Memorials | Brighton Music Blog

It’s that time again where we give a shout out to the bands we’ve loved over the last year. As always it’s worth flagging that it’s a subjective thing, and also that huge swathes of music passes me by – which is to get my apology in early for anything and everything that isn’t in here. The local music scene feels like it’s in rude health at the moment, despite being knocked sideways a bit over lockdown and social media becoming less and less effective. But anyway, onto the music…

Firstly a shoutout to what I like to think of as the Old Guard. Fatboy Slim DJed at the Prince Albert when it felt like it was under threat from a planning application. The Go! Team proved they’re as sharp as ever with their album Get Up Sequences Part two, Electric Soft Parade surprised everyone with their release of Avenue Dot which nobody was expecting (and Thomas White also played his first solo gig in ten years), and Steve Mason dropped his fifth solo album Brothers & Sisters (which he showcased with a gig in Worthing last week).

There’s also a number of acts who have been in the music industry for a while but are releasing under new names. Electralane’s Verity Susman has teamed up with Wire’s Matthew Simms to form Memorials, whose double album Music for Film showed their skills to be far more expansive than either of their other bands work. It’s still not too late to catch them live this year – they’ll be playing at Lewes Con Club this coming Sunday. Penelope Trappes and Agnes Haus are/were members of on-hiatus The Golden Filter, now also putting out releases (Heavenly Spheres and Sequel respectively) the show a dimension that goes well beyond what they initially became known for. Penelope Trappes’ Heavenly Spheres was released on Nite Hives, her new experimental cassette based label run by and for women and gender nonconforming artists, who have just announced their second release. Both Penelope Trappes and Agnes Haus are on the bill for A Séance for the Solstice at the Rosehill on 22nd December, being put on by Dem Papademetrie and Saint Etienne’s Pete Wiggs who produce the weekly Séance radio show.

Brighton has long welcomed people from outside it’s borders – those who claim that you’re not a proper Brightonian if you weren’t born here could do well to remember that Brighton was just a small fishing village with a population of less than 2,000 before the Prince Regent turned up and had the Pavilion built, so very few of these people can claim to have families dating back more than a couple of generations. Which leads me to possibly Brighton’s brightest star at the moment – CMAT has just played four nights in a row in Dublin, but kicked off her tour with a hometown gig at Chalk, with banter between songs about Lewes Road, and Penelope Isles Jack Wolter / Cubzoa on guitar. Now’s also a good time to give a shout out to ĠENN (originally from Malta), Ciel (Netherlands and Spain), and Wax Machine (Brazil via Italy) who are all making the place even more special.

Lambrini Girls have had a very good year – their own EP release, a guest vocal with Iggy Pop covering Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus for Trevor Horn’s covers album, and sticking it to TERFs in a Kerrang interview telling them to to “have fun on the wrong side of history”. In a parallel universe that only exists in my head it could easily have been the likes of CLT DRP making those comments.

At the completely opposite end of the music spectrum to Lambrini Girls, there’s a couple of ambient albums that have soothed my ears this year. Ironically, the first is from the sister of Lambrini Girls’ lead singer – Eva Lunny’s Sonics & Meditations, equal parts harp and electronica, came out in the spring on Bella Union’s Private Pressings imprint and is still on heavy rotation in these parts. There was also Guided by Horses by Sam Organ (sometimes seen as a third of Physics House Band), a lovely pastoral work inspired by the South Downs.

My current enthusiasm for the local music scene comes from by being at gigs recently and recognising so many people from other bands in the audience, seeing how they support each other – collaborating on each other’s releases, playing support slots, and just showing up to watch them play – all of which makes a big difference. Most recently, at last weekend’s Ideal Living gig at the Green Door Store I spotted members of Fliptop Head, The New Eves, Van Zon and Hutch in the crowd. There were probably more I didn’t spot too. All of these bands would be worth seeing independently, regardless of who they were friends with, but regularly spotting people supporting each other feels quite life affirming. I imagine most of them will be back at the Green Door Store this Sunday for Mumfest where a lot of other associated acts are on the bill.

I also wanted to give a shoutout to a bunch of other great bands I’ve loved this year ARXX and their album Ride or Die (who are have one last gig of the year on 15th December at Water Bear), Trip Westerns and their self titled EP (who you can catch at Acid Box’s 10th birthday celebrations this weekend), Dark Horses and their album While We Were Sleeping, Egyptian Blue who released their debut A Living Commodity this year, and Soft Walls who made a return with their first album in four years, True Love. It’s been a very good year for Brighton bands.

