bedgell music

Banoffee Pie Recipe :: Courtesy of Hungry Monk (RIP)

2012-01-08T08:25:00.000-08:00

The Original Hungry Monk Banoffi Pie Recipe

Invented at the Hungry Monk in 1972, Banoffi Pie (originally known as Banoffee Pie), is still as popular today as it was the first time it appeared on the menu. There have been many imitations as far and wide as Russia and the United States; it is even rumored to be Mrs Thatcher’s favourite pudding! Below is the original Banoffi Pie recipe as it first appeared in‘The Deeper Secrets of the Hungry Monk’ in 1974.

Banoffi Pie Recipe (to serve 8-10 people)

12 ounces uncooked shortcrust pastry
1.5 tins condensed milk (13.5 ounces each)
1.5 pounds firm bananas
375ml of double cream
Half a teaspoon powdered instant coffee
1 dessertspoon caster sugar
A little freshly ground coffee

Preparation

Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 (400F, ). Lightly grease a 10in x 1.5in flan tin. Line this with the pastry thinly rolled out. Prick the base all over with a fork and bake blind until crisp. Allow to cool.

The secret of this delicious pudding lies in the condensed milk.

Immerse the cans unopened in a deep pan of boiling water. Cover and boil for 3 hours making sure that the pan does not boil dry *(see CAUTION).

Remove the tin from the water and allow to cool completely before opening. Inside you will find the soft toffee filling.

Method

Whip the cream with the instant coffee and sugar until thick and smooth. Now spread the toffee over the base of the flan. Peel and halve the bananas lenghtways and lay them on the toffee. Finally spoon or pipe on the cream and lightly sprinkle over the freshly ground coffee.

*CAUTION

It is absolutely vital to top up the pan of boiling water frequently during the cooking of the cans. 3 hours is a long time and if they are allowed to boil dry the cans will explode causing a grave risk to life, limb and kitchen ceilings.

Hint - Banoffi is a marvellous “emergency” pudding once you have the toffee mixture in your store cupboard. We therefore suggest that you boil several cans at the same time as they keep unopened indefinitely.

Wild Beasts :: Smother (Domino)

2011-05-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

Wild Beasts’ latest is a sublime, alt-pop gem - but that doesn’t mean it will be loved. Like the album’s eclectic and wonderful forebears, Smother will beguile and alienate in similar measure – yet for those who persevere, this is undoubtedly one of 2011’s crowning achievements.

The third release from Kendal’s original (and, one suspects, only) art-rock quartet, Smother saw Wild Beasts relocate writing duties from the serenity of their Lake District homestead to the mania of East London – a fact of note simply because their sound has gone completely the other way. Compared to the falsetto-led clamour of debut album, Limbo, Panto, Smother is a radical change of pace – and even those awaiting a follow-up to 2009’s Mercury-nominated Two Dancers – an alt-pop fusion that brought down the tempo but retained a healthy dose of the outlandish - may be surprised at the delicacy of the delivery.

Smother is touching and majestic – a surprise of juxtaposition that is at once both plaintive and emotional, strident and libidinous. In no small part, these counterpoints arise from the dual vocals - Tom Fleming’s darker tenor is now increasingly prominent, and lends a sultry hue to Hayden Thorpe’s excitable falsetto. It grants the album an immersive range that lets the mood ebb and flow, seamlessly, to great effect. And this interplay extends to the freedom with which Wild Beasts shift pace - from the sparse, slow-burn of opener Lion’s Share to the sultry, Hercules and Love Affair-beats of Bed of Nails. It’s a bold and wonderful mix that captures the best of a band who are unafraid to explore their lyrical and musical motif – while being blessed with the subtlety to make styles blend with assurance.

In this invention, they’re of a set with Everything, Everything and Hot Chip – playful, intelligent music with soul enough to match its pop-hooks - though distinctiveness itself, rather than output, is the common ground here. Indeed, direct comparisons are fleeting – Deeper could nestle into Elbow’s next release (and Fleming could spot for Guy Garvey’s husk given half a chance), while the sparse piano of Invisible, and Plaything’s synth and drum-loop backdrop, look to James Blake (but, overlaid with the maudlin, Antony Hegarty-esque vocal, that makes it, also, undeniably unique). Such allusions, then, are more to compliment than compare – this is an album that draws on many strengths rather than many influences. Which of course begs the question: how, amidst such finery, could Smother possibly disappoint?

The issue is the complexity of the craft. Wild Beasts lay themselves open to accusations of an arty affectation, with dense composition and a sense their music is burdened by its own longing to transcend indie mores. For some, Smother will be dismissed with an anti-art-pop sneer and a concluding harrumph that says, simply, no thanks. Yet it would be a sad irony to let these conceptions stick when this album really sees them dispelled. While Limbo, Panto’s falsetto lustiness skirted the ridiculous, and Two Dancers took itself more seriously than certain tracks merited, this album sees Wild Beasts focus and refine. They temper some of their more outlandish instincts, but retain their characteristic breadth of style and influence and, crucially, a willingness to experiment. The result is a work of that rare alchemy: where the art is base, and the pop is gold.

Smother adds to an inventive and eclectic canon. While it stands apart, this is an evolution that will please both Wild Beasts’ early adopters and the many converts that will undoubtedly now follow from what is, quite simple, one of the stand out releases of the year.

Wild Beasts - Burning by khadunio

via musicOMH

Fight Like Apes :: The Body Of Christ And The Legs Of Tina Turner (Model Citizen)

2011-05-22T03:23:00.000-07:00

Fight Like Apes don’t do complexity. They do heart-on-sleeve, insouciant noise. They do in-your-face, bratty punk with titles like Ice Cream Apple Fuck, and sex-loaded lyrics about making cheese toasties. They do cascades of sludgey synth, dreamy pop refrains that swerve into expletive-laden vitriol, twisted B-movie samples that crescendo into aneurysm-inducing outros - but they don’t do complexity.

All of which is fantastic for album number one where a bucket of attitude is about all you need. As it was, 2009’s Fight Like Apes And The Mystery Of The Golden Medallion was a glorious slab of FLA’s self-styled “karate rock” (with a title inspired by an episode of the A-Team where Mr T coaches a gymnastics team, if you must know). And there was easily enough raw energy in FLA’s hedonistic chaos to carry off those initial 12 tracks – but to do it again? If ever there was to be a second album hump, you always had the feeling it would be here.

But if the fans may have been looking forwards to The Body Of Christ And The Legs Of Tina Turner with a weary trepidation, no one told Fight Like Apes. There’s a slower burn in places, not least on Thirsty and Katmandu where the production – led by Andy Gill, who sat behind Young Knives last effort – moves closer to Sky Larkin solidity over the typical FLA mess. But Jenny Kelly, and Waking up with Robocop, suggest they still know their way around a combustible chorus – their knack for combining punch and playfulness neatly showcased in the counterpoint between the gritted-teeth snarl of Jamie ‘Pockets’ Fox and the shrieking, bubblegum-Banshee wail of Mary-Kate “Maykay” Geraghty.

There’s still a feel that The Body of Christ… is leaning towards the more polished-punk vein of Los Campesinos! and Art Brut, but Poached Eggs, a frenzied bed of fuzz and bass overlaid with fist-punching, chanted outro, is uniquely FLA’s creation. And the hilarious cartoon violence of Maykay’s frequent lyrical tirades still punctuate the album in a way their peers wouldn’t dare try – conker attacks and genital mutilation litter the tracks, while FLA’s mantra could be summed up in the genius bridge of Pull Off Your Arms And Let’s Play In Your Blood: “My well-read friend informed me that I was a cunt. / Well, it's her own cunting problem / It's not my fucking problem I'm dumb”.

Beautiful.

It won’t be a surprise with that approach that The Body of Christ… has its weaker moments but it almost seems to miss the point to care. Fight Like Apes delight in their own cackhanded methods, and the odd sloppy sample or laughable lyric are merely grist to their deliberately anarchic mill. There is a slowing down here, and at times they don’t quite carry off the attitude that drives them, but there’s no second album hump – just another slice of hook-laden pop-punk that you’ll either love or hate. But frankly, take it or leave it – Fight Like Apes won’t bloody care.

Fight Like Apes Live at Tower Records Dublin by rubyworks

via musiOMH

Dark Dark Dark :: Wild Go (Melodic)

2011-05-22T03:15:00.000-07:00

Dark Dark Dark set out their stall in eclectic style with 2010’s Bright, Bright, Bright EP. The Minneapolis-based sextet had been knocking about across the water for several years and, for their European debut, they crammed a six-track appetiser with just about every alt-indie flavour they could find. The result was a promising, if confused, introduction.

It was half a haunting introspective – built on a simple blend of Nona Marie Invie’s bewitching, sultry vocal and a brooding, rumbling piano that produced the much-praised title track, Bright Bright Bright, and the superb Something For Myself. Yet the other half, seemingly belonging to the influence of banjo-playing co-writer Marshall LaCount, played out like an odd Gallic romp lost in its own sense of theatre: accordion and cello jostled uncomfortably to set the tone, and its jaunty instrumentation squirmed awkwardly amongst references to East European folk and flecks of Americana.

