It’s nearly that time again. Next weekend, the Great Escape rolls into town again, turning everywhere that you could fit a stage, and a lot of places where you can’t imagine a stage normally, into venues for a few days. We’re not going to go through the whole line up – first of all there are literally hundreds of bands playing, but also most of them aren’t from Brighton. Also, a lot of the good local stuff happens as part of the Alt Escape. What we’ve done instead is compiled a list of what we think is every Brighton band who are playing as part of the main festival, and asked a few of our favourite bands for their recommendations for the weekend. We’ve also got a list of what we believe is all the facebook events set up for Alt Escape gigs, which will provide you with a lot more information than you’ll get from anywhere else. Continue reading →
Here’s this week’s new music roundup, which comes with an apology to half of the bands included. We’re off on holiday at stupid o clock tomorrow morning and that means I should be spending my evening packing rather than blogging, so the tracks are included but half of my accompanying words aren’t, leaving you with just the words I note down before I flesh things out for some tracks. Sorry!
This weeks first tune is the new single from Orchards which somehow got missed from our last roundup. It’s called Luv You 2 and came out on 4th April. You can catch Orchards representing Brighton at the Great Escape next month
Next up is Underwater Boys who have a new single called Apricot. Underwater Boys next local gig will also be part of the Great Escape (get used to me saying this a lot over the next four weeks)
We can’t see Tuval mentioned in the line up for the Great Escape yet though. That doesn’t mean he won’t be playing (we know of at least one band who aren’t listed yet), or that he won’t pop up at an Alt Escape gig somewhere. Their My Love Don’t Worry EP came out last Friday and is released on download or limited CD:
Spectrum always has great lines ups, but they pulled out all the stops for Record Store Day – almost a given since the nights are put on in association with Resident, who had people queuing up from 1pm the day before Record Store Day as well as a live 6Music broadcast from Lauren Laverne with Norman Cook and Tim Burgess as guests.
The day kicked off at 2pm and featured performances from Buzz Holly, Underhound, Via Tirana, Jessica Bishop, Normanton Street, Catherine Ireton, Dela Lupa, Lucas and King, Calico, Jonezy and Arif, Barnacles, Squid, Yumi and the Weather, MOSS, Merlin Tonto, Mrisi, Gang and Tiger Cub. We popped along for the last few hours with our camera to catch the action, shooting Yumi & The Weather, Merlin Tonto, Gang and Tigercub‘s sets:
It’s been a few weeks since our last New Music post, and we were playing catchup with that one, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. Here’s a selection of our favourite tunes that have come to our attention in the last couple of weeks.
First up is Our Girl with their debut single Sleeper, the coolest four minutes of guitar music we’ve heard in a while:
In case you hadn’t realised, this weekend is The Great Escape festival, probably the most important musical event in the local calendar. There’s a few Brighton bands tucked in the main festival, but the bulk of the homegrown talent features in the line-up of the Alternative Escape – a sister festival that runs side by side where for most events you won’t need a wrist band, or have to shell out any money to see some fantastic live acts. There are literally hundreds of bands playing over dozens of events so to help guide you through the weekend here’s our pick of some of the BN postcode-based performers you can catch.
The fun begins on Wednesday night with Late Night Lingerie vs The Great Escape at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, where can catch the first of Demob Happy‘s many sets of the festival as well as Skirts last ever gig. Inspired Artists Agency who represent quite a few Brighton bands are taking over Latest Music Bar on Thursday, and we’re hoping to pop in for The Slytones at 2.55pm and Moulettes who play at 6.30pm. There are 20 bands over 28 sets on at The Mesmerist on thursday, on the stages put together by Liberty Music PR, amongst others. If we had to pick one it would be Phantom Runners who are on at 9.40pm. Bleach is being taken over by Strong Island Recordings and Pic & Vinyl on thursday, where Brighton Music Blog favourites Curxes take to the stage at 5.40pm. Over at London Road’s newest cafe Presuming Ed, Cate Ferris tops their line up. Miamigo play their debut show at Patterns (formerly Audio) at 6.45pm.
