Today Blood Red Shoes release their fourth album Blood Red Shoes on Jazz Life records. Recorded in Berlin by the band themselves without outside help from producers or any other musicians, and the sound they create is incredible for just two people. Deliberately moving back to a rougher sound after the more produced In Time To Voices, Blood Red Shoes is an album that revels in the unadulterated joy of rock. You can stream the album over on the band’s website, where you can also read details of their mammoth upcoming tour. The hometown date is at the Concorde 2 on 25th April.
February might be the shortest month, but there was no shortage of good music. Here’s our pick of the crop from the last month:
1 – Momotaro / Warm Step
We could have put any track from Momotaro’s Second Side album at number one this month. It’s barely left the stereo since we first heard it
2 – GAPS / I Know It’s You (Foreign Skin remix)
The original version of I Know It’s You made an appearance in our January top ten, but right at the end of the month, Foreign Skin’s remix was post up, which made the track even more lush.
3 – Blood Red Shoes / An Animal
The brand new Blood Red Shoes album is out tomorrow, but if you pre-ordered it you got an early download of An Animal, which is also the single coming out on 7″ alongside the album. If you want a physical copy and tomorrow’s too long to wait I did spot that they already had it on the racks at Resident yesterday.
4 – Yumi & The Weather / Love
Yumi & The Weather gave us their Love as a Valentine’s present. We didn’t get around to posting about it (but we did retweet their link) and since then the link has gone. If you managed to grab the track – all jittery rhythms and slick vocals – then you’ll know why we’re such a fan of this.
UPDATE : Yumi & The Weather have just posted that the track is available as part of a Camels & Lions compilation which you can download for free here.
5 – Electric Soft Parade / One of Those Days
One Of Those Days was one of our favourite tracks on Idiots when it came out last year, so we’re pleased that they’ve put the track out as a single, and that we’ve got an excuse to post it up here
6 – The Wytches / Gravedweller
It’s been a great month for Brighton’s finest psychedelic rock’n’rollers. Not only have they signed to the mighty Heavenly Records, putting them on a roster alongside Toy and Charlie Boyer and the Voyeurs, but they also released their first single with the label, available on their current tour, or as a free download.
7 – Physics House Band / Titan (Ital Tek remix)
This month also saw Physics House Band put out an album of remixes of last month’s Horizons / Rapture Ep. Our pick is Ital Tek’s remix of Titan, which wrestles the original into something altogether more dancefloor friendly.
8 – Fujiya & Miyagi / Tetrahydrofolic Acid
Tetrahydrofolic Acid is the first new track released by the band since 2011’s Ventriloquizzing, and shows them heading in a much more electronic direction. To these ears it sounds like To Rococo Rot on a night out with Underworld.
9 – Milk & Biscuits / Hairstyles
Yes, we wrote about Hairstyles before, but that was when it was released as an mp3 download, and this month it’s the lead track on the first cassette released by newly founded Lick Music, who wanted a distraction from making frozen yoghurt.
10 – Michael A Grammar / The Day I Come Alive
It feels like ages since we first wrote about Michael A Grammar’s Random Vision EP, but it finally came out this month. Lead track The Day I Come Alive sounds like dreamy early period Blur.
We might be approaching Christmas, but the new music keeps on coming, with five new tracks to share this week.
First up is Curxes with their new single Avant-Guarded. They hinted at the track with a series of videos on Youtube that we blogged about a couple of weeks ago. Avant-Guarded is another fantastic electro-pop assualt from the band and is out now to buy on Bandcamp.
On the first day of Christmas, Blood Red Shoes gave to us… The Perfect Mess. The band posted up QR codes in 10 cities across the world and said that they’d release the song once they were all found, which they were within 24 hours.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have recorded a new version of Higgs Boson Blues from this year’s Push The Sky Away. The new version is an epic, clocking in at more than nine minutes:
Normanton Street launch their Phoebe Freya EP on Friday Night at the Green Door Store. They’ve posted up one of the tracks – Juicy – as a taster on Soundcloud.
