Tag Archives: Iyes

June Top Ten

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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:

May Top Ten

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Welcome to our second monthly Top Ten feature. It’s officially regular, now that we’ve made it two months in a row! As with last month, it’s loosely based on what Last.fm has told me I’ve listened to, although this month it seemed to bear no relation to what iTunes was recording for the play counts. Also one of the tracks is just a YouTube video, so that didn’t appear on iTunes or Last.fm. So without further ado, here’s what we’ve been loving this month:

1) Watching Her Dance / DA-10

Watching Her Dance appeared on our radar roughly at the same time as we heard about DA-10’s The Shape of Space EP, but it was the EP which was getting the attention and the PR push. Several weeks later it’s this mode dancefloor friendly free download which is still on heavy rotation.

2) Battersea / AK/DK

Battersea is the lead track from AK/DK’s new cassette only release Dispatch #3, and we love it’s crazy squelchiness

3) Rio / Cave Painting

The video for Rio surfaced online a few months ago, but the EP finally hit the shops on 29th April. The packaging is every bit as gorgeous as you’d expect from Cave Painting, as is the quality of the music. There’s only a hundred of these out there, so good luck hunting one out

4) Daddy / IYES

This track was a bit of a surprise after the vocal pop of Lighthouse and Glow, but Daddy showed that IYES are just as assured at Balearic house

5) Goddess of War / Phantom Runners

Phantom Runners were one of our discoveries in the run up to the Great Escape. We didn’t manage to catch their set (although hopefully we’ll be there when they play at the Blind Tiger at the next Les Enfants Terribles night on 28th June), but we think their debut single as a great slice of indie pop

6) Anneka / Deliver

Not a single, or even a physical or digital release, but just a Youtube video, Deliver was still one of the best tracks out of Brighton we heard this month

7) Abraxical Solapse / Physics House Band

The Physics House Band’s Horizons / Rapture mini LP came out in April, and while it’s not as accessible as some of the poppier acts on the list, it’s certainly just as rewarding. You probably won’t be whistling any of the songs in the shower, but you will keep going back to them over and over

8) Hold On / Luo

Luo seem to be growing more and more with every new track we hear from them, and Hold on is no exception. In a few releases they’ve expanded their range from glitchy chill out and currently sound like a more electronic Physics House Band. Give them a few months and the sky’s the limit

9) Fallback / Catherine Ireton

A little while back, our friends over at the Some Of It Is True blog started up a record label called Hidden Trail. We got a bit distracted and haven’t got around to writing about the label’s first release yet – a compilation of some of their favourite tracks they’ve come across – but our favourite track from what we’ve listened to so far is Catherine Ireton’s Fallback

10) Goldfish Song / Crayola Lectern

We’re still listening to The Fall and Rise of Crayola Lectern at Brighton Music Blog HQ, and have grown rather fond of The Goldfish Song, a tune about suicidal pets sounding not a million miles away from The Beatle’s Day In The Life

Great Escape Gallery

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What a weekend – I saw over thirty bands over the weekend, many of which were local. Here’s a gallery of them all. We’ve got: Jennifer Left, Justin Saltmeris, Curxes, Kinnie The Explorer, Us Baby Bear Bones, Anushka, Fear of Men, Martin Rossiter, The Bobby McGees, IYES, Jacko Hooper, Kins and The Beautiful Word. As usual, click on the image to view large:

 

 

IYES – Daddy

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Brighton Music Blog favourites IYES have posted a new track online, which shows a new side to the band. Daddy is a seven minute long house number, which is a little bit baggy and a little bit balearic. It’s stripped of the vocals which characterised Lighthouse and Glow, but the one thing it has in common with the previous two tracks, one of the things that strikes you is how good it sounds. There’s something really clever going on with reverb and stereo, but don’t go overthinking about it, just enjoy it. You can hear it online by watching the youtube video above, or you can get a free download to listen whenever you like by signing up to their mailing list.

 

April Top Ten

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Here’s a new regular feature that I’ve decided to start on the blog. We write a lot of posts about a lot of bands, and quite often a blog post about something we absolutely love can easily drop out of view. On top of that, some things we write about are slow burners, and while we’ll write things up as soon as we hear about them, some tracks can creep into your consciousness weeks later. So here’s my top ten for April, based on my plays according to last.fm (although it seems to miss half my plays, so I reserve the right to use a bit of licence sometimes).

10. Interlocutor – Saturday (demo)

Alex White of Electric Soft Parade and Brakes has played a couple of gigs with his new solo project Interlocutor, despite the new ESP album due any minute now. He’s also quietly put up a couple of demos onto Bandcamp which we rather like.

9. Bat For Lashes – Laura (Vogue session)

A couple of months ago Natasha Khan did an exclusive session for Vogue.com. Two of the tracks from this session were released on 7″ for Record Store Day which was a nice reminder of what a brilliant track Laura is.

