deserves an extra mention. Our first draft didn’t mention Martin Rossiter though – We’d spotted him playing bass innocuously in Call Me Jolene, and heard some positive second hand reports about his performance at The Wedding Present’s At The Edge Of The Sea all dayer back in August, but we didn’t think that was quite enough for him to make our list. But then a couple of weeks ago, we got hold of his first album in over a decade, and we knew that our list needed changing straight away. The Defenestration of St Martin is tender, emotional and personal. It’s cruel yet majestic, cold yet beautiful.
There’s something about Fear of Men that makes them feel like stars-in-waiting. There’s their releases, all great songs, which they’ve made sure have all been issued on 7″ or cassette so that they’re all physical artefacts, but given online exclusive streaming on Pitchfork before anyone else. There’s the decision not to play too often in Brighton so that when they do it feels more special. Then there’s the support slot with Best Coast, giving them an audience not just across the UK, but Europe too. Watch this space, because next year we predict big things for Fear of Men.
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