We’ve big fans of Australian based Cloves ,with her two previous releases making waves the Melbourne-born songstress is finally back with new cut ‘Wasted Time’. Here is…WASTED TIME…I’m so proud of this record, for me this record is about that voice in your head that fucks with you, that makes you feel paranoid mid conversation with someone that maybe they hate you or maybe you’re boring them, and trying to understand why people want to stay around
It’s a timeless bluesy ballad that focuses down on Kaity Dunstan’s gloriously rich, booming vocals, and talks of the self-esteem issues and lapses in self-confidence that affect us all. And it has us all excited about the debut LP, ‘One Big Nothing’, which is promised for release later this summer.
London’sTeleman have long been favourites, and now the foursome have unveiled details of their third studio album; Family of Aliens, set for release in early September
To mark the occasion, they have offered another insight into their flourishing electronic-inspired sound, with new single Cactus. Flaunting the harmonious marriage of their classic pop sensibility accompanied by pulsating electronic undertones, the single is anchored by an unrelenting riff that crescendos to a cacophony of thrashing guitars and unbridled synth-sounds, bound by a palpitating, monotonous drum-loop. It’s danceable, psychedelic and completely infectious, burbles of synth and distorted guitar competing for space over the disco groove at its core.
The video ‘Cactus’. Directed by Prosper Pictures and Lone Taxidermists, it’s a warped Frankenstein tale that sees a mass of wires, cables, rubber gloves and god knows what else form itself into a gigantic half-dancing, half-flailing cactus monster. Set in what looks like the basement level of a car park and created using a mix of physical and digital animation the creature’s birth is a sight to behold with floating astroturf and strange amorphous blobs abound.
‘Cactus’ from Teleman’s forthcoming new album ‘Family of Aliens’
Olden Yolk is the collaborative songwriting project of multi-instrumentalist Shane Butler. The project initially functioned as a moniker for Butler to release one-offs and singles under while touring with Quilt, but over time morphed into his full-time pursuit. The result is a harmonious, melancholic, and mystical brand of low key alt-folk with quirky, abstract lyricism.
Band Members
Shane Butler – Vocals, Guitar, and Sampler
Caity Shaffer – Vocals, Keys, and Sampler
Jesse DeFrancesco – Guitar and Keys
Pete Wagner – Bass and Vocals
Dan Drohan – Drums
Kid Dakota is the musical moniker of Darren Jackson. Formed in 1999, Kid Dakota to date have released two albums on LOW’s Chairkicker’s Union – So Pretty (2002), and The West is the Future (2004) – and three albums on Graveface Records – A Winner’s Shadow (2008), Listen to the Crows As They Take Flight (2011), and Denervation (2018).
Some albums were meant to be heard on vinyl. So Pretty is one of those albums, and that’s why we’re reissuing it as a 2LP on 180g of black vinyl. Originally released in 2002 on LOW’s record label, this reissue will include two previously unreleased tracks (Down to Get ’Em and Blackout) from the “So Pretty” sessions in the summer of 1999.
Darren is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, engineer, teacher, and producer. He owns and operates Shortman Studio in Northeast Minneapolis. In addition to creating and recording music, he is currently a Ph.D. student in ASPECT (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His areas of research are early twentieth-century avant-garde film, film theory, and philosophy.
Mercury Rev celebrates ‘Deserter’s Songs’ 20th Anniversary with a very special acoustic and intimate performance…
An intimate, acoustic evening featuring many of the stories and songs surrounding the Mercury Rev’s heartbreaking 1998 classic ‘Deserter’s Songs’. Performed in the fragile ‘whisper and strum’ way they were originally written, this promises to be an extraordinary glimpse into the forces that nearly destroyed a band and the strange events leading toward a most unexpected return. Mercury Rev’s influential orchestral rock landmark from 1998 has been reissued in 2xCD form, with an extra disc of demos and rarities.
Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs were mailed out to press in a cardboard-replica postal packet, complete with a stamp and a postmark advertising its release date. This was no random act: In 1998, a new Mercury Rev album could have felt like a postcard from a long-lost, old friend. Unlikely beneficiaries of the post-Nirvana major-label cattle call, Mercury Rev initially overcame the inter-band acrimony that fueled their first two brilliantly frazzled albums (1991’s Yerself Is Steam and 1993’s Boces), only to slip further into oblivion with the more refined but commercially ignored 1995 release, See You on the Other Side. A subsequent improvised recording released under the name Harmony Rockets (1995’s Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void) suggested the band was forsaking populist ambition to delve deeper into the psych-noise underground. Aside from a songwriting credit for Rev ringleader Jonathan Donahue on the Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole, by 1997, Mercury Rev had effectively vanished.