The follow up, Wild Go, does little to clarify and, instead, merely expands on the contradictions of the EP (the CD and vinyl release will both package the two together). While Invie’s melancholia certainly now drives the core of the album, Dark Dark Dark continue to skip along their own singular path with a gleeful ambivalence that ensures the stylistic lurches remain. Put it this way: were there to be a Being John Malkovich sequel, where the eponymous brain belongs to Regina Spektor, John Cusack is replaced by Tiny Vipers, and their cerebral interloping basically involves going to a Gogol Bordello acoustic show instead of starting a lesbian relationship with Cameron Diaz, the soundtrack would come out like this.

Picture these as an illustrative opening triptych: In Your Dreams is a bawdy tumble that assumes finger clicks, accordion and cello make for good listening – they don’t, and the result is an off-kilter mash. And yet, one track on, Daydreaming is thoughtful and stirring, with Invie landing her vocal somewhere between Vipers’ tremulous Jesy Fortino and Bat for Lashes’ spectrally self-assured Natasha Khan. Superb. Yet Heavy Heart sees LaCount move front and centre, and the sound shifts again with an Andrew Bird-esque instrumentation now perched precariously over an unhappy nest of folk and jazz. And you thought Charlie Kaufman was confusing.

Dark Dark Dark are best discovered in moments. The sparse beauty of Something For Myself, the epic mysticism of title track Wild Go, the fragile woe that seeps through Invie’s piano on Robert. Yet while there are flourishes throughout, there are also too many pretensions and, ultimately, the album is undone by an unwelcome abundance of unresolved ideas. This is one from which to pick and choose – in a way the production fails to do.

Mazes :: A Thousand Heys (FatCat)

2011-05-22T03:08:00.000-07:00

Mazes are the refined progeny of a collective sound that spans a generation and the great blue sea – and it’s this heritage that makes their full-length debut, A Thousand Heys, both an imperfect, but superb, album.

It’s arguably since the likes of Danny and the Dressmakers started banging together some homemade notes in late 70s Britain, that the low-fi rumbling of the DIY scene has been making its shambling way across the Atlantic. It’s done it more times than Simon Cowell – but while his mission to autotune the soul out of every living organism has seen him nearly collapse with a pop-schmultz–induced coronary, the sound, and ethos, of DIY retains a healthy heartbeat. And the juxtaposition of those two cultural poles shows exactly why – because the point here, genuinely, is that success isn’t based on the numbers and DIY revels in it. Indeed, there’s been neither a pay-day nor a hey-day for much of this decade-spanning output, perhaps aside from the feted era of Pavement and the US-alt scene of the early 90s, (and even those bands eschewed the mainstream for the most part). It’s a reflection not of failed genre, but from its chief protagonists accepting, and embracing, their own imperfections as symbiotic with their cause. And because that’s possibly the only defence against the relentless homogenising that comes form trying to make pop from culture, it’s the exact reason that this music can be both shambolic and invigorating in the same instant, and serve from slackjawed to awed in one muffled and crackly beat.

A Thousand Heys gives exactly that first impression - one of a band doing things gloriously on the hoof. It’s an affable shambles akin to stumbling through the door with readymeals two minutes before your parents arrive for tea. Affable because, for all its rough edges, a precocious energy yaps at you from every track, and the whole thing is so teeming with ideas, you’re never more than five second from a hook. Opener Go Betweens is a punchy case in point – two minutes of riffs and peppy vocals are over before the album draws breath, but they return in the similarly sunny Most Days, and again in Summer Hits. The upbeat feel echoes genre-mates Spectrals - both are so determinedly catchy that the messiness makes no difference. So what if the drums sound like a man with a box of cymbals falling down some slightly irregularly placed stairs? Neil Robinson is no Phil Collins but… well, there really is no ‘but’ there. Take it as a compliment that no one would ever apply the epithet “sloppy loveliness” to In The Air Tonight.

Mazes are low-fi cheerleaders. There’s no doubting their raw talent – it just seems they’re deliberately keeping it raw. Indeed, when their choices for recording location were uptown New York, or the refined haven of Sigur Rós’ Icelandic retreat, they opted for box number three: a boat moored in east London. Indie, much? Yet, you can’t imagine the warming fuzz of Cenetaph, or Boxing Clever’s Pavement / Strokes hybrid, having any of their character if a slick-haired producer had come within fifty miles of them. That open desire to protect the ideas from overengineering, that deliberately analogue-era choice, is what unites Mazes to the collective – for while comparisons to Male Bonding or Yuck seem to miss the gloomier overtones of either, they all share a musical joie-de-vivre. One that reminds us why this whole scene is still shuffling along.

Yet that also sets the bar. Engaging though A Thousand Heys is, eschewing tight production will always let in some weaker moments. Bowie Knives is insubstantial and dull, while Death House and Til I’m Dead are both classically low-fi without being classics – achieving a sumptuous dirge, but failing to find a focus for it. So, while Mazes bear comparisons to both their heritage and peers, any exalted comparisons have to come with an admission that they’re not they’re yet. Because is A Thousand Heys a seminal milestone for the genre? No. But is it the best thing that Mazes will write? No.

There’s two things this album makes clear: Mazes are a who band stay true to what they love, and they have a massive great box of ideas they’ve yet to unpack (see their forthcoming Record Store Day release of thirty offcuts as evidence there…) This promise is what makes Mazes superb. A Thousand Heys isn’t perfect, but start here - and see where they take you.

Illegitimate Love (live on BBC 6 Music) by Mazes

via musicOMH

Beardyman :: I Done A Album (Sunday Best)

2011-05-22T02:53:00.000-07:00

In one way, Beardyman’s debut longplayer, the imaginatively-titled I Done A Album, is a perfectly distilled version of the man. It’s a zoetrope for an entertainer whose scenes flicker between YouTube musical cookery, claiming the UK Beatbox Championship (twice), and a sold-out comedy slot at the Edinburgh Fringe. All of this is successfully crammed into his eclectic opener – but while it can all be glimpsed, it fails to deliver the true feel of such a maverick showman. Beardyman is a performer, and that seems to have proven an elusive essence to capture.

The big hurdle for a beatbox artist was always going to be delivering rounded tracks from what is typically scattered and quickfire pastiche. Not that it’s new ground – since Rahzel’s If Your Mother Only Knew, UK and US audiences have grown accustomed to their beats coming replete with melody. These days, everyone from Björk to Justin Timberlake is pulling in the likes of Rahzel and Shlomo and showing beatbox is more than just rhythm. The problem, it seems, is specific to Beardyman – that on record, when the impact of the performance is lost behind the production, it’s the quality of the composition and not the skill of the composer that matters.

Vampire Skank is the poster boy for the album’s woes. Half Adam-Sandler-esque skit (and funny for it), but half Cossack-dubstep, it’s a chimera too far. While impressive to witness Beardyman’s mocked-up trumpets and balalaikas, and actually mouthwatering for the opening bars of its grimy second half, it’s overly long and fails to evolve from these early ideas. Big Man, meanwhile, a wry dig at the precocious chav, finds the album’s other fault line – while there are rumbles of alluring skank-bass, and infrequent eruptions of melody on the chorus, Beardyman’s humour rubs aggressively against the track and, in the end, he can’t let it subside. The result is a song that disappears down its own, whiney, pikey crevasse.

The jokes don’t all fall flat though. Neat snippets set the tone, and maintain pace, and If Only’s dream of the mauling of Justin Bieber is just delicious. Elsewhere, you can’t help smiling with Beardyman’s sardonic despondency and this edge is a strength. Yet these elements won’t bear repeat listens and what’s funny will quickly turn to filler.

The real high points, then, are in the few tracks where the bluster takes second place and lets the music entertain. Twist Your Ankal is an effervescent dance round an Afrobeat savannah – catchy, still fun, and reaching effectively across genres. Oh! lets rap / grime stalwarts Foreign Beggars add their vocals, and so lets Beardyman return to support duties – the result is well struck and all parts benefit from being back in their natural setting. Smell The Vibe nods to the 90s, with jazz toots mixing over hip-hop loops – a little Goldie Lookin’ Chain, but still hook-laden. And across all three, what works is Beardyman letting his skill compliment the track rather than dominate it. While they still have his touch, they see him let loose his grip.

There’s plenty on I Done A Album to please Beardy-fans, while those newcomers to all things beatbox will be pleasantly surprised by the range of styles that he taps up. But those wanting a complete package – a sign that the genre is matured and ready to offer up the finished product – still have some waiting to do. For now, download the best, and watch the rest on YouTube.

Beardyman 'I Done A Album' sampler minimix (mixed by JFB) by Beardyman

Funeral For A Friend :: Welcome Home Armageddon (Pledge / Distiller)

2011-05-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

The fans of Funeral For A Friend don’t do lukewarm. They don’t do quiet appreciation. They’re a group whose solitary state of being is a kind of shrieking apoplexy in direct keeping to the music they love. Where it’s a given that a new album by their Welsh post-hardcore idols should immediately spark a hysterical stampede to HMV in the manner of the rage-filled zombies of 28 Weeks Later, storming over a field trying to eat Robert Carlyle’s kids.

So, when 2007’s Tales Don’t Tell Themselves failed to charm these same fans with its tales of a lonely fisherman, and follow-up, Memory and Humanity, landed to no more than muffled murmurs of discontent about a perceived change in direction towards stadium-friendly crowd-rock, it would have been understandable if Matt Davies and co had exchanged a few nervous glances about their turn to the soft, and whether it was losing them their previously diehard fanbase.

