Nottingham post-punks Do Nothing blend jerky, spidery rhythms with surreal, half-spoken vocals that recall the Fall ‘s Mark E. Smith . Do Nothing was formed in 2017 by four long-time school friends: frontman Chris Bailey, guitarist Kasper Sandstrøm, drummer Andy Harrison, and bassist Charlie Howarth. All had played in various acts around the city; the band got their start at the popular Maze Club.
Bailey, whose father was a singer in an a cappella folk group, grew up listening to the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel , and his own biggest influence was Tom Waits. Initially attempting to copy big names like LCD Soundsystem (as heard on their first 7″ single, “Gangs,” released in 2019), they eventually became more confident about doing their own thing, and Bailey gave his stream-of-consciousness lyrics and outsider stage persona free rein. Associated with, but wary of, the then-popular post-punk revival, they made clear it was their intention to follow their own path. Their debut EP, “Zero Dollar Bill”, was released in 2020; another, “Glueland”, arrived the following year, and now comes the stunning new album.
The band who we tipped for great things back in 2020 announce their debut album ‘Lost in a Rush of Emptiness,‘ which is reassuringly the most Bleach Lab-sounding title you could hope for, and it’s due on September 22nd via NettwerkRecords. The album was produced by Catherine Marks, known for her work with PJ Harvey, Foals, The Big Moon, and the new boygenius album. They’ve also announced a headline tour.
‘Counting Empties’ builds on themes of heartbreak and isolation laid out in their previous single ‘Indigo’, as the band reflect on “how having a difficult relationship with alcohol can hinder romantic and personal relationships. A battle with your own mind to do better and a vulnerability of asking someone patience and forgiveness, although you may not feel you deserve it”
Can’t quite believe we are saying this but our debut album ‘Lost In A Rush Of Emptiness’ will be out on 22nd September and you can pre-order it now! You have no idea how much this means to us, thank you to everyone who has supported us up to this point.
After releasing three EPs, they are now release their debut album “Lost In A Rush Of Emptiness”, where the band felt free to experiment, always keeping true to their alternative nature. The songs on it are packed with widescreen, dreamy soundscapes that pushed their aesthetics forwards and continued the experimentation that exists at the heart of the project.
Perfect songs deserve perfect visuals, Bleach Lab certainly have a knack for capturing emotions with graceful understatement and poetic beauty, and they do so yet again on their new track ‘Counting Empties’ which arrives replete with a stunning video.
Bleach Lab proudly call themselves perfectionists. The South London formed in 2017 as a duo of bassist Josh Longman and guitarist Frank Wates, they then recruited vocalist Jenna Kyle before reaching their final form at the start of 2021 with the recruitment of drummer Kieran Weston.
The Pretenders have teamed up with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood for their new song ‘I Think About You Daily’ , ‘I Think About You Daily’ is the second song released from The Pretenders’ forthcoming album ‘Relentless’, which arrives on September 15th. The Pretenders singer and guitarist Chrissie Hynde said in a statement that her band are “obviously big fans” of Greenwood and revealed how the collaboration came together. “I saw him at the Phantom Thread premiere [the film of which Greenwood scored] where the film was running on screen with a live orchestra playing. We spoke afterward and he expressed an interest in doing something one day,” she said.
The moving ballad features a string arrangement from Greenwood, who is a composer outside of his work with Radiohead and The Smile. “I was thrilled and very surprised… So when we discussed the idea of getting strings on ‘I Think About You Daily,’ he was the first choice. Legend!”
Greenwood added: “The arrangement wrote itself because of that voice. She’s one of the greatest singers in popular music, and her continuing passion for creation was an inspiring experience from first the email to the last note of the recording.”
“Relentless”, which is the 12th album by the British-American rockers, has also been previewed by lead single ‘Let The Sun Come In‘.
Lande Hekt continues her poignant musical introspection with two singles ‘Pottery Class’ and ‘Axis’. Bittersweet ‘Pottery Class’ captures the feeling of yearning for someone and longing for a space to share with that person. In the song, Lande reflects: “we could move to the city, go to shows and join a pottery class / But you’d always be overwhelmed by everything that moves too fast / I don’t care where we live, I just want you back.”
Second single, ‘Axis’, conveys wistful and fleeting thoughts of loneliness and the desire for freedom, transforming elusive feelings into concrete experiences: “Late nights keep me down but it’s different from how it used to be / Birds fly past the window and Lola wishes she was free.” After spinning in a hazy stream-of-consciousness amongst hypnotic guitar-driven instrumentals, Lande resigns “It’s always the bad days that keep me from pushing forward.”
