Ack. What to say to explain away a two month plus dearth of blogging here. Well, no proper big excuses. Rest assured, I’ve at least not been frittering my time away on what we are reluctantly obliged to term ‘social media’, like so many other former bloggers (DESERTERS!). Instead, let’s just say that adult responsibilities (both ‘unspeakably frustrating & tedious’ and ‘rewarding & necessary’ sub-divisions) have accounted for pretty much all my waking hours recently.

As a result of this, the majority of the music I’ve ended up listening to has been wholly accidental. Bands caught randomly at gigs I’ve attended for social / organizational reasons, stuff randomly heard on the radio whilst working or washing up. For better or worse, that’s the way I’ve been keeping my hand in, as both the time for personal investigation and the money necessary for crazy excesses like buying vinyl records has vanished. In fact, free/cheap bandcamp downloads, £4 door charges and the odd marked down 2nd hand LP have been the sum total of my contributions to the, uh, ‘musical economy’ in 2015 thus far, BUT HEY, on the plus side, there’s so much good stuff going on out there right now, it’s difficult not to stumble over at least some of it from time to time, however little effort you put in.

Here, then, is a brief summary of new stuff I’ve seen or heard in the past three months that I’ve liked. You know the drill, I’m sure. After that, I’ve got some longer album reviews and stuff brewing etc, so rest assured, there’s life here yet.


The Sundae Kups

Circumstances at the gig my friends Charla Fantasma played at a Shoreditch vintage clothes emporium back in January were far from ideal; loud, disinterested punters, poor acoustics, outrageously priced beer and an outspoken sound-man who seemed quite intimidated by the savage noise-making potential of a 20W combo amp. Nonetheless, a varied and surprising line up of bands made it into a thoroughly rewarding evening, and foremost amongst them were these guys – a motley bunch of sure-I’ve-seen-him-in-some-other-band so-and-sos intent on playing instro/surf music and ‘60s-style pop with a welcome dose of chaos and good humour.

Thing about surf music y’see, is that, in it’s modern iteration at least, it is usually presented as very technical music, despite its primitive origins. Super-tight drumming full of monster fills and abrupt hand-break turns, sizzling high-speed guitar flash and exquisite, carefully manicured amp tone – these are the things upon which yr standard post-Los Straightjackets/Man or Astroman? surf combo is judged. Which is great as far as it goes, but nonetheless… given my usual preference for a good ol’ shambles, it was a joy to stumble across a properly SLOPPY surf band. Which is not to say that these guys don’t play well – on the contrary, they had a lovely groove and the lead guitarist knows his stuff inside out. But they just…. didn’t give a damn, y’know? They were having fun and messing around, the way a band should.

Tempos often stayed at the more relaxing end of the instro spectrum, but swung nicely,with some nice riffs and a good deal of twangy racket. There was a lot of instrument swapping, some oddball vocal numbers, and at one point the bass player took the mic for a hilarious rendition of Jacques Dutronc’s ‘Hippie Hippie Hourrah’. Collapsing equipment and random chaos was dealt with with an off-hand confidence that would’ve make Alex Chilton proud.

Oh, and I think the band’s gimmick was that they purported to be dressed up as ice cream parlour employees, the costume chiefly consisting of a set of disposable paper hats that looked like they could’ve been knocked up with some A4 printer paper and staples. Total class on every level.

Not much on the net from this lot yet beyond a few short tracks on soundcloud, but definitely keep an eye out for em playing round your way.


Meat Raffle

Also on stage during that fateful night were this peculiar prospect. A bassist sitting on her amp, picking out stoned and disjointed dub fragments with a bass apparently held together largely with gaffa tapes, a guitarist practicing worryingly ‘smooth’ amateur jazz moves, and a small table of presumably inexpensive electronic equipment providing clattering, off-kilter backing. Out front, a man in casual attire sings words from a pile of A4 print-outs (perhaps the same ones The Sundae Kups made their hats out of?) in a ragged yet heart-felt voice, and occasionally deigns to express himself via a trumpet.

