Tucked in at the end of this week’s gigs picks was an artist who we hadn’t written about before on the blog. Champione are playing a late gig at Sticky Mike’s to support the launch of their new EP which came out yesterday.
The Home EP features an incredibly generous eight tracks of Electro House. Opener MshMshMsh has a fizzy, effervescent introduction, before bubbling into a French House banger. The next couple of tracks, Unicorns and Bear vs Bear, follow suit with a ravey electro house that would sit nicely alongside MSTRKRFTS finest. The View brings female vocals into the equation, sounding a bit like Katy B produced by Justice. Things go a bit dubstep on title track Home, which features vocals by Danny McGurn, and The End uses elements from each of the preceding five tracks to make something new. The EP also has two remixes of The View by Burenze and Dirty Purity.
Home is available through iTunes and Champione’s Bandcamp page, and the launch night is at Sticky Mike’s from 11pm-3am on Saturday night.
It’s that time of week again where wish dish out our recommendations for the best Brighton bands playing around town this weekend. You might not be at Glastonbury, but that’s no reason to miss out on live music.
Our picks for Friday night are the Les Enfants Terribles and Brighton Rocks nights. Les Enfants Terribles is at the Blind Tiger, and has Kill moon, Phantom Runners and The Semper Teens on the bill. Brighton Rocks is at Sticky Mikes and sees The Repeat Prescriptions, Midnight Wire, Karlek and Victims Athletic playing.
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There’s loads of good stuff on Saturday too, starting in the afternoon. There’s a twelve hour surf rock all dayer on at the Green Door store, kicking off at 4pm and going on until 4am, with The Space Agency playing at some point, as well as loads of DJs and a few other bands from out of town. It’s also The Open House Pub’s Cider Festival, which has Jennifer Left and Jacko Hooper playing live. Finally Champione have their EP launch at a late night gig at Sticky Mike’s from 11pm.
We got a sense of déjà vu last night. It felt like it had only been a week since we saw the White brothers onstage at the Green Door Store. Last night’s songs weren’t from Idiots though. In fact, it wasn’t even an Electric Soft Parade gig. Confused yet?
Last night Alex White’s new band Interlocutor played at the Green Door Store. You can count their gigs so far on one hand, which is why you might not be familiar with the name. Including Alex’s brother Thomas (on drums) there were a total of eleven people on stage, including a violinist, a three piece horn section, an additional percussionist, and at times three people playing guitar.
If all of this sounds a little bit grander than the current Electric Soft Parade live setup, which has less than half the number of musicians, then that’s because it is. While both Idiots and the new Interlocutor material both hark back to the days of classic songwriting, Interlocutor’s influences are more rooted in AOR – The set included Steely Dan and Todd Rundgren covers, the arrangements were bigger and the sound a little more melancholy. Alex’s own songs, which he described at one point as “slowcore” sat well alongside the covers although the lyrical content about family and domesticity brought things a little closer to home.
Interlocutor may not have packed the pop punch of Electric Soft Parade, but what they did had grace, class and the same fantastic musicianship.
It’s barely been a few days since we last posted about the latest batch of new music but here we are again with even more!
First is the new video from British Sea Power for their upcoming single Loving Animals. It’s hot off the press only going up YouTube earlier today:
Next up is Derriere‘s new single Last Laugh. We gave this a share on our new Facebook page last week, but if you haven’t found us on Facebook yet you might not have seen this. Last Laugh will be out in July:
We’ve had some indie, some soul, and now we’ve got some leftfield electronic pop. Come Alive is the title track from Faux Flux‘s new EP which is out on 1st July:
Finishing us off with something different again is the latest release from the Wilkommen stable. Eyes & No Eyes release their new double A side If No One Else Saw It / Flying Machine today, available on 7″ vinyl, cd with handmade linocut cover or name-your-price download:
Last night The Electric Soft Parade headlined a rammed Green Door Store to launch their new album Idiots.
Crayola Lectern
Support came from the leftfield Crayola Lectern, who we’ve written about numerous times. The stage was all set up for the headliners, which left Chris Anderson tucked at the back playing Electric Soft Parade’s keyboards and Alistair Strachan rather exposed at the front. They only played a short set, and did their usual trick of leaving those in the room who hadn’t seen them before confused and beguiled.
Thomas White
By the time The Electric Soft Parade were ready to start the room was as rammed as the stage. Now playing as a six piece, and with at least half the band swapping instruments over the course of night there it all got a bit crowded. The set was drawn from their whole career with around half the tunes taken from Idiots. It was their first live gig with the new material, not that you would have known it. The White brothers were on charming form, with plenty of banter including some self deprecating words on their review from NME (which referred to one track as ” as unlistenable as a million malfunctioning taps” – “How did they know that was what we were after?” quipped Alex!). The band finished up with an encore of album closer Never Again played just by Alex and Thomas and then Mr Mitchell with the whole band. Electric Soft Parade – it’s good to have you back.
