Newsflash
Quote of the week by Julian Gross: Do you know what to do when someone ODs? You shove an ice cube up their ass.
Blog: Bruce Willis kills Gorillaz
New Bands We Love
August 2007
Has it been a decade since we did one of these? Oh well, it takes time looking for something we really do like. Five of our top writers have two new bands each to recommend. Quite a lot of these guys we have already seen them live, and they are well approved. It would be interesting to see where they go from here. Check it!
Prinzhorn Dance School
Prinzhorn Dance School, judging from their MySpace page, are a curious and hard to fathom bunch. Claiming to be from Afghanistan, with one photo of three torsos, no friends and only one track, their page is somewhat bleak. That track, ‘You Are The Space Invader’ does however speak for itself.
Given further research (on Google), it transpires that PDS is a UK based two-piece, combined of Tobin Prinz and Suzi Horn who produce minimalist post-punk of the kind that puts a paranoid knot in your belly. With just a guitar and drum kit they sound something like a stripped down version of The Fall’s early years. Their lyrics also seem to have something of Mark E. Smith about them, each telling abstract tales of fairly mundane things made to sound like a living nightmare through Tobin’s guttural moanings.
Their name comes from Dr. Hans Prinzhorn, a German psychiatrist who collected art by his patients and they take musical influence from the DIY/art-punk leanings of Wire, Young Marble Giants and Gang Of Four.
Vehemently media-shy, they are reluctant to conduct interviews and consider photo shoots to be “vain”, instead preferring to make music in isolation in a church in Brighton. Indeed, there is much of the art-rocker stance about PDS, from their non-image to their scattered, uncompromising sound, and it makes them unlikely but somehow suitable signings for centre-leftfield electro label DFA Records.
With two singles already under their belt, they are set to release a third; ‘Crackerjack Docker’ in August, before releasing their debut album shortly after. PDS will most likely, and quite deliberately, slide beneath a lot of musical radars, so keep your eyes peeled people. – Steve Gislam
Seasick Steve
While Seasick Steve might initially hail from Oakland, California, and while he might look like a hobo bluesman straight out of the book of Hollywood clichés, these days he calls Norway home. Sporting a huge white beard and with a leather cap stretched over his head, he’s like Captain Birdseye if the good sea captain had been thrown off the ship for drinking too much bourbon. According to his tale, his parents split when he was aged 4, he split from them aged 14, and he walked the earth, living hand to mouth, until his music took control.
‘Dog House Boogie’ sums up much of what Seasick Steve is about. Partly autobiographical, partly philosophical, it’s a song where he ruminates on how his early life shaped he wandering existence: “All my life I been in the doghouse’ I guess that just where I belong…” But rather than maudlin or miserable, it’s told with a wry grin and a sly glint in his old eyes.
The fuzzbox blues of Seasick Steve rides a groove so rough and deep that it makes you want to drive across Nevada in a Cadillac with just a cowboy hat a box of Marlboro’s for company. The man has a brow-beaten guitar - nicknamed the “Three String Trance Wonder” on account of only having half the number of strings that it should - yet he can make it plow out a blues riff with more weather-beaten than half of the deep south combined.
Beating out his own rhythms on “The Missisippi Drum Machine” (ie, a wooden box he taps his foot on), Seasick Steve is a one man band that ditched the dumbass drum on his back and took to riding the railroads. – Hugh Platt
Get Crucial
The name may be easily confused with Lenny Henry doing a lampoon of Michael Caine for Comic Relief, but if anything Get Crucial is more random than that. Take a band that resembles a wild ideas explosion but is simultaneously blessed/cursed with the mayfly-like belief that everything they do is their last directionless flutter. Which well it may be in these rotten times, but then listening to the results is fascinating. Songs of standard three to four minutes’ length seem epic not because of loftiness, neither boredom, but because these frantic people continue to throw so much at the royal ear.