So it was that last year’s Young and Defenceless EP, a limited release only available through charity site Pledge Music, was widely taken as conscious effort to reconnect with the disillusioned with a shift back to their emo-metal roots and a distinctive return of their post-hardcore chug. And hot on its heels, new release Welcome Home Armageddon is once again causing brays of undead fervour amongst the FFAF-faithful. But those expecting a return to the days of Casually Dressed will be left wanting.

Armageddon is definitely a harking back – but not to first-album glories. Instead it finds itself mired in a non-specific point in mid-noughties metal and, while there’s proficiency in its recreation, FFAF seem to have too vague a view of this new direction for anything here to be on a par with Juneau, or Roses For The Dead.

Where it works, as on the punky Aftertaste, all brattish holler and incendiary riff, or in the atavism of Front Row Seats To The End Of The World, a glorious mix of Dillinger Escape Plan’s rawness and the type of loaded choruses beloved of Alexisonfire, there’s a potent tension between untrammelled, hardcore energy and a sound that’s both tightly-bound and highly crafted.

Yet FFAF struggle to retain this balance. Too often, Welcome Home Armageddon feels over-designed, and smoothed-out to the point of blandness. Sixteen feels flat like a Fall Out Boy B-side; Man Alive is inoffensive filler; while Owls (Are Watching) veers between moments of chunky, riff-filled wonderment to insipid meandering. There’s still much to like – but almost zero to excite.

What Welcome Home Armageddon achieves is a recovery of the sculpted aggression beloved of their fans. But Funeral For A Friend fail to turn this into anything bold or new. And this is the bigger risk – because much as the diehards idolise the familiar, and long for an endless respawning of the band they first adored, that early work was captivating for being new. Even its perfect facsimile will pale by repetition. Armageddon is a sop to the disaffected fans of FFAF’s pomp, and in seeking to recapture their ardour tries too hard to pander to their needs. And from the few tracks that evidence what could have been, that’s a clear shame.

Funeral For A Friend - Sixteen by goodfightent

Hercules and Love Affair :: Blue Songs (Moshi Moshi)

2011-05-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

Some bands you just can’t help but like. Whether it’s their style, their music, or the desperate shagability of the lead singer, some groups just strike a chord. With Hercules and Love Affair, it’s the untrammelled joy of wildly esoteric personal histories meeting musical passion. Replete with transsexual vocalists and a utopian love of New York disco, the band are an evolving blend of house and slow-funk beats, Hawaiian lesbians and B-Boys, fronted by the DJ and singer Andrew Butler - a man whose own career started in a Denver leather bar under the watchful gaze of a hostess named (what else?) Chocolate Thunder Pussy.

Need we say more?

Well, yes. Hercules’ first album was a seminal homage to the mid 70s-80s disco scene, revived and reworked by Butler with the counter-intuitive, but utterly wonderful, injection of Antony Hegarty’s alluringly maudlin vocal. Together, they evoked the pulse and throb of the once vibrant disco movement before its reputation and growth were curbed by the explosion of AIDS, and the long shadow it has cast ever since. Lead single, Blind, was an effervescent but poignant slab of modern disco that, on release, encapsulated the excitement of the Hercules project and, now, serves as just one more reason to dribble excitedly at Butler and co’s new release, Blue Songs.

Yet for album number two, Hegarty has moved on. In his place are Venezuelan Aereat Negrot, the wonderful neo-Sylvester pipings of Shaun Wright and, perhaps surprisingly, Kele Okereke – proving just how far he’s travelled on his indie-dance journey by landing one of the album’s stand out tracks in Step Up. The band themselves have also moved on – with Moshi Moshi now on release duties. And the sound?

Blue Songs retains Butlers’ thirst for the revival – in once more re-awakening the skittish beats, loops and drive of disco on the Patrick Cowley-esque Falling, the Gamble and Huff strings of Painted Eyes, or the late-80s house of upcoming single, My House. Butler himself references Brian Eno, and the more ethereal strands of Ultramarine, in his music and, here too, the album picks apart its technical reference points with an impressive relish. But it’s clear that the album is a widening of the canvas. There’s a lot of space given to slower tracks – the meandering Blue Song, and the ponderous Boy Blue (originally written by a 15-year old Butler in dedication to shaved-head Pope-basher Sinead O’Connor). These are well delivered, and display a solidity that lends the essential darker hues to disco’s oft-overly glitzy palette – but while the down-beats anchor the album, they also lend a certain schizophrenia. Blue Songs sticks to its genre, but seems intent on exploring the whole of it, and begins, at times, to feel a little lost. Each track is perfectly formed, and of themselves work well – but the album does feel like a DJ picking favourite tracks from an exhaustive, but exhaustingly large, selection.

Hercules have furthered their ambitions on Blue Songs, drawing more of the late-great disco scene into a modern vehicle. Yet, it’s an album that does many things well, but nothing to perfection. Butler has the feel of a collector and, over time, his work will either seem more complete, or more disparate. But his passion to live out what he loves is clear, and that you just can’t help but like.

Hercules & Love Affair - Blue Songs by moshi moshi music

30 Seconds To Mars :: Brighton Centre :: 25/11/2010

2011-05-21T12:18:00.000-07:00

At the height of the Beatles’ fame, John Lennon would threaten to leave the stage, so frustrated was he that the music couldn’t be heard above the screaming girls. It’s hard to believe that 30 Seconds To Mars’ frontman Jared Leto – the former teen heartthrob once named in People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People – would ever share Lennon’s angst. Leto clearly adores the hormone-addled adoration of “the Echelon” – the legion shrieking teens that slavishly promote the benign cult of TSTM.

“Jared! I’ll have your babies! Jared!” they holler incessantly through tonight’s show, striving throughout to outdo each other’s progeny-yielding promises. But instead of cowering away on a distant stage, safely ensconced from his newly-pubescent fans, Leto actively encourages contact – popping up more than once mid-crowd, and then inviting a whole bunch of bleary-eyed teens onstage for the closing number. It was the equivalent of Wacko Jacko’s Jesus moment at the Brits – but with Leto clearly less pure, and cunningly waiting until his followers were over the legal age of consent.

The slag.

But this is also 30 Seconds To Mars playing to their strengths. Leto is their core asset for more than just the poster-boy looks. Their sound is built on his radio-friendly wail – full of husky down-notes, quasi-angst and a seething top-end – and his efforts as frontman to heat up a crowd, especially one chilled by the arctic weather and cooled by the apathy of an overly large seated section, were tireless.

In the stronger tracks – the swirling synth menace of Night Of The Hunter, the plaintive, hollered grind of From Yesterday – Leto yields large chunks of each to the baying, moshing crowd. It’s a shame in parts, admittedly, as his trademark chorus peaks were less than faithfully replicated by the throng’s basic monotone. But it’s symptomatic of TSTM’s anthemic appeal that so much of the setlist worked as a huge singalong. However, therein lies the rub.

This is the same formula that has dredged Biffy Clyro from the hinterland, but also similar to the ethos that has streamlined the once effervescent edges of Kings of Leon. An approach to rock that fits in a 30-seconds iTunes preview; that works best at a stag-do mosh; that is at its best when it can’t be heard above the screaming girls.

via musicOMH.com

30 Seconds To Mars - This Is War by CTD7

Little Noise Sessions : Union Chapel, Islington : 17/11/10

2011-05-18T15:48:00.000-07:00

You can’t not like the Little Noise Sessions, the acoustic mini-festival that is this year celebrating its fifth birthday in the hallowed halls of Islington’s Union Chapel. Firstly, it’s presented for the admirable cause of learning disability group Mencap – as all of tonight’s performing artists dutifully noted – and you’d surely have to be a total bounder to slur such a fine cause with musical cynicism. But secondly, it’s so chock full of wonderful bands and emerging talent that only the thoroughly tasteless could emerge unsated. So then, tasteless bounders, walk away – the rest, read on.

Joe Worricker is first to emerge from the Chapel’s draughty back rooms (draughty as the UC is still very much a church, with its reverential chill intact, as well as its famous alcohol ban - enforced by polite, if dispiritingly ubiquitous, laminated notices). Worricker is at the point where self-effacing shyness meets glitter-faced charisma – an awkward juncture that suggests the 21-year old isn’t quite sure where his career is leading yet. But the indecision is buried in an enviable, jazzy husk of a voice – an Antony and the Johnsons rumble that he takes in the direction of recent Elbow, though with a more playful tone. Quite how you fit these pieces together is a puzzle that Worricker still needs to work on, but it will be good to see the completed picture.

Summer Camp meanwhile have never had trouble deciding on their musical persona. Indeed, they perch so artfully in the unlikely confluence of beauty and the geek, of ramshackle low-fi and high sheen perfection, that theirs could only be a well-crafted vision. The music is possessed of a rare and intimate allure: approachable in its simple synth beats and twee lyrical vignettes, personified in the acoustic geek-chic of folkster Jeremy Warmsley (replete with howling-wolf tees and 70s dad specs); but unattainable in the sultry mystique of Elizabeth Sankey, whose vocal is at once soft and brave, inviting yet distant. In each of Summer Camp’s beautifully told histories, Warmsley is the warmth of memory and Sankey its silken-shimmered haze. Simplified for Little Noise from their full-band summer shows to just an acoustic duo, this pair were electrifying in their stripped down form. Let’s hope for more.

