Tonight we’re off to see Momotaro supported by Faux Flux at Above Audio, but before we do, here’s this weekend’s gig picks:
The big gig on Thursday night is Passenger. The Let Her Go singer is playing a sold out hometown gig at the Concorde 2 (actually he’s playing two, with the second next Monday, which is also sold out). Thursday’s other gigs which caught our eye were The Resonators playing at The Haunt, and Foreign Skin supporting Jungle at Sticky Mike’s.
On Friday night, Ancient Times launch their new single Nightschool at the Blind Tiger. Support comes from Shudder Pulps, Morning Smoke and Hot Glass. It’s also this week’s Brighton Rocks at Sticky Mike’s, with The Dials, Cat Fire Radio, 1914s and Broadbay on the line up.
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Finally, on Saturday night, regular Green Door Store night Drugs returns after a summer break with a five band line up. For less than a pound a band, you get to see Grasshopper, Twin, Bentcousin, Skirts and The Bright Ones.
There’s four new releases to tell you about this week, from some new bands, and some more established bands. So without further ado…
The Electric Soft Parade – The Sun Never Sets Around Here
The White brothers next single, put out to support their mini-tour later this month (which sadly doesn’t include a Brighton date at the time of writing) is Idiots opener The Sun Never Sets Around Here. There’s a home made video, and the track has been re-recorded, with a brand new guitar solo and a completely different second half.
The Mojo Fins – Introverts
The Mojo Fins third album is due for release next year. Before then they’re putting out Introverts, which is out on November 10th on Amazon Records
Poles Apart – Atlasless
Atlasless is the debut EP from new Brighton four piece Poles Apart. It features three tracks of atmospheric rock and is up on Bandcamp now as a name-your-price download.
Octopuses – Ghost in the House
Octopuses are lining up for the release their second single Ghost In The House. With a title like that, it could only be released on Halloween, when it’ll be available as a free download from Big Salad Records. Until then you can enjoy the second home made video of today’s round up.
British Sea Power – Monsters of Sunderland
Finally, British Sea Power have put out a video today of Monsters of Sunderland from their album Machineries of Joy, featuring the bears which are staples of their live sets. The video only went up today, so catch it while it’s fresh!
Last night The New Union supported Let’s Buy Happiness at the Blind Tiger and IYES played their first headline show at the Prince Albert. We were torn – we’re fans of both bands – which should we go to? And then we figured that since The New Union were supporting and IYES were headlining, we should be able to make it to both.
When we first heard about the New Union gig, we read that they would be on at 8.15. On the day, we read on Facebook that it would be 8.30. We turned up at the gig to see set times that said 8.45, but the support act who was on before them didn’t get onstage until 8.50. In the end The New Union started just after 9.30, so we only caught a few of their songs before we headed to the Prince Albert. But those few songs sounded fantastic. Every time the New Union head into the studio, they come out sounding even better, taking everything they’ve learned and improving their live sound with it, and just recently they’ve been recording at Metway Studios with Matthew Twaites (of Electric Soft Parade, Milk & Biscuits, etc).
The normal career path for a new band is first to get support slots with other local bands, then headline your own small gigs, then get supports with bigger touring bands that visit. It’s testament to the strength of IYES demos that they managed to skip the first two stages, with all their gigs so far playing before more established national acts. As sods law would have it, the IYES gig was running late too, but that meant we got to catch Londoners Rivieras from the back of a packed room. When they were done, we took the opportunity to get to the front so we could make up for all of the photos that we didn’t take at the New Union gig. IYES were on top form, showcasing the demos that the crowd was familiar with as well as a brace of new tracks including the first play of their upcoming single Infinity.
Here’s this week’s round up of the new music that has hit our inbox since our last update. There’s new singles from Wytches and Yumi & The Weather, free downloads from Alice Amelia and Prince Vaseline, and a mixtape from Dizraeli and Downlow featuring a new track of theirs.
The Wytches – Robe for Juda
Robe For Juda is the next single from this month’s Source cover stars The Wytches, and is out on the 18th November on Hate Hate Hate records. The Wytches are working hard on tour at the moment supporting Splashh, and as soon as that tour ends they’ll be supporting Metz, playing their hometown on 27th November at the Haunt.
Yumi & The Weather – All We Can
All We Can is the new single from Yumi & The Weather, out a week on monday on XVI records. It’s lush electronic pop with textured beats and subtle harmonies. Lovely stuff. You can hear pre-order the EP and listen to another track over on the XVI records bandcamp page.
