Shortly after their debut, Melbourne band Civic return with their sophomore EP “Those Who No’ – a fatalistic slab of power pop for the modern set. Recorded on a stint in Geelong, with Billy Gardner once again at the helm, “Those Who No’ acts as a counter point to the gutter rock classicism and urban decay romantics of ‘New Vietnam’, and shifts it’s focus towards genre experimentation, bleaker insular realities and modern personal warfare.
Over four tracks Jim McCullough, Lewis Hodgson, Darcy Grigg, Roland Hlavka and David Forcier dance on the knife’s edge of mythology versus the mundane – an against all odds desperation that flirts with the anthemic yet only stokes the flames.
Mid 70s glam and rock n roll tropes are pummelled beyond recognition referencing the past but predominantly pointing to the future. There are forces at work here and Civic aren’t a band merely content to play to their strengths – they are a true sum of their parts who get their kicks testing their limitations. – Ben Hepworth
Civic “Those Who No’ OUT THROUGH ANTI FADE AND FAMOUS CLASS released originally November 9th, 2018
All songs written by Civic except Needle In The Camel’s Eye written by Brian Eno.
Playing garage-accented pop, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Mikal Cronin was raised in Laguna Beach, CA, where as a teenager he developed a passion for both surfing and rock & roll. While attending Laguna Beach High School, he fell in with a handful of like-minded music fans, many of whom he still collaborates with to this day.
It’s easy to get caught up in an undertow, pulled down into the water, weightless and directionless. The current stirs and you lose your way. But eventually, if you’re lucky and patient, you can float back up to the surface and take a breath. This is my first new music in a while – my gulp of air. Many talented friends joined me, the basic tracks were recorded live together for the first time in my recording career. This felt good. Jason Quever recorded it in Los Angeles, December of 2018. Thanks for listening. – MK
Performed By: Mikal Cronin – Vocals, Guitar, Bouzouki, Saxophones William Tyler – Guitar Shannon Lay – Vocals Ryan Weinstein – Bass Heidi Alexander – Vocals Marc Riordan – Drums Jordan Katz – Trumpet David Ralicke – Trombone
BSCBR is a group of Black Sabbath lovers hailing from New York City. The group consists of Brad Truax (Interpol), Mick Barr (Ocrilim, Krallice), Greg Fox, Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and Angel Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors, Deradoorian). After a music residency in Berlin where Zinner, Deradoorian (I didn’t believe I would like Deradoorian doing Ozzy). , and Fox met up, the first formation of the band was created. Zinner had the idea of bringing the music to NYC (when Truax and Barr joined) where the band received immediate attention and sold out their first concert. It was surprising for everyone, but they just kept on playing, and the people kept on showing up. It’s been one of their favourite bands to play in ever. The love of Sabbath has brought so much joy to this group and there’s no greater feeling than spreading that joy to fellow fans.
Released September 4th, 2020
BSCBR are:
Vocals – Angel Deradoorian Guitar – Nick Zinner Guitar – Mick Barr Bass – Brad Truax Drums – Greg Fox
Recorded at Barefoot studios Los Angeles by Tim O’Sullivan Mixed by Nick Zinner
“This EP was a personal feat in light of the existential malaise we have been wading through. The songs are surreal and honest. My take on current reality inevitably takes a bit of a nose dive in to spiralling repetition. This isn’t new to me as I am by nature an over thinker. I would take the instrumentals on hikes to sort out the lyrics. A blend of physical and mental exhaustion ultimately let me lower the guard.
I found the concept of Soft Crime could be the slight of hand that takes place in front of our eyes … or the small things we let ourselves get away with; either way Soft Crime goes down every day. The Blood Machine turns, and we sacrifice ground to take steps. It’s important to remember that by the burning light of the dumpster fire, we can still find the true beauty of our neighbours. We’re in it together until the very end. Whether that is tomorrow or was yesterday.” – Charles Moothart
releases October 15, 2021
Charles Moothart – “Soft Crime” from Soft Crime EP Out October 15th, 2021 on Famous Class Records
Long before John Brannon of Negative Approach cemented himself as a USHC icon, you would hear rumblings about his pre-NA glam group, Static. Only a handful of people were lucky/brave enough to see them live. Scenesters spoke of a tape but never seemed to have one. Their most well-remembered song, “Toothpaste and Pills,” allegedly featured smashing beer bottles against John’s mom’s basement wall as a percussion instrument. Could this be real?
Fast forward to 2020 and a few months into the covid-19 lockdown, Brannon came across a bunch of tapes he dug out of a box in his Mom’s closet – STATIC DEMOS ‘78, STATIC LIVE AT GROSSE POINTE SOUTH H.S., STATIC LIVE AT PLEWA HALL. Holy shit! The legend is true! And best of all, Static rule!