If all this sounds a bit questionable, well, it was, frankly, but as I stood there contemplating the possibility that something other than the £3 in my pocket might lead me to another £5 bottle of Lowenbrau, I found myself very much drawn into the feeling this lot were putting across. I don’t know where Meat Raffle call home, but I couldn’t help thinking that, in some weird sense, their music sounds like a direct musical personification of the London Docklands - jerry-rigged signifiers of comfort and relaxation (a sound literally haunted by the Thatcherite ‘80s, as if reluctantly learning to live with it's legacy rather than crassly reviving it), barely concealing a reservoir of resigned, impoverished melancholia.

Sometimes sounding like a pound shop PiL, but also distantly evoking such unlikely comparisons as Robert Wyatt’s socialist hymnals, the more far-out end of the ‘80s Television Personalities catalogue and Lol Coxhill & Mike Cooper’s harrowing ‘Zombie Bloodbath on the Isle of Dogs’ LP under the name The Recedents (which I’m sure you’re all familiar with), I don’t really know where Meat Raffle are coming from or what they’re up to, but I found the sound they made on this particular evening quite affecting.

A few tunes online here, all sounding a tad more strident, aggrieved and headachey than I recall from the live performance.


Dog Chocolate

Named, like Meat Raffle, after a food-based human / animal interaction that definitely exists but quite possibly shouldn’t, Dog Chocolate are without doubt one of my favourite bands to go and see in London at the moment. In fact, how have I somehow managed to not mention them on this blog thus far? I guess not bothering to post anything for months will do that to you.

So anyway: Dog Chocolate! Fucking brilliant! That just about says it all really, but unjustified superlatives don’t pay the bills, so let’s roll out a description para and see where it gets us. Dog Chocolate are four very likable fellas who are all to some extent associated with the more, uh, self-sufficient end of the Deptford visual arts scene (you know - doodles, strange expressionistic etchings, photocopied fanzines, that sort of thing). When together and suitably equipped with musical instruments, they succeed in making a riotous yet tightly-controlled cacophony of lop-sided DIY punk that embodies the very best elements of that concept.

Punishing noisy, wildy exuberant and possessed of a spirit of wanton unpredictability and ranting, caffeinated obnoxiousness, the feeling the band put across on stage (or more than likely, on floor) is nonetheless entirely lacking in negativity or awkwardness, instead evoking a spirit of unchecked inclusivity and shared experience that always proves a great deal of fun.

Rob plays a full size guitar plugged into a tiny amplifier and makes a load of racket, whilst Matthew plays a tiny guitar run through an excessive number of pedals and makes what might generously be termed a ‘subtle’ contribution to the sound. Jonno plays a small drum kit that he wheels around on a custom-made trolley and Andrew yells and sings and does keyboard and stuff, kinda like a young Lou Barlow with all that angst that made him such a bore happily removed from his shoulders. All of these eccentricities though, rather than studied devices designed to make the band members ‘stand out’, seem instead wholly practical solutions to problems unforeseen by most, allowing the band the comfort and flexibility to, uh, ‘do their thing?’ with maximum effectiveness and a minimum of site-specific interference.

In fact, having now witnessed a number of their performances, I believe Dog Chocolate actively thrive upon the kind of stress that might easily fell a lesser combo, dealing with time constraints, technical problems and audience/space-related strife with an ease that I find nigh-on awe-inspiring, ploughing all potential difficulties straight back into a free-flowing stream of racket and banter that no mere organisational hassles can quench. Oh, and their songs are really good too. Like I say: Dog Chocolate! Fucking brilliant! I think they like playing out, so book them for your own thing immediately. You won’t regret it.

You can listen to the split LP they put out on Upset The Rhythm, and some other stuff, on their Soundcloud page. ‘Strange Train’ and ‘Poisoned Eye’ are my favourites.


The Ethical Debating Society

Another London band who seem to get better and better each time I see them, EDS have a proper album coming this year from Oddbox, and I can only imagine it’s going to be a blinder. Sounding essentially like a big arrow heading in THE RIGHT DIRECTION, EDS infuse their politicised punk with a personal specificity and avoidance of didactic grand-standing that renders their message more refreshing and compelling than most such endeavours, whilst still remaining as practically applicable as that of the most dour Socialist Worker troubadour.

