Here’s some new music that’s popped in our inbox recently for your aural delectation:
First up is the new Crayola Lectern single Slow Down / Trip in D, both standout tracks from The Fall and Rise of Crayola Lectern LP out earlier this year. We’ve already shared the video for Slow Down, and the single comes with alternate versions of both tracks. You can buy on iTunes here.
Le Juki release their album Capillaries on Beatabet today, which is up to buy on Bandcamp. One for fans of quirky folktronica, the band are holding their album launch on 12th July at Unitarian Church.
We’ve previewed the video for Dead Captain‘s track Maybe Maybe, and today the whole EP finally got released. The New Plan EP is available for download from Bandcamp.
Changing styles again, next up is Tubba 3 Ply‘s debut release Pass Me By / Fake MC, out now on 7″ or download. They describe it as Breakbeat Dub Punk Techno:
Finally, to calm things down, we have Limbic System‘s new EP- Beat Wave. The soundcloud link below is for our favourite track Distant Lands, which sounds a little like fellow Brightonians The Mummers. You can listen to the whole EP here.
Hopefully we’ll have more new music to share with you soon from the likes of Cate Ferris and The Mojo Fins, so watch this space!
We’ve had news in this week about the new Abi Wade single. The Boxer was produced by Daniel Copeman of Esben and The Witch, with a video made by Brighton’s Create Studios:
As with her previous releases the track is centred around Abi’s haunting vocals and cello, but instead of percussion coming from the noises made between her instrument and her bow, The Boxer introduces programmed beats giving a much fuller sound than before.
The Boxer gets a digital release on 15th July on Love Thy Neighbour.
Here’s our regular monthly post of what’s hot on the Brighton Music Blog stereo over the last month.
1) Electric Soft Parade – Summertime in My Heart
We’ve probably listened to more Electric Soft Parade this month than everything else put together, and our top ten probably should just be the tracklist of Idiots, but what fun would that be? Summertime edged out in front of the other tracks, mainly because it’s the current single.
2) Milk & Biscuits – Hairstyles
Hairstyles is the second single from Milk & Biscuits forthcoming album Spirit Nap, and it’s great. It’s a bit Belle & Sebastian, a bit retro pop, and has a video filmed all around Brighton:
3) Us Baby Bear Bones – Swamp
We’ve been waiting for “What Starts With a U Ends With An I” for ages, and it was well worth the wait. A few of the tracks had appeared on YouTube, but the EP was the first chance we’d had to listen to Swamp over and over:
4) The Beautiful Word – Particles
When we first posted up the video for Particles back in May we said that it could well be the best thing they’ve done. After repeated plays, we’re pretty much sure it is.
5) New Union – Staying Friends
Staying Friends is the lead track on the New Union’s eponymous EP which came out four weeks ago. All four tracks on the EP are great, and the artwork for the 12″ is just as classy as we’ve come to expect from the band.
6) IYES – Lighthouse (BBC Introducing Session)
For their recent BBC session IYES swapped the electronics for a cello and it sounded lush. Unfortunately it’s long disappeared from iPlayer, so here’s the original:
7) Gaps – Cascade
We posted up the video for Gaps lovely, hypnotic upcoming single Keep You a couple of weeks ago, but we ended up listening to it’s AA side Cascade even more. The Guardian agreed with us and made them yesterday’s New Band of the Day! The single will be released on 15th July on Sexbeat.
8) Curxes – Further Still (Avec Sans Remix)
We featured the original version of Further Still in our April Top Ten, but this month a remix surfaced which reversed the vocals, giving the tune a completely different melody:
9) Champione – Bear vs Bear
We only got the chance to give Champione’s tunes a listen last week, which means they haven’t had that many listens which is why Bear vs Bear is only at number nine. This, and the rest of the Home EP, are definitely going to get a lot more listens over the next few weeks:
10) Rivieras – Weekend
Rivieras got in touch on twitter and pointed us in the direction of their latest EP, a four tracker called Weekend. We liked what we heard, but we spotted that it had been up on Soundcloud for at least six months, so didn’t really sit alongside the new music that we write about most of the time. It’s definitely worth a listen though. Here’s the title track:
Next Monday sees the release of Cousin’s Alternate Tunings for Regular People EP, coming out on Fcking The Night on hand finished fabric sleeved 12″ and download. Cousin’s instrumental math-rock is a lot more accessible and melodic than a lot of other bands in the genre, but that doesn’t come at the expense of big rock hooks. Here’s the video for for the song three on the six track release, Fourth Floor Balcony Fight:
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.