Here’s our first new music post of 2015. We’ve kept receiving music over the Christmas break, including an incredible five emails from one band about a track we’d already featured in a new music post. Odd.
First up is the new single from Moulettes, the aptly titled Glorious Year, out today via the usual digital distribution channels, which comes with remixes from Jimthefingers (aka Moulettes bassist Jim Mortimore) and Modernaire – an old pseudonym of the band they used when they made dance music which has largely been inactive for the last five years:
Ambassadeurs new release came out last week. The Forever EP has been released on his own Lost Tribe label, and can listen to it below on Soundcloud:
Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster drummer Rob Ling has got a new project called Krak Krak, which he describes as like the White Stripes on crack. They have an upcoming EP coming out in February on Sonic Anhedonic in February, but as an introduction here’s a track called It Sleeps:
After we put Yumi & The Weather into our top twenty at the end of the year last year we were promised that there would be some new music soon, and today a new track called Be There appeared on Soundcloud. We don’t know much about the track, but we’ll keep you posted with any news:
Finally, from nowhere we have a mini album from Black Black Hills who we had thought were missing in action somewhere. The eponymous release collects together the bands several singles along side a few other unreleased tracks and is available on Bandcamp now:
End of year lists are a funny old business. Should they be a measure of the success of the artists on the list you’re compiling? If that were the case then Royal Blood would be the top of any Brighton based list by the longest of margins (and they have been voted album of the year by NME readers). The alternative is that they’re based on personal preference instead, which is incredibly subjective but does give us the chance to enthuse about the things we’ve loved the most over the past twelve months. Being just a list of twenty acts is incredibly restricting too. The past couple of years we’ve put together out best of list as an Advent Calendar instead, which gave us another five acts we could include, but would have meant us getting our act together in November which was never going to happen this year. So here’s the first half of our top twenty – we’ll count down our top ten counting down as we get closer to Christmas.
20. Yumi & The Weather – All We Can EP
Technically All We Can came out in December 2013, but end of year lists had all been agreed by that point and tracks on the EP are easily as good if not better than most of the new music we’ve heard in 2014. The Vondelpark rework of the EPs title track is pure bliss.
Anushka’s Mansions, the lead single from their album Broken Circuit which came out on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings was one of our tunes of the summer.
18. Curxes – Valkyrie
To keep us interested while the Brighton / Portsmouth duo inch forward to completion of their debut long player (which has a provision title of Verxes), this year the band put out PreCurxor – a compilation of their early work – and this single, a noisy, frantic affair that’s guaranteed to wake you up.
17. Michael A Grammar – The Day I Come Alive
We fell in love with Michael A Grammar’s The Day I Came Alive on the very first listen, probably because it sounded like early Blur and reminded us of our first trips to indie discos many years ago.
16. Dog in the Snow – Factory
Dog in the Snow put out a couple of singles this year, with Factory being the more electronic of the two. The video was a fantastic match for the song, initially about mundane daily repetition before morphing into something magical.
15. The New Union – Now
The New Union continue apace with their melodic indie rock. Now was the first of their two singles of 2014, which was followed up later in the year by the equally great Believe in Nothing.
14. Winston & Goldstein – Ode to a Massive Obsession
Jacqueline Collyer used to be in Kins, but this year she went solo, ditched the guitars (mostly), and embraced electronica in all it’s forms on her album In The Eyes of the Other from ambient to dance tracks like Ode to a Massive Obsession which is our pick.
13. The Fiction Aisle – Blue
The Fiction Aisle have only played three gigs, and have only put one track on the internet so far. The man behind the band is an industry veteran though, with over ten years experience under his belt. This year, Electric Soft Parade hung up their hats (except for the odd one off), but Tom White has formed a brilliant new band, recruiting brother Alex on drums, and a cast of thousands. Well, about a dozen.
12. Blood Red Shoes – Blood Red Shoes
Blood Red Shoes eponymous fourth album was heralded from all quarters as a return to form. Their gig in April at the Concorde was the loudest thing we heard this year.
