Brighton Music Blog End of Year Top Twenty, 5 – GAPS / In Dark, In Day EP

Posted on 20/12/2014 by brightonmusicblog

Sometimes a chance encounter can lead to magical things – Rachel from GAPS met Maya Jane Coles at a house party long before GAPS were formed or Maya had found the success she now enjoys, but that meeting long ago is what led to them collaborating on this year’s In Dark, In Day EP. Where Rachel’s warm vocals and acoustic guitar are normally paired with Ed’s electronica, things were taken to another level on the three tracks (plus one instrumental) on this collaboration with the addition of Maya Jane Cole’s deep house beats.

New Music – Random Acts of Vinyl, King Porter Stomp, GAPS

Posted on 02/12/2014 by brightonmusicblog

The flow of new music has slowed recently, as it always does this time of year. The blogs are otherwise occupied with end of year lists (ours will be coming soon), but there’s still a few bits and pieces out there to tell you about.

King Porter Stomp‘s new single Warning, which features the talents of reggae legend Prince Fatty came out last week on Feet Up records on 10″ and download. It’s backed with a Dub remix by dub producer Nick Manasseh.

Yesterday saw the release of GAPS new single She Bears a Flower. We posted up the video for the single back in October, so we won’t repeat ourselves. Instead what we have for you is the b-side We Are Here – the most ambient thing we’ve heard from the band so far:

Finally, now it’s December it was inevitable that there would be some Christmas music coming. Random Acts of Vinyl have put out a four track 10″ EP with their bands each penning an original festive tune. We’ve got the audio of Fire Eyes‘ O Falling Snow below and the EP also has contributions from Beat Hotel, The Delta Bell and Palm Springs. Details of how you can get hold of the EP will be in the next blog we put up later this evening.

New Videos – Spit Shake Sisters / Blasphemer and GAPS / She Bears a Flower

Posted on 16/10/2014 by brightonmusicblog

It’s only been less than 24 hours since our last new music post but in that time two of our favourite bands have posted up videos to their new singles.Rather than wait until next week to post them up we thought we’d share them now

Spit Shake Sisters new track Blasphemer is officially their debut single, and comes out on Dead Fun Records on 31st October. The launch party for the single is at Bleach on the same day with Strange Cages and Tombes also on the bill.

We shared the audio for the new GAPS track She Bears a Flower a week ago, but here’s the video, directed by Walt McNee. Apparently tickets have almost sold out for their upcoming debut London show, so if you’re planning on getting tickets, don’t hold back.

New Music – GAPS, Great Pagans, She Crazy, Dark Train, The Dubarrys, Heliopause, Winston & Goldstein

Posted on 09/10/2014 by brightonmusicblog

Here’s our first New Music post for October, which is already shaping up to be another great month.

It only feels like the other week that we were sitting in the sun outside Small Batch interviewing GAPS about their new EP with Maya Jane Coles, but they’re not resting on their laurels and have announced details of another new single. She Bears a Flower will be released out on Sexbeat on 1st December:

Great Pagans have previewed Tangled Up in Poetry from their upcoming album Cupid in Error which gets released on Anti Ghost Moon Ray on 20th October. The launch party for the gig takes place at the Green Door Store on 6th November with support from Japanese Sweets and Soph Nathan.

As we head to the end of October, we’re hoping we see more videos like the new one from She Crazy. Made by Novi films, the promo for Zompocalypse Now is nothing short of brilliant (the song’s not bad either)

Carrying on with the vaguely horror theme, here’s Jekyll & Hyde, the new track from Dark Train:

A couple of weeks ago we posted up the video to Lilly by The DuBarrys, taken from their self titled EP. At the time we didn’t have too much info, but this week, as the band post up the rest of the EP to soundcloud, we thought we’d share another track from the record and also the iTunes preorder link.

Here’s some new music from Heliopause. City of Glass is possibly the furthest away from folk that the band have strayed to date:

Finally, a new download from Winston & Goldstein. If you’ve ever wondered what an ambient electronica response to female celebrity phone hacking might sound like, take a listen to Celebgate:

September Top Ten

Posted on 01/10/2014 by brightonmusicblog

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.

10 Phantom Runners – On The Run

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkr8p0m8m7w

Finally, we have On The Run, the new Huey Morgan produced single from Phantom Runners, with it’s video filmed partly at Brighton Arts Club.

GAPS interview

Posted on 15/09/2014 by brightonmusicblog

Brighton Music Blog favourites GAPS have got a new four track collaborative release with multi award winning British-Japanese producer Maya Jane Coles. It’s some of the most exciting new music to come out of Brighton recently, and just the excuse we needed to catch up with the Rachel and Ed over a coffee:

GAPS

Brighton Music Blog: So, you’ve got a new release out. Is it a single or an EP?