Alice Amelia – #1000 Dreams
Alice Amelia is back with another gorgeous piano ballad, available as a free download from Soundcloud. Alice’s next Brighton gig is at Above Audio on 9th November.
Prince Vaseline – Island EP
While we’re waiting for the new Milk & Biscuits album, a couple of the bands members have got together and quietly snuck out an EP. Max and Eleanor’s side project isn’t a million miles away from their other band, but maybe isn’t quite as poppy. Their Island EP is a Name Your Price EP on bandcamp, so take a listen and see what you think.
Disraeli & Downlow – Everyone’s a Winner mixtape
Diszraeli, Brighton conscientious voice of urban poetry, has put out a hip hop mixtape with beats put together regular collaborator Downlow and additional rhymes from Dizraeli. You can download the whole mixtape from Bandcamp, or listen to the new Dizraeli & Downlow track which features in the mix on it’s own on Soundcloud.
Congratulations to Cold Crows Dead, who are the Guardian’s New Band of the Day. I’ll be honest and say that they weren’t on my radar until now, except for reading the name as one of the supports for Electric Soft Parade’s London gig on 23rd October. Neither their Twitter or Facebook profiles mentions that they’re local which is why they’d passed me by. Anyway, their new single I Fear A New World is out on 2nd December (which actually isn’t too far away now) and the band play The Hope on 15th December. Electric Soft Parade described the lead track from their debut EP Ghost That Burned Your House Down as their tune of the year:
Normally we post up our weekend gig picks on a Wednesday, but got a bit distracted this week. So we’ll keep things short and sweet this week and just pick out one for Saturday and one for Sunday. We promise that next week’s post will be bigger than ever.
House of Hats
When the House of Hats started their Harvest Sessions earlier this year, we thought it might have been a little unkind to pull them up on the fact that it wasn’t harvest season. It is now though, and it’s time for this month’s gig, headlined and curated by the band. This Saturday they’re joined at The Brunswick by Swell and Woodland Blue.
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Back in June, The Hundredth Anniversary and Tyrannosaurus Dead appeared on a three-band mini-album called GUTS, alongside London band Gum. GUTS has now grown into a one day festival at the Green Door Store, featuring all three bands and a fair few others from Brighton and London. There’s full details, including set times, over on the Facebook event page.
Here’s our regular round up of the latest Brighton music that we’ve come across, and if we can’t write about that with a blog name like ours, what can we?
Palm Springs – Could You Be Wrong
We took delivery of the 7″ of Could You Be Wrong a few weeks ago, but because of a bit of confusion on our part we put off writing about it until we thought it was out. Only we got the release date wrong. The track is four minutes of solid indie pop, well produced with catchy sha-la-la’s drawing you into the chorus. We liked it enough to put into our September Top Five blog post even though we hadn’t written about the track by then, and that should tell you how good we think it is. Flip Side ‘The Wake Of Us’ with it’s spoken word verses is pretty tasty too.
The Beautiful Word – Eating Me, Eating You
Speaking of tasty things, the video for the Beautiful Word’s new single is literally a food fight. Eating Me, Eating You has come out in advance of the band’s album Particles which hits the shelves in about six weeks time.
GAPS – Belong
At the moment GAPS aren’t putting a foot wrong. After the double A side Keep You / Cascade back in the summer, the duo have put out the more acoustic sounding Belong as a free download. GAPS are on the bill at the Green Door Store next Friday (11th October) supporting Pawws.
Eagles for Hands – Lisbon EP
Eagles for Hands put up their new EP as a free download today (after previously being for sale). We don’t know how long it’s going to be free, so grab it while you can. Head straight for the lead track Lisbon, or the blissed out House of track 4, Peaks.
Momotaro – Reverie
Momotaro’s new track Reverie is also available as a free download, in exchange for signing up to their mailing list. Fans of Momotaro’s r’n’b influenced electronic dub should head down to Above Audio on 16th October, when they headline, or the Green Door Store next Monday, when they support Landshapes
Maker – Hopeless (Champione Remix)
Maker posted up the original version of Hopeless about a year ago, but it’s been given a new electro lease of life by Champione, who impressed us with his Home EP earlier this year. Subtle synth pop has been transformed into effervescent anthemic house.
Theo Verney – Heavy Sunn
Theo Verney’s Heavy Sun EP is out later this month on Hate Hate Hate records, but the lead track is up now for all to hear. Heavy choruses collide with deceptively pop verses. Flip side Count It Up can also be heard over on Hate Hate Hate records’ Soundcloud page.