If the backstory of St. Saviour and Claire Maguire were told in the style of the X Factor, these two characters would be at the same, R Kelly-backed turning point in their fledgling careers. But in fact, they really have as much in common as Cheryl Cole and Wagner. Filling out the middle of the bill, each is a much-feted chanteuse starting out on a promising solo career. And while St. Saviour, aka Becky Jones, has tasted the larger stage as the singer for dance outfit Groove Armada, and previously in electro-troupe the RGB’s, Maguire is no stranger to the spotlight either as she’s already being touted as the “sound of 2011” (by some ingenious musical seer at the BBC who will, by the time 2011 actually comes around, no doubt have moved on to laud the undoubted, epoch-shattering talent of One Direction). So far, so similar. But where St Saviour has the stage presence of an impassioned pulsing heartbeat – with a brassy, wild and emotive voice to match – Maguire is an insipid flatline. There no doubting the strength of her voice – full, bold and determined – but there’s nothing heartfelt about the performance and, without the vitality to back up her immense pipes, she just sounds overblown. Don’t write her off – on record there’s much to excite – but on this performance she’s not there yet. The “sound of November 2010”, she ain't.

Hurts, meanwhile, are most definitely “there”. Right there, right now. While they’ve seemingly got nothing on Claire Maguire, having only banked a measly fourth place in the BBC’s “Sound of 2010” (is there any point carrying on when such a vital career barometer has written you off? They predicted Little Boots after all...), this year has actually served them well with the release of debut album Happiness and a burgeoning reputation as one of the only worthwhile synth bands to emerge from the seemingly endless new wave rehash. In fact, the only real argument in the “against” camp is Hurts’ fondness for style over substance – their affection for slick-back hair and white scarves; the studied solemnity of their album sleeve and, well, their every single photo shoot; their apparent love of 80s emotional clichés… It’s a concept they do little to dispel with their replacement for singer Adam Anderson, who tonight is off after a piano-lifting injury (seriously…). In his place comes a beautiful young waif whose sole purpose is to sit centre-stage, heartbroken and motionless, and pluck petals from a bunch of pristeen white roses. Make of that what you will, but know this: this evening, in the echoing shadows of the Union Chapel, during the iced falsetto of Wonderful Life, with its gloomy depths and Ultravox peaks, or in the climactic despair of Blood, Tears and Gold, it was craftsmanship. Whether creatively masterful, or pretentiously piffling, just for tonight it was bloody wonderful.

Hurts:

Hurts: Devotion

Summer Camp:

Summer Camp

Broken Records : The Hope, Brighton (10/11/10)

2011-05-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

“Haven’t you all got work tomorrow?” cries Broken Records’ frontman Jamie Sutherland, drily berating the mid-week crowd at Brighton’s The Hope with a trademark Edinburgh twang. “Fuck it!” comes the reply, and both sides reward themselves by launching into another rollicking, folk-rock ceilidh.

From the off, this is a gig drenched in the frenetic. The Edinburgh six-piece (reduced after cellist Arne Kolb left in the summer) are crammed on a tiny stage, but refusing to be contained: their blend of celtic folk, Balkan-knees-up and Killers-tinged epochal rock looming huge in the cramped quarters. Broken Records are layer on layer of impulsive, animated indie whose songs span an impressive arc from Slow Parade’s Jeff Buckley-esque, low-burn angst to the rousing, stadium-filler pomp of A Darkness Rises Up. Somewhere in between they touch on the edgy pop of latterday the Cure in early single If the News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It. And both tracks have more than a tinge of a certain Canadian troupe…

“You hear all the usual bollocks about sounding like Arcade Fire,” explains Sutherland, speaking to musicOMH before the show. “We were hyped up when we first came out a couple of years ago. We just wanted to write as clear and concise pop songs as we could.”

And if you don’t hear the pop in their mix, you do hear that clarity of purpose – especially when performing live. “We don’t like to fanny about,” he grins. “You get a more immediate reaction to the faster tunes, and we just want to build a good show.”

And that immediacy is perfect for The Hope’s tinderbox confines. Broken Records are raw but refined, wielding aggression without brutishness and landing each moment with a fierce lightness of touch. “There’s nothing but love and lager on this stage,” they holler, fittingly, after the superb Nearly Home, a perfect blend of soaring strings and Sutherland’s despairingly bleak lyrics.

Their performance is tempestuous, building every moment to crescendo but holding at the peak – a feat built through counterpoint; through the clash of cacophonous drums and plaintive violin; through sonorous bass and falsetto vocal. It’s these moments, where they blend of so many parts, that earn the Arcade Fire references. And it there’s more that separates them than unites, they certainly share that ability to make a ‘big’ sound. But even on the quieter moments, there’s a grandness. In the taut memories evoked in The Motorcycle Boy Reigns, Sutherland matches the gravelly showmanship of Brandon Flowers – but switching Flowers’ looming Nevada vistas for windswept, heathered moors.

But in that very scale comes the kicker. Because Broken Records, for all their flattering comparisons, and despite the undoubted ability in a live show, are two records in and still yet to command their own big stage. The album’s have had mixed reviews and they’ve played second fiddle to some big-name 4AD label mates but, as Sutherland himself acknowledges, being warm-up for the National isn’t enough for a band of this ambition. “No one expects anything. You play half an hour, watch the headliner, and go get drunk.”

But anyone watching this kind of show most definitely will expect. It’s time Broken Records began to deliver.

Agnes Obel : Philharmonics (PIAS)

2011-05-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

Time is cruel to beauty. Much that is lovely will falter, and the greater its former splendour the clearer its decline. The wilting of a flower. The crumbling of once-great architecture. Madonna. And so it is with music. Some examples?

In 1994, Enigma’s Return to Innocence seemed like a soul-affirming reach into our collective inner mystic. Today, it’s a cringe-worthy turd of a song with all the mysticism of Derek Acorah. And in 2006, our collective hearts beat with the twinkled ache of Jose Gonzales’ soft-hewn meanderings. Yet, what once was life-affirming is now as inspiring as the beige waiting-room in a hospice for synesthetes. It’s the curse of any song with a vein of emotion to age badly, and few mature unhexed. It’s like reading an old diary - every entry of heartbreak once meant so much, but now they only make you wince at the bare sentimentality. Does anyone still listen to Damien Rice without wishing he’d just cheer up? Really? You do? Go write in your diary…

So what future for Agnes Obel? The Copenhagen-born songbird is best known for soundtracking a corporate ad campaign (Deutsche Telekom) and going cross-genre by doing a heartfelt reworking of a well-known hit (John Cale’s I Keep A Close Watch). So far, so Gonzales. And her debut album, Philharmonics, is full of exactly that emotive beauty that could be so easily ravaged by that cynical passing of time. Yet are all so easily flawed?

Philharmonics is a sparse and haunting first listen. Obel sings with a hushed and tender grace that waxes wistful and serene over yearning cello, harp, and piano vignettes. She’s a fey siren, with a dusky, near-whispered vocal that speaks to Ane Brun or Eva Cassidy. And all three accentuate the voice with pared, subtle arrangements that are all the more engaging in their simplicity.

Yet Obel is more evocative, more cinematic, than these. The voice has a broader range, touching on the sass of Karen Elson in the upbeat Beast; and the spectral edge of Imogen Heap in the harmonic refrains of Avenue. And Brother Sparrow, and title track Philharmonics, have a sense of backstory akin to John Grant in his recent Queen of Denmark. Obel’s work is more than a string of dulcet moments because the vocal is only part of a theme – of a motif echoed in the well-chosen instrumentation, from the playful harp to the portents and rumbles of her much loved piano. In her own words: “I don’t see myself as a singer that plays piano. The piano and the singing are two equal things to me - maybe not inseparable but very connected. You can say they are like two equal voices”. In this, Philharmonics has the sense of craft you find with Patrick Watson – albeit more sombre for its touching, unfussy structures.

So how will it age? Philharmonics is certainly beautiful. Return listens reveal more of Obel’s rich imagery and faultless voice, and if it lures you in it will always tempt you back. The same, in truth, will be true of Gonzales and Rice, and even that old diary won’t be thrown away. Any moment of beauty can seem at odds with the present, but they all have something timeless. There are enough of those moments on Philharmonics to ensure that time will treat it well.

6/10

Agnes Obel "Philharmonics" Album Teaser by PIASGermany

Violens : Amoral (Static Recital)

2010-11-20T09:43:00.000-08:00

How to explain Violens? Since their eponymous teaser EP in late 2008, The New York quartet have been hailed as everything from the spawn of '60s psychedelia, to the illicit sons of new wave - a complex genealogy encompassing all from The Zombies to Depeche Mode, by way of Orange Juice and New Order. Their long-gestated debut album, Amoral, does little to narrow the potential heritage, but does offer a glimpse of their inheritance: the proto-emo, synth-fed bombast of the mid-'80s English indie regency. It's a lineage of great riches, but is this a new generation's proud first born, or the runt of an illegitimate litter?

Along with fellow east-coasters Yeasayer and The Drums, the Big Apple's output has, in recent months, made more than a few nods to mid-'80s England. But unlike Violens, their peers haven't sought to recreate the era - they've fished artfully in its pools, landing the warmth and drama of its electronics and plaintive vocals, but also casting the net wider both to world music and the more recent, local noise of The Strokes et al. Amoral is more beholden to its forebears. But this is a record that pays homage with a plucky insouciance - with a cocksure twist that suggests Violens are more than happy to step forwards as unabashed throwbacks.