The arrival of Deserter’s Songs on the nascent V2 label was a brow-raiser in and of itself; but that sense of pleasant surprise turned to dumbstruck disbelief once the CD was dropped in the player. Mercury Rev had flirted with symphonic flourishes and sentimental balladry before, but usually delivered them in a haze of distortion (Boces’“Something For Joey”) or cheeky, irreverent arrangements (See You on the Other Side’s“Everlasting Arm”). Deserter’s Songs’ opening track, “Holes”, however, was something else entirely: Never before had Donahue left his helium-high croon so vulnerable and exposed, and never before had the band’s densely textured arrangements been deployed to such moving emotional effect, with the song’s eye-welling surge of orchestration and weepy bowed-saw lines perfectly complementing Donahue’s crestfallen lyrics.
And while there were always themes of New York state iconography running through the band’s disjointed discography– the Coney Island Cyclone, the Rockettes, Bronx cheers– Deserter’s Songs projected an especially vivid sense of place, casting a set of intimate, romantic narratives against the staggering natural beauty of the band’s upstate New York surroundings. Credit producer/bassist Dave Fridmann for foregrounding certain agrarian classic-rock influences– namely, Jack Nitzsche-era Neil Young, the Band, and Brian Wilson– that were heretofore buried behind the band’s wall of squall; Mercury Rev even went so far as to solicit guest contributions from Levon Helm and Garth Hudson for some authentic Big Pink flavor.
This unmissable event takes place at Glee Club Birmingham on 10th December 2018.
Jess Abbott can write a booming melody that cuts through a wash of guitars, screaming her insecurities to the beat of a chugging drum kit. As Tancred, Abbott sheds the atmospheric tendencies of her former band Now, Now for straightforward guitar rock, as evidenced on 2016’s Out of the Garden, a confident reckoning of personal identity.
For Abbott’s forthcoming album Nightstand, she takes a different approach,
This new album takes a step back from the energy of my last album to bring in a little more vulnerability. I wanted to reconnect with myself and these songs document that process. “Reviews” felt like the right first single because it holds some of that same propulsion the last album had, but also opens a secret door into a more introspective vibe present throughout Nightstand. It’s a deeply personal song for me and I’m happy I can finally share it.
“Reviews” balances an effects-laden, electric guitar that rackets around like an abused pinball in an arcade game alongside a guzzling bass line. But Abbott has also demonstrated a burgeoning knack for pop melodies, which is in full swing on this track.
Johnny Marr has shared the video for his catchy new song “Hi Hello,” the latest single off the former Smiths guitarist’s upcoming album Call the Comet. The fomer Smiths guitarist pens loose concept record that takes place in a futuristic “alternative society”
The video finds Marr performing the song alone in a gazebo and a park bench in the dead of winter. The desolateness of the “Hi Hello” video – no one besides Marr appears in the clip despite the public settings – ties into themes from the new album, his third as a solo artist.
Call the Comet, due out June 15th, is inspired by both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, with Marr’s lyrics drawing from an “alternative society” set in the “not-too-distant future.”
“I wouldn’t call it a concept record,”said Marr of the album. “But it’s got a unifying theme going through it about the Earth welcoming a different intelligence from the cosmos to save us from our own plight. The title Call the Comet is sort of a conscious plea for a new way.”
The Who recorded live footage at Shepperton Studios in 1977 and 1978 for their documentary “The Kids are Alright”. Keith Moon’s final performance with The Who before his death was at these studios on May 25th, 1978.