Out of a musical sharps bin come raw rocking yet enigmatic forms, an impressive example of which is ‘Planes’. This songs starts off kind of spacey as Kevin, but gets churned around and mangled in eddies of emerging complexity before breaking down in a driving Bleach-era Nirvana rumble. ‘Charms’ is like a personalised haunting that makes you want to jump around crazily even as you point and jibber. We’re assuming this is a good thing.
Get Crucial provide antidote for anyone who has grown a little weary of the culture of pervasive sameness that has befallen British music. There are no post-Libertines reference points, for example – but we’ll leave the genre labelling to someone else. They’re still in development and possibly need a bit more belief that they’re as talented as they actually are, if that makes sense. For one thing I’d like to hear Cesca C’s vocal taking hold of the territory without reserve, with unapologetic fervour. It’s all there though and that last matter could be just a question of production levels. When mess is this good, let them keep making it. – Alderson
White Rabbits
So, a drummer, a bassist, a guitarist, and a lead singer it is then. No, forget that, lets have two, yes two, drummers, add another lead singer/songwriter, and, hell, if we can’t use that piano over there! Yes, the four-piece formula was quite literally torn up when White Rabbits hopped into town. But that is no bad thing for this indie-rock sextet living (together) in New York. Citing their influences as William Tell’s Second Arrow Cricket Club, White Rabbits don’t give a lot away. It is best, then, to let the music do the talking. Quite right too, because, lets face it, White Rabbits write indie-rock songs that’d make anyone proud.
Where White Rabbits stand out is in the danceable rhythm department, no doubt aided by the use of two (!) drummers. Slapping rock tunes over compelling reggae/ska rhythms, as they do, they have been compared to both The Specials and The Walkmen. Straddling the inevitable catchy hooks and danceable rhythms are tales of people, alcohol, and paranoia (often all at once). If there was such a thing as observational rock, then this would be it, as both Greg Roberts and Steve Patterson set about documenting those around them and their seemingly booze-addled lives. For a particular rhythmic highlight see Kid On My Shoulders, a helter-skelter of ebony and ivory set against the most addictive rhythm this side of the Carribean.
Recently endorsed by the Letterman show, things are looking bright for these rabbits across the pond. Album ‘Fort Nightly’ was recently released in the U S of A and can be rocked up on import if you just can’t wait. What’s more, you can sample the delights of Untitled, Navy Wives, Beehive State and Sea of Rum, for absolutely nothing with the daytrotter sessions. Loveable and rockable, six White Rabbits are heading our way with a sound that is definitely their own. Catch them if you can. – Matt Coxon
Joanne Robertson
A recent graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art, Jo Robertson is a talented and multi-faceted individual, whose music and painting both display a quieted calm aching of the soul.
She forms one half of the art duo Blood ‘n’ Feathers, who take their name from a song by her slightly ill-fitting heroine Courtney Love, and also plays drums and guitar for the noise band MeMeMe and she has long combined musical references in her art.
Her music largely revolves around the kind of simple but angsty acoustic plucking that Cat Power has laid down the foundations of for a generation of young female performers. With the kind of voice that speaks of a life lived and an ever-present yet subdued aching of the heart, her words chime so suitably with the intimacy of her songs. Every nuance of her recordings can be heard; from the notes themselves to the sound of her fingers sliding over the guitar strings to the occasional faltering in her intonation.
Lyrically she paints pictures of those moments in life when emotional lucidity is hard to find. ‘Tap’, for example, talks of a person who is “gone from this life” and deals with the vacuum that the death of someone close can create. She finds a poetry in those things that seem so poignant yet ordinary, “the light beating down across me, like a clean river”.