My new 7” is out now! Go and listen to the second single on it, “Axis” which is streaming in the places. You can also buy the 7” from my bandcamp or in record shops.
Rustbelt makes Underdog Pop for the confusing 20s; anthems for everyone just barely holding on. Rustbelt is John Chiaverina, formerly known as Juiceboxxx. Rustbelt’s self-titled debut EP, released in the fall of 2022, is a direct pop statement from an artist who has spent his career on the fringes of everything at once, all the time.
Incubated in punk house basements, weird art galleries, European squats, Midwest truck stops and noise warehouses, Rustbelt finds Chiaverina bruised but intact, writing the best and most accessible songs of his life. “Through all my failure, all my embarrassment, all my stupidity, I keep writing songs,” Chiaverina says. “I feel like I’m in some sort of an identity purgatory. I no longer feel like Juiceboxxx, but who is John Chiaverina? That sounds really dumb and overdramatic, but it’s true. I don’t know who I am. So, again, I keep writing songs.”
He continues: “As you get older and older it gets less and less easy to continue to be creative and believe in yourself. But then I’ll listen to Lou Reed on the bus and I’ll remember that I have no choice. I like to think of this EP as sitting within some vague continuum of Underdog Pop music that may or may not only exist in my head.
These lyrics mean a lot to me. And I hope the choruses are catchy, too.”
American cellist, artist, and composer (born 21st May 1951 in Oskaloosa, Iowa, USA – died 4th April 1992 from AIDS in New York, New York, USA (aged 40).
“Picture of Bunny Rabbit’ features nine previously unreleased performances from this era compiled from completed masters culled from two unique test pressings, including one, dated 9/15/85 by Arthur, provided by his mother and sister. A further four tracks were discovered in his tape archive.
The track listing includes an exceptional and dramatic solo recording of “In The Light of a Miracle” and the enigmatic title instrumental “Picture of Bunny Rabbit”, written especially for a friends pet rabbit. The bulk of the material was recorded with engineer Eric Liljestrand at Battery Sound Studios, New York, which was located directly opposite the World Trade Center and at Arthur’s apartment studio in the East Village.
“Music is a very personal thing. How you deal with your music is very closely linked with how you deal with your life. If you misuse your capacities as a musician, you’re misusing your capacities as a human being and you’re taking humanity in the wrong direction” – Arthur Russell – 03/17/77 Soho Weekly News
“In outer space you can’t take your drums – you take your mind” – Arthur Russell
In 1986 Arthur Russell was diagnosed with HIV, that same year he released his career-defining masterpiece ‘World of Echo’, the first and only solo album issued during his lifetime.
Arthur had found his voice and a fresh direction with a set of new, transformative material, unlike anything he or anyone else had previously released. His illness ensured that the artistic growth and sense of exploration encapsulated in ‘World of Echo’ would be tragically curtailed. Within six short years Arthur was gone.
Arthur’s final years were filled with a renewed commitment to creativity and unceasing live and recording work. He regularly performed the ‘World of Echo’ material and incorporated several of its compositions in collaborations with choreographers active in New York’s innovative dance community. Arthur worked closely with Diane Madden, Allison Salzinger, Stephanie Woodard and John Bernd, usually playing his cello and effects boxes off stage as the choreographers’ pieces were performed.
In 1993 Arthur posthumously received a prestigious Bessie Composer Award for his work in the dance world. “Picture of Bunny Rabbit’ features nine previously unreleased performances from this era compiled from completed masters culled from two unique test pressings, including one, dated 9/15/85 by Arthur, provided by his mother and sister. A further four tracks were discovered in his tape archive. The track listing includes an exceptional and dramatic solo recording of “In The Light of a Miracle” and the enigmatic title instrumental “Picture of Bunny Rabbit”, written especially for a friends pet rabbit. The bulk of the material was recorded with engineer Eric Liljestrand at Battery Sound Studios, New York, which was located directly opposite the World Trade Center and at Arthur’s apartment studio in the East Village.
releases June 23, 2023
Arthur Russell – Vocals, Cello, Keyboards, Guitar, Harmonica, and Echoes
New York psych-folk outfit Woods have announced their next album. “Perennial” is out September 15th on the band’s own Woodsist label. To go with the LP news, the band has shared two new songs, “Between the Past” and “White Winter Melody.” The former cut has been released with a colorful visual directed by Ian McNaughton.