Keith Moon climbed over his drum kit, took a bow, shook hands with fans and then walked off stage, unaware it would be the last time he would play live with the Who. The band had reconvened (after two years of not touring) at Shepperton Studios in England to record some pick-up footage for their documentary movie The Kids Are Alright. Some tension had surrounded the sessions, which was performed in front of a small invited audience, because director Jeff Stein was unhappy with a take of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”
He wanted the band to play it again, and after some complaints, they did, giving it the bombastic ending Stein wanted. But no one could have predicted Keith Moon would be dead within four months, at age 32, a victim of his larger-than-life lifestyle. Moon suffered a number of setbacks during the 1970s, most notably the accidental death of chauffeur Neil Boland and the breakdown of his marriage. He became addicted to alcohol, particularly brandy and champagne, and acquired a reputation for decadence and dark humour. After moving to Los Angeles with personal assistant Peter “Dougal” Butler during the mid-1970s, While touring with the Who, on several occasions he passed out on stage and was hospitalised. By their final tour with him in 1976, and particularly during production of The Kids Are Alrightand Who Are You, the drummer’s deterioration was evident. Moon moved back to London in 1978, dying in September of that year from an overdose of Heminevrin, a drug intended to treat or prevent symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.
Scottish bassist Chris Glen of Michael Schenker Group, who knew Moon during the last decade of his life, says he still finds the footage difficult to watch. The pair first met when the Who played the Caird Hall, Dundee, Scotland, around 1969, and Glen’s band Tear Gas — which later morphed into the Sensational Alex Harvey Band were the support act. The Who and SAHB would later tour the U.K. together.
“It’s very emotional, and sadly it’s far from his best,” Glen says of the filmed performance, “He’d put on a lot of weight by that time … and the worst bit was that the Who hadn’t been together for a while. I saw him the week after the recording and he told me, ‘I wish we’d got together before it, just hung out together for a bit, and that would have made it better.’”
In spite of all Moon’s much-documented antics, Glen says the drummer “cared an awful lot about their music.”
“As a bass player,” he notes, “I was impressed with John Entwistle, of course, and one of the most impressive things was that it was John’s problem to take what Pete Townshend and Keith were doing and pull it together. That’s not easy and God knows how Roger Daltrey managed to find a place to fit in! But Keith really cared about what he did, and I think it’s a shame that’s ignored by the general populace.”
Glen had first-hand experience of Moon’s legendary eccentricities, and recounts a number of the drummer’s outlandish moments in his memoir Chris Glen: The Bass Business. In one instance, they were in a penthouse suite in a hotel in Glasgow, when Moon, who’d stolen a megaphone, opened the window and announced that there was a bomb scare in the building, leading to a police raid. Moon was arrested but released with a caution. Glen also remembers a story about Moon leaving a U.S. hotel only to return an hour later, because he’d forgotten to throw the TV out of his room window.
But Glen insists that not all of the drummer’s legendary antics were Moon’s idea. “Keith was a nicer, quieter guy than people think he was,” Glen says. “He was just easily led. You hear stories, like he drove his car into the swimming pool, but it wasn’t his idea. People would say, ‘Come on, Keith, do a Keith Moon thing! Drive your car into the swimming pool!’ and he’d go, ‘Okay, I will then.’ It’s not that he didn’t find it funny, or that he regretted it, it was just that if no one had asked him to do it, he wouldn’t have done it.”
Echo & The Bunnymen have announced their first new album in four years and will tour the UK in October.
The new record, entitled The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon, is a 15-track collection which will feature new versions of songs from their back catalog along with two brand new recordings.
“I’m not doing this for anyone else. I’m doing it as it’s important to me to make the songs better. I have to do it,” says Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch in a statement.
The new record is out in October and they’ve shared the lead single today which is a sparse rework of their iconic 1984 track ‘Seven Seas’.
Steve Winwood formed Traffic with Jim Capaldi, Dave Mason, and Chris Wood in 1967. In the spirit of the times, the group was intended to be a cooperative, with the members living together in a country cottage in Berkshire and collaborating on their songs. Signed to Island Records their single “Paper Sun,” peaked in the U.K. Top Five in July 1967 and also spent several weeks in the lower reaches of the charts in America. Traffic toured Europe in the summer of ’67 and the live recording that comprises this album was made for radio broadcast in Sweden at Radiohuset, Stockholm on September. 12th, 1967. It has been newly mastered for vinyl and pressed on blue vinyl.
• Restored and newly mastered audio
• Historic live radio broadcast available for the first time on LP
• Includes the hits ‘Paper Sun’ and ‘Hole In My Show’
• Complete live show from 1967
• Limited edition blue vinyl
TRACK LISTING
1. Giving To You [live] / 2. Smiling Phases [live] / 3. Coloured Rain [live] / 4. Hole In My Shoe [live] / 5. Feelin’ Good [live] / 6. Paper Sun [live] / 7. Dear Mr Fantasy [live]