11. Adolescent – Golden Halls part II
There’s been an incredible amount of electronica produced in Brighton this year, most of it coming out through the wonderful Physics House Band affiliated KLDSCP records. Pick of the bunch for us was Adolescent’s Golden Halls EP, and it’s utterly beautiful and unhurried lead track Golden Halls Part II
February might be the shortest month, but there was no shortage of good music. Here’s our pick of the crop from the last month:
1 – Momotaro / Warm Step
We could have put any track from Momotaro’s Second Side album at number one this month. It’s barely left the stereo since we first heard it
2 – GAPS / I Know It’s You (Foreign Skin remix)
The original version of I Know It’s You made an appearance in our January top ten, but right at the end of the month, Foreign Skin’s remix was post up, which made the track even more lush.
3 – Blood Red Shoes / An Animal
The brand new Blood Red Shoes album is out tomorrow, but if you pre-ordered it you got an early download of An Animal, which is also the single coming out on 7″ alongside the album. If you want a physical copy and tomorrow’s too long to wait I did spot that they already had it on the racks at Resident yesterday.
4 – Yumi & The Weather / Love
Yumi & The Weather gave us their Love as a Valentine’s present. We didn’t get around to posting about it (but we did retweet their link) and since then the link has gone. If you managed to grab the track – all jittery rhythms and slick vocals – then you’ll know why we’re such a fan of this.
UPDATE : Yumi & The Weather have just posted that the track is available as part of a Camels & Lions compilation which you can download for free here.
5 – Electric Soft Parade / One of Those Days
One Of Those Days was one of our favourite tracks on Idiots when it came out last year, so we’re pleased that they’ve put the track out as a single, and that we’ve got an excuse to post it up here
6 – The Wytches / Gravedweller
It’s been a great month for Brighton’s finest psychedelic rock’n’rollers. Not only have they signed to the mighty Heavenly Records, putting them on a roster alongside Toy and Charlie Boyer and the Voyeurs, but they also released their first single with the label, available on their current tour, or as a free download.
7 – Physics House Band / Titan (Ital Tek remix)
This month also saw Physics House Band put out an album of remixes of last month’s Horizons / Rapture Ep. Our pick is Ital Tek’s remix of Titan, which wrestles the original into something altogether more dancefloor friendly.
8 – Fujiya & Miyagi / Tetrahydrofolic Acid
Tetrahydrofolic Acid is the first new track released by the band since 2011’s Ventriloquizzing, and shows them heading in a much more electronic direction. To these ears it sounds like To Rococo Rot on a night out with Underworld.
9 – Milk & Biscuits / Hairstyles
Yes, we wrote about Hairstyles before, but that was when it was released as an mp3 download, and this month it’s the lead track on the first cassette released by newly founded Lick Music, who wanted a distraction from making frozen yoghurt.
10 – Michael A Grammar / The Day I Come Alive
It feels like ages since we first wrote about Michael A Grammar’s Random Vision EP, but it finally came out this month. Lead track The Day I Come Alive sounds like dreamy early period Blur.
Yesterday the best New Music festival in the country made its first line up announcement. The Great Escape Festival, taking place from 8th-10th May this year, released a list of over a hundred names, including a good representation of local talent. Royal Blood, Theo Verney and Yumi & The Weather are in there, as well as honorary Brightonians (by virtue of their Source cover feature) Traams. There’s still a chance to apply – Artist registration is open until the end of January, and more details can be found here.
