Here’s a few new videos for you to watch, including two bands who are both playing in town next week. We’ve written about the first two before, but when we did, the videos weren’t ready yet, so here they are now.
First up is Jennifer Left with her new single Black Dog (which we wrote about here). Jennifer is having a single launch at the Blind Tiger on Tuesday, supported by Cate Ferris and The Peppermint Beat Band
We wrote about the new Fear of Men single Green Sea ages ago, and it’s finally released on Monday. Fear of Men are supporting Best Coast on tour at the moment, and they play Coalition on thursday.
Finally we have Nimmo and the Gauntletts, with the lead track from their debut EP Young Light. The EP came out in January, but the video’s only just been made:
Have you downloaded the new track that Munich are giving away yet? Because if you haven’t, you ought to. We gave it a re-tweet last week, but it deserves a post all of it’s own, because it’s such a great track. It starts off with beautiful cascading guitars, like Doves or Vampire Weekend on a good day, but like all the best Munich tracks it morphs into a huge epic tune by the end. A true anthem for the summer!
Congratulation to Kovak and Heliopause, who are representing Brighton at this year’s NXNE festival in Toronto. This might not sound like a big deal, but there are only ten bands from the UK out of the 780 who are playing (and here’s something for the people from The Great Escape to think about – about half the bands playing are from Toronto)
After spending the last few months honing their sound, today Fragile Creatures unleash their debut single onto thje world today, released digitally through DNVMusic.
The single is a double A-side – Dear Michael is laid back, shuffling indie pop with organs, brushes on the drums and lush harmonies. She Makes Me Nervous is a more up-beat affair, and off kilter stomper which switches tempo between verse and chorus. The video for the single isn’t out there just yet, but I’ll update the blog when it is.
Fragile Creatures have just been to Normandy to record their album, which they’re hoping will be out by the end of the year. Between now and then, they’re playing at Latest on 29th June, Brighton People’s Day on 14th July, and if recent activity has been anything to go by, dozens of other dates too.
Back in April The Moulettes had their single launch at The Marlborough. Two months on, it’s about time they actually released it. Held back by a combination of trying to tie things in with their multitude of festival appearances, and pressing plant delays caused by bank holidays, Sing Unto Me finally hits the shops next monday.
Sing Unto Me is the lead single from the Moulettes new album The Bear’s Revenge. In a bit of a departure from most of their tracks, lead singer Hannah Miller takes on guitar rather than ‘cello duties, but the overall sound is very familiar – tight female harmonies sung in the round, and a folk rhythm section made up of guitar, fiddle, bodhran, and any other bits of percussion that come to hand as well as double bass from Ted Dwane from Mumford and Sons.
Being the generous sorts they are, the single comes with a bumper six tracks – as well as a single edit, there’s a remix, a cover by fellow Brightonians The Muel, and a handful of b-sides including live favourite Are You Going Away To Sea, which is probably the track that made me fall in love with them in the first place.
The band are going to have a very busy summer. If you happen to be at any of the following festivals, I heartily recommend you go and see them:
07/06 Irish Cultural Centre, Derry, Northern Ireland
08/06 Marlboro House, Bundoran, Donegal
09/06 ‘Gentlemen Of The Road’ Salthill Pk Galway – w/Mumford & Sons
10/06 The Slate, Cork – on at 5.30pm, *before* the football!
06/07 Nova Festival
21/7 Secret Garden Party – Three gigs in one day! 5pm @ Onetaste, 8-ish @ Small World, 11.30pm-ish @ Cut-A-Shine
It was a British Bank Holiday, therefore it must be raining. It seems to be raining nearly every time I go to the Haunt. But last night it was definitely worth braving the weather, as new-in-town promoters TEA put on Com Truise with support from Anneka, who’s a local artist who we haven’t written about on the blog yet.
Com Truise
Com Truise was fantastic, filling the room with big crunchy beats. But Seth Haley, as his mum calls him, isn’t a Brightonian so let’s devote the rest of this blog post to the support. There’s a chance you may have heard of Anneka already – She’s collaborated with the likes of Falty DL, Starkey, Ital Tek, Vex’d and Blue Daisy on records that have been all over BBC 6Music, Radio 1 and XFM, and now she’s starting to perform on her own.
So many solo female electronic artists get compared to Bjork, and often it’s a very lazy comparison on the journalists part and one that doesn’t tell you a great deal about the artist either, so let’s refine it a bit and then justify it: Anneka’s music sounds like Bjork’s around Post / Homogenic – Music that would sound as good on the dancefloor as it would on the radio, or through headphones. The sound is heavy on the bass, but the rest of the musical spectrum isn’t ignored, nor are melodies or song structures. Vocally, Anneka isn’t so much like Bjork – she doesn’t attempt the vocal acrobatics or growls – but her voice does have strength, warmth and character.
