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I just got back from seeing FIELD MUSIC at Sheffield University’s Fusion and they were bloody brilliant! Opening with Give It, Lose It, Take It (my favourite Field Music track, fact fans!) they played an amazing set, turning the initially unresponsive crowd into one calling for an encore at the end.
New album “Field Music (Measure)” got the strongest showing, with the title track and Clear Water particular highlights. Tracks from the Brewis brothers’ solo offerings also got an airing, including the excellent Rockist Part 1, alongside plenty of tracks from the band’s first two albums.
The band’s performance was super-tight, even on unscheduled encore trackLet’s Write A Book, which they claimed never to have played live before. Similarly impressive were the group harmonies on A Gap Has Appearedand on excellent closer Tell Me, Keep Me.
Overall, a phenomenal performance from a hugely underrated band. If you haven’t done so already, check them out.
David Bowie: “6 Music keeps the spirit of broadcasters like John Peel alive and for new artists to lose this station would be a great shame”
Bear with me as I give my opinion about the threatened closure of BBC 6 MUSIC. I can’t (and don’t intend to) speak for the rest of the AGCS writers but this is something I personally feel strongly about.
Although I generally find the notion of national ‘pride’ alienating the BBC is an example of an institution Britain definitely should be proud of. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop an army of twattish men with their fuckwit dogs constantly moaning if their license fee is spent on anything they don’t personally agree with. These will be the same wankers who were offended in their masses by Sachsgate without even hearing the supposed offence. In short, dickheads.
It’s because of these dickheads, egged on by a dickhead press, that the BBC is consistently under attack, feeling the need to defend every bit of programming, every scrap of expenditure against the angry mob. So it is that both BBC 6 Music and Asian Network look set to be scrapped in a futile attempt to placate this baying crowd. I can’t say I’ve ever listened to the latter but this serves to underline the point of BOTH stations - they cater to niche markets because that is their remit, and lest we forget (as Director General Mark Thompson seems to have) part of the BBC’s remit as a whole.
Before I get into full on rant mode, there IS a point to this. The closure of BBC 6 Music will have wider implications for British music. To my mind no other station plays as much new music; every time I listen I hear something I haven’t heard before, and most of the time it’s something good. All the station’s DJ’s, and in particular Steve Lamacq, show a genuine interest in discovering the new. Without this potential source of early support, it’s going to be harder for upcoming acts to get noticed. It’s also important to established acts like Yeasayer or Field Music, who have both featured on the station’s playlist recently. These are bands who will rarely, if ever, get airplay on other stations, but on 6 Music they have the chance to reach a national audience receptive to alternative and independently-spirited music.
6 Music is the only radio station I listen to regularly - and if it goes I can’t think of any other which will be able to do the same things that it is able to. The BBC’s entire digital radio output costs 10p of the license fee per month, yet it appears a bunch of shit-eating Daily Mail readers and the prospect of a BBC-bashing Tory government are going to persuade Mark Thompson that this isn’t a price worth paying. That would be a damn shame, because in less than a decade 6 Music has become an important part of British indie culture. I’m sure there’ll be some petitions doing the rounds, and if you want to search them out that’s great, but if I could give you one piece of advice it would be to just listen to 6 Music. While you still can.
“With this record you’re going to be interfacing with your soul in ways that have never happened before” - THE RAPTURE
FINALLY, some news from the Rapture camp regarding their third album. Aside from the GTA IV-soundtracking “No Sex For Ben” the band have been awfully quiet since 2006’s “Pieces of the People We Love”, so it’s good to know that despite losing bassist Mattie Safer new material will be released soon.
According to an interview with Pitchfork the band are 1/3 of the way through recording in Paris and if all goes well the album could be “out by June or July”. You can read further details on the recording process of the as-yet-untitled album HERE.
To celebrate, here’s one of the highlights of the last Rapture album, “The Devil”
Here’s the brand new LIARS video for the excellent SCISSOR. Needless to say, it’s a dollop of pure awesomeness and is only getting me more excited about forthcoming album “Sisterworld”. Here’s hoping for a UK tour so I can finally see them live!
REVIEW: HOT CLUB DE PARIS - With Days Like This As Cheap As Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want To Work? EP
I’m a big fan of Hot Club De Paris, and I still play their greatly under-appreciated second album “Live At Dead Lake” on a regular basis. I’m pretty pleased then that 2010 promises not only a new record from the band but two stand-alone EPs, the first of which comes out tomorrow on 10” and download.
Entitled “With Days Like This As Cheap As Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want To Work?”, the six new tracks show the band trying new things with mostly successful results. Opener Dance A Ragged Dance is the exception to the rule, deviating little from the band’s earlier sound, and perhaps as a result of this it’s the weakest song here. However, following track Fuck You, The Truth!, ushered in with a minute of percussive chimes and glockenspiel, is amongst the band’s best work to date with it’s catchy guitar line and infectious chants of “the carpet, the street, these hands and these knees”.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? sounds unlike anything the band have done before, with it’s simplistic ascending riff and stripped back percussion, and is another great addition to the band’s catalogue. It’s closing track Extra Time, Sudden Death which is the real star here though. Clocking in at six minutes it’s Hot Club’s longest song yet and, to my mind, their finest. A marching drumbeat, glockenspiel chimes, group harmonies and more catchy riffs combine to create a song which just oozes perfection. The closing refrain of “We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death” may not look that special written down but it’s been stuck in my head for the past four hours.
Not everything on this EP works but when the band succeed they do it in style, as shown on Extra Time, Sudden Death which is surely their best song to date. That alone makes this a record worth buying.
Altogether now: “We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death, We caught the start, We watched the rest, Extra Time, then Sudden Death” (etc.)