Finally Omnivert have got in touch to tell us about their new track which features Helen Ganya Brown, better known on the blog as Dog in the Snow. Chichijima is available as a name your prices download on Bandcamp.
We’ve come across a bumper treasure trove of videos from Brighton Bands over the past few days. Maybe everyone was saving them for the new year, maybe it’s just coincidence that they’ve all turned up at the same time. No matter – here they all are:
We wrote about loads of bands earlier this month in an arbitrary personal take on the year, but there’s been lots going on that we couldn’t include for one reason or the other. There were lots of bands who were just bubbling under, we didn’t write about any bands who were from Brighton – obviously – and we kept the list just to bands and didn’t mention venues or events or stuff like that.
We tried to have a bit of balance across our advent calendar, making sure we had big and small bands, so it was always going to be the case that there was going to be some we couldn’t fit in. As well as The Maccabees and Bat for Lashes hitting hard for Brighton, Blood Red Shoes and Orbital were troubling the charts. While we’re talking about big acts, Fatboy Slim‘s most recent Big Beach Boutique was a success not on the beach but at the Amex, where they apparently ran out of beer on the first night. On the subject of local bands in sports venues, hundreds of people braved the rain in July when Rizzle Kicks accompanied the entrance of the Olympic Torch to Hove Cricket Groung Saint Etienne were further down our longlist than the album “Words and Music by Saint Etienne” and their gig at the Concorde warranted, but with only Pete Wiggs living in Brighton, we had to prioritise bands with more local members.
Other bands with albums out in 2012 who we just couldn’t fit in were Tall Ships, Cave Painting, Ital Tek (referred to by one of my mates as possibly his album of the year), Sparrow and Negative Pegasus. When Todd Jordan isn’t being part of Negative Pegasus, he’s also one third of promoters One Inch Badge, who brought us the fantastic Sea Monsters festival at the Prince Albert as well as dozens of other great gigs, and is one of the people responsible for Bizarro World, a monthly covers gig which is so much better than it sounds on paper.
There’s a few bands who’ve caught our eye that we’re expecting big things from in 2013. Crayola Lectern‘s album is recorded and due to arrive in Spring sometime on Bleeding Hearts Recordings. We saw Dead Cars live a few weeks ago and really really liked what they were doing, but it was too late to squeeze them into our list. But if we were to be pushed to name one act whose year it could be then we’d have to say Anneka. We’ve only seen her live once so far (supporting Com Truise at The Haunt), but there was something about what she was doing that sounded so fully formed, that she’s bound to be huge.
Outside of Brighton, here’s our top ten albums and top five tracks of the year:
1. Melody’s Echo Chamber / Melody’s Echo Chamber
2. Beth Orton / Sugaring Season
3. Laetitia Sadier / Silencio
4. Toy / Toy
5. Raveonettes / Observator
6. Clock Opera / Ways to Forget
7. Best Coast / The Only Place
8. Black Reindeer / Real Life is Overrated
9. Scuba / Personality
10. Cornshed Sisters / Tell Tales
1. Mmoths / Heart
2. Blur / Under The Westway
3. Saint Etienne / Tonight
4. Minotaur Shock / Janet
5. Lee Hazlewood / Souls Island
Two Brighton acts’ forthcoming album streams have popped up on the web this week. The new Blood Red Shoes album In Time To Voices is available to stream at NME.com, and the new Grinderman remix album is available on the Guardian website. Take a listen to them here:
Today Blood Red Shoes release their fourth album Blood Red Shoes on Jazz Life records. Recorded in Berlin by the band themselves without outside help from producers or any other musicians, and the sound they create is incredible for just two people. Deliberately moving back to a rougher sound after the more produced In Time To Voices, Blood Red Shoes is an album that revels in the unadulterated joy of rock. You can stream the album over on the band’s website, where you can also read details of their mammoth upcoming tour. The hometown date is at the Concorde 2 on 25th April.
Brighton Music Blog 