John Brannon grew up in Grosse Pointe Park just a few blocks from the Detroit border. John was always into music, but as soon as he heard T-Rex, The Stooges and Alice Cooper, he was obsessed (and still is). He had to start a band to channel his obsessions. So, John and fellow neighbourhood kid, Billy Daniels, started writing songs and jamming in John’s mom’s basement. John sang and played piano. Billy played guitar and sang too. They enlisted the help of a local drummer known simply as “Red”, and Static was born.
During the first year that they recorded demos at Mrs. Brannon’s, they bought a bunch of beer and invited all the kids over to drink and go nuts as Static would run through their hits like “Toothpaste and Pills,” “Punk Nation” and “We’re So Cheap We’re Divine.” Mrs. Brannon finally had enough and kicked them outta the basement and forced them to get a space they could call their own. They added Mike Neal on bass and started doing proper gigs at Plewa Hall(STATIC HQ) and at legendary Detroit and Windsor (just across the river in Canada) punk rock clubs like Nunzio’s, Bookies and Coronation Tavern. Their talent show performance at Grosse Pointe South High School in 1979 ended with the plug being pulled, the cops being called and a riot of rowdy kids. Amazingly, this is documented on the album under ‘’H.S. Riot”.
After the talent show, Red left and in stepped a new drummer named Dana. Dana, Mike, Billy and Brannon, going by Static Electric, continued to play until the last Static show at Coronation Tavern in the summer of 1981. By this time, Brannon had seen Black Flag and Necros and knew he had to do something new. A few short months after the last Static show, Brannon was back on stage with his head freshly shaved, fronting his new group Negative Approach.
Before Negative Approach changed the face of punk and hardcore, before Laughing Hyenas scared the world silly and blew everyone else off the stage and before Easy Action started melting minds all over the world, there was STATIC. STATIC was real.
Third Man Records is beyond ecstatic to be providing this long-missing piece of the American Underground Music puzzle. We worked closely with John Brannon and Warren Defever, one of Third Man Mastering’s resident wizards, to put together this essential collection of demos and live recordings.
This is a memoir as wry, funny, moving and vivid as only John Cooper Clarke could deliver. Inimitable and iconic, his book will be a joy for both lifelong fans and for a whole new generation.
John Cooper Clarke is a phenomenon: Poet Laureate of Punk, rock star, fashion icon, TV and radio presenter, social and cultural commentator, reluctant national treasure. At 5 feet 11 inches (116lb, 32in chest, 27in waist), in trademark suit jacket, skin-tight drainpipes and dark glasses, with jet-black back-combed hair and mouth full of gold teeth, he is instantly recognisable. As a writer his voice is equally unmistakable and his inimitable dry Salford drawl shines through the prose.
I Wanna Be Yours covers an extraordinary life, filled with remarkable personalities: from Nico to Chuck Berry, from all the great punks to Bernard Manning, and on to more recent fans and collaborators Alex Turner and Plan B – who have championed his work. Interspersed with stories of his rock and roll and performing career, John also reveals his boggling encyclopaedic knowledge of twentieth-century popular culture, his private passions and guilty pleasures: from Baudelaire, Pam Ayres and Rimbaud to football to Coronation Street, comprising horse racing and gambling, politics and jokes – and much more.
In the summer of 1966, an 18-year-old Laura Nyro auditioned for Milt Okun, one of the most respected music producers of the day, and Artie Mogull, a noted A&R man. After the session, these eventual music business legends, were so blown away that Mogull became her manager, and Okun signed on to produce her debut record, “Go Find The Moon: The Audition Tape” puts the listener in the room at the very beginning of Nyro’s legendary career.
“Go Find the Moon: The Audition Tape” captures the summer 1966 performance of 18-year-old singer songwriter Laura Nyro auditioning for Milt Okun and Artie Mogull. The audition on which Nyro accompanied herself on piano, went so well that Mogull signed the young artist and budding songwriter to a management contract and Okun promptly booked studio time with arranger Herb Bernstein to record her debut album, More Than a New Discovery.
It’s not hard to realize why: Laura Nyro heard music differently than everyone else – and her songs reflected that. At the audition session, she performed a pair of the remarkable songs that would soon appear on that LP, the precociously mature “And When I Die” and “Lazy Susan.” She also previewed an embryonic “Luckie,” the final version of which would be included on her even more acclaimed sophomore album, “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession“. The ballad “Enough of You,” brief “In and Out,” and deliciously swooning “Go Find the Moon” were never released in studio form, making their appearances here all the more welcome.
