Following up on my hopelessly naive post from earlier this week, you’ll probably already be aware that Bandcamp have announced that they will be waiving their revenue share on all sales made this Friday, allowing all revenue to go straight to the artists and/or labels.

Now, Bandcamp ain’t perfect (I know some people have issues), but it’s probably about as ethical a way to buy/enjoy music as exists when face-to-face interaction is no longer an option, especially during the window when they’re kindly not grabbing their own cut off the top, and if there is one rallying cry that can surely unite us in these dark, working-from-homey times, it’s “fuck Spotify”, right?

As such then, here is a swift list of a few things new and (slightly) old I will buying on Friday.

Mako Sita / Hamid Drake – Ronda



I just today discovered this 2018 collaboration between ubiquitous avant-jazz luminary Hamid Drake and “Chicago’s premier free-rock trio” Mako Sita (whom I confess have passed me by until now), and my freaking god, it’s exquisite. Sounds like Ennio Morricone, Charles Mingus and Alessandro Alessandroni recording a soundtrack to a moody, post-apocalyptic spy thriller set in the Near East. Kind of fits the current mood quite nicely, if you want to go there. Partially recorded at Electrical Audio (tho not with Albini), the sheer SOUND of this thing is incredible…. just a hugely evocative mess of all-points brilliance. [The same line-up of players have a follow up album currently on pre-order from the Astral Spirits label, and the sample track is equally inspired.]

Slum of Legs – s/t LP



Slight cheat here, because technically I already own this, but I was incredibly happy to discover earlier this month that Slum of Legs, one of the most exciting, idiosyncratic and imaginative bands to have emerged from the UK DIY milieu in recent memory, have returned from a five year hiatus with their first full length LP, and that furthermore it’s pretty brilliant, mixing wildly exuberant renditions of all the great songs I remember them playing back in the day with a bunch of equally inspired new material.

Very much deserving of a full write-up at some point in the future, but for the moment, let’s just say that the six members of Slum of Legs still sound like an unruly gaggle of entirely disparate, equally strong voices, all pulling in different directions whilst still somehow coalescing into some unholy, unified whole that’s almost, well, pop, Jim, but not as we know it. I hate reviews that end with “For Fans of…” lists with a passion, but if you can find me another band somewhere in the world whose hypothetical list might include The Mekons, Broadcast, The Raincoats, Marianne Faithful, Rudimentary Peni and Fad Gadget, I’d probably really like to hear them. Thanks in advance.

Tamikrest – Chatma



Playing some of the best Tuareg rock (can’t quite ring myself to call it ‘desert blues’) I'ver heard this side of the mighty Tinariwen, Tamikrest have been about for at least a decade, but they’re a new discovery to me. They too have a new record on pre-order this month, but further investigation soon led me back to this 2013 release, which rules pretty mightily. The band’s line-up seems to have undergone a fair few changes over the years, but this earlier release is definitely enhanced by the presence of female vocalist Wonou Walet Sidati, whose declamatory, pop-savvy style and defiant presence in the midst of what is still very much a male-dominated sphere adds a real fire to these fret-blazin’, hand-clapping songs of displacement, defiance, struggle and survival.

As ever, bands from this scene/genre represent a strange paradox, in that they are professional touring outfits who enjoy a higher profile, bigger bookings etc than most of the other contemporary groups I’m liable to cover on a blog like this, but at the same time it’s a fair bet that, as members of an embattled and disenfranchised itinerant culture without a homeland to call their own, they still really, really need your effing money right now, more so than, say, some guy in Leeds or Chicago with a day job in IT. Not that that really matters one way or another in view of the fact that their music rocks like an absolute bastard and is assured worth a few dollars of anyone’s pay cheque purely on its own merits, but y’know what I mean.

Headroom – Head in the Clouds



2017 debut LP of fog-shrouded, heavy-lidded fuzz-psych bliss-out from Kryssi Battalene & friends over in New Haven, CT, previously discussed in these pages on several occasions. Nuff said, I should hope.

Bridget Hayden - Pure Touch Only From Now On, They Said So: Outtakes



A late addition to the line-up, Bridget Hayden – who I was looking forwarding to seeing live last week, pre-cancellation – has just uploaded a set of ‘outtakes’ from her exceptionally affecting ‘Pure Touch Only..’ album from 2018 [also available here]. Forlorn, elegiac and beautiful in the sense that that vision of hell at the end of ‘The Beyond’ is beautiful, her quasi-abstract, elemental shut-in blues should provide some appropriately uneasy catharsis for our grim, collective-yet-isolated current predicament.