8. Pete Fij & Terry Bickers / I don’t give a shit about you

This track originally came out back in October last year so isn’t Pete and Terry’s new single. This track has crept into our top ten after being put up on Soundcloud as a free download.

7. Shrag / Sleeprunning

Officially the last track to be released by Shrag now that they’ve split. Sleeprunning is the b-side to On The Spines of Old Cathedrals, their final single to be taken from Canines.

6. Curxes / Further Still

Curxes put out their fantastic new release Further Still at the end of March as a free download, and then put up the video a few weeks later. We can’t wait to see them playing the Alternative Escape in a few weeks time (Thursday 16th May – Les Enfants Terrible stage / The Mesmerist at 18:55 or Southsea fest stage / The Black Dove at 20:50).

5. IYES / Lighthouse (Capsun remix)

We absolutely adore Lighthouse. It was one of those tracks that appeared from nowhere that was some brilliant and so unexpected. It’s spawned dozens of fawning blog posts saying how great it is but the problem was the only way to listen to it was on Soundcloud. Earlier this month though the track was remixed Capsun, which beefed up the beats and the bass and put up on Soundcloud which meant you could listen wherever you happened to be. IYES play the Alternative Escape on Saturday at the Mesmerist at 15:20

4. Black Black Hills / Red Cabin

Red Cabin, with it’s retro reverb drenched rock and roll and backwards video, was an immediate hit when we heard it a couple of weeks ago. Go download it now! Black Black Hills play Brighton Noise’s stage at the Alternative Escape on Saturday at 15:50.

3. Us Baby Bear Bones / You

You is another track which had been floating around for a while but got put up as a free download this month. You is going to be on UBBB’s debut EP due for release in July

 

2. Crayola Lectern / Slow Down

Slow Down is one of my favourite tracks from the new Crayola Lectern album The Fall and Rise of… The whole album is fantastic, but this is the track that we’ve played the most.

1. Electric Soft Parade / Brother You Must Walk Alone

From the moment we heard the new Electric Soft Parade single at the end of last month, it was inevitable that it was going to end up as this months most listened to track. Breezy guitar pop at it’s finest, that sounds even better now that the sun’s out.

 

Weekend Gig Picks

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Normally our weekly post about which gigs we think you should go to to see some of our favourite local acts starts on a Thursday. Thursday has long replaced Friday as the start of the weekend in the Brighton Music Blog calendar. This week though, we’re starting things even earlier on Wednesday, because there’s two cracking gigs on tonight which we feel deserve a bit of a mention.

Milk-and-BiscuitsTonight Milk & Biscuits play at the Blind Tiger. We loved last year’s epic White Noise single, and this is a great chance to see them playing their new material for their follow up to 2011’s Balcony Time’s mini-LP. Over at the Green Door Store, Danger De Mort are holding their third event. Their first night had Nordic Giants headlining, and we were gutted to miss last month’s event which had IYES and Us Baby Bear Bones supporting. This month’s local support are Curxes, who have promised to play the new tracks they they’ll be releasing later this year. I don’t know a great deal about the rest of the bill, headlined by a band called Cymbals, but we reckon it’ll be great just on the strength of their previous line ups.

Onto Thursday night, where we normally kick off our weekend. One Inch Badge are putting Doldrums at the Prince Albert. Doldrums are from Toronto, but the supports – Us Baby Bear Bones and Luo are two of our favourite local bands.

Written-In-WatersOn Friday night we’ve spotted four gigs we like the look of. Written in Waters, IYES and Calico are playing at Brighton Electric, Speak Galactic and Cloud are supporting Antibang at the Prince Albert, Catherine Ireton is supporting Stu Larsen at Sticky Mike’s and Anneka is playing at live set at the Traumfrau night at the Haunt. We’re spoiled for choice!

Then on Saturday Professor Elemental is launching his new single at the Marlborough. The single’s called This is My Horse (Show Me Yours), and we’ll be writing a separate post about it sometime next week.

IYES – Glow

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When we first wrote about IYES back in January, we tucked their track Lighthouse in amongst a whole bunch of other tunes by local bands that we wanted to share with you all. After we posted it, we couldn’t stop listening to it – it was that good. And then we went to go and see them live, and that was great too.

Fast forward to this weekend, and a brand new track has appeared on their soundcloud, and this time we’re going to give it the fanfare that it deserves. Glow starts off simply with an arpeggiated rhythm and Melis’ vocal, and then around thirty seconds in it explodes into technicolour with effervescent synths and the strength of Josh’s voice. Glow is a bit more uptempo than Lighthouse, but doesn’t lose anything for it. I always have a little bit of fear when I hear one track by a new band that the rest of their material won’t match it, but IYES have proved that this doesn’t have to be the case.

