Here’s a few bits and pieces that we’ve come across this week. Gnarwolves and Octopuses have the launches for their releases this weekend (see our previous post), so if you like what you hear, make sure you catch them live.
First up is the new single from Martin Rossiter. No One Left To Blame, one of the standout tracks from last year’s The Defenestration of St Martin, will be released on September 16th, but the rather chilly video is up now:
Moving from chiller to thriller, the next video is for Sun by Us Baby Bear Bones, which features on their What Starts With a U Ends With An I EP, which is available to buy via the band’s website.
Funemployed is the new EP from Gnarwolves. The band have their launch party at the Green Door Store on saturday night, and the EP sounds like this:
Octopuses launch their new single Sarcastic at the Prince Albert tonight. The track’s up on Soundcloud, and you can listen here:
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:
Last night, Us Baby Bear Bones launched their debut EP at the Green Door Store. We were there to enjoy the fun and catch Alphabets Heaven, Speak Galactic and Us Baby Bear Bones live sets. As with our other galleries, click on the images to view large.
Next Monday finally sees the release of “what starts with a U ends with an I”, the debut release from Us Baby Bear Bones, which we’ve been looking forward to for what seems like ages. The original announcement about the EP was made back in April last year, and we’re pleased to say that it’s been worth the wait.
The five tracks on the EP will be familiar to anyone who’s seen Us Baby Bear Bones live (and if you haven’t seen them live, then our advice is to remedy that as soon as possible – more information on that below), and two of them have videos up on YouTube which you might have seen. There’s also a re-recording of Rain which first appeared on last year’s Sea Monsters compilation.
The Dream-Pop tag gets used far too much these days, presumably by people stay away from cheese in the evenings and don’t remember what happened in the land of nod once they’ve woken up. Happily though Us Baby Bear Bones fit the genre like a glove, with dreamy textures, ethereal vocals, arpeggiated keyboards and crunching beats. The closest comparison is probably sometime Bjork collaborator Leila whose records are similarly brimming with influences but retain a pop sensibility.
The highlight for us the triumphant EP closer Swamp, which starts off with a drone note and builds and builds into glorious alternative electro pop. If this is what Puff Gandolfo, Daisy Warne and Luke Philips have achieved with their first release then the future is very bright indeed for Us Baby Bear Bones.
The full EP is available to stream over at This is Fake DIY now, and the launch party is Tuesday 11th June at Green Door Store. The EP is released on CD, limited to 216 copies whose combined covers make up a giant piece of artwork by Puff Gandolfo, which will be available to buy at the launch, or from bandcamp,
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:
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.
About a month ago, we brought you news of the upcoming Us Baby Bear Bones EP, due on 10th of June. Today the band put up a new taster of what we’ve got to look forward to on What Starts with a U, Ends with an I. Mountains is less than three minutes of hypnotic swirling dream pop, with a video to match. We love it.
On top of that, UBBB are giving away You (which is going to be on the EP, and whose video was on our the post we mentioned earlier) as a free download. Brilliant!
Us Baby Bear Bones have announced details of their debut EP. “What Starts with a U, Ends with an I” is being released on 10th June on Brighton Based label Love Thy Neighbour (who have also put out Abi Wade’s releases so far, as well as putting on countless great gigs around town).
The EP will be limited to 216 copies, the covers of which are a segment of a massive picture painted by band member Puff Gandolfo (have we mentioned how much we love the revival of proper rock star pseudonyms?).
The band gave us a taster last year uploading You to YouTube, and the EP will also include Rain which was previously available on the Sea Monsters 2 compilation. For now, you can grab Rain as a free download over on bandcamp:
Us Baby Bear Bones next gig is supporting Fiction at the Green Door Store on 19th March.
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.
In advance of next week’s One Inch Badge promoted Sea Monsters seven gig bonanza at the Prince Albert, we caught up with Andy Rossiter of Love They Neighbour, who’s curating Wednesday night’s gig:
Last year’s Sea Monsters wasn’t curated, but this year’s is. How did you come to be hosting an evening?
I’ve known Alex from One Inch Badge for a while now; we owned the Freebutt together and Love Thy Neighbour have done a few co-promotions with One Inch Badge, so when they asked me I had no hesitation in saying yes. The last two Sea Monsters events have been great in showcasing the best of Brighton, so it is a pleasure to be part of it.
The next Love Thy Neighbour release is by Us Baby Bear Bones, who aren’t on the bill. Did you want them to play, or were they already booked to play at the Danger Du Mort night at the Green Door Store already?
Yeah, we’re really excited to be releasing Us Baby Bear Bones debut release ‘What starts with a U ends in an I’, which is out in March. That band are incredibly creative, so expect some great artwork as well as a stellar ep! They would have played this year, but they played Sea Monsters 1 & 2, so One Inch Badge were keen not to have the band play for a third successive year.
Have the other acts on the bill got a chance of recording for Love They Neighbour, or is the night about Love Thy Neighbour as promoters rather than the label?
Love Thy Neighbour is open to all sorts of music, so if we find a band we love who get what we’re about then we’d happily release something by them. After the Us Baby Bear Bones EP we plan to release an EP by A Lily, and we’re in talks with another Brighton band about a release in the summer, but other than that we are free for something new. We see ourselves as a introductory label where acts can release their music and have complete creative control over their music & art, so I anticipate that Abi Wade, Us Baby Bear Bones and A Lily will move onto bigger & better things and we will release music later in the year potentially by acts we haven’t even heard yet.
Who’s Love Thy Neighbour’s tip from the bands playing across the other nights?
Apologies to anyone who knows me personally, because I literally don’t shut up about this band, but if you haven’t seen TRAAMS yet, then you must, they’re amazing. They make slacker lo-fi rock music with elements of Krautrock & US indie. They have an eye for a tune too. Would have loved to have done something with them for Love Thy Neighbour, but they have already moved onto bigger & better things! A close second is Physics House Band, another band who are flipping awesome and an outstanding live proposition.
If you could have got any Brighton band, past or present, to play your night who would you have chosen?
Er wow, that’s a tough one. There were loads of Brighton based bands I loved when I was about 18 like Clearlake, 80’s Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Turncoat, Charlottefield, British Sea Power, Coin-op & Electric Soft Parade, but I think it would have to be Electrelane. For those who don’t know their music, they made alternative, mostly instrumental rock & electronica and their albums were largely produced by Steve Albini. They split up in 2007, but reformed last year for live performances. My favourite album of theirs is ‘No Shouts No Calls’, which gets a lot of play in Sticky Mike’s!
Love Thy Neighbour curate Wednesday night at Sea Monsters, with Abi Wade, Holy Vessels, Plasticine and Jacko Hooper
Brighton Music Blog 