Natasha Khan & Jon Hopkins – Garden’s Heart
Brian Eno protege Jon Hopkins has provided the score for upcoming film How I Live Now, and has roped in Bat For Lashes for the single that goes with the soundtrack. Garden’s Heart is out on Partlaphone next monday and as well as vocal and writing credits, Natasha Khan also directed the video.
We’ve been away for half of September, so this month we’re just doing a Top Five rather than our normal Top Ten. Any good stuff we like from the last week or two may well make it into next month’s list. Anyway, without further ado:
1) Dog in the Snow – Fire in the Sky
At the top of the pile this month is Helen Ganya Brown’s latest haunting offering, available as a free download through soundcloud, and with a video that just went up online today:
2) Palm Springs – Could You Be Wrong
We’re the ones who’ve got things wrong about the new Palm Springs single. Their label, Random Acts of Vinyl, sent us a copy a few weeks ago and there was a bit of a mix up with release dates and we haven’t got around to doing a write up yet, even though it’s been out for a few weeks. We’ll be giving it a proper write up soon, but in the meantime, let it be known that it’s one of favourite tracks of recent weeks:
3) Luo – Spiral Staircase
Luo keeps churning out great music, which he keeps giving out for free, and was awesome at Sound Screen at the Corn Exchange earlier this month. This is our favourite track from his latest EP Imprints:
4) Momotaro – Embers
We got turned onto to Momotaro care of the new Green Door Store fanzine which has been popping up all around town. They’ve got got a bunch of free downloads up on Soundcloud, and Embers has had a lot of plays at Brighton Music Blog HQ:
5) Nordic Giants – Violent Lights
We only heard Violent Lights less than a week ago, but we’re big fans of Nordic Giants so we couldn’t not include it. The Build Seas EP which it’s taken from is out tomorrow.
Things have been a but quiet on the blog for the last week or so because I’m on holiday and have been off the internet, but the magical combination of an early rise brought on by jet lag, a hotel with wireless, and an exciting new track to tell you about has forced me to break my silence.
Violent Lights is the first track that’s surfaced from the Nordic Giants forthcoming Build Seas Dismantle Suns EP. It features vocals by Alex Hedley from Saturday Sun, who have been on the bill the last couple of times I’ve seen Nordic Giants, so if you were at any if those gigs you’ll have heard his tender, almost falsetto voice which suits the track perfectly.
The track is just what you’d expect from Nordic Giants – an ambient atmospheric beginning that builds to their trademark epic sound, with a breathtaking drop a minute before the end preceding an awesome aural onslaught.
The EP is being released in two parts, with the Build Seas half coming out next week on 1st October. Nordic Giants play a headline show at the Concorde 2 on 30th October.
We’re going to be out of town for a few weeks, so it’ll be a bit quiet on the blog, but before we go, here’s a few gigs that are on while we’re away that we think you ought to be at.
There’s already been one Source New Music this month but since Brighton Digital Festival is on at the moment, a second one is taking place. Headliner Bitbin will be collaborating with visual artists metaLuna. Champion Fever will also be performing a live set alongside DJ sets from Spacenoid, Alphabets Heaven and the Beatabet collective.
A little while back the RSPB put on a charity gig headlined by Mary Hampton. It’s a great way to engage with a Brighton audience who are regular gig goers but whose main interaction with birds is seagulls waking them up at five o clock in the morning. The local contribution at this gig comes from The Bobby McGees, who would be worth going to see even if it wasn’t a charity gig.
Tuesday 1st October – Communion Records Night at the Haunt with Us Baby Bear Bones and George Ezra (and Teen Creeps DJs)
Communion Records are relaunching their club nights and are coming to the Haunt on 1st October. The full line up features live sets from Royal Blood, Fossil Collective, Us Baby Bear Bones, Trouble with Templeton and George Ezra in what promises to be a fantastic night.
The big gig on Thursday night is Passenger. The Let Her Go singer is playing a sold out hometown gig at the Concorde 2 (actually he’s playing two, with the second next Monday, which is also sold out). Thursday’s other gigs which caught our eye were The Resonators playing at The Haunt, and Foreign Skin supporting Jungle at Sticky Mike’s.
On Friday night, Ancient Times launch their new single Nightschool at the Blind Tiger. Support comes from Shudder Pulps, Morning Smoke and Hot Glass. It’s also this week’s Brighton Rocks at Sticky Mike’s, with The Dials, Cat Fire Radio, 1914s and Broadbay on the line up.
Finally, on Saturday night, regular Green Door Store night Drugs returns after a summer break with a five band line up. For less than a pound a band, you get to see Grasshopper, Twin, Bentcousin, Skirts and The Bright Ones.
Brighton Music Blog 