Here’s the full list of acts announced so far:
AMBER RUN / ANDY SHAUF / ARC IRIS / ARTHUR BEATRICE / AS ANIMALS / AUTOBAHN / BABY IN VAIN / BABY STRANGE / BEARD OF WOLVES / BEAUTIFUL BOY / BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE / BLACK CITY LIGHTS / BLAENAVON / BROKEN TWIN / CHARLI XCX / CHERUB / CHLÖE HOWL / CIRCA WAVES / CLEO T / COURTNEY BARNETT / D/C / DARK FOR DARK / DARLIA / DENAI MOORE / DIVE IN / DOLOMITE MINOR / DOOM SQUAD / DOUGLAS DARE / DUNE RATS / ELLA EYRE*/ EROTIC MARKET / FABIENNE / FAT WHITE FAMILY / FEMALE SMELL / FEMME / FLUX PAVILION LIVE / FLYTE / FTSE / FUTURE ISLANDS / FYFE / GIANNA LAUREN / GINGER AND THE GHOST / GLORY GLORY / HANNAH GEORGAS / HERMITUDE / HOLY STRAYS / HSY / HUMAN PYRAMIDS / JAAKKO EINO KALEVI / JAY ARNER / JEREMIAH JAE / JEREMY NEALE / JUNGLE / KELIS*/ LABYRINTH EAR / LEON T PEARL / LONELY THE BRAVE / LOVEPARK / MAJOR LEAGUES / MARIKA HACKMAN / MATTHEW AND THE ATLAS / MAX MARSHALL / MICKEY LIGHTFOOT / MONEY FOR ROPE / NEW DESERT BLUES / OLIVER WILDE / ORVAL CARLOS SIBELIUS / OY / PAWWS / PHOX / POWDER BLUE / REJJIE SNOW / ROSIE LOWE / ROYAL BLOOD / RUSSIAN RED / SAINT RAYMOND / SAMARIS / SATELLITE STORIES / SEPTEMBER GIRLS / SHOPPING / SHY NATURE / SIN COS TAN / SLAVES / STUBBORN HEART / SUNDARA KARMA / THE BONY KING OF NOWHERE / THE CREASES / THE CROOKED BROTHERS / THE DARLINGTONS / THE OSCILLATION / THE SCENES / THEO VERNEY / TOVE LO / TRAAMS / TRAUMAHELIKOPTER / TRAVIS BRETZER / WET / WHITE LUNG / WILSEN / WOMANS HOUR / YOUNG SUMMER / YOUTH MAN / YUMI AND THE WEATHER
Somehow, we’ve turned two! Two years of gig going, photo taking, demo listening and doing out best to share the music we love coming out of Brighton. Here’s what we loved in October:
1 Eagles For Hands – Lisbon
Eagles for Hands gave out their new EP for free for a short while earlier in the month and the title track, which sounds not dissimilar to 808 State at the height of the powers has been our most played track this month. The free download is over now (you should have grabbed it when we told you about it!) but it’s worth every penny you’ll pay on iTunes.
2 Momotaro – Reverie 3 Gaps – Belong
Giving away a free track in return for signing up to a bands mailing list is the new black. Or something like that. Momotaro and Gaps are two of our favourite discoveries this year and you can get these tracks just for the price of an email address.
4 The Beautiful Word – Eating Me, Eating You
“It’s not rude!” Megan and Emily blush when they introduce this track live. Of course it’s not, but a bit of innuendo doesn’t do anyone any harm. The video for Eating Me, Eating You dropped this month, and the track appears on The Beautiful Word’s album Particles which we’ll be reviewing soon.
5 Electric Soft Parade – The Sun Never Sets Around Here
The Sun Never Sets Around Here in ESP’s new single to go alongside their minitour. The band have just announced a Christmas date at the Unitarian Church on 6th December. Get your tickets quick because it’s going to sell out fast.
6 Prince Vaseline – Sunset
Lovely lovely stuff from a Milke & Biscuits side project
7 Nordic Giants – Neotenie
Neotenie appears on part one of the Nordic Giants Build Seas Dismantle Suns double EP. We’ll be putting up something about part two – the Dismantle Suns half – very soon.
8 Yumi & The Weather – All We Can
The lead track from Yumi & The Weather’s debut EP (and it’s accompanying video) is a much sunnier track than the weather outside at the moment. We’ve had it on repeat to bring a bit of summer back into our lives. The Vondelpark rework that’s also on the EP is quite tasty too.
9 Moulettes – Songbird
Moulettes gig at Applefest (which we missed because we didn’t want caught in the torrential rain in Lewes), and their giveaway of this track reminded up just how much we love Moulettes. From the look of their Facebook / Twitter streams, they’re working on new material right now. Can’t wait!
10 Alice Amelia – #1000 Dreams
We rather liked Alice Amelia’s free download that she gave away earlier this month – sophisticated sparse piano and a lovely vocal. She’s playing down at Above Audio this Wednesday for free as well!
Brighton Music Blog 