IYES

Luo and IYES at the Prince Albert 30/1/13

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We haven’t even reached the end of January yet, but 2013 is already looking like a great year for new musical discoveries from Brighton. There’s two bands who I hadn’t heard before this year who are already shaping up to be firm favourites – to find two bands in what’s normally quite a fallow month is good, but to find them both on the same bill at a gig was irresistible.

Luo

Luo

One of the great things about Sea Monsters was that you got to see so many bands in such a short space of time. This meant reduced turnaround times between them, and shared setups, which meant an element of compromise with the sound. That’s not to say that the sound was bad, more that it could probably have been improved if each band had the time and opportunity to set things up exactly as they’d want. Luo impressed us when they opened at last Saturday’s One Inch Badge vs One Inch Badge – they obviously impressed OIB too, who’ve put them on again so soon after the festival. The sound last night seemed bigger and more brutal – the soporific melodic washes of guitars were still there but caught you unawares by growing like post-rock monsters. Some later songs toyed with time signatures reminiscent of Physic House Band’s modern take on jazz. The beats, which kick off once you’re lulled into a false sense of security, seemed more brutal. In short, Luo confirmed the conclusion we came to at Sea Monsters that they were definitely a band to keep an eye on this year.

IYES

IYES

Anyone who’s anyone is talking about IYES and Lighthouse – their demo which has appeared online to huge acclaim. Give it a quick Google and you’ll see over 11,000 results. Most of those pages don’t give you much more than a link to Soundcloud though, and some gushing words about how Lighthouse reminds the writer about the XX but better. Some of them mention that the band are from Brighton, and some mention the IYES are a two piece, made up of Czech singer Melis Soyaslanova and singer and multi-instrumentalist Josh Christopher. Onstage last night they were joined by an additional guitarist to help create their shimmering widescreen pop vision, leaving the duo to focus on the song side of their tracks. Despite their Facebook page only being created in February of last year, IYES look and sound like a fully fledged band. Behind his laptop and with a guitar strapped to him, Josh looks like a re-boot of an eighties pop star, somewhere between one of the Goss brothers from Bros and Chris Lowe from Pet Shop Boys. Melis took the simpler option of a leather jacket over a dress but still looked every bit the pop star. Already the band have plenty of material for a solid half hour set, drawn from the spectrum that ranges from alternative ethereal alt-pop to chart friendly synth pop which if things continue on their current trajectory will have IYES uniting the underground and mainstream before the year’s up. Melis’ vocals complemented the sound perfectly, carrying the melody or dropping to barely a whisper. The big surprise was the power, strength and control of Josh’s voice which only came out at some of the more epic moments. It was good to see it used subtly at the right times. There were a few gremlins at the beginning of the set which led to a false start, but nothing unforgivable and they soon got going again. The gremlins came back just before the final track leaving the laptop silent, so for a finale we were treated to an acoustic version of Lighthouse which sounded just as strong as the original – a testament to the band’s fine songwriting talent.

New music

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I was thinking that January might be a bit of a quiet month for the blog, but I’ve found myself inundated with new music to share. In this post we’ve got stuff from new bands including Iyes, who have yet to release anything but are causing a bit of a storm with the first demo that they’ve put out there, to bands who’ve been around for a bit longer, like The Go! Team:

Iyes managed to get a mention on The Line of Best Fit on the strength of Lighthouse. A fantastic start which will hopefully translate into bigger things. Here’s the track in question along with a few remixes of it which are doing the rounds. We like this A LOT.

Next up is a new track from Verity Susman, formerly of krautrockers Electrelane, still sticking with the lock grooves, but more synth based and aimed at the dancefloor. It doesn’t sound a million miles away from Ladytron to our ears, and that’s no bad thing at all. There’s no info on a release date for this, but we’ll definitely be keeping you updated.

Then we have Gazelle Twin, covering The Wire’s Heartbeat. It’s a haunting dark ethereal track and it will appear on Gazelle Twin’s new Mammal EP, which is due to hit the shops on 28th January alongside a whole bunch of remixes.

The Go! Team have remixed Justin Velor’s track Galliano Rocks. No embedded Soundcloud available for this unfortunately, but you can give it a listen if you click here. It’s got a great classic Go! Team sound – relentless energy, lo fi guitars and bundles of joy.

Tyrannosaurus Dead are previewing Sadie, from their forthcoming 6 track “Pure // Apart” EP, coming out on Odd Box Records later this year. Keep your eyes on the blog tomorrow night for some more Tyrannosaurus Dead related news.

Finally, here’s Nick Williams with his new EP Anniversaries. If you like the sound of this, his band are headlining the Prince Albert next saturday (19th January)