Last, but definitely by no means least, I wanted to call out the two bands who I reckon will be HUGE in 2024. Lime Garden release their debut album One More Thing in February, and I can’t see how they can possibly go wrong on the basis of everything they’ve put out so far. Rest assured we’ll be in the front row for their gig at Chalk in March. Another band not putting a foot wrong in our book is Hutch. there’s no news of an album just yet, but they’re playing bigger and bigger gigs, and surely it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on.

Last week Memorials, Brighton’s newest supergroup, made up of Verity Susman (from Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (from Wire, It Hugs Back, and Better Corners) released a double album called Music for Film. We caught up with them when they were on the road launching the album to ask them a few questions about the band and the record, and took along our camera to the show at their Prince Albert (with the photos underneath the interview below):

Memorials is a new band, but you’ve both been working together for a very long time – I see that Verity played saxophone on the first It Hugs Back album almost fifteen years ago. Is there time you could point at when “Memorials” was born? If I remember right, It’s In Our Hands came out as Susman & Simms before being later released as Memorials.

Verity: We can remember the point exactly – it was when we were offered a gig, and at that point it seemed fairly essential to start a band! We had released It’s In Our Hands a single with no intention of playing gigs, but one thing led to another, and we wanted to have a slightly snappier name than Susman & Simms, which sounds to us like a firm of provincial solicitors.
Matthew: We’ve worked together for 15 years on various projects, but this is the first time we’ve worked on something together where we’ve had a proper chance to focus on it. 8 years or so ago we played at Café Oto in London together, as a trio with Steve Beresford, completely improvised, with Verity on sax and me on modular synth, live processing/sampling, and some of this probably informed some of the things we’re exploring now, but combining this with our love of songwriting.

After It’s In Our Hands, which is a jangly pop song, there was There Are Other Worlds, which featured on a Duophonic cassette and is almost komische in it’s sound, then Tramps which goes in much harder. Did you want to get a wide range of styles out in the first few releases to show your breadth as a band, or were these some of the most obvious singles? Which of these is closest to the “Memorials” sound?

Verity: the Duophonic cassette track (There Are Other Worlds) was written specifically for that release, because we were going to play with Stereolab and they asked all the bands on that night to contribute a track to the tape. We decided we wanted to write something new for it, as we are huge Stereolab fans and wanted to do something special for it, and then that ended up coming out before the film-related albums and singles. The label chose the singles – it’s quite hard to stand outside your own and choose what might appeal most.
Matthew: There Are Other Worlds was the first thing we’d recorded outside of music for film, so in a way it probably hints more at what we’d get up to without any outside influence from film directors.
Verity: We’re part way through recording a new album – of non-film music – and it’s a bit of a mixture of everything we’ve released so far, but jumbled up and spewed out in one big vomit of new music. (Matthew says that’s gross).

The latest single Boudicaaa which came out a few weeks ago is a celebration of notable women throughout history, who may or may not have been lesbians, and was used as the closing music for the film Tramps, the soundtrack to which forms part of the album. The other part of the album is music from the film Women Against The Bomb, which is about the protests in the 80s at Greenham Common. Is celebrating women who have been misrepresented or understated throughout history a central part of the band? How important to you is it that you can use the platform that you have to share this message? Do you think that in the twenty first century, with the role of historians not being confined to old white men so much, that history books might better reflect what actually went on in the past?

Verity: all of those songs were written for the films they soundtracked, so their impetus came from the films. But at the same time, I’m a feminist and that influences me in all walks of life. I definitely think the women of Greenham Common and the movement they created there should be much better known, especially among younger generations who weren’t around at the time, because they were so innovative in their direct action and that is really inspiring for activist-minded young people. Films like Women Against The Bomb are great for bringing this women-centred history to new audiences.

The album “Music for Film: Tramps! & Women Against the Bomb” is out on double LP – is it one disc for each soundtrack or has the tracklist been ordered to make it work better as a whole album? Are all the tracks on the album from the film, or are there extra tracks that were written alongside the soundtracks?

Matthew: it is one disc for each soundtrack – they stand alone as separate albums, as do the films, which were made by different directors. Both albums were individually worked on and sequenced to make them the best listen that we could manage as an album from start to finish. To keep costs down, so we weren’t charging vinyl fans extortionate amounts in the shops, we packaged both together as a double LP.

We’re speaking to you on your first tour – what can people expect when they come and see you live? One of the highlights at your Lewes Psych Fest gig earlier this year was Verity managing to play two synths AND saxophone at the same time.

Verity: we played in Bristol last night, and someone wrote online after that we are like “Stereolab’s evil twin” – I’ll take that description!
Matthew: we play music from both released soundtrack albums, and new material from the album we’re working on at the moment. Between us both we play far too many instruments at once for a two piece!

The various parts of Music for Film are available in the shops, or through the band’s Bandcamp page (which also has a cassette of additional material for sale which won’t be in the shops)