New Stuff Round Up:
Jan/Feb 2012

Reluctant as I am to tip the balance away from ‘substantive piece of writing’ type posts to the more contemporary ‘faux-insider tip-off & youtube link’ approach to music bloggage, needs must when I can’t be bothered to write anything, and I want to get all this down in html before one of the groups mentioned below ‘takes off’, and everyone’s like “hey, have you hears so-and-so yet?”, and I’m like “yeah man, I heard them like DECADES ago… but I forgot to tell anybody”, and nobody believes me.

(I don’t actually have conversations like that with anyone, by the way.)

So without further ado, here’s a bunch of stuff that’s grabbed my attention, either in person or via the sickly light of a laptop screen, since the start of this year.

Grey Hairs.

New outfit from a bunch of Nottingham veterans whose ‘ex/currently-of’ list would probably make a really nice free-form poem, playing a great example of the kind of non-denominational heavy music I’m really into at present. It sounds as if they take as their inspiration a lot of bands who favoured very little bullshit, and cut the bullshit level yet further. Hell yeah, etc. Look forward to catching them live at some point in the future.

The sound on these rehearsal videos pleases me greatly.





Sapphire Slows.

Latest in the seemingly endless line of precocious bedroom savants discovered by the Not Not Fun label, Sapphire Slows’ bandcamp page informs us that “born in 1989, she started her solo project in Tokyo, spring 2011. Tracks are all recorded in her bedroom, simply with one lap top and some keyboards.” So there ya go. One of the central threads running through NNF’s releases in recent years seems to be an attempt to combine obsolete forms of commercial dance music with an aura of psychedelic witchiness under strict DIY circumstances, and that’s a concept Sapphire Slows absolutely *nails* across the six tracks on her debut EP/12” on the label, mixing up comforting, analogue-y fragments of house and techno with breathy, ultra-verbed vocalisms amid a nest-load of other magpie borrowings, all coming together to form one of the flat out bestest things NNF have put out to date. Solid goodness that’s up there with Peaking Lights and Blues Control in the modern day pantheon of this sorta thing, it’s rarely been off my digital un-turntable in the past month or so.




Loveover.

New band featuring Ayako from Bracelettes – only a guitar/drums duo, but I was lucky enough to catch their first gig last month, and can report that the need for further instrumentation was pretty much annihilated by means of running the guitar through guitar and bass rigs simultaneously. Pretty gnarly. Fast, riff-based punk rock with a great melodic sensibility, touching on Wipers/Milk Music territory in places – I was well impressed.

Here’s their demo:




Heroin in Tahiti.

You know it’s the future now, right, so we should probably get used to groups calling themselves things like ‘Heroin in Tahiti’. I mean, I’m fine with that. Nothing weird and obscurely offensive going on there at all, no sir (whistles to self and looks the other way).

Anyway, I can’t possibly try to beat the blurb of this Italian duo’s label Boring Machines, who claim that – hold on to your hats for this one guys – “inspired by the classic Italian “spaghetti sound” turned into a depressed and paranoid version of the typical twang-surf of Morricone’s scores, “Death Surf” is an hypothetical soundtrack of an old mondo-movie gone bad. The album drags the oppressive heat and bad habits of the Mediterranean to the radioactive beaches of Polynesia, discovering non-existent tribes, invented costumes, misplaced traditions and colonial exoticisms. Think of drinking a frozen Daiquiri on a solitary beach while watching a poorly tuned TV broadcasting loops of “If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death”, while Mururoa tests are happening at the horizon.”

So that saves me the effort of hammering out some guff along broadly similar lines, at least. On a more prosaic level though, I would like to highlight the way that their silly, made-up genre tag of ‘droneabilly’ takes on worryingly literal form when the entire guitar line from The Cramps ‘TV Set’ can be heard rattling away behind the cough syrup haze of ‘Death Surf’ – a truly odd affectation that is replicated in some form on most of their tracks. Curious stuff – I like it.




Young Romance.

Token indie-pop type inclusion for this month, I caught this London-based, M/F guitar/stand-up drums duo the other week and they were bloody terrific. I’d make some iffy suggestion about them fitting nicely into what may be turning into a whole tidal wave of icy, floppy-haired, Gretsch-wielding winter jangle type stuff alongside Veronica Falls et al, but… why would I even countenance such a snidey, NME-like dribble of a thought just for the sake of something to say? Fuck it, I dunno, let’s just cautiously say I think these lot are good and leave it at that.




Divorced.

Not to be confused with the Scottish group Divorce, Divorced with a D are another bunch of Australians making no nonsense punkoid rock music that is powerful and fun, somewhat akin to Eddy Current Suppression Ring if they were angry, uncouth teenagers rather than grown up, responsible men, but also drawing on a tradition of solid rhythmic pound that takes them all the way back to Radio Birdman and The Saints. Hopefully I’m not just comparing ozzie to ozzie here to perpetrate some sorta unfounded cliché – like many current Australian bands (see the faultlessly self-aware top ten from Brisbane group Slug Guts alongside Comet Gain’s one here), these guys seem to be consciously embracing their country’s rich heritage, managing the surprising feat of making guitar/bass/drums/singer music that you could instantly pinpoint on a world map. Or at least, I think that’s what they’re doing. Whatever they’re doing, it’s great, and can be easily enjoyed without the benefit of a brain – a consideration I always appreciate.

Labels: Divorced, Grey Hairs, Heroin in Tahiti, Loveover, Sapphire Slows, Young Romance