Missive CLXXXVIII 11-01-2009 Singled Out
Missive CLXXXVIII
For Kelly and Mark
Singled Out - essential ear treats for the discerning listening space.
www.myspace.com/clubclang - not so much a band but a monthly music night extravaganza held at the Wilmington Arms in Ye Olde London Town responsible for dazzling passers by and paying punters alike by playing host to some of the trendiest tunesmiths in the neighbourhood, apparently these musical recital nights have been happening for more years than most care to admit and have been so popular and embraced to the bosom of the surrounding parish that announcements for forthcoming gathering are greeted with such joy and anticipation that local councillors have declared such events as a national holiday. Sadly the last bit was slightly untrue - however Clang have been responsible in recent times for playing host to An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump who you may well remember us fondly mentioning a missive or so ago, Official Secrets Acts and the Woe Betides - who all things being well you should find mentioned again in these here pages. Anyway next pop band soiree is scheduled for January 21st wherein there will be stage visitations by the Theoretical Girls, the Joy Formidable and It Hugs Back all of whom are featured at some point here.
http://www.myspace.com/thejoyformidable - do any of you lot remember a tv show on Channel 4 aired in the late 80’s / early 90’s called Snub TV - it was just videos, no links, no boring ego inflated presenters or equally vomit inducing gimmicks just a strange sense of anonymity and a shed load of records that you just knew you‘d have to bunk off work early next day in order to hot foot to your nearest vinyl emporium to nab as your own, all banging sounds arguably on the side of all things guitars especially those sugar dipped in elements of shoe gaze / psyche and plainly unreal. Why am I mentioning this you may well ask - well simply because ’cradle’ sounds for all the world as though its fallen straight from a Snub transmission, arresting your senses like some immune system quarrelling airborne virus, this sub three minute slab of tenaciously tangy and thrill lashed shock pop could be right at this moment the best platter in record land - all chugging riffs, squalling hysteria, crunching hooks, infectious harmonies all delivered with an acute audacious heart stopping panic stricken urgency which at various points had us recalling the Cranes, Bleach, early Pixies, ‘the wagon’ era Dinosaur JNR and the db’s. Anyhow this trio have already decorated the decks of the clued up cognoscenti with an array of by all accounts dandy singles - all sadly sold out, ’cradle’ is due for re-release next month with the official UK release for the previously only available in Japan ’a balloon called moaning’ full length following in hot pursuit. Asides the unstoppable ’cradle’ we suggest you hook up to the bitter sweet and rather slyly immense bruised and blistered bubblegum pop of ’whirring’ - in the meantime we’ll try and nail those forthcoming releases for a proper review.
The video for ’cradle’ looks and sounds like this….
http://www.myspace.com/ithugsback- we still occasionally dig out their debut ‘lights in the tree’ - such a gem of a record - then they signed to Too Pure and we didn’t hear from them again. Obviously to big these days to care though their PR have on numerous occasions promised to send us stuff - to this day they haven’t - feckin useless - still we survived this long without their wares so er - ho hum. Anyhow better give them a mention here seeing as they are in attendance at Club Clang’s forthcoming monthly spot along with the Joy Formidable and the Theoretical Girls (both mentioned somewhere about these pages) and recommend without reserve their rather smart cover of Stereo lab’s ’stomach worm’ which was apparently released as part of Too Pure’s singles club last month which we missed - ha ha - bloody PR’s……
http://www.myspace.com/totallyenormousextinctdinosaurs - yep your right - it was the bands name that encouraged us to visit their strange musical lair. Those thinking the strangeness ends with the name think again, totally enormous extinct dinosaurs described their sound as ’electro / techno / power pop’ and while we tend to agree by and large it can’t be denied that there’s been scant in the appearance of any power pop-ping for us to fling around the room wildly for. Mind you the rest of it more than makes up for matters. The jittering shadow boxing glitch grooved ‘dinosaurs having a party’ really does radiate with an air of early Plone caught in possession of a New Order songbook being teased and tickled by some strange collaborative conspiracy made up of Biotron Shelf and Minotaur Shock while ‘are you ready’ very much veers into territories more commonly associated with EMF though on this occasion sounding as though Apollo 440 have fed the template with their trademark impish gremlins. Rounding off the showcase the ethereal and ridiculously infectious schizoid blip core of their ’butterflys last spell’ remix should have the Knife admirers among you swooning ’til you drop though all said and done our favourite moment by far is ‘death ray trebuchay number 6 remix‘ - a coolly smoked fringe arranging and slamming skewed slab of electroid dub-tronic ska beat replete with Mexican waves, exotic trippyness and blessed with a stupidly infectious rampant groove that will frankly drive you to distraction and beyond.