Alex White
The Electric Soft Parade are back onstage in Brighton again on 4th July, at an instore in Resident, and again on 19th July supporting The Levellers at The Dome.
Last Night’s Source New Music at the Dome Studio Theatre was a fantastic night. We’ve written about all three bands, but I can confidently say that each of the three bands better than I’d ever seen them before.
Jacko Hooper is growing with every performance, and he won over the room most of whom were there solely for Martin Rossiter. There seems to be less nerves than when I first saw him, and there’s a great balance that shows off the quality of both his songwriting and his guitar playing. The Beautiful Word have made a bit of a change of direction this year, going a bit more indie and introducing tropical guitar riffs. There’s still a hint of the twee folk in the background with tracks like May Not Be Love, but overall they now sound like a band who’ve found their sound. Fantastic stuff.
The first thing Martin Rossiter did when he came on stage was thank The Source for extending their definition of New Music – I first saw Gene at Reading Festival back in 1999 – but Martin’s solo album only came out last year. Being the showman that he is, he’s recruited the talents of pianist Robin Coward so that he’s not constrained by an instrument, which allows Martin to roam the stage. The simplicity of the songs holds up in a live setting, and the sound is every bit as powerful as on the record. If you’re thinking of going to see Martin live at Bush Hall in London next week, then we thoroughly recommend it.
Back in February we wrote about a new release by Emiliana Torrini, put out on a 7″ only label called Speedy Wunderland. They’re obviously doing something right over there because they’ve given us cause to write about them again.
Their new release is a track called The Bride, a collaboration between Natasha Khan and Toy. We’re not quite sure what distinguishes Bat For Lashes from Natasha Khan, but the piano line, and the vocals are instantly recognisable. You can take a listen to the track on soundcloud below, and the record is available to pre-order from Resident.
Last night, Us Baby Bear Bones launched their debut EP at the Green Door Store. We were there to enjoy the fun and catch Alphabets Heaven, Speak Galactic and Us Baby Bear Bones live sets. As with our other galleries, click on the images to view large.
The opening song from the new Electric Soft Parade album sneaks in the line “And now it’s back to work / as if I never left”, but while it’s been seven years since No Need To Be Downhearted came out the White brothers never quite got around to leaving. Since then there’s been three Brakes albums, three solo albums from Thomas, and guest spots from both brothers in numerous bands. There’s been plenty of live dates too, most notably supporting Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds on their world tour in 2011, and playing a gig at the Haunt last year for the 10th Anniversary of Holes in the Wall.
At the end of 2011 a French label put out Lily on 7″, which we described as “the kind of melodic guitar pop that most indie bands would sell their grandmother to be able to write”, and then the band spent all of 2012 assembling an album full of tracks of the same high standard. Earlier this year they released the country tinged Brother You Must Walk Your Path Alone, which has barely left our stereo.
Next Monday sees the release of Idiots, Electric Soft Parade’s fourth long player. The thing that strikes you on first listen is that any of the album’s ten tracks could be singles; not only is Idiots very much a pop album but there isn’t a duff track on it. It’s a classic guitar pop sound that’s been sorely missing from the charts of late, which have been cluttered up with the likes of Kasabian’s testosterone soaked riffs or Ed Sheeran’s overly sensitive acoustic drivel. Where are the tunes? Where are the choruses you can sing along to?
Well, here they are. Summertime In My Heart is the optimism of the season distilled into song form. The Corner of Highdown and Montefiore is a brooding, reflective ballad with lush strings that you lose yourself in before you realise it’s got a bit epic. Title track Idiots draws on the lush seventies pop of ELO or Wings, and the infectiously catchy Mr Mitchell could have been penned by Ray Davies. One of Those Days makes me swoon with it’s gorgeousness, shuffling rhythms and close harmonies, and Welcome To The Weirdness has the best guitar solo that Brian May never wrote. Never again calms things down to finish with, the sweetest song about hangovers that’s ever been written.
Idiots is a fantastic album. It’s rammed with brilliant, sunny guitar pop tunes, and is a great comeback for the White brothers. It’s out on Monday 17th on Helium Records, and the launch is being put on by Melting Vinyl at the Green Door Store that day.
The Fall and Rise of Crayola Lectern has been one of our favourite albums of the year so far, sounding unlike anyone else out there in Brighton right now. We decided to catch up with Chris Anderson to find out a bit about Crayola Lectern.
Brighton Music Blog 