The most accomplished moments show why. The band's first single, Acid Reign, strides in with a hammered bass riff, potent and haughty, a loose jangle of guitar flecked at the edges, before giving way to Jorge Elbrecht's smooth-cut vocal - a Haircut 100-esque sheen that post-punk devotees will cream their skinny jeans over. It's a track with the dark emotion of New Order's Blue Monday, but leaning upbeat - all held tight by that inch-perfect Nick Heyward-like croon. This is the standout track, and little else has its edge - though others have their strengths. It Couldn't Be Perceived keeps the pace, and throws in twinkling guitar riffs and duelling synth counterpoints that capture the more epic moments of Simple Minds. And there's more than a little of Jim Kerr in the slow-burn of Until It's Unlit - a lascivious writhe of a track that evokes the mix of grandstand and gloom of the Scot's own best moments.

But while Elbrecht and co are convincing in bursts, Amoral can seem too polished. The sound is pristine where it should be dirty, bright where there should be shadow. The opening tracks are catchy but hollowed out, at times sitting unconvincingly between Prefab Sprout and The Lightning Seeds. Violent Sensation Descends is a Hammond-organ slip into pyschedelia - thankfully anomalous with its stuttering mix of Beach Boys and The Monkees.

Violens are more than capable of a bolder sound - Another Strike Restrained is superb, echoing the arching despondency of Depeche Mode's Precious, but ramping it up with layers of frenetic bass and desperate synth. But there are too many moments where they seem a soft touch. While Violens draw from strong influences, they capture their potency only fleetingly. Amoral is a worthwhile listen, with stand out tracks that hold much promise. As yet, though, there's too much that leaves you, like that promise, unfulfilled.

via musicOMH.com

Aias : A La Piscina (Captured Tracks)

2010-11-20T09:31:00.000-08:00

Must not mention Eurovision. Must not mention Eurotrash. Must not make condescending references to continental pop culture just because an album from the mainland pokes its perky little head above the endless wave of synth-gorged UK / US indie.

So what if Aias sound a little twee against the draconian fuzz of contemporary indie? There's something fresh about the classic - the C86 lo-fi, and the heart-on-sleeve, piping vocals of Gaia Bihr. So what if a Barcelona threesome want to sing in their native Catalan? Ditching English worked for Sigur Rós (if not necessarily for Jónsi) and even Celine Dion slips into French occasionally (there are though, as might be clear, few other trailblazers to reference). So what if much of A La Piscina would be a perfect backing track for the ridiculous, drawling franglais of Antoine de Caunes? The kind of ditsy europop that plays while he's cheekily describing esoteric Dutch erotica in the midst of a posse of scantily clad models who, gyrating awkwardly to its bouncy continental tempo, also rhythmically point phallic objects at Jean Paul Gaultier? (Damn, that would be Eurotrash sneaking in... But why not? It sounds lovely...)

Aias do have form. Their twinkling pop bursts (no track comes in over three minutes) might be jarringly at odds with much of the Anglo-American post-punk world, but they do slip comfortably in with another of 2010's niche indie offerings. A La Piscina is garage pop very much born of the Best Coast school - lollipop-punk that's doled out in adrenal shots of toe-tapping, guitar fuzz with a hazy, summery vocal. The unfussy bass and hi-hat beat of La Truita, and the simple low-fi fuzz of Una Setmana Sincera evoke The Vivian Girls while the floating naivety of the vocal - perfectly tinged with playful ire - brings both their peers to the fore: echoes of Cassie Ramone and Bethany Cosentino abound throughout. And in the sludgier moments, like the yearning Bali, and the thoughtful, down-tempo meanderings of Dues Pedres, there are twinges of the more straightline indie of Crystal Stilts or The Pains of Being Pure At Heart.

But don't be fooled. Aias are unconcerned with transposing their native sound into any other musical locale or trend. A La Piscina is an album very much born of its setting - both Moto and Quan Tornis Demà conjure images of Barcelona (though contradictorily, one likens it to a racetrack while the other bemoans the slowness of the underground...) And the breezy warmth of Mon Inventant's trumpets, and the unremitting cheeriness of its vocals, could only belong to a Catalan summer. Yet to admire the album's indigenous charm is not to avoid its failings. Aias fail to capture the harder edges that frame the genre's better offerings - the rawness of Dum Dum Girls; the groundswell of noise that always seems ready to burst from Best Coast. For all their low-fi loveability, these bands always effect a sneering punk undertow that ramps up the "garage", and damps down the "pop". Aias have the tunes, but not quite the grit, to be anything more than likeable.

via musicOMH.com

Bjørn Torske : Kokning (Smalltown Supersound)

2010-11-13T15:53:00.000-08:00

Bjørn Torske is the Lord Lucan of electronica: a quirky experimentalist with a habitual disappearing act. Way back in 2001, Norway’s Torske, a stalwart of the ‘90s techno / acid-house scene and regular with cult Dutch outfit Djax-Up-Beats, seemed to be on the up. He released second LP, Trøbbel, and spent the next year with fellow Bergensere Röyksopp, touring on the back of their seminal Melody A.M and remixing the then-ubiquitous Eple. But then… silence.

It was six years until the dreamy proto-dubstep of his next full length, Feil Knapp, a wave of Nordic bliss that saw Torske segue from house beats into a chilled electronica. The album seemed to land neatly on a burgeoning electro-zeitgeist, and marked his link-up with current label Smalltown Supersound. Yet it also marked the start of another three year hiatus – a period that Supersound politely, if with some frustration, refer to as Torske being in “his cave”, and one that is only now ending with upcoming release Kokning.

Despite the break, Torske’s motif remains intact: a base hewn from soft struck house and patterned electronica, with eclectic samples and techno-fills carved lovingly into the mix. Upbeat and lilting, Kokning bears little resemblance to the pulsing rush of Torske’s 90s heritage, or indeed the adrenal, space-disco frenetics of label-mates Lindstrøm and KXP. It’s an album to fall into, blissed-out and wide-eyed – rather than one ever likely to fill a Scandinavian dancefloor.

Indeed, title-track Kokning is a lulled, beatific opener that is less thumping house anthem, and more Music To Be Massaged By: the type of lilting ephemera that could slip any second into whale song or chirruping birds (and must be heard while prostrate and kneeded by an oily Swede).

Yet while a similarly slumbered warmth recurs on Gullfjellet (or The Goldmountain, for any non-Norwegians out there), Torske has only a dalliance with the serene. The remainder seeks a greater effervescence, and insistent bass dubs, and trilly synth hooks, bubble out of every pore. Bergensere is pure disco, lining its dirty, danceable riffs with hand claps and space-age bleeps; Bruggesjam winds casiotone riffs into a jaunty electro-ditty; and Langt Fra Afrika bounces samples across a bed of jungling bongos.

Kokning is clearly an album of diverse influences – its name, as a clue, means scavenging: Nordic style – and Torske has the knack of infusing them all with an infectious, danceable charisma. But it also has the feel of sculptured scrap, like one of those creations of car parts and chainsaws that hopeful artists occasionally weld together in metallic defiance of the usual media. The samples are solid, the joins are tight, it’s attractive in its engineering – but you wouldn’t want it in your front room. Too often Torske is caught in the crafting of a sound: reworking it until he’s eked every toe-tapping angle from it. It’s a diligence that errs on numbing, that puts in too-rigid an order a creativity that would seem much more exciting in its random, exalted expression. As a result, Kokning, sadly, is underwhelming.

via musicOMH.com

The Great Escape, 2010 :: Various Venues, Brighton :: Day 1

2010-05-28T04:04:00.001-07:00

You need luck at The Great Escape: Blighty's answer to SXSW that this year celebrates its fifth anniversary on the eclectic shores of Brighton. To find the next big thing in a Sussex basement take a dose of serendipity. To be the next big thing, discovered by a salivating A&R rat in a beachside bordello, needs a fist-sized enema of kismet. But for the fortuitous few, TGE is a beatific three-day stumble round 30 packed out venues, soaking up 350 of the next generation in a blissful, sun-dappled stroll through the planet’s musical finery.

Of course, if you left your rabbit’s foot at home, there’s nothing for you but a damp weekend with nudey, vegan cyclists: hordes of which also descend on Brighton’s beaches for the World Naked Bike Ride. So some advice: if you’re luck-averse and want to avoid the saggy nudists peddling their body-painted muftis in the cause of eco-justice then stay home and read on. We’ve got the all the good bits right here…

And so to Day 1, swinging into life with Kid Bombardos, whose Strokes-ian indie brought some New York pep to the end of Brighton Pier. A neat if downbeat indie troupe, they fought valiantly with the fairground outside - raging techno creeping in to form an unfortunate Julian-Casablancas / 808-State mashup. Bizarre.

No less bewildering is the first of The Great Escape’s info-texts. “Violent Soho at the Doughnut!” it suggests, unnervingly. But spying a vaguely ring-shaped statuette across the beach, I take my chances and stumble sea-ward to find the first of TGE’s street-gigs in full flow. Violent Soho turn out to be a hairy Australian contingent trying to kick-start a 1995-esque metal revival. Afraid not boys.

Across town, and preferring classical soul to slack-jawed hair rock, Marques Toliver is treating an enraptured few to street gig number two. Lightly struck strings and soaring, emotive vocals grant New York’s Toliver a dignity rarely sought midst the brattishness of post punk. A TV On The Radio alumnus and sometime session man for Bat For Lashes and Grizzly Bear, the East-coast journeyman is an act of heartfelt crescendo, bittersweet lyrics and lone violin – segued together to grant a grandness of emotion to our own soft humanity. Superb.