And did we just mention Deathray Trebuchay…as if by magic
http://www.myspace.com/deathrayband - absolutely wired, we’re betting that you’ll not hear anything so contagious for a fair while, death ray trebuchay cook a wildly frantic and frenetic brew whose bad assed boogie is primarily made up of wiring slices of skewiff ska all threaded within a scrumptious hot pot of noir jazz interludes, psyched out dream sequences and ether drilled communications (as on the essential turntable happening ‘fuck you yankee blue jeans’ wherein amid the grooves distant intermissions of man or astro man are noted) or the unweilding psychosis of the erratic and jagged John Lurie meets Bablicon ‘I’m gonna kick you in the ass’ with its squalling brass fractures and funereal backdrops while the original mix of ‘number six’ (see remix by totally enormous extinct dinosaurs above) sounds to these ears like some smoked three way split between the Two Tone crew, One More Grain and the Ukranians. We need to hear more. And soon.
http://www.myspace.com/vpop - we’ve just had an email from Vacuous Pop head honcho Ady, after what was by the labels standards a quiet 2008 the VP machine is ready to kick into action in these coming months with expectations riding especially high for Load. Click. Shoot! These cuties hail from Barnstaple number in 5 and are shortly about release these debut twin set through Fermez La Bouche / Vacuous Pop entitled ‘young pretender’ - by all accounts this beauty is housed in a tasty looking hand painted sleeve and strictly limited to just 250 copies. Anyhow ‘x-ray specs’ featured on this here page is just what the demented doctor ordered, a wilful (though admittedly wonderful) example of a band with a total disregard for structure, time signatures or form, there are things going on here with guitars that we suspect are outlawed in certain territories, happily its all energetic fun albeit skewiff, deranged and very much damaged. Load. Click. Shoot! it seems excel at hammering out frenetic slabs of dislocated acrylic art pop boogie that loosely colours in the dots existing between the Fire Engines and Johnny Foreigner and adopt wildly frenzied riff slashes to their designs, breathless stuff - razored, caustic and highly inflammable - hopefully we’ll nail that debut for a future review.
www.myspace.com/theshameuk - more of that frantic and jerky earlobe spanking zig zagging energetic shouty angular pop that we here love so much, the Shame much to our embarrassment have so far managed to bypass our selective radar and to date have managed to whip out an album and the odd single to a no doubt admiring cognoscenti. New single ’cosmic love’ is aired here and a bit of a speaker spanker it is to, a liberal braiding of a quickly jabbed riffs frontal assault welded to a near heart seizing erratic arrangement whose ancestral bloodline is drawn from a ferociously toe tapping hip swerving fusion of hardcore math and acutely addled art pop, its all devilishly damaged and dislocated fun guaranteed we suspect to get you giddy and incur the odd passing nosebleed. Elsewhere ’doctors and nurses’ is plainly mental, a rampant display of the kind of high wiring frenzy so ably recalibrated these days by Nephu Huzzband though we must admit our favourite moment of the showcase is the clearly skewed and near demented ’electric chairs’ which at times had us much recalling a particular spiked and spiteful ’beasts’ era Sex Gang Children.
www.myspace.com/nephuhuzzband - and as we just mentioned them in passing a second ago thought it was wise to give them another shout even though to much grumbling we appear to have missed out on their recent ‘should have used an abacus’ single from which ‘clockwork’ which you’ll find here features as the preferred b-side. Of course this lot should need no introductions here given that both ‘papers’ and ‘nurse nurse’ were greeted with the kind of overt fondness normally displayed and bestowed upon an offspring, ’clockwork’ sees them continuing to plunder their own unique blend of austere post punk / art pop meets drilled dance floor decimating grind and very much carved in an sound that wouldn’t look to out of place on a Peel tape c.1981 - a kind of beautifully bleak marinating of early ’let’s go to bed’ era Cure blended with And Also the Trees - quite immense in its own incubated insularity.