Her debut solo album will be released in November through the very indie French label Textile and this, along with the production credits being down to former Flying Lizards maestro David Cunningham, mean that her leftfield credentials check out very well indeed. Jo Robertson’s music might be too barren, too low-key and far too uncomfortably quiet to catch the imagination of the wider public but she cuts the kind of pose that is likely make her utterly adored by those that do get what her work is about. – Steve Gislam
Sleeping States
Like many of the UK indie acts currently vying for attention in today’s cut and thrust market, Sleeping States are driven by the imagination and technical wizardry of one founder member. Apparently influenced by ‘tape hiss, Optic Nerve Comics and knitting’, the musical mastermind behind Sleeping Sates is one Markland Starkie, who uses an array of unusual tools to create a series of subtle, low-fi soundscapes. He does this live with the help of a collected group of collaborating musicians; predominantly Craig Beacons and Caz Mechanic, but there’s also a long roster of others who have helped along the way.
Despite the list of collaborators, Sleeping States remains very much a personal project, focusing on Markland’s voice and lyrics, which act as an overall anchor for the compositions. On tracks like ‘Don’t Make Me Over’ and ‘Trip to NYC’, plucked and chiming a-rhythmical guitars and wistful, half-whispered vocals are under-laced with subtle keyboard effects and sampled sounds. Soft drums appear briefly on ‘Rivers’ but Sleeping States appear to work very much with a ‘less is more’ philosophy of expression and stripped-down musical doodling remains the order of the day.
According to Starkie Markland, he likes singing because ‘it makes him feel better’. The beautiful ‘Under a Capricorn Sky’ is out now on 7” single (Caspian) and Sleeping States have a string of live dates booked in the UK and across the US. An album, There the Open Spaces, is due in September and will be released in the UK on Tome. – Isaac Howlett
Robotville
You can be as popular as you want over here, but breaking the US is a whole different kettle of fish. Just ask Robbie Williams, Oasis, or Take That. However, the intrepid fresh-faced-folks of Robotville have decided to do the whole darn thing in reverse, emerging in the US then cracking their native UK! Led by Hari Ashurst, (singer, songwriter and general ring-leader), Robotville are a collective of at least eight members. Nine if you include the one who is responsible for fags, coffee, and playing Pro-evo soccer (no, I didn’t count them either). However, it is with Hari that the responsibility seems to rest, and my, they sound excellent.
With stateside coverage on college radio, Robotville have thus far only released one beautiful EP (in April), titled I Am Hiding An Elephant. Covering such diverse themes as moving to Paris, becoming romantic, and not having sex on your birthday (!), Robotville playfully recount their ideas on fear, sex, love and leaving. Indeed, if they were conceived in a sexual relationship then they would be the bastard child of Bright Eyes, Beck and Belle & Sebastien (and that’s just the B’s). Yes, if you know your indie-pop then you’ll be able to pick out influences from across the spectrum, but making comparisons is to miss the point. Whatever they are doing, they are doing very well. Sweet and infectious, each track is brimming with acoustic guitars, bleepy noise machines and brimming full of ideas. Indeed if you do check them out then stop by KOTS, featuring the Canadian rapper/producer Cadence Weapon. Might sound wrong, but sounds just right.
Compared to Elliot Smith, influenced by Pulp and Sam Cooke, it is difficult to see how the next year doesn’t hold big things for Hari and the rest of Robotville. Viva Nu-Folk! (I just made that up) – Matt Coxon
Marnie Stern
Claiming to practise for “at least” three hours a day, Marnie Stern takes her musicianship seriously. But unlike a thousand feckless singer songwriters, sitting on stools under spotlights being all so pleased with their latest acoustic drivel, Marnie’s music is a berserk attack administered through a Fender.
Entirely self-taught, the New Yorker’s unique style mixes full-on thrash shred with rapid fret-tapping finger work that’s as intricate as a sonically-arranged Faberge egg. All with Marnie’s thick East Coast drawl buffing out the ragged edges, it makes her an intriguing prospect.
I doubt there’s anyone other than Marnie herself who could tell you exactly what her songs are about. Oblique almost to the point of impenetrability, in songs like ‘Patterns Of A Diamond Ceiling’ she tells us: “I am not looking to find a pot of gold. I will paint you a picture that's inside my head; first I must carve out a place. Picture yourself carving out a place in a room. Now look up, there's the diamond ceiling. Look up now, this is what it sounds like”
When she stands on stage, staring into the middle distance, chanting to us like a self-help hypnosis tape, for all its sideways messages, people everywhere have been able to hang their own meanings from her lyrics.