Woods composed “Perennial” in stages; first with Jeremy Earl’s drum loops and passages of guitar and keyboard. Earl then elaborated on those sketches with bandmates Jarvis Taveniere and John Andrews, who joined Earl at his New York Home before the songs were finished at the Panoramic House studio in Stinson Beach, California—where Woods tracked their 2020 LP, “Strange to Explain”. The album title was inspired by flora, specifically perennial plants, which Earl called “nature’s loops” in press materials.
“Perennial” is the sound of a band on the edge of their 20th anniversary and still finding bold new ways to sound like (and challenge) themselves. “Perennial” grew from a bed of guitar/keyboard/drum loops by Woods head-in-chief Jeremy Earl, a form of winter night meditation that evolved into an unexplored mode of collaborative songwriting. With Earl’s starting points, he and bandmates Jarvis Taveniere and John Andrews convened, first at Earl’s house in New York, then at Panoramic House studio in Stinson Beach, California, site of sessions for 2020’s “Strange To Explain“.
With a view of the sparkling Pacific and tape rolling, they began to build, jamming over the loops, switching instruments, and developing a few dozen building blocks.
Emerging from the process alongside the music was Earl’s reflection that “perennial plants and flowers are nature’s loops,” an idea rolling under the album’s lyrics like the loops themselves. It certainly applies to the band, too, who have quietly tended to a long, committed project of being a band in the weird-ass 21st century, both individually and communally. Though separated by coasts, the communal sprit carries through Earl, Taveniere, and Andrews’ collaboration, a living embodiment of the freedoms rediscovered every time a new collectively created piece of music emerges.
For nearly two decades, Woods have survived subgenres, anchored in the fertile soil below hashtags like lo-fi and freak-folk and psychedelic and indie, and built a shared history that’s something to marvel at.
From the album “Perennial” out September 15th on Woodsist.
On Friday, August 12th, 2011, Sonic Youth played what was to be their final North American concert. Now, the band is releasing a recording of the show as a new live album: “Live in Brooklyn 2011” arrives August 18th via Silver Current, and will be available on vinyl, CD, and cassette tape for the first time. The remixed and remastered LP will also be released digitally via Goofin’. Fitting that their storied career would bookend with a panoramic view of New York City where it all began 30 years before, having left in their wake one of one of the most powerfully influential careers in rock music.
Listen to Sonic Youth’s 2011 performances of “Brave Men Run (In My Family)” and “Death Valley ’69.”
“Live in Brooklyn 2011″ capture’s Sonic Youth’s full 17-song set from their August 2011 show at the Williamsburg Waterfront in Brooklyn. The legendary band played in front of a scenic view of the Manhattan skyline after opening performances from Kurt Vile and Wild Flag.
Sonic Youth ripped through a 17 song set that spanned from deep cuts off their first studio album and highlighting many other albums all the way through to their last, like a band with everything to prove. Or as Brooklyn Vegan said at the time: “While most bands who are thirty years into their career are either fading away or living off of the nostalgia of their older material, Sonic Youth continue to sound and perform as fresh as ever.”
Steve Shelley explains the uniquely career spanning set list of “Live in Brooklyn 2011” and how it came to be, as well as the importance of outdoor NYC summer shows in Sonic Youth’s legacy:
“This show was a culmination of a run of really special outdoor summertime shows in New York City for us,
releases August 18th, 2023
Sonic Youth: Kim Gordon – Voc, Gtr Mark Ibold – Bass Thurston Moore – voc, gtr Lee Ranaldo – Voc, gtr Steve Shelley – drums
Former Girlpool singer Harmony Tividad has announced her debut solo EP. Recording as Harmony, she’ll release “Dystopia Girl” via AWAL Recordings on August 25th. The EP’s lead single, “Good Things TakeTime,” comes with a video directed by Morgan Maher. In the visual, Harmony leads a ceremony for a room of women before they all head to the beach.
Harmony said that “Good Things Take Time” came to her in a dream in which she was playing a Girlpool show and audience members kept requesting the song. “I felt awkward because I knew it wasn’t a Girlpool song,” the musician explained in a press statement. “In the dream I began to gently play it on guitar and sing to it. I woke up with the melody in my head and texted my parents asking if it was a Sheryl Crow song…. It felt so crystal clear to me that I felt like it had to have come from somewhere else.”
100 gecs’ Dylan Brady co-produced “Good Things Take Time” with Wyatt Bernard, Wyatt Bernard, Francis Brady, and Micah Jasper. The track was mixed by Kayla Regan.
Girlpool released their final album, “Forgiveness”, in May 2022. A few months later, Harmony Tividad and Avery Tucker announced the band’s breakup.