Rachel: It’s an EP.

Ed: <Puzzled look>

BMB: You don’t seem sure about that Ed?

E & R: <laughter>

E: I was wondering myself which it was! Yeah. It’s an EP.

BMB: How did the collaboration with Maya Jane Coles happen?

R: It’s sort of a long story but basically I met her years ago in Brighton at a party at my house and she was really sweet. She said she was a DJ, and we chatted about music and then that was that. Then a few years back before we’d even formed GAPS I saw her headlining a festival – it was so nice to see that someone you met randomly has done really well – so I sent her a message on Facebook and got back in touch. When we had our first single I cockily sent it to her to see if she’d be interested in doing a remix. There’s not that many people that I thought would be good for our sound, but she was always someone I’ve always had in mind. It was a bit out of our ballpark with us being totally unknown but she was really sweet and liked what we were doing but was too busy at the time, but was keen to hear more about GAPS and was interested to see if I wanted to do some vocal stuff with her. That was last summer.

BMB: What was the process for writing? To us they sound a lot like GAPS tracks that have been produced by someone else.

R: That’s exactly what they are. I didn’t do anything different to what I do with Ed. I sat in my bedsit and wrote and recorded it and then Ed took the stems, treated them, made them sparkle, and then we sent them onto Maya. So instead of Ed going to work on the production, they went to Maya instead.

BMB: So they’re basically written by you but produced by her?

R: Well, it’s half and half, a bit like me and Ed really. I wrote the initial idea, but obviously she has written all the production and the extra lines in it that you hear. So the guitar and the vocals are me and the rest is her.

BMB: How long has the writing process been going on? I saw she posted up your track Inside Your Head on her Soundcloud six months ago. And you haven’t had anything out this year and she hasn’t had any singles out this year.

R: It’s been really natural and organic really. We decided to do an EP together around Christmastime and I wrote my parts around February / March, then she was really, really busy so from then it was down to her having the time to work on them because she’s away every weekend and she has her own remixes to do. So it got written, then she did her bit, then it’s come out almost as soon as it was finished. It’s been quite fast moving in that sense.

BMB: And it’s out on Maya’s own record label I/AM/ME where your previous releases have been on Sexbeat on 7”s.

R: Sexbeat are friends of ours and they put our singles out to allow us to get music out there and still keep a lot of control over our music, which is what we wanted to do, but the EP was always going to be with Maya and down her routes.

BMB: Have you got any live dates coming up?

R: We haven’t got any in Brighton at the moment, but we’ve got a show at Servant Jazz Quarters on Tuesday 28th October so we’re looking forward to that.

E: It’s our first London headline.

R: Well, it’s our first paid London headline, so they’re advertising it as our first headline. So this is our first opportunity for Londoners to buy tickets and see us, which is cool for us. And we’ve got someone from Brighton supporting us who we both love called Lloyd Williams, who’s a brilliant folk musician.

BMB: Which leads nicely onto our last question which we ask everyone we interview. Are there any other Brighton bands you’d recommend?

R: Lloyd Williams is amazing. You should check him out.

E: We’re quite excited about bringing out the folk influence. It’ll be quite nice to get a folk guitarist play and then have us play afterwards. I think the two will fit together quite well, even though what we do is quite electronic there’s a folk influence there.

R: The scales that he uses are similar to ours, and he loves drone, I love drone, so we’re singing from the same hymn sheet.

E: Do you know Eagles for Hands? We’re big fans and good friends with him. He’s doing very well for himself. He’s played at a couple of gigs of ours before and we’re trying to work with him in the future.

R: Another band that I’ve seen twice this week is Thieves by the code, and they sound a bit like Megadeth, but they’re amazing, really tight. Beautiful riffs. They’re just putting an album out in October. You should look out for them.

In Dark, In Day is out now via Beatport and gets a general release across other digital platforms next week.

New music – Dog in the Snow, Nick Cave, Troves, The Mojo Fins, Normanton Street, GAPS

Posted on 08/09/2014 by brightonmusicblog

Here’s this week’s new music roundup, as much of a mixed bag as ever, showing the fantastic diversity of this city.

Our first track is the new single from Dog in the Snow, which comes out on 22nd September on Tidal Wave Sounds. We posted up the live video of Africa which did the rounds at the end of last year, which was almost studio quality, but Helen Brown has gone into the studio and made it sound even better. There’s going to be a launch party for the single at the Green Door Store on 24th September, which support from Momotaro and Winston & Goldstein.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have a new single coming out on 1th November, taken from Nick Cave’s 20,000 Days on Earth film. A 10″ of Give us a Kiss is coming out on 10″, backed with a live version of Jubilee Street from last year’s Push The Sky Away album.