TRACK BY TRACK: LOS CAMPESINOS! - ROMANCE IS BORING
I’ve made no secret of my Los Campesinos! obsession in the past on this blog and with the release of the excellent Romance Is Boring today it’s only gonna get worse. Safe to say it was worth the wait - the second album proper from Los Campesinos! is everything I hoped for and more, so here’s a detailed track-by-track review of an album I’m already earmarking as potentially the year’s best.
1. In Medias Res - “On the back seat of your car because it wasn’t safe to start it, you were ‘far too fucked to drive’ were the words that you imparted”
The album starts off simply enough, with acoustic guitar and some background organ noise ushering in the first of many great vocal performances from Gareth, but with a creepy electronic midsection ushering in clattering drums, distorted vocals and a blaring trumpet outro it quickly becomes apparent that Los Campesinos! have “grown up”. It’s a great opener which segues seamlessly into…
“Think Before You Speak”, the début album from Morden four-piece Good Shoes, may not have been an original record but it was nonetheless an enthralling one. With the yelped vocals of frontman Rhys Jones and the memorable hooks of songs such as Sophia and Ice Age the band showed they had more to offer than many of their contemporaries. Three years later the band are back with “No Hope, No Future”, but after a long absence do the band still have the same power?
The answer, in short, is no. Rhys’ vocals sound for the most part flat and the songs here are nowhere near as catchy as those on the band’s first record. On a ten track album only half an hour long there is no room for filler - yet almost half the tracks here sound like b-side material.
On the positive side, Under Control and The Way My Heart Beats, both released as singles before the album came out, are as infectious as anything on their début, and the riff on Then She Walks Away is sure to burrow it’s way into your consciousness. However amongst these genuinely good songs and the merely average ones there are a couple of genuine stinkers. Everything You Do is a turgid mess, with Rhys’ languid vocals likely to induce a coma. I Know, meanwhile, is bogged down by overly earnest (an pretty awful) lyrics: “I think that if there’s a day of judgement then our leaders will be first against the wall”.
There’s some good ideas here, but considering how long the group have spent on this album it’s a shame that it sounds so rushed and unfinished. Hopefully Good Shoes will be able to release another album as good as their début, and they remain a great live band, but this is a pretty disappointing effort from a group which once seemed so promising.
Here’s the new video from Blood Red Shoes, and it’s made my day. You may remember I wasn’t that impressed with “Colours Fade”, the first taste of the band’s second album Fire Like This, so I’m dead pleased that the record’s first official release “Light It Up” is pure pop-punk perfection. It boasts a proper shout-along chorus and may be the most infectious thing the band have written yet. The video’s pretty good as well.
The new album is out on March 1st and this song’s got me pretty excited. If the rest of the record is as good as “Light It Up” it’s going to be amazing.
Yesterday evening the new Gorillaz single “Stylo” leaked all over the internet, but just in case you missed it you can listen to the first taste of new album “Plastic Beach” here.Featuring Bobby Womack and Mos Def, the track is on first listen a relatively subdued affair, but it’s insistent bassline is certain to ensure it’s a grower.
Further details about “Plastic Beach” have also been released, and we can now confirm that the album will be released on March 8th. You can see the album artwork and a full tracklisting (including info on collaborators) below.
01 - Orchestral Intro (featuring Sinfonia ViVA) 02 - Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach (feat. Snoop Dogg and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble) 03 - White Flag (feat. Kano, Bashy and The National Orchestra For Arabic Music) 04 - Rhinestone Eyes 05 - Stylo (feat. Bobby Womack and Mos Def) 06 - Superfast Jellyfish (feat. Gruff Rhys and De La Soul) 07 - Empire Ants (feat. Little Dragon) 08 - Glitter Freeze (feat. Mark E Smith) 09 - Some Kind Of Nature (feat. Lou Reed) 10 - On Melancholy Hill 11 - Broken 12 - Sweepstakes (feat. Mos Def & Hypnotic Brass Ensemble) 13 - Plastic Beach (feat. Mick Jones & Paul Simonon) 14 - To Binge (feat. Little Dragon) 15 - Cloud Of Unknowing (feat. Bobby Womack and Sinfonia ViVA) 16 - Pirate Jet
One time, when I was at a house party and drunk, I pretended that I knew something about electronic music. What followed was a ten minute “conversation” (and I use that term very lightly) where I painfully tried to bluff my way through a succession of discussions about different sub-genres and upcoming artists. This self inflected torment only came to an end when the guy I was talking to wandered off, in order to tell everyone else at the party how much of a twat I was. Probably.
What’s the point of this, you might well ask? Well, despite the fact that I know nothing about electronic music I do occasionally stumble across a great act, either because they’ve remixed an indie band or because they’re a member of an indie band.
I stumbled across Dolby Anol last year for the latter reason, as one half of the DJ duo is Dananananaykroyd singer-and-drummer John Ballie Jnr (the other half is fellow Glaswegian Graham Peel). A quick listen to Dolby Anol’s myspace made it pretty clear that this was no half-arsed side project. Their glitchy electro is probably some of the most immediately accessible dance music I’ve heard, as shown in the excellent singles “Puppies” and “Tender Touch”. A delve deeper into the two-piece’s back catalogue (you can find loads over at last.fm, including some free downloads) led to the discovery of further gems “Just Julia”, “Heil Mary” and “We Don’t Rock”, to name but three.
With new material due out in the near future and some big name remixes under their belt (Kings of Leon, Gossip) 2010 looks set to be a very good year for the duo. I’ve learnt my lesson and I’m not going to pretend I know much about electronic music, but I do know that Dolby Anol are fucking awesome, so check them out.