Kris’s brilliantly visceral guitar playing provides an effective contrast to Tegan’s more spidery, dissonant style, and it is perhaps the mixture of brute distortion and ideological purpose that always leads me to take a big ‘UK ‘70s punk’ vibe from the band’s performances. Whilst I’m sure they would deny any direct similarity, it is the spirit (rather than sound) of ATV, X-Ray Spex, Gang of Four and even early Crass that keeps coming to mind, and that keeps me wired and excited every moment they’re on stage. A really great group that you owe it to yourself to see as soon as possible if any of this sounds like your cup of tea.

https://theethicaldebatingsociety.bandcamp.com/


Blown Out

Ok, so, not exactly a new subject for discussion on this weblog (I talked up their ‘Drifting Out Between Suns’ LP as part of my end of year run down), but nonetheless, I would to at least take the opportunity to inform readers that Blown Out’s new one, ‘Jet Black Hallucinations’, takes things to a whole other level. In fact it’s one of the best things yet to emerge from Mike Vest’s cottage industry of long-form guitar noise, and thus riding pretty high on the list of flat out awesome things I’ve encountered in 2015 thus far.

With John-Michael Hedley’s bass in particular taking on a more prominent role here than on previous records, ‘Jet Black Hallucinations’ sees Vest working more as an equal component in a power trio triangle than in a “guitarist plus backing” setting, and the results speak for themselves – a hypnotic space-rock groove monster crushing planets beneath its heels, and a heroic dose of exactly what I want to hear during about 90% of my waking life.

To be honest, there’s not much more I do say that won’t be patently obvious the second you click the link below and hit ‘play’, so fergodsake, don’t be a mug and just do that. If your tastes lie anywhere near my own, you’ll be reaching for your Paypal password within about 90 seconds, but there's nothing to be gained by being impatient. Keep streaming for some intense head-nodding and I’ll see you in forty.

https://visualvolume-mikevest.bandcamp.com/album/blown-out-jet-black-hallucinations-lp


Saturn Form Essence

Welcome evidence that at least some folks in Ukraine have enough good sense to turn away from proxy war pissing contests and meaningless ethnic strife, the gentleman behind Saturn Form Essence sounds, quite literally, as far away from such concerns as it is possible to get, locking the home studio doors and conjuring his own landscapes of limitless interstellar vastness from a covetous array of analogue noise-making equipment.

Released as a limited tape and hopefully unlimited download from Newcastle’s Invisible City label, his‘Stratospheric Tower’ comprises a veritable motherlode of deep space void exploration, touching upon Tangerine Dream’s synth limbo, Alan Splet’s landmark space drones, perhaps even a touch of Badlamenti’s sublime ‘Twin Peaks’ mind-meld on the epic closing track…. but, basically, always falling back upon the spirit of anyone who ever plugged a short wave radio into their mixing board in the hope of capturing something a bit creepy, and aspiring to leave all traces of human consciousness  quadrillions of light years distant. (And christ, who can blame him).

https://invisiblecityrecords.bandcamp.com/album/stratospheric-tower


Wymyns Prysyn

Hmm, not much punk-qua-punk on this update so far, and no American bands either if you can believe that, so, let’s give this mob a shot. After all, they’ve been nice enough to put up their LP as a ‘name your price’ d/l, which dissolves geographical boundaries better than most things.

So: ripped slacker sort-of-hardcore (softcore?) from Atlanta featuring some guys I believe are/were in G Green (and my god, is it already three years since their album came out?). More straight-forward and aggressive than that band, incorporating only the most tastful of indie rock incursions, ‘Head in a Vise’ (that being the name of the album) is straight up aggravated, nowheresville budget noise, marshaled by a vocalist who’s a straight up nasal shouter (rather like New Bomb Turks’ Eric Davidson perhaps?), and smeared with that particular kind of reverb and pedal gak that makes punk bands sound like they’ve gone all rotten and mildewed or something. Bad mood, ‘why bother?’ sentiments channeled into a sound that suggests a more affirmative forward momentum, flooring the accelerator on the tour van as home town entropy disappears in the mirror.

Get it from Bandcamp, and hey, why not give ‘em some money, it might cheer them up and help cover gas.

Labels: Blown Out, Dog Chocolate, Ethical Debating Society, Meat Raffle, Saturn Form Essence, The Sundae Kups, Wymyns Prysyn