Afterthought is the b-side to Troves debut single Youth in Decay which we featured a few weeks ago. More details have emerged about the single – it’s coming out on 29th September as the first release in over seven years from Suede’s former label Nude Records.

We spotted a remix of The Mojo Fins‘ Longwave Reach from Bristol’s Atki2 on Soundcloud last week, which gives the track a solid house beat:

Normanton Street have got a new EP out soon, entitled “Much Respect”, which their facebook cover photo tells is us being launched with a gig at The Haunt on 31st October. A video has emerged for a track called Waiting which presume is going to be on the EP, but there’s nothing on the video or anywhere else online that we can see to confirm that just yet:

Last, and by no means least is a teaser video for a new collaboration between Brighton Music Blog favourites GAPS and Maya Jane Coles. A four track EP called In Dark, In Day has been released today and is available exclusively through Beatport.

February Top Ten

Posted on 02/03/2014 by brightonmusicblog

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.

December / January Top Ten

Posted on 02/02/2014 by brightonmusicblog

With December being a quiet month for new music and with us being a bit busy with our end of year round up, we thought it would be an idea to combine the new music we heard December and January for our Top Ten this time around.

1 Fickle Friends / Swim

In the middle of winter, Swim was exactly what we needed to hear to be reminded that it won’t always be cold and grey.

2 IYES / Crazy in Love

Beyonce released a new album, so IYES shared their cover of her most popular tune with us.

3 GAPS / I Know It’s You

GAPS second single I Know It’s You came out in early December but it’s been on heavy rotation since then round these parts, along with its B-side Inside Your Head, getting a bit more interest thanks to the fantastic Foreign Skin remix.

4 Curxes / Avant Guarded

Avant Guarded is another of December’s single releases, which came easy listening YouTube teasers, drums which could be used as sonic weaponry and a video featuring the band wearing budgerigar heads. Obviously.

5 Do You Feel What I Feel Deer / Golden Future

Do You Feel What I Feel Deer quietly split up midway through 2013, then snuck out their gorgeous album Beat Glorious Heart before Christmas when they thought people weren’t looking. By then it was too late to appear in our end of year round up, but it would have done if we’d heard it sooner. It’s difficult to pick out one track, because the whole record is lush, but we’ve put up album closer Golden Future to listen to here.

6 Ital Tek / Golden

By the time we had blogged about Ital Tek’s free Christmas giveaway Golden a few weeks ago it had already reached its download limit. Thankfully for everyone who missed it, it’s been reuploaded, so go and grab it while you can!

7 Calico / Nightowl

Calico put out their first single Night Owl right at the end of November, after we’d put together our November top ten list. We haven’t enjoyed anything this cinematic and funky since David Holmes’ soundtrack stuff.

8 Kins / Opsimplistic

We wrote about Kins single Aimless and went to the launch party at The Hope back in November last year, but what we didn’t spot at the time was that the track – and a brand new B-side Opsimplistic – had been uploaded to Soundcloud. The B-side is just as good as anything on the album and definitely deserves a bit more exposure.

9 Thomas White / Go Your Own Way

Last year Electric Soft Parade’s Thomas White covered the whole of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Alex White covered Steely Dan’s Katy Lied. They’re both very good indeed.

10 Gudjohr / I Built A Home

Some sunny guitar pop to round off our top ten, which we only got hold of last week.

New Music – Lion Bark, GAPS, Fickle Friends, Lonesome Heights, Half Hour Hotel, Cleff, Woodland Blue

Posted on 30/01/2014 by brightonmusicblog

We’ve got a bumper New Music post this week, with seven new tracks to share. First up is Lion Bark with a video for their track Longhorns, which originally appeared on Soundcloud back in November:

We mentioned Foreign Skin’s remix of the new GAPS single I Know It’s You last week, but that was just a preview (which we updated when the full remix got posted), and we like it so much that we thought we’d give it another mention:

Fickle Friends are having a launch party for their debut single Swim tonight at the Green Door Store. In advance of that they’ve posted up a remix of the track – Soundcloud describes it as the Paperwhite remix, but we’re not sure if that’s just a name that they’ve given it or whether paperwhite is an act without any presence on the internet as yet:

Lonesome Heights new single is out on 8th February. It’s nearly four minutes of fresh indie guitar pop and it’s called Come out Swinging. The band will be supporting Wave Pictures at the Green Door Store, which happens to coincide with the release date:

Half Hour Hotel have put up a new song onto Soundcloud. The anthemic indie track is called Warcry and you can grab it as a free download via the band’s facebook page. Half Hour Hotel will be supporting The Boxer Rebellion at Coalition on 4th February.

Last year we wrote about Alexandra King’s band Limbic System. She’s now got a new project called Cleff and you can see their first video Restart here:

Finally we have the video for Bodies, the new single by Woodland Blue, which you can buy on iTunes here.