Imagine one of Mike Patton’s more outré side-projects – you know, the ones that sound like the inner musings of the residents of the worst kind of bedlam. Now squash that all down inside the skull of a small blonde woman from New York City and you’ve got Marnie Stern.
Playing her fretboard more like it’s a keyboard, Marnie Stern’s noise occasionally edges near to full on riffage, before she cocks her ear up and tears off on some new dischordant tangent.
Marnie has recently finished touring in support of Animal Collective, and tours the USA in July / August. Her debut album In Advance Of The Broken Arm, is out now on the Kill Rock Stars label. – Hugh Platt
Agaskodo Teliverek
A band that most definitely lives up to its name…er… you’ll find there really is no substitute for catching Agaskodo Teliverek live. These guys have the aesthetic impact of the coolest scene in Napoleon Dynamite (yes, the Jamiroquai dance routine) combined with a cold war soviet gymnastics competition.
More particularly, Miklos "The Accountant" Kemecsi and Tamas "Karamazov" Szabo excel in bobbing around a stage in tight fitting football gear while producing a mind-blowing, highly instrumental sound that elevates the comedy aspect to the status of awe. Take how on their MySpace profile (with flagrant irresponsibility we might add) they site more influences than quite possibly have ever existed. Amazingly, they are also able to do justice to this catalogue.
A new album is on the way and its title, Psycho Goulash, aptly sums up the ingenuity of the situation. There really seems no embargo on any base ingredients and the duo delight in each random explosion that emanates from the lab. Track names such as ‘Valeria Lobelia Bluebell’ and ‘The Girl With the Waxball featuring Man From Uranus’ should alone sell you to the idea. Meanwhile, ‘The Gay Hussar’ is one successful example from a separate 7” project.
The full force of each success, however, is to be experienced at each and every Agaskodo show – where you tend to be treated to additional burlesque dancers, filthy-minded guitars, vibraphone and sometime even jaw harp and violin. Maybe they’re crazy, maybe that word is far too overused, but what’s certain is you’d be crazy to miss this. – Alderson
No Bra
You know how they say Ethiopians are like Germans dipped in chocolate? No? Well obviously you haven’t yet had the pleasure of hearing ‘Munchausen’; an irreverent dish of uncompromising electro-pop garnished with the hilarious tête-à-tête of two supercilious, conceited homosexuals who make ridiculously over-embellished claims about their supposed artistic and sexual ‘achievements’ in a pathetic attempt to ‘out trash’ each other. During the course of the tune they brag about everything from contracting syphilis in Topshop to being saved from burning wreckage by David Hasselhoff.
Meet the languidly named ‘No Bra’ then; the latest quirky electro ‘art-wank’ act to both shock and delight the ears of the exclusive Hoxton club scene. No Bra are a duo consisting of emphatic partners in crime Dale and Susanne, who have been quietly plugging away on the fringes of infamy over the last couple of years, playing dates all over the world. With rhythm-less, stream-of-consciousness-style lyrics jostling with repetitive electronic beats and bleeps, plucked guitar or piano chords, No Bra effortlessly create compositions that are both hypnotic and, well, vaguely disturbing.
No Bra’s album, Dance and Walk, with it’s uncompromising photo of long-locked and deeply androgynous lead ‘singer’ Susanne typically sans brassiere and baring her right breast (censored for MySpace), has received some varied and imaginative reviews, ranging from the scathing; ‘…only four of the songs on this record have what could be recognized as a melody" (Time Out), to the vaguely complimentary; ‘cocks, cocaine, wanking, fags, fucking, tits...there's just nothing else to say about this record’ (VICE). No Bra are supporting The Gossip on tour in September and their album Dance and Walk is out now. – Isaac Howlett
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
--advertisement--
