New Music Round Up

Posted on 15/05/2013 by brightonmusicblog

The Great Escape is almost upon us – great news for seeing bands, not such great news in terms of having time to write about them. So, very quickly it all kicks off, here’s the things on our list which if why don’t write about now, we’ll never get around to.

Cave Painting have a new EP out called Rio, which is packaged just as beautifully as their album was last year. You can buy it for a fiver from Resident or from the Cave Painting website. Here’s the video for the lead track:

Phantom Runners debut single Goddess of War recalls the best of early 90s guitar indie pop. There’s a hint of Stone Roses in the drums, and the guitars sound like The Railway Children or some other Factory band from that era. We hit download before we’d even listened the whole way through:

Next is the video for Battersea, the lead track from AK/DK‘s new single we wrote about recently:

The new Transformer single is out on 31st May, sees them dropping the vowels for three and a half minutes of electro pop:

Luo‘s new single Dissolver is available to download on Soundcloud. We’ve been big fans of his glitchy laid back jazzy electronica since we first saw him at Sea Monsters, and this track is another fine string to his bow:

AK/DK aren’t the only local analogue synth dance band with new material out. DA-10 also have a new EP called The Shape of Space. Redshift is ravey, Respirator is instrumental hip hop with huge bass (and is still available for download over at XLR8R), Anaphase is retro sounding space-rock, I Have to Survive is broken beat house number and closer Out Of Reach Of Earth brings together a lot of the sounds from each of the preceding tracks. There’s a sampler up on soundcloud, which you can hear here:

The new Call Me Jolene EP, May, is a real change of pace and mood to something far more personal and reflective. It was out on the first of may, and sounds a bit like this:

Finally we have Alice Amelia‘s new single Passion. What starts off sounding like a piano ballad transforms into some slick r’n’b. There’s a free download on the soundcloud link below:

Sam Physics / KLDSCP[001]

Posted on 12/03/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Not content with being a third of one of Brighton’s best and busiest upcoming bands, Samuel Organ of Physics House Band is a man of many talents. The band also put on a monthly night called Kaleidescope at Sticky Mike’s which always features some of Brighton’s best electronica, and now Sam has started a record label – kldscp – whose first release is a seven track compilation of lovely, local downtempo beats:

kldscp[001] opens with Aadvarks which recently appeared on Luo’s lush Antidote EP. Next is a Written in Waters remix, completely transformed from the band’s more familiar sound. There’s also a Physics House Band demo on there, and a Samuel Organ solo track. There’s choral ambience from Coral ŸS and effervescent electronica Caveman Genius. The highlight for us is the track by Foreign Skin – a slice of gorgeous balearic chill out.

The full tracklist is:

Luo – Aardvarks
Written In Waters – The Fall (AZEDIA Remix)
The Physics House Band – The Underlying Fluctuation (Teratology Demo)
Foreign Skin – Hoi Sum
Coral ŸS – Lumi
Caveman Genius – Bone Machines
Samuel Organ – Tisno

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 07/03/2013 by brightonmusicblog

It’s a bumper weekend for gigs as ever in Brighton with loads of local talent getting out there and playing live.

Late night on Thursday is the third Night Sweats even – a gig where the doors don’t open until 9pm and the headliner isn’t onstage until after midnight. It’s on at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, and Royal Blood headline supported by Broker, She Crazy, Eager Teeth and Light Parade.

Friday Night is the Tiny Dragons single launch at Latest Music Bar that we mentioned in a post earlier this week. There’s also a Brighton Rocks night being held at Sticky Mike’s headlined by Jipsy Magic, and we’ve also spotted that Luo are going to be supporting Easter Island Head at The Hope.

On Saturday, we’ve got a rare afternoon gig to plug. The Blind Tiger has an afternoon of music featuring A-M-I, Southpaw, The Cotard Delusion, Grasshopper and Crisis Warning. If you’re after something to do in the evening you could do a lot worse than head down to the Physics House Band’s free monthly club night Kaleidoscope at at Sticky Mike’s, where Caveman Genius are playing live.

Sunday is all about the local support slots – Jennifer Left is supporting Polly and the Billets Doux at the Hope, meanwhile Calico and Dog in the Snow will be supporting the Hidden Orchestra at the Blind Tiger.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 20/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

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.

Tonight 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.

On 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.

New Music

Posted on 06/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve had a roundup of the new music that’s dropped into our inbox, so time for an update.

