Here’s this week’s new music round up. We’re kicking things off with news of the second album from the brilliant Fiction Aisle who completely unexpectedly put out a new album last week. It’s called Fuschia Days, and is available as a download or on very limited cd. There’s only two cds left – that’s how limited it is. Where The Fiction Aisle’s first album was a huge orchestral widescreen affair, the new album feels more sparse, but no less lacking in vision. A fantastic progression. Continue reading →
It’s been a while since we’ve done a New Music post, so here’s a round up of some of the things we think you should be listening to.
Two thirds of Dream Wife are from Brighton, but their third member Rakel Mjöll is from Iceland. Brighton’s been home to Icelandic musicians before – Emiliana Torrini lived here for a number of years – but she never rocked out like this. Dream Wife’s new release EP01 is out now on Cannibal Hymns, and this is the title track Hey Heartbreaker. The band play a late night set at Sticky Mike’s on 1st April at the new-ish Busy Doing Nothing night.
Here’s our first update in a little while. The usual excuses don’t apply – we were on holiday instead. Whatever the excuse though there’s still over a week’s worth of new music to catch up on.
Our first track is a new free download from Alex Banks. It’s called All Over and it features fellow Brightonians Alphabets Heaven. Here’s the video for it, you can download the track via Alex’s website.
Here’s our first new music blog post in a little bit. Thankfully things have been quite quiet in the last week or so – I guess all the bands are off at festivals rather than uploading new tunes.
Anyway, our first track is the first new proper release from Dog in the Snow since last year’s Africa single. Proxy is taken from their new EP Uncanny Valley, which comes out on Love Thy Neighbour in October, and has it’s launch party at the Hope & Ruin on 14th October:
It’s been a few weeks since we’ve done a new music roundup. There’s doesn’t seem to be quite as much music coming out as there was a couple of months back for some reason, but there’s still plenty for us to write about. We would write about the new Tigercub track Destroy, leaner and more angular than some of their melodic tracks, but we can’t share the stream. You’ll have to click here to go over to soundcloud and listen for yourself.
End of year lists are a funny old business. Should they be a measure of the success of the artists on the list you’re compiling? If that were the case then Royal Blood would be the top of any Brighton based list by the longest of margins (and they have been voted album of the year by NME readers). The alternative is that they’re based on personal preference instead, which is incredibly subjective but does give us the chance to enthuse about the things we’ve loved the most over the past twelve months. Being just a list of twenty acts is incredibly restricting too. The past couple of years we’ve put together out best of list as an Advent Calendar instead, which gave us another five acts we could include, but would have meant us getting our act together in November which was never going to happen this year. So here’s the first half of our top twenty – we’ll count down our top ten counting down as we get closer to Christmas.
20. Yumi & The Weather – All We Can EP
Technically All We Can came out in December 2013, but end of year lists had all been agreed by that point and tracks on the EP are easily as good if not better than most of the new music we’ve heard in 2014. The Vondelpark rework of the EPs title track is pure bliss.
Anushka’s Mansions, the lead single from their album Broken Circuit which came out on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings was one of our tunes of the summer.
18. Curxes – Valkyrie
To keep us interested while the Brighton / Portsmouth duo inch forward to completion of their debut long player (which has a provision title of Verxes), this year the band put out PreCurxor – a compilation of their early work – and this single, a noisy, frantic affair that’s guaranteed to wake you up.
17. Michael A Grammar – The Day I Come Alive
We fell in love with Michael A Grammar’s The Day I Came Alive on the very first listen, probably because it sounded like early Blur and reminded us of our first trips to indie discos many years ago.
16. Dog in the Snow – Factory
Dog in the Snow put out a couple of singles this year, with Factory being the more electronic of the two. The video was a fantastic match for the song, initially about mundane daily repetition before morphing into something magical.
15. The New Union – Now
The New Union continue apace with their melodic indie rock. Now was the first of their two singles of 2014, which was followed up later in the year by the equally great Believe in Nothing.