Of a less sublime cut, Hungry Kids of Hungary take the baton for the early evening crowd at Jam: Morning-Runner-esque indie whose half-cut hooks do little to lift the dirge. Surprisingly well received, though.

No such reception at perennial rock-slum Hector’s House, where Canadian alt-rockers Final Flash lay out their anthemic indie to sparse applause. The five-piece deliver big, rollicking guitar numbers with a bluesy tinge and Verve-esque vocal that’s never bereft of a riff or hook but ends up defiantly retrograde. It never quite catches the crowd who are more taken with the singer’s oblique accent. (He is, he admits, a “French fuck”…)

For the lovers of tomorrow, then, some respite back at Audio where Cambridgeshire psych-popsters Fenech Soler launch onstage with a crystal-etched, indie-rave aplomb that’s instant proof of their ability to command both the Radio 1 Weekend Anthem and the love of a surging festival crowd. Theirs is a synth-soaked swerve borne of 90’s dancefloors, Noughties’ nu-rave and a choppy, mashed-up ethic that has the “Levi’s Ones to Watch” crowd literally begging for more.

So much so, in fact, that their gig runs way over and headliners These New Puritans are practically forced on-stage and soundchecking before FS are through. And after the glitzy sequin-pop beats of the King’s Cliffe boys, the syncopated gloom of Southend’s post-punk revivalists descends like an acrid shadow, twisting their malevolent beats like a leather-gloved hand on the neck of a frail, baying crowd. TNP’s presence is a skronked-out menace: building layers of complementary dischord, groaning synth, and drum-backed portent under a fearsome spoken-vocal. Best moment? Twin brothers Jack and George, mirrored at drums across the stage, stoking a beat of increasing rage as the basement crowd writhed, cult-like, beneath. Blade-like genius.

The Great Escape 2010 :: Various Venues, Brighton :: Day 2

2010-05-28T04:02:00.000-07:00

Tinnitus seems too gentle a word for the rampaging aural hangover that wakes us on Day 2. Luckily, it’s a gentle start back at Horatio’s Bar where the celtic warblings of Helsinki quartet Vük ease the swelling ears. It’s a workable pastiche of sombre pump organ and synthy trills with a drum and autoharp nest to lend moments of urgent mysticism. Sadly, most parts labour in their own sobriety (and the polo-necked beatnik on the harp looks more school janitor than anguished poet). Hit and miss.

Quite a contrast then to the effervescent post-pop at the beachside Fortune of War, where Everything Everything host a short-but-sweet first showing. Infectious as ever.

Eschewing the hectic, pop sensibilities of their post-punk peers, Polish trio Kamp! pick out a synth-led drama laden with tasty loops and hooky, Bowie-esque vocals. They might struggle to pack an album with their Eastern-European gloom-riffery, but their half hour showing at Brighton’s Coalition was a promising peek.

Following onstage was the unbridled smarm of Othello Woolf, a crooning new-soul wannabe who struts out his queasy Club-Tropicana funk-pop with an admittedly well-drilled punch – but layered with an unwarranted cocksureness that makes you want to land a well drilled punch on his Simon-Le-Bon-adoring kisser. Not for me.

At literally the other end of the ego spectrum is the homebrew sparkle of New York’s Darwin Deez – once ripped off by Coldplay but now sloping about the Digital stage to low-fi indie-rock that’s toe-tappingly rhythmic and packed with hooks for all its makeshift simplicity. Between tracks come divinely half-cut, synchronised dance routines, worked to a ragbag collection of 80’s pop gems and played out with aplomb to rapturous cheers. Musically, the allusions to the Strokes are plentiful with a classic East-coast drone leading out the sound. But for Deez, it’s glazed in a wonderful daftness that’s far removed from the honed sheen of Casablancas et al. Sonically goofy but unmistakably lovable, DD exude a slacked out twinkle that will carve them a cult-like fanbase in every town they play.

London’s electro-soul trio Chew Lips, meanwhile, slither clean-cut synth loops over a growling, lounge-act class that’s best heard within five millimetres of a twenty foot amp. Fronting the fusion is the prowling Tigs – a potent East-London tigress that claws and arches over the stage with a sassy Karen O vocal that she belts, relentless, into one pulsing, surging, dirty-disco peak after another. “How are you Brighton?” she purrs, sequins sparkling in the strobe, one hand clutching her gin as the other feels her own heart: beating to the closing, writhing outro of the peerless Salt Air. Glorious.

The Great Escape 2010 :: Various Venues, Brighton :: Day 3

2010-05-28T03:56:00.000-07:00

We can hear The Great Escape planners cackling as we emerge, bludgeoned by lack of rest, for the preternaturally early start of Day 3. And so, before the sun has even scorched away the morning mist, we’re at Queens for the Generator showcase – a rag-tag assortment of delights from the UK regions designed to break London’s assumed strangehold on new talent. I’m not sure anyone else shares the regions’ concern, but nonetheless there’s a good crowd for alt-blues sextet Detroit Social Club: a reasonable troupe that trawled the annals of trad-rock and found a few effecting hooks to dust off. Sadly, they also find its penchant for overly long jams and today hit too few peaks. Passable.

Jackie Oates lines up next for a folk-by-numbers stroll into a cul-de-sac not often scoured at TGE: tradition. “Day dreaming is much better than real life,” she whispers hopefully, Shruti Box in her lap, and vague notions of Fairport Convention flitting through her mind. But in Oates’ imaginings, flair and flourish come second to ye olde simplicity. Sweet but dull.

In the awkward loft-space at Life, surely the most poorly realised gig space in the world, French indie also-rans Revolver sum up the mood of the crushed and sweating crowd with a wonderfully Parisian ambivalence. “’Elloo, we’re very ‘appee to be ‘ere,” they assure us, smiling, but sounding for all the world as if our presence is as unwelcome as a bunch of fiercely inserted, onion-sized anal beads. Theirs is a well-worn blend of upbeat, skippy Kooks and a messy Libs-jangle that, apparently, earned them a Franco-hit across the water. I’d be surprised if they had another.

A hop and a gleeful jump down the prom and we’re back at Coalition to catch the tail end of Katzenjammer, a raucous Norwegian femme-quartet that do Gogol Bordello-esque folk-rock with an enormous balalaika and a peerless wail that is, presumably, the eponymous sound of cats being, quite literally, jammed. Frenetic.

Aussie quartet Birds of Tokyo have caused few flutters since winging northwards from Perth with their straight-cut rock – but they might just snaffle the weekend’s award for oddest line-up: seemingly sporting a moustachioed Dominic Diamond on guitar, that awkwardly straight-laced keyboardist kid from School of Rock – tanktop, glasses, and charisma-controlling arse-rod all present and correct – and a singer whose twitching, wild-eyed portrayal of Trainspotting’s Spud was more endearing than a limply half-rock vocal that was easily lost in a frustratingly poor mix. To our Antipodean cousins, ‘Birds are a musical Moses that will lead Oz-rock from its Silverchair-ravaged wilderness. On the strength of this showing, I’d stick with Kylie.

Juxtaposing the normally synth-filled basement at Audio with some belt-and-braces, honest-to-goodness indie, Sunderland five-piece Frankie & The Heartstrings strut and posture about the cramped Levi’s stage with a jangling, neo-Teddy Boy swagger that you’ll love and loathe in equal measure. “Funny-bunny shows these, aren’t they?” muses a wired Frankie Francis, suspended from the roof and glaring down at us with the wide-eyed mania of A Clockwork Orange’s Alex. “Shut up and play the next song,” retorts bassist Dennis Mennis, bravely. It’s a rough-hewn banter whose playfulness runs through the set: a stomping Wearside brogue that sits somewhere between the crisp arrogance of Franz Ferdinand and the fey post-punk of Orange Juice-era Edwyn Collins. With their be-quiffed, tank-top wearing nod to a bygone era of working class rockabilly, ‘Heartstrings are in so many ways anachronistic – but displaying a charismatic punch that could yet prove very timely. Only a string of summer festival dates will tell.

There’s an impenetrability to Summer Camp, the accidental, low-fi summer-of-love-child from electro-tinged enigma Jeremy Warmsley and the über-lilting Elizabeth Sankey, the (now presumably part-time) editor of oh-so-hip lifestyle meta-blog Platform. Maybe it’s the lingering fear of exposure, hung over from their secretive online gestation (where they posed for months as an unknown Swedish MySpace); or maybe it’s the way their soft-struck dreamy pop seems to hold a nostalgic diffidence in our hectic, bleeping zeitgeist. Either way, tonight it’s compounded by Warmsley’s palpable frustration as endless sound problems threaten to crack their usually blissed-up exterior. Nonetheless, Sankey retains her allure as the sultry ingénue, dulcet and graceful as a soft-edged version of Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser and, when duetting with Warmsley’s solid timbre, Summer Camp do exude a slow-burn warmth that’s an appealing counterpoint to 2010’s synth-led exuberance. In their retro-philia they’ve carved a closed-book niche that may yet prove short-lived but, like the sun-blessed days they hark back to, let’s enjoy them while we can.