First up is Impellers main man Ed Meme, who’s roped in the vocal talents of Myles Sanko for his first solo slab of 7″ vinyl on a track called Oh Yes I Will, which is coming out on classic funk label Breakin’ Bread on 25th February.

We’ve already mentioned Luo today, in our Weekend Gig Picks. His new EP Antidote is available as a free download, and is three tracks of lovely, jazzy, glitchy, electronica. And it’s free.

The last track of the Luo EP features the vocal talents of Jacko Hooper but In Angers couldn’t be more different from Luo. This is haunting sparse folk:

Raven also have the lyrics to their tune popping up in the video for Sounds Like Home, which puts a spin on rock by adding occasional glitchy 8-bit electronica, which gets reflected in the video:

Because of the snow the other week we missed Tiger Cub at Sea Monsters, so we’re happy to give their new single Little Rope a mention:

Gudjohr picked a funny time of year to put out an EP with an opening track entitled Summertime. Don’t be put off though, because Memories of Once Known is five tracks of lovely gentle lilting folk, which is available for free over at bandcamp.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 06/02/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Another weekend, another blog post flagging up our pick of the Brighton Bands playing live this weekend.

Our call for Thursday night is the launch of the Self Help Group‘s debut album Not Waving But Drowning. The gig at the Albert has been sold out for a little while, so well done if you’ve got a ticket. Tomorrow night is also the next Spirit of Gravity night at the Green Door Store, headlined by Sarah Angliss (who’s also a member of SpaceDog). There’s talk of robots, and that’s enough for us.

On Friday night Nick Cave is allowing an audience into his last rehearsal before he goes on tour. Resident Records, The Quietus and a few other places held competitions to win tickets. We were unlucky so we don’t even know where it is but it’s definitely the hot ticket of the night. We’re hoping to see The New Union at the Green Door Store, who are supporting the 1975 – that’s another sold out gig though, sorry!

Saturday night we recommend that you pay a visit to the Physics House Band’s regular night Kaleidoscope at Sticky Mike’s. Physics House Band aren’t performing – they are playing next weekend though, at the next Source New Music Night – but Sam is DJing and live music comes from Luo, who we like so much we’ve seen them twice this year.

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

Posted on 31/01/2013 by brightonmusicblog

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

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

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.

Sea Monsters Day Six – One Inch Badge vs One Inch Badge

Posted on 27/01/2013 by brightonmusicblog

Saturday night was One Inch Badge’s own choice of local bands. There was one change from the original line up – unfortunately Soccer 96 couldn’t make it, but we’ll get to that later. Queues were building up before the doors even opened – After a Source cover and loads of storming shows, The Physics House Band are one of Brighton’s hottest tickets at the moment.

Luo

Luo were the first band to play. They mixed glitchy electronica with lush guitars – think Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross remixed by Plaid. It wasn’t all instrumental though – they were joined onstage for a track by Jacko Hooper, who played earlier this week. It was all really lovely stuff, who I’d love to find out more about, but search engines are no help whatsoever (“Did you mean ‘Lou’?” – No Google, if I’d meant Lou, I would have typed Lou).

Squadron Leaders

Next up were The Squadron Leaders, a surf rock three piece. I had a glance at their set list before they started, and wondered how they were going to play fifteen or twenty songs when most other bands were only playing five or six in their allocated sets. The answer was that they sped through their short songs, barely stopping for breath. The crowd loved it, but it was a little dispiriting to hear references to the Pulp Fiction soundtrack – there’s a whole genre out there beyond Dick Dale.

Ed Prosek

The extra act on the bill following Soccer 96’s cancellation was Ed Prosek, who acknowledged that an acoustic folk act didn’t quite sit with the rest of the bands on the line up. Ed’s Californian optimism meant that he was undeterred though, and the crowd soon warmed to him and his band made up of cello, double bass and mandolin. The highlight of their set was a cover of Paul Simon’s Homeward Bound, currently featuring on a cheese advert. Obviously.

Phoria

Phoria were on the bill at October’s Source New Music night last year, but I was a bit distracted and didn’t really pay enough attention. What I missed was ambitious, intelligent songs, aiming for somewhere between Coldplay and Radiohead. Epic stuff.

Physics House Band

The stars of last night’s show were The Physics House Band though. On paper they could sound difficult – non-standard time signatures, jazz, prog… In reality, they’re a fantastic prospect. Each individual player is a virtuoso, but they aren’t just tremendous musicians individually – together you won’t find a tighter set of musicians. But it’s not all just about the musicianship, their live show is also one of the most energetic in town. Being an amazing band is about being different, and being better, and Physics House Band have that in spades.