14. Winston & Goldstein – Ode to a Massive Obsession
Jacqueline Collyer used to be in Kins, but this year she went solo, ditched the guitars (mostly), and embraced electronica in all it’s forms on her album In The Eyes of the Other from ambient to dance tracks like Ode to a Massive Obsession which is our pick.
13. The Fiction Aisle – Blue
The Fiction Aisle have only played three gigs, and have only put one track on the internet so far. The man behind the band is an industry veteran though, with over ten years experience under his belt. This year, Electric Soft Parade hung up their hats (except for the odd one off), but Tom White has formed a brilliant new band, recruiting brother Alex on drums, and a cast of thousands. Well, about a dozen.
12. Blood Red Shoes – Blood Red Shoes
Blood Red Shoes eponymous fourth album was heralded from all quarters as a return to form. Their gig in April at the Concorde was the loudest thing we heard this year.
11. Adolescent – Golden Halls part II
There’s been an incredible amount of electronica produced in Brighton this year, most of it coming out through the wonderful Physics House Band affiliated KLDSCP records. Pick of the bunch for us was Adolescent’s Golden Halls EP, and it’s utterly beautiful and unhurried lead track Golden Halls Part II
In a rare return to our gig picks posts, here’s three gigs that have caught our eye:
Drill Festival is this weekend. There’s a fantastic line up featuring LOADS of Brighton bands from big names like The Wedding Present, Blood Red Shoes and British Sea Power alongside upcoming bands like Speak Galactic, Dog in the Snow and Luo. You can read the whole line up on Drill’s Facebook page, but rest assured you won’t be disappointed.
Things have been a bit quiet from Les Enfants Terribles since their regular venue The Blind Tiger closed down earlier this year. They’re back next wednesday with out of towners The Away Days heading the bill, supported by locals and Morning Smoke.
Last, but by no means least is the Bleeding Hearts Christmas party. The Bleeding Hearts Club went into hibernation after their Christmas party two years ago to focus on putting out records (by the likes of Crayola Lectern and Cuz as well as upcoming releases from Clowwns and Seadog), but they’re back for a one off event at the Rialto Theatre on Dyke Road next Monday. Expect some great festive music from some of the old familiar faces. You should also be able to pick up a copy the Random Acts of Vinyl Christmas 10″ mentioned in our last blog post too.
We probably posted more new music in October than we had in any month in the three years we’ve been writing (we turned three on Friday!). Here’s our top picks from what we’ve heard:
When we’re not listening to bands from Brighton, there’s a good chance that New Order ends up on the stereo, so when we read last week that one of our favourite Brighton bands had been remixed by a member of New Order it was almost inevitable that we’d love it.
2. Native Roses – Shadows (Ambassadeurs remix)
More Ambassadeurs than Native Roses, this remix of lush textured electronica didn’t bear a great resemblance to the original, but it’s beauty won us over.
3. Great Pagans – Tangled up in Chemistry
Great Pagans album Cupid in Error was one of the highlights of the month. We could have picked any of the tracks – it’s all good – be we chose Tangled Up in Chemistry
4. Normanton Street – This Wolf
We gave Normanton Street’s Much Respect EP a post of it’s own a day before it’s release last week, and deservedly so. The track we’ve chosen for our top ten is the beautiful stripped down This Wolf.
5. Heliopause – City of Glass
Heliopause have popped up quite frequently on the blog over the years, as folk, then nudging post rock, and most recently as more straightforward indie. It suits them.
6. The DuBarrys – Undress Your Soul
The DuBarrys had a self titled EP out this month, and lead track Undress Your Soul is a beautiful folk-pop classic in the making.
7. Fire Eyes – Hide Out
Random Acts of Vinyl’s latest 7″ release by Fire Eyes is a great track on it’s own, but it confirmed it’s place in our top ten with remixes by the Bad Seeds’ Barry Adamson and AK/DK.