And so to the final headline, lining up at Terraces in the form of folk siblings Angus and Julia Stone. On paper, this midnight tryst, with the delicate acoustics and gentle, smoky harmonies – backlit by the type of moonlit beachscape that surely birthed the Sydney duo’s haunting sound – should have been perfect. Yet we’re blighted by relentless chatter as half of the crowd, unable to see or hear the band in Terraces’ abysmal layout, resort to a night of drunken banter. It doesn’t obscure the stiffer turns of Big Jet Plane, or the harmonica-infused Just A Boy, but the Julia-led, softer edges, such as this year’s Hold On, or the plaintive, yearning harmonies of I’m Not Yours, are lost in a clattering din that, so nearly, wrecks it all. But not quite. For while Angus and Julie succumb at times to a sugary sentiment that belies a greater depth, there’s a darker, twilit resonance here that gives a captivating edge to their live offering and can, even if only for a moment, hold all else as silent.

Florence + The Machine :: Interview :: 16/07/09

2009-07-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

“Holiday? Hah! What’s that?” she snorts, with an echo of dry laughter.

The girl is Florence Welch, eponymous 22-year old starlet of the critically-beloved Florence and the Machine, whose brand of compelling, soul-etched bohemia has graced every chart and festival of the summer, and whose name is now manically scribbled on every editor’s “must have” list. And she’s unceasingly busy. For this is the year that Florence scooped the Critics’ Choice at the Brits, the month that she broke the Top 20 with single Rabbit Heart, and the week that saw the long-anticipated release of debut LP, Lungs. By the time I catch up with her, the album has already gone Gold.

Decamped to an Edinburgh hotel following a breathless run that has taken in Oxegen, T in the Park, and a stint with Paul Weller at the Eden Project, I’d ventured she might be due a break. But Florence’s sardonic laugh said it all – she clearly has no time to rest. Around her, the promotional machine grinds noisily as we talk, interjecting with mechanical regularity to take her photos, get her answers and plan her time. Florence apologises for every interruption with a politeness that seems to isolate her from the bustle. She talks softly, a fragile flutter in the whirring din, and she’s much more placid than I’d expected. I wonder if it’s her way of coping with the frantic pace. “It’s just I’m not really sure when it stops,” comes the sigh. “I haven’t been home in ages and I’m feeling a bit weary.”

The fatigue is understandable, yet I’m surprised to find such meekness. Welch is renowned for her wild streak – a fiery waif that cavorts across the stage, leaping into the crowd at every opportunity, and forever bejewelled in a home-made finery that she’s cut from chain-mail, or curtains, or anything in between. And her music thrums with a similarly passionate verve: a remedy to the prosaic that soars majestic, twinkles darkly, and tumbles carefree, always smouldering with a mystical depth that is at once soulful, wilful, and eclectic. I suggest to her that I’m struggling to match this “calm Florence” with her many creations. “I’m productive when I’m calm,” she explains, “I think that’s where some of the dreamier imagery comes from - when I’m actually in quite a calm place and can just write. When I’m manic, then I can’t think of anything apart from, you know, heaven and hell.”

This penchant for dramatic imagery is what has corralled Florence and The Machine into the bracket labelled ‘kooky’, drawing flattering, if overly frequent, comparisons to Kate Bush, or Natasha Khan’s Bat For Lashes. There’s certainly an art-installation feel to parts of Florence’s work – a sense of the deliberate in her creativity that she’s happy to acknowledge. “There are a lot of big statements on the album. I’ve always liked dealing with those – with that poetic kind of grandeur. I’m exploring with each song. You know, really taking it to the extreme. I want it to be timeless.”

And yet, while seemingly penned with a grand design, Lungs still retains an unwieldy charm (Welch calls it “fractured”) that speaks of a spirit more unruly. Kiss With A Fist, her vitriolic ode to “giving as good as you get”, is a raggedy brawler of a track that’s at odds with the album and, fittingly, seems to have scrapped for its own inclusion. Girl With One Eye, pared down and jolting along at half-pace, also stands alone. What brings them together is Welch’s keen sense for the inherent drama of life, or what she terms “the grand tradition of emotions”: a subject that makes her immediately more animated. “I think each song comes from a particular moment. Any extreme of emotion, I think, leads to good music. It takes you to places that maybe, otherwise, you wouldn’t have explored. You feel so lost and free that you need to record [it] to kind of save yourself.”

Florence’s love for this freedom of expression is utterly convincing. She talks vividly of following her feelings, as they run the gamut from manic rage to pure joy, and how she discovers herself in their performance. Welch seems a rare example of the musician who has successfully translated from life into art, and, in no small part, she attributes that ability to Island, the label with which she signed earlier in the year. She talks happily of creative control on the first album – a gamble for the label to take on such a young, and adventurous, singer. And yet, I put it to Welch that such untempered creativity has been a gamble for her too – especially when releasing second single Dog Days: a brilliant follow-up, but also a huge shift in style. “Yeah, totally. I was worried that after Kiss With A Fist, people would be like “What the fuck? What’s she doing? Cos I feel that [Dog Days] was like the song that most represented where I was gonna go as a musician. And I felt like that was more, much more me, and what I wanted to do. When people accepted that positively it was like “Hoh! Fuck! That could work! This could work!”

As we speak about that moment, it’s clear that Welch doesn’t view her music as just something she’s made. She’s intertwined with it – poured out into it. So much so that she speaks not about success, but of validation as a person. “Sometimes I can feel quite exposed,” she explains, “because it is just me up there, you know. I haven’t tried to create something, it’s just sort of happened.” And you believe her. On stage, on record, or in person, Welch’s gift is to maintain no boundary, and it’s both thrilling and brave. “It feels quite vulnerable sometimes. I don’t have any sort of a persona to hide behind. But then, performing is what I love and I love making music, so… I don’t think I could do anything else.”

When our interview draws to a close, and Florence Welch disappears into the PR maelstrom around her, it’s clear she really could never take a holiday. This is not a job – this is her life. Welch’s music and performance may be newly ensconced in the trappings of a burgeoning fame, but there’s no doubting they remain an extension of her. It’s unmistakeably Florence whose pulse beats through every song: pounding, exhilarating and vital. It’s Florence whose breath fills every inch of Lungs: its grandly swelling sighs; its wild exhalations.

It’s Florence that gives The Machine its soul.

Fight Like Apes :: Cargo, Shoreditch :: 01.07.09

2009-07-05T10:22:00.000-07:00

“You won’t be able to sing along to this one - it’s too complicated!” screams Mary-Kate “Maykay” Geraghty, the dancing punk banshee that fronts Irish quartet Fight Like Apes. Of course, she’s being ironic. “Lend me your face! I’ll bust it up and I’ll replace it” she hollers from behind a matted veil of black hair: twisting, writhing, and shouting, but never losing the heaving mosh who sing back her every word.

Of course, in the packed back room of Shoreditch’s Cargo, it would take a brave soul to dare to stay quiet. In between tracks, keyboardist Jamie “Pockets” Fox leaves behind his synth duties to appear at the front, looking uncannily like Infernus from Norwegian death-metallers Gorgoroth, and stabbing a frenzied stare at anyone foolish enough to stand still. After which, Pockets stage-dives, or stumbles across the stage swigging at a wine bottle, occasionally hacking at Maykay with a plank.

Genius.

But while the stage antics look to metal, the music recalls the melodic punk of Siouxsie and The Banshees – albeit dragged through a Roland keyboard, and played at triple-speed. Fight Like Apes are a high-colour reworking of the likes of Los Campesinos or Johnny Foreigner – borrowing their indie-meter, but mashing it with a frantic, bubble-sweet filth that stomps, carefree, from each twee, she-rock verse to every screaming punk chorus.

When it works, it’s a fantastic clash of carefree pop and hedonistic, synth-led hardcore – like the delicious contrast on Digifucker, where a plinking, music-box intro slips into sleazy bass, thrashed guitars and wailing synth. Or Jake Summers: opening with ditzy, dreamy lyrics (“I bought a present for my guy…”) before careering off to a tirade that peaks with the lovely “Hey, you, you’re taking up space / And you’re a fucking disappointment to the human race!”

FLApes’s clashing styles can fall flat, and they certainly don’t land every track. “Out of respect to you guys, we’re gonna play a waltz,” chirps Maykay, before descending into a sludgy homage to a fired bandmate. This, and others, never raise their heads above a b-side joke, while even former single Tie Me Up With Jackets can seem overly repetitive.

But when Maykay is leaping onto the crowd as she sings, or dodging the unwelcome advances of a swinging two-by-four, you can’t help but smile. FLA have an enviable charisma that bounds around the stage, and often through the crowd, and a knack for piling on layers that injects some essential depth into what could otherwise have been a puerile thrashabout. Battlestations does it best – building a simple, pop-synth hook into a snarling chorus and a torrential outro capped by the guttural, harridan-scream from a truly anguished Mary-Kate.

And it’s there that you understand why Fight Like Apes have succeeded where other punk-jokers have failed – why the same foursome who delight in screaming the “I’m coming… I’m coming…” refrain from Mclusky’s Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues have also found their way onto the middling, new-music playlists of Radio 1. This is an outfit who are both truly punk, and truly pop; who are lighthearted, yet convincingly visceral; who play dumb but scream ironic.

There’s only one thing Fight Like Apes love more than a fun-filled, pop-punk hook. And that’s to hit you with a plank.

Swimming :: Interview :: 15/06/09

2009-06-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

Swimming are all about BIG.