The audition tape is rounded out with fragments of “When Sunny Gets Blue,” “Kansas City,” and “I Only Want to Be with You.” While Nyro was prompted to sing them when it was asked if she could perform something she hadn’t written, they hint at the stylistic diversity that informed her passionate song writing and performing. In just 18-1/2 fly-on-the-wall minutes, this is the sound of an incandescent talent. Omnivore’s first-time release is annotated by Jim Farber and mastered by Michael Graves.
Norway’s Ora The Molecule (aka Nora Schjelderup) released her debut album, “Human Safari”, via Mute . Ever since we were first sent the album several months back we’ve been enamoured by album closer “Souldigging” and now that the album is out.
Last February, Schjelderup shared the song “Creator” upon the album’s announcement, she then shared its next single “Die To Be A Butterfly”. There was then another single from it, “The Ball,” via a video that features lots of slow motion shots of her riding a horse (sometimes in reverse), as well as of her with a dog on a beach. “The Ball,” once again landed Ora the Molecule lots of acclaim on the blogging scene.
A press release for “Human Safari” says its songs alternate “between joyous, beat-driven avant-pop and slick synthwave.”
“It’s for sure two poles,” Schjelderup agrees. “The speaker is the storyteller and the instrumentals are nature or the way life goes. Sometimes you get scared, sometimes it opens up. It’s life. I wanted to make a landscape where the voice could guide you through and be a safe voice. So even when it’s a little bit darker, you’re still in the story and it continues.”
Ora The Molecule under exclusive license to Mute Artists Ltd
Glass Animals have released their first new music since the beginning of the pandemic, ‘I Don’t Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance)’ is the first music since Glass Animals reached a new level of popularity and critical acclaim with their third album “Dreamland”.
Premiered on triple j Breakfast, ‘I Don’t Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance)’ has all the sticky groove and psychedelia you’d expect from the British band. It’s a lot more urgent than ‘Heat Waves’ and with its cutting guitar lines and Wavey Davey’s spacey falsetto.
Frontman Dave Bayley said the new single is intended to provide a musical release from the pressure cooker of a global pandemic that’s rattled our lives and fed our worst insecurities.
“Being locked down in England for so long, you end up going a bit stir crazy. You start over-thinking everything. I was talking to myself in my head all night, staying up all night, not being able to sleep.”
“The song is about the realisation that what I wanted and needed most – what everyone probably needed most – is to just go out and see their friends and have fun. Have something to enjoy; we all need that little bit that makes us feel human. That’s what this song is about.”
“It’s really hard because you expect and hope you can play the songs live [after releasing an album] and see people smile and that is the whole reason you do it. We haven’t had that.”
Music video by Glass Animals performing I Don’t Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance). Wolf Tone Records, a division of Universal Music Operations Limited.
Guitarists Neil Halstead & Lee Lavender join acclaimed HOO to create a synth and guitar heavy masterpiece with guests Jackie Oates & Farmer Dave Scher.
Producer-songwriter and organic gardener with a penchant for wah-wah, Nick Holton brings you the wide-screen, heartbreaking glory of HOO’s gothy toned second album “We Shall Never Speak”. A more song filled leap forward from debut “Centipede Wisdom’s” post-rock electro adventures.
Holton is a master builder of woozy dynamics, his songs unfurl with a mysterious, hooky logic all their own – this is cinematic and deeply emotive machine music. A glorious hybrid of electro, shoegaze, dubby ‘niceness’ and floating dream pop. The spooked, narcotic throb of opener “Ghost In You”. The pounding, chewy Kraut/Space rock of “Cranium”. The mighty’s exquisite slow build towards Can-like lift-off. Snarly hypnotic throb of first single ‘Still Dream’ pounds along like a wide-screen Spaceman 3. Its subject paints a picture of youthful arrogance veiled in a foil of anger & cowardliness, a loved one lost to an ocean of dark cold space. Moog battles with groovy bass while guitars try to take your head off. A brief flirt with musique concrète on the metronomic “No One Can See This”. The Halstead co-penned shoegazy, echoey swagger of “We Shall Never Speak”. The album’s poisoned chalice & peak song moment, “Powder Moon”. The synthpop of “You Changed The Way You Smile”. Closer “Sea Of Glass” sounds like Leonard Cohen visiting Kraftwerk’s Klingklang studio.
Let that sink in – the idea is perhaps the heart of this venture.
The detail and texture is extraordinary. A glorious hybrid of an album that over eight songs builds into something unique. Epic and homegrown. Upbeat and melancholic. Questing and questioning. Haunted by loss but future-facing. It’s a genuine marvel.
The Fat Angel Sings 