The Bevis Frond – various records





Meanwhile, I will also be buying some digital albums from The Bevis Frond, because I like The Bevis Frond at the moment. Listening to them makes me feel comfortable and happy, and he/they have more-or-less an entire lifetime’s worth of music up on bandcamp, so this is a good opportunity to fill some of the gaps in my collection. Frankly, if Nick Saloman were to knock on my door and ask for twenty quid, I’d be happy to oblige, so getting about six hours of music into the bargain seems like a good deal all round.

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Away from Bandcamp meanwhile, let it simply be said that if London’s best venue Café Oto closes as a result of all this kerfuffle, I for one will be pissed. Their in-house Otoroku label has a huge archive of releases & live recordings available for download – and they also offer a range of downloads in collaboration with the aforementioned & generally great Astral Spirts label - so please, fill yr boots and empty yr virtual wallets upon their counter.

(Regarding other ‘best venue’ contenders meanwhile, DIY Space For London can always be donated to here; I’m not sure if there’s any remote way to support New River Studios or Pulse Studios in Walthamstow during their inevitable periods of closure, but if you know better please let me know.)

Labels: appeals, Bridget Hayden, disasters & emergencies, Headroom, Mako Sita / Hamid Drake, Slum of Legs, Tamikrest, The Bevis Frond

Support Finder Keepers.

I’ve been a bit slow in getting ‘round to posting about this, but better late than never.

In brief, it seems that Finders Keepers, one of my favourite record labels, got well and truly clobbered by the recent PIAS warehouse fire. To try to raise some cash to keep themselves afloat, they’ve invited the great and the good from the groovier end of the British music world to compile a bunch of CD/mp3 compilations from the label’s back catalogue, available for just a few quid each from the label’s website.

You know that the label does lots and lots of fantastic stuff, and if you don’t, well this is a good opportunity to find out.

Don’t necessarily want to go all-out into treating record labels like charities, but let’s just say that if they were charities, Finders Keepers would certainly be in my monthly direct debits – just have a quick scan through their recent releases for an insight into why. And if all these setbacks delay their programme of Jean Rollin soundtrack releases even slightly, I’m gonna hold the whole world responsible.

Labels: appeals, Finders Keepers

Soup Studio / The Duke of Uke.

I heard some bad news yesterday concerning the uncertain future of what is almost certainly the best place in record music in London, Soup Studio.

In a textbook example of that horrible process whereby useful and creative ventures raise an area’s ‘appeal’ to the extent that those very ventures find themselves kicked out on their arse to make space for the same identikit commercial crap that people initially went there to avoid, the studio and it’s upstairs neighbour The Duke of Uke are being evicted from their E1 address by the landlord, who seemingly reckons he can now use the space to harvest more cash than mere rent can provide; exactly the same fate that befell The Spitz venue & restaurant down the road a few years back, and what apparently used to be a far more worthwhile incarnation of Spitalfields Market a few years before that.

Anyway, as mentioned, Soup is a brilliant place with a great, no-nonsense set up, and Simon Trought is both a skilled engineer and a lovely chap. To have a space in the middle of London where bands at any level of ability and notoriety can go to get quality recordings of their tunes done efficiently on a variety of nice equipment for reasonable rates, in a welcoming, relaxed environment in which no one is ever sneered at or made to feel dumb, is an absolute godsend.

The fact that I, an avowed hater of ukuleles, should essentially be campaigning to save a ukulele shop hopefully tells you something about the overall goodness of this place (and in fairness, it must be said that the staff and customers of the ukulele shop have always proved very friendly too, helping to dispel the unholy terror and rage that inevitably overwhelms me at the thought of having to traverse a room containing about five hundred ukuleles).

So yeah – I’m not quite sure what the likely future of Soup is at the moment, or how entwined it is liable to be with the future of the Duke of Uke, but… let’s just say that if in recent years you’ve enjoyed recordings by the likes of Comet Gain, Herman Dune, The Loves, The Wave Pictures, Darren Hayman, Veronica Falls or Let’s Wrestle, you could do worse than expressing your appreciation by donating some cash to help The Duke secure a new home. That is all.

Labels: announcements, appeals, bad news