There’s the big press coverage. (Swimming’s column inches have attained some serious girth in recent weeks, with all from NME to Artrocker gibbering manically about the Nottingham five-piece, and bestowing all kinds of 5-star, top of charts, single-of-the-week-style praise upon them).

There’s the big ‘concepts’. (Latest single Panthalassa takes its name from the vast global ocean that surrounded the Paleozoic supercontinent Pangaea. Phew…)

And there’s the big music. (Not for Swimming the pared-down charm of recent indie offerings - their scale starts at ‘soundscape’ and ends somewhere on a far off, slightly ethereal horizon. Think Arcade Fire meets The Polyphonic Spree, smudged together with the thumb of British Sea Power.)

Yep, Swimming are all about big, and new album The Fireflow Trade is no exception – firing briskly through a series of sweeping, hook-laden tracks with an impressive range and depth. Yet, amazingly, all thrown together for just north of 800 quid. So, when Liberation caught up with the band mid-way through their (typically expansive) tour of the UK, we just had to get them to spill the beans on their impressive low-cost production.

“We're all sound-junkies and we had no money to get anyone else involved,” says lead singer John Sampson “It was recorded on begged and borrowed time in different spaces, and mixed on a laptop in my spare room. I think that had the biggest effect on the sound.”

Some effect, maybe, but the cut-price production hasn’t limited the scope of the album. Freewheeling, vibrant, and imaginative, The Fireflow Trade seems anything but a low-fi homebrew. And, although Swimming met at school and "weren't really thinking about it as a full band" until their Primary EP, the amateur-hour stops there. The band are four-fifths from a sound engineering background, so they have ability in spades. Lucky for them, in fact, as neither they, nor their then-label, had any cash. But times have changed since then, so what about next time? “We really want to go into the studio with someone else for the next one, to try something different and bring in some fresh ears.”

Fresh ears, and maybe a whole new sound if their recent experiments are anything to go by. As well as binaural Christmas tunes, the band have been working on a ‘headphones only’ series with “sonic artist” Dallas Simpson. So far, so quirky. But having recently fallen in love with her track I Feel Love, their next collaboration could be even more leftfield: the one and only Queen of Disco, Donna Summer. “We’ve become obsessed with it – we could duet on an ethereal disco number”. (See swimmingband.com for an exclusive preview…)

True, of many bands, these eclectic side projects could feel like filler – exciting fluff to tell the press but of no real value to the music. But for Swimming, they’re essential ballast to help plot a course through the synth-obsessed tide: the range and experimentation are central to the theme. Tracks like Crescents, moving seamlessly from an almost tribal drum to a Mars Volta-esque wail, nestle comfortably alongside Panthalassa, on indie homeground with synth hooks and pop twirls, and Tigershark, which could easily have hailed from the likes of Passion Pit or Temper Trap. So have they got an agenda to stop post-punk in its tracks? Not really. “Its exciting to have a whole range of acts getting attention. When there's no template or formula there's more scope to move forward”. But agenda or no, they’ve staked out a different direction from their indie peers. So what’s the story?

“We've never felt part of a specific scene or sound. We all have different influences in the band as well - we don't all listen to the same stuff so that helps keep it off a set track. We don't go about writing or recording the same way every time, it changes with every song. Whether it be a sample we've found, working with someone like Dallas Simpson on the headphone only stuff, or an interesting space to record in, that all comes through in the music.”

On The Fireflow Trade, they pull this all together with aplomb. An impressive full-length debut, not least considering its humble origins, you’d expect Swimming to be crowing about their progeny’s huge success. But unpredictable as ever, we actually find them humbly hopeful and wanting merely that the album “falls on the ears of people who connect with what we're trying to do: with these songs, and the sounds we're making. And that they will keep finding things that speak to them in it.

“Oh, and that it get its 50m badge...”

The Fireflow Trade is out now on Colourschool records.

Wintersleep / LoveLikeFire :: Barfly, Camden :: 19.05.09

2009-05-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

If you’ve read the recent press for Welcome To The Night Sky, the third slab of introspective post-rock from Canadian five-piece Wintersleep, you’d expect a review of their intimate gig at Camden’s bijou Barfly to be overflowing with praise. And sure enough, with their self-titled taster-EP thrumming away as the venue doors opened, I was already thinking how to describe the inevitable acclaim that awaits the folk-referencing Nova Scotians.

As the lights went down, contented musings were already sketched out in my head – ready for Wintersleep’s emotive, twilight rock to nestle intimately amongst the swaying shoulders of the Barfly crowd, all smiling beatifically midst the waves of brooding indie. I guessed their vocal – gentle, yet stretched across a more urgent backing – would lend itself nicely to allusions to Broken Social Scene’s Cause = Time; the low-fi moments would speak of Grandaddy; while the more strident sections would evoke the jolting rhythm of The National’s Mistaken for Strangers.

And, of course, I already had in place several glowing epithets for the stand out tracks – the yearning rumble of opener Archaeologists, at once brash and grandiose, yet still finding moments to be touchingly soft; Oblivion: all searing lead-guitar peaks, clenched-fist earnestness, and soul-searching drive; and, of course, the sweetly mystical bop of Weighty Ghost. Hell, I’d even found a dreamy quote from two adoring Canadian tweens – a giggling, screaming duet who were slavishly following their idols around the UK in a bid to “you know, celebrate life. Celebrate love. Celebrate Wintersleep.”

But beware your preconceptions. Wintersleep phoned in a muddled, one-dimensional performance of such fumbling mediocrity that they were roundly upstaged by support act LoveLikeFire. Theirs was a display that belied their big band credentials – rousing, epochal choruses that fell flat in a stiff, wooden mix; tender, aching lulls sold short by Paul Murphy’s overly nasal vocal; long, unwieldy outros that smacked of a group wrapped up in their own hype. But after this, no one else was.

Still, where the headliners misfired – allowing their low-fi to bleed into monotonous sludge; their wilder moments to slur into an unnatural breed of indie-folk and prog rock – LoveLikeFire held tight, blistering through a set that piled shoegaze and alt-rock into a wonderful, wailing torrent. They work by maintaining a peerless, scintillating energy that’s simply captivating. They don’t stop to talk, they don’t stop for breath – they just don’t stop.

The throbbing, heartbeat pulse of the drum / bass core is both at odds, yet wonderfully in keeping, with the screech of Marty Mattern’s guitar. It’s a sonic oxymoron that’s repeated in Ann Yu’s outstanding lead vocal – a lilting screech; ferocious yet composed; wild and unstintingly rich. There are touches of Veruca Salt, and certainly something of the feel of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O, but the direction is entirely different. Which, sadly, may be to the ’Fires’ disadvantage. While magnificent in the crush of a tiny indie venue, their soaring blend of distortion and haunting rock vocals fits into a power-pop niche that’s at odds with the majority of their synth-pop, post-punk peers.

But, who knows? Preconceptions can be thoroughly misleading. With the energy that LoveLikeFire showed tonight, that niche is definitely theirs for the taking.

Official Secrets Act :: Luminaire, Kilburn :: 15/05/09

2009-05-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

Catch them if you can. North-London art-poppers Official Secrets Act have barely set foot in Blighty since the March release of debut longplayer, Understanding Electricity – a vibrant clutch of new wave with a wistful British core. Since then, a hectic tour with pop-punk outfit Art Brut has seen OSA trek across Europe, honing their brand of eclectic synth-pop for a slew of festival performances over the summer.

Tonight, OSA return to the homeland for a one-off stint in Kilburn, slicing up a selection from the album for a packed-out Luminaire. And, whether it’s the venue’s close-quarters energy – Luminaire heaves at little over a hundred, with a throng of moshing indie faithful just two steps from the stage – or a tour-led rethinking of their sound, OSA’s upbeat pop is newly infused with a tightly-fitting grit and, compared to the record, works harder to eke out the drama of their darker, melancholic turns.

Opener So Tomorrow leads with a stomping bass staccato and kickdrum vitriol, every beat tapped out in return by the eager feet of a receptive Camden crowd. On record, this track smacks of Ultravox’s Sleepwalk – a pacey synth meter, but lacking true depth; but live, it’s a seething nest on which to lay Tom Burke’s vocal, which swoops in with an assured English charm, wonderfully placed between the clippy drone of Editors’ Tom Smith and the funky smarm of ABC’s Martin Fry. Add to this a dash of Brian Molko, and you’ve got the angst underpinning Momentary Sanctuary – a swerve towards a straighter indie that’s at once maudlin, yet rousing. Although worth a listen on the album, it’s only on stage that OSA can deliver the drama required to bring this blend together. And this new depth carries into a richer feeling Bloodsport (replete with all-original, jerky art-rock dance from bassist Lawrence Diamond), and a jangled re-imagining of recent single, The Girl From the BBC.

All this is essential tweaking for a band skirting with the breakthrough – for, while they’ve drawn excited chatter from a host of indie luminaries, OSA’s studio oeuvre can feel overly lightweight in places. ’Electricity blends some of the best of the retro-pop zeitgeist, but it also sees OSA fail to shake off an unerring sense of whimsy. Thrust on stage, OSA pull away from their 80’s forebears and add a post-synth edginess that opens out their sound. For case in point, see the band’s MySpace for Bloodsport (109 Mix) – seedier, filthier, and darker than the clean-cut album track, and all the more wonderful for it. That’s the OSA that dropped in on Kilburn – let’s hope the same band return this summer.