Fear of Men

Posted on 19/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

There’s something about Fear of Men that makes them feel like stars-in-waiting. There’s their releases, all great songs, which they’ve made sure have all been issued on 7″ or cassette so that they’re all physical artefacts, but given online exclusive streaming on Pitchfork before anyone else. There’s the decision not to play too often in Brighton so that when they do it feels more special. Then there’s the support slot with Best Coast, giving them an audience not just across the UK, but Europe too. Watch this space, because next year we predict big things for Fear of Men.

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 18 / Us Baby Bear Bones

Posted on 18/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

We’re huge fans of Us Baby Bear Bones here at Brighton Music Blog because they’re everything we think a band ought to be. In short, they’re the antithesis of four young men in check shirts and skinny jeans playing guitars. It’s like nobody told UBBB that most bands have a different member taking on drums, vocals, guitars and so on – musical duties are passed around the band without care for convention. But if it sounds like Us Baby Bear Bones are difficult or inaccessible, think again because all of these ingredients come together to make lush, bold pop tunes. If only they’d get around to releasing their debut single, originally promised for July last year! My sources tell me that it may be arriving in February, so watch this space.

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 17 / Speak Galactic

Posted on 17/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

The first time we saw Owen Thomas, at the Green Door Store supporting Laetitia Sadier, it was so loud we couldn’t stay in the room. Thankfully we persevered (and bought some ear plugs), because Speak Galactic are one of the most exciting bands in Brighton. Watching them live, ideas come faster than the audience can process them – there’s a guitar there, but it’s not making guitar noises because it’s wired through a box of home made electronics which makes the most amazing sounds. There’s frenetic vocals and drums too making for an incredibly visceral performance. Cupboard Music put out the album Severed – slightly slower paced than the live performances with woozy unsettling electronica and big crunching beats building their widescreen vision. The record finished off with the spectacular Solar Sail – a glorious seventeen minute long post-ambient epic. Amazing.

Speak Galactic

Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer / Oh, Santa

Posted on 16/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

Christmas is almost upon us. You might have picked up the fact by the fact that we’re midway through our Advent Calendar. Or maybe it’s the relentless commercial onslaught in the shops and the ad breaks that may have alerted you to it.

Anyway, Mr B has noticed too, and has prepared a song for our listening pleasure. Oh, Santa is guaranteed to raise a smile and has been released just in time to coincide with the festive season:

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 15 / Catherine Ireton

Posted on 15/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

It was sheer good luck that we found out about Belle & Sebastian collaborator Catherine Ireton. She’d moved down to Brighton around eighteen months ago and had kept quite a low profile, but some eagle eyes on twitter spotted a mention of a local designer reworking her website and passed the news onto me. An afternoon set at The Great Escape confirmed that the big voice heard on God Help The Girl was just as big when she was playing on her own. In June Catherine kicked off a series of concerts intended to make the audience make a bit more effort in return for something a bit more intimate. The Treasure Tracks gig were real highlights for us, and we look forward to seeing what Catherine has up her sleeve in 2013.

Catherine Ireton

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 14 / Jennifer Left

Posted on 14/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

It was a sad day when Gloria Cycles split up back in 2010, but this year Jennifer Left has burst back onto the Brighton music scene. Now fronting her own band, and with a brace of songs written with producer Tim Bidwell and Bonobo’s guitarist Ewan Wallace, Jennifer Left is back. Over the year, they’ve released two singles – Black Dog and Diggory – and grown in confidence with every show they’ve played. They’re also one of two bands in our calendar this year who’ve covered New Order – check out their gorgeous bossa nova cover of Temptation.

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 13 / Bat For Lashes

Posted on 13/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

The Haunted Man was Brighton’s other huge album this year, alongside The Maccabees Given The The Wild. It caused a stir before it’s release with it’s provocative artwork, but lead single Laura showed that Bat For Lashes didn’t need shock tactics to create attention for the album. Natasha Khan’s homecoming concert at The Dome was definitely one of the gigs of the year for us.

Weekend Gig Picks

Posted on 12/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

So, we’ve got a veritable bonanza of weekend gigs for you this week. Last week I was musing that maybe things that might get a bit quieter in the run up to Christmas – how wrong I was.

Holy Vessels Let’s start this with Thursday – it is the start of the weekend after all. We’ll be heading down to the Concorde 2 to see Saint Etienne (with support from Scritti Politti – what a line up, eh?). Also on thursday night there’s Mr B‘s Chap Hop Christmas Ball at the Prince Albert. Holy Vessels play their album launch at the Blind Tiger, with support from Soccer96, Autumn Red, The Common Tongues and Songs For Walter. Last Orders at the Marshall Arms is out now and available from iTunes. Paul Diello plays his annual Christmas party at the Brunswick, and Alice Amelia plays the Constant Service.