8. Eva Bowan – Lacerta XI
Eva Bowan’s latest EP Hyperspectacle has been released by local label KLDCP and is possibly her most accessible, most cohesive work yet. We loved EP opener Lacerta XI.
9. Dog in the Snow – Concrete Wall
Technically, Concrete Wall came out last month, being released as the B-side to Dog in the Snow’s Africa single, but it only got posted up to Soundcloud this month, and it’s still getting a lot of plays around these parts.
10. Nightkites – Drones
We got the heads up about Nightkites’ future garage from GAPS who posted up a link to the music on their facebook page. The EP is named after the paranoid yet slightly hopeful standout track Drones.
Here’s this week’s dose of new music, starting off with a couple of releases which are out today.
Great Pagans new album Cupid In Error is released on Anti Ghost Moon Ray today. You can hear the whole lot over on their soundcloud, but as a taster, here’s album opener December:
Eva Bowan‘s new EP is also out today. The EP is entitled Hyperspectacle EP and it’s been released on KLDSCP records. Here’s lead track Lacerta XI.
On a vaguely KLDSCP related theme, here’s 316 by Mount Bank, a new electronic project featuring Physics House Band’s Sam Organ as one of their number, and Luo (some of who’s previous releases came out on KLDSCP) with Parallelogram.
Dog in the Snow‘s new single Africa came out earlier this month, and the band have just put the b-side up on Soundcloud. We reckon Concrete Walls is just as good as it’s flip, but we’ll let you judge for yourself:
Feel It is the new track from High Tyde. You can catch the band supporting Little Comets at The Concorde 2 on 31st October.
Finally we have another remix of Play by Fickle Friends, following on from last week’s remix by Foreign Skin. Brazil’s Cesare injects the track with a bit of South American sunshine and turns it into a summery house tune:
September was yet another great month for Brighton Music. We’ve barely kept up with posting the new music that we’ve heard throughout the month, but these have been our favourites:
1 GAPS & Maya Jane Coles – In Dark In Day
GAPS collaboration EP with Maya Jane Coles was an easy choice for our number one spot this month. We were fans of GAPS before this release, and In Dark In Day made us love them even more.
2 Gazelle Twin – Belly of the Beast
Live show of the month had to be Gazelle Twin’s headline post at last week’s Spectrum night at the Dome Studio Theatre. The tracksuit and obscured face was the perfect visual representation of her leftfield claustrophobic electronica. We could have chosen any track from her new album Unflesh, but we’ve gone for Belly of the Beast.
3 Cate Ferris – Giants
Giants has been a staple of Cate’s live sets for quite a while, so we were pleased to hear it get released on her new EP Disappear. It’s even better live – if you’re about this weekend get down to the Level where Cate is headlining the Lantern Fayre around 8-8.30ish on saturday night.
4 Dog in the Snow – Africa
Helen Ganya Brown’s latest single is another great slice of art pop which, too, has been a staple of her live sets over the last year.
5 Momotaro – Kite
If we could have, we’d have put the Deep Blast & Ricco Remix of Kite into our top ten tunes for you to listen to this month, but since it’s not streaming anywhere online, here’s the standard single version
6 Fear of Men – Tephra
2014 has been a good year for Fear of Men – support slots with Pains of Being Pure at Heart across the US and Europe, an album with great reviews across the board, a headline UK tour of their own, and to top it all their latest video premiered on the NME website.
7 Oslo Parks – Twin
As debut singles go, you couldn’t ask for better than Twin. We’re looking forward to heading down to the Green Door Store for the launch tomorrow night (Thursday 2nd October).
8 Heliopause – I seem too cold (Faulty Remix)
Heliopause’s latest offering is a beautiful, blissed out, exotic rework of an older track, put out to celebrate Brighton Digital Festival.
9 Troves – Afterthought
Afterthought is another debut single from another new Brighton band, and coincidentally, Troves are the support to Oslo Park’s gig on thursday.
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