www.myspace.com/thewoebetides - currently something of a listening obsession around these parts given their PR keeps peppering our in box with various updates on there whereabouts though sadly without sending out anything to review, the woe betides are duo Grundy Le Zimbra and the Late Simon Mastrantone - look don’t even bother asking we’re as clueless and as worryingly mystified as you although Mr Mastrantone has featured in these pages previously with his ‘the drowse’ release via Rekobet way back at missive 138. Anyway it seems these dudes formed allegiances to host ‘cabaret’ nights of musical playing, comedy and poetry under the banner ‘songs in the dark’ along with that other notable urchin of melody Jeremy Warmsley. Deciding that both had similar tastes and desires to corner, secure and liberate some small part of pops vast landscape as their own they agreed to fuse their chemistry, the result being a soon to be released ultra limited debut EP entitled ‘play dead’ three tracks of which are showcased here for your fond listening perusal. Musically the Woe Betides occupy a curious locale rooted in the fuzzy overlaps that exist between folk, prog, soft psyche and west coast pop, we are thinking their nearest reference marker is the much missed Hush the Many though its clear to see or as is the case clear to hear that elements of Buffalo Springfield, Radiohead, Violent Femmes, the Long Ryders, Jefferson Airplane, Mojo Nixon, Mansun and perhaps less obviously so though irrefutably in evidence the grossly overlooked 18 Wheeler. Blending the dark with the mystique the Woe Betides spin wonderfully blister like crooked melodies that hush, stir and pounce into animation without warning, lush with 60’s accents and drizzled with noir phraseology these slowly burning gems flicker and flirt between passages of dark and light ’the road to the cemetery’ in particular steeped as it is in a haunting soft lysergic frame sounding as though it was carved from the same work bench as begat Fairport Convention and Pentangle. Elsewhere ’under the sand’ is acclimastised in the kind of tonalities more commonly associated with Yorke and Co though here the mix is mellowed by a bewitching and strange effervescent pop symmetry while ‘boredom is the killer’ splendidly wraps up the set laced as it is with a sublimely off set and sparsely coaxed melodic hook the likes of which you’d swear had been whipped straight from Joe Jackson’s locker of tricks and treats.
By now you should all be aware of the sad passing of Stooges legend Ron Asheton who died suddenly of a heart attack this week - see Guardian obit at http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jan/06/ron-asheton-stooges - if you head over to our favourite resource for all things discordant, degenerate and damaged - yea that’ll be www.garagepunk.com then you can hook up to the latest Get Drunk and Play Records who among the usual fuzz drenched two chord vomit venting happenings play host to a Ron Asheton tribute - shoehorned amid the grizzled grooves and a butt spanking plethora of Stooges ear gear you’ll hear some well worn treats from - hell what do you think I am a feckin’ track list - just tune in and flippin wig out big time.
Staying with Garage Punk there are also new shows from Out of the Vaults which features a live set from the Penetrators from last September’s ’UFO dictator fest’ in Michigan while the ominous 13th transmission from Garagepunk surf cast features a killer assortment of twanging sensations and fuzz drilled hotrod beauties 23 in all if truth be told then there’s the new year edition of Killed by Porn to feast upon a frankly one stop resource for all things ripping, raucous and razored.
And it goes without saying that since we were having a quick at the Vacuous Pop recommendations for the year that we should have mentioned Elephants whose ‘american football’ you can hook up to via www.myspace.com/vpop - a bit of a blinder of a cut that starts out to a lilting braid of electronic swathes and a teasingly mellowing cascade of side winding noodle some riffmanship framed with a fuzzy felt shy eyed jubilance that soon ruptures and fires up into a truly angulated brew of razor like passion laced friction though we here recommend that you redirect your mouse towards www.myspace.com/fullyelephants and check out the highly attractive and full bodied pop thrug of the melodically math doused ‘lions’ which one suspects should have a fair few of you swooning especially those much loving of their tunes treated with an off set brittle beauty.
www.myspace.com/tigersapien - fill your boots uber cool and classy electro pop hailing from NYC courtesy of Tigersapien who number in four and produce sleazy though seductively hotly throbbing and flirtatious dance floor damaging grooves tailored one suspects to be heard after the water shed at the trendiest cutting edge clubs in the phone book, ‘luxury’ opens their account a meaty and down n dirty slab of erogenous zone zapping errant 80’s flash back type grind that to these ears sounds not unlike a kind of hybrid death disco Duran Duran with a particularly suave and sophisticated BEF happily mooching about re-wiring the controls desks and something certainly deserving of a place in your record collection sitting alongside gems by White Rose Movement. It doesn’t stop there, ‘right angles’ is about you in a flash imparting a juicy and mutant industrial futuro funk thrill while ‘god knows’ has a distinct element of A Flock of Seagulls’ edge about it, though for us the best moment of the set is the binary fuzz bomb buzz of ‘used to be’ which we don’t mind admitting had us rightly chomping at the bit given its succulently dipped in an electro chassis assembled from accessories purloined from an early career Ladytron and spot welded and re-sprayed by Arthur Baker. Well smart.