Anneka
In a live environment Anneka didn’t just hide behind her computer and augmented the those sounds with live vocals, extra keys and percussion making for a far more interesting experience, and the sound setup in The Haunt deserves a mention for sounding so good – loud but without being overbearing. In her short twenty minute set as well as half a dozen of her own tunes Anneka also covered PJ Harvey’s Electric Light, using the original as a base, transforming PJ’s simple mantra into something epic:
Anneka is definitely an act to watch out for. Go and see her somewhere with great sound sooner rather than later because before long, if there’s any justice, she’ll be too big for anywhere in Brighton.
It’s not often you get to see a band’s debut gig. But then it’s not often that a band doesn’t play their debut gig until after their second album is released, as Time & Space Machine did last night. Time and Space Machine is Richard Norris’ band based project – a twin brother to Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, his psychedelic remix / re-edits project with Erol Alkan. The records are mostly Richard’s own work (with a little help on drums), but for their debut gig, they’d grown to a five piece.
Richard Norris / Time and Space Machine
If you haven’t heard the new album Taste The Lazer, it’s mostly psychedelia, with a bit of krautrock and garage thrown into the mix. Live they gave the impression of being the band Oasis could have been – if only they’d taken LSD rather than cocaine and listened to the Beatles later albums rather than stopping somewhere around Rubber Soul – or maybe they were a bit like current music industry darlings Toy if their record collection wasn’t just experimental German records from the early seventies. While it’s mostly instrumental, there is a smattering of vocals across their work. In Richard’s own words “sometimes it sounds like Crosby, Stills & Nash, sometimes it sounds like we’ve just come back from the pub”. According to people I was with, things might have sounded a bit better if they’d had decent vocal monitors onstage.
But you don’t go and see Time and Space Machine for the vocals – it’s all about the amazing accompanying visuals, the swirling hammond, the really tight drumming and the great musicianship that never strays into showing off. The band left the stage after an hour that went far too quick and didn’t come back for an encore, leaving us wanting more. Hopefully it won’t be long before they’re back.
Brighton Music Blog favourites Nordic Giants release their debut single today.
If you’ve got a nagging feeling that they’ve had a single already, then you’re kind of right – Their “A Tree as Old as Me” EP came out in September 2010. But technically, that was an EP, not a single, so here they are with their debut. And if you’re thinking that you might have heard Shine before, then you’ll be right there too, because a different version was on the EP.
Shine is an absolutely epic track. Like the very best bits of Sigur Ros, but with female vocals, going from whispers to a barrage of wondrous noise in a heartbeat. Things start off quiet with Cate Ferris’ vocal line over what might be strings, or could be reversed guitars. Things stay restrained for a couple of minutes after which the tension slowly starts to build, then comes the drop, and then an explosion of noise, like fireworks in your soul.
B-side Together samples a Martin Luther King speech (which bizarrely has also been sampled by Linkin Park, of all people), and brings to mind a more melodic Godspeed You Black Emperor – a rousing moralistic oratory over rousing intense post-rock. There’s also an acoustic version of Shine thrown in for good measure, with simple piano lines and a string quartet replacing the guitars.
Last week, I mentioned that the new Jennifer Left single was due soon. The physical copies drop next monday, but for those of you living in the twenty first century who don’t want to be burdened with cds cluttering up your house, the digital version is out today.
Jennifer Left – Black Dog
Black Dog has been all over BBC 6Music and Radio 2, and rightly so. The song is fresh off-beat pop which is a great showcase for Jennifer’s almost jazzy vocals. Best of all, it has whistling. There’s not nearly enough of that these days. It’s backed with the title track of her forthcoming album Hushabye (which has more whistling, mandolins and some rather lush strings) as well as remixes from The Wild Knights (wobbly, glitchy house), Murder He Wrote (all stripped back and minimal) and Restlesslist (with added bleeps, surf guitar and reverb turned up to eleven on the vocals).
The video isn’t online yet, but here’s a version of Jennifer and her band playing the track for Balcony TV last year:
You can download the single on iTunes, or from her bandcamp site which also has an option to pre-order the physical release where you get the download right now.
If you’re wondering about the amazing brown paper dress in the promo shots, read more about it on the Create Studios blog.
Update : I’ve seen that someone has googled the blog looking for Jennifer Left’s label. The single is being released on Singing Hinny Music, with catalogue number SH001CD
When I first wrote about Kidda, when he played at the Juice New Music Night back in December, I wrote ” there’s going to come a day in spring when the sun’s out, the skies are blue and the world is just coming back to life when one of his tunes comes on the radio and it’ll be just perfect”. I just checked the weather forecast for this week and the sun’s out every day. And a few days ago, I got a heads up about the new Kidda single. And guess what – it’s the perfect tune for right now.
Get Close is the sound of Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx and The Avalanches having a party with Junior Senior banging on the door to get in. Remixes come from JeKO and The Sneekers, and it came out on Brighton’s own Skint Records yesterday.
Brighton Music Blog 