Noise Night On Friday British Sea Power return with a special Christmas Krankenhaus at The Haunt. Our friends over at Brighton Noise are putting on their second night at the Green Door Store. They were turning people away from first one, so get their early to see Traams, Bitches and the fantastic Negative Pegasus. Transformer are launching their single Dragonfly at the Blind Tiger. Check out the Facebook event for more details and a look at the video. The last gig on our radar on friday is at the Coach House in Kemptown (not the pub on Middle Street), where Crayola Lectern headlines a “veritable melange of auditory delights”.

binge2poster On Saturday The Impellers hold their Office Christmas Party at The Brunswick, which is cheap to get into if you’ve got a ticket for Craig Charles later that night. If you’d like to start things a bit earlier on in the day, Beatabet kick things off at 1pm. They’ve got twelve bands playing at their Betabet Binge – P for Persia, Spacenoid, Napoleon III, Colectress, Speak Galactic, Laboratoro, Old Man Diode, Scalar Fields, Duot, Operator, Temple Decade and Burnt Toast. Phew!

art noise If you’ve still got any energy left come Sunday, then our top pick is Cate Ferris at The Neptune. There’s also an art event at the Blind Tiger called Wonderland, where Amongst The Pigeons, Them The Sky, Tiny Dragons, and the Elevators and Ribbon play in the evening. In yet another night in town with an above average number of bands on the bill, there’s also Club Criminal at Sticky Mike’s, starting from 5pm, with Trip to Dover, The Flip Flays, The Kut, Thieves by the Code, The Trophy Hearts, Childbrain and King Mews.

Brighton Music Blog Advent Calendar / Day 12 / Your Explosion My Mind

Posted on 12/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

We don’t know very much about Your Explosion My Mind at all. We do know that it’s a project by someone called Barney Douglas, but following him on twitter you’ll learn a lot about cricket and very little about his music. Eyeball Kick came out on a split 7″ with Sparrow’s Move back in August, so we looked it up on YouTube. It’s so good that we’d only got halfway through listening to it before we were on iTunes buying the whole “Under a Heavy Sun” EP that it appeared on. There was an accompanying free download EP of another five tracks too. Eyeball Kick is fizzing motorik kraut-pop that makes you feel alive, but the rest of the tracks across the EPs touched all bases. Your Explosion My Mind were one of those discoveries that make writing the blog so worthwhile for me, and Eyeball Kick is one of my singles of the year.

Melting Vinyl present Roller Trio supported by Physics House Band at Komedia Studio Bar

Posted on 11/12/2012 by brightonmusicblog

When I was reading an obituary of jazz legend Dave Brubeck last week, it noted that one of the reasons for his popularity in the 1960s was that he toured college campuses and made sure he reached out to a younger audience. So it was good to see a younger audience in the Komedia for last night’s gig. Sure there was a section of the audience who weren’t so young, dressed in black and looking like they wanted to be smoking gitanes, but on the whole it was a crowd of people who weren’t living out the cliché of the Fast Show Jazz Club.

Physics House Band

One of the reasons was support band (who were who we’d come to see). Physics House Band have already scored themselves a Brighton Source Cover, and are headlining a night at Sea Monsters next month. They’ve been working incredibly hard this year, playing regular gigs (including a slot at Lewes Psychedelic Festival), building their fanbase and writing new songs (some of which were played last night). As their confidence and abilities have grown, they’ve transformed from three guys furiously concentrating on their instruments to a band who are more comfortable onstage and who interact with their audience a bit more. Jazz-prog-math-rock fans have never had it so good.

Roller Trio

Another reason for the younger audience was probably Roller Trio’s Mercury Music Prize nomination. Following the awards ceremony, sales of their album went up by a mammoth 618% according to the Guardian (compared to a rise of 7-9% for our local nominees The Maccabees). It might have been easy to dismiss the band as this year’s token Jazz entry, but Roller Trio were a joy to behold and it was easy to see on the basis of last night’s show, that the nomination wasn’t a token entry at all. Their individual performances were impressive, but more impressive was the way that they all melded together. It wasn’t all just about technical ability though – musically the evening was a triumph too. At two ends of the spectrum, jazz can either end up as coffee table music or as avant garde unlistenable noise. Roller Trio skilfully avoided these two extremes but played a set which at times challenged though never pushed things too far.