www.myspace.com/thewritingbirds - no info on this lot except to say they feature the talents of Fabrizio and friends, hail from Philadelphia and have an album to their name entitled ‘Camillia’ alas after that the trail goes quiet. That said what attracted us here (the links coming via the aforementioned Tigersapien) apart from the fact that we liked their name (shallow I know but its never let us down yet) was the gnarled greeting of the opening cut of their featured showcase ‘will all the pieces ever mend’ - a dust ridden coffin blues rumbler if ever we heard one that for the second time this particular missive had us fondly recalling Mojo Nixon and Lard both of whom have had a passing acquaintance with a certain Jello Biafra - so you can imagine where this is going. Mind you what we weren’t prepared for was what passes for lilting gems that emerge from the rest of the set. Edging its way in the cute, frail and fragile stakes is the simply exquisite ‘I’ll always miss you lost soul’ which ordinarily we’d have dedicated to the ex but then we remembered the pitiful state in which our records were returned and thought better of it though if anyone has a track called ‘burn in hell bitch’ we will be guaranteeing lots of listening and indeed much loving. Nevertheless this babe offers a moments of sedate loveliness, the genteel trickle of a statuesque key braid washed amid swirls of hollowing drones and the sweet ache of tearful string arrangements and twinkle some cascades was I’ll admit enough to have us blubbing like a bad ‘un. Majestic stuff. Equally engaging is the lolloping ‘we love you’ which to these ears sounds like some punch drunk off cut from a sketchy soundtrack montage from ‘once upon a time in the west’ with added ingredients supplied by a mellow and out of it Pavement though for us we must admit to being wholeheartedly smitten by the bruised and forlorn lulling chime of the head bowed and withdrawn power pop throb of ‘conclusion song’ which we are thinking should be ripe listening for those of you much in awe of Kevin Tihista.
www.myspace.com/soonersband - sadly only one track posted so far but word has it there’s an EP on its way in some shape or form shortly, Sooners are a quartet hailing from Sydney, Australia and ‘black sheep’ here in its demo form initially had us immediately recalling fellow countrymen the Lucksmiths until that is it approached the half minute mark and strangely though beautifully - it should be said - blossomed into a shimmering soft psyche velveteen sweetie that had us for a moment in two minds whether to plunder our Velvet Crush goldmine of goldmine or to wile away the night searching out that long lost slice of 90’s loveliness from Ripe entitled ‘the most’ which we seem to recall appeared on the Shock imprint - but then again of course we could throw in names like the Soft Parade’s ‘nobody told you anything’, Broken Social Scene, Butterflies of Love, The High and the Power of Dreams but I think you’re already getting the idea that this is something shyly perfect.
www.myspace.com/birdautomatic - and because we are nosy so and so’s we specked this lot on the Sooners friends top 10 and yep guided by the fact that we quiet liked the name and the cut of jib of their little picture motif we went and had a little peak. Damn are we glad we did, again hailing from Sydney Bird Automatic are a quartet who delicately carve sun bathed lovelorn chime pop indie gems the type of which that longingly hang on your heartstrings and tug for dear life, its breathlessly serene stuff that pitches its tent somewhere between early Prefab Sprout and one of the finest ensembles currently parading its wares right now - the High Wire, it’s the kind of honey toned pop that sweetly caresses and aches all the time endowing a shimmer like tingle about you, there’s a debut EP kicking about in record world though while your sitting on the fence wondering whether to dip your toes into their mellowing melodic universe we suggest you fall headlong under the beguiled spell of the wounded and bruised though desirable and pristine ‘invisible’.
www.myspace.com/grandpastanrecords = and as we briefly mentioned the High Wire previously we recommend you hook up to this here site - their label in fact for a taste of the honey drenched crush pop perfection of the adorable ‘Saint Bees’ in our view one of the finest things to have hit our turntable in years, oh yeah there’s also tasty morsels from the equally perfect the Heart Strings and the Jim Muir Sideshow.
That’s your lot. The delayed Kelman special is on its way it’ll either be next or preceded by a bumper singles missive. After that there’ll be an extended special where we’ll haul the latest ‘Psychedelica’ compilation - volume 3 in case you’re making notes - onto the inspection block and run a detailed examination of all the featured culprits therein. So that is next weeks agenda sorted following that there will be a Distant Noise special borne of the fact that we’ve just eyed four releases still awaiting reviews and much deserving of a place in your little loving hearts. Can’t say fairer than that can I.
As usual thanks and apologies to all those who’ve made these doodled accounts possible and especially for you - yes you - yep you reading this right now for er reading this right now. Updates via www.myspace.com/thesundayexperience or email mark@losingtoday.com or if you still dig snail mail 105 shaldon drive, morden, surrey, sm4 4bq, uk - by the way we love vinyl - lots.
