We are incredibly excited to announce the lineup for the third edition of The Downs Bristol on 1st September featuring Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Paul Weller, Orbital (Live), The Heavy, Goldie & The Ensemble (Live), Basement Jaxx (Dj Set), Khruangbin, Nadine Shah, Channel One, Laid Blak, Dream Wife + Many More
Alongside an amazing line-up of bands we will be welcoming the return of The Information Stage, with thought-provoking speakers from around the world invited to talk and take part in panel discussions.
Bath based dark dreampoppers with their third single due out early 2018, following 2017’s ‘Tastes Like Money’ and ‘2Kids‘ alt-pop gems. The vocals glide over walls of sonic bliss and cut through abstraction – gifting ‘Like a Prayer’ anthracene and ‘To Here Knows When’ sugar-cane within the same breath.
Dream-weavers Swimming Girls, being randomly fused together, and simply instructed to “write a song”, birthed a world of high-aiming melancholy that is as unashamedly confident as it is imaginative. Mixed by Marta Salogni, who has collaborated with such artists as Shura, M.I.A. and Sampha, the band’s first offering was “Tastes Like Money’ is a celebration of 80’s, night-drive nostalgia – kissing sheets of Lynchian romance and pandering to the ache and obsession found in the thought of yesterday.
Self-described as ‘Dark Dream-Pop’, Swimming Girls stop to smell the roses, while pressing thorns against a blushed cheek.
We’ve been pretty spoilt by massively promising debut singles this year – from the polished introduction from Pale Waves to the Warpaint and Blood Orange-channeling Londoners ALASKALASKA – but ‘Tastes Like Money’, the first offering from Swimming Girls, might just take the biscuit.
The band element in ‘Three Oh Nine’ came from it being written when I was feeling small, so I knew it needed to be recorded big,” explains Lily. “I wanted to sound less alone.”
This new track follows a handful of standalone, self-released cuts and collaborations with local pals Oliver Wilde, Slonk, ThisisDA, and Tamu Massif. Lily also teamed up with New Zealand’s Aldous Harding for her recent record Party, which was recorded in Lily’s home city.
Lily is due to tour with Siv Jakobsen, Sivu, and Paul Thomas Sanders from next month across “some of the UK’s most beautiful venues”
Bristol singer/songwriter Fenne Lily captures the fine lines of experience in a truly unique and enigmatic way. On ‘Bud’, the singer triggers vocal intensity and delicacy with aching ease.
Lily is certain to find universal appeal. In the meantime, before the majority wake up to the stirring intimacy of Fenne Lily’s folk-pop sound, we will savour every second of her ascent to wider familiarity. The new single proceeds a small tour circuit around the UK, commencing on 16th November in London.
Any fans of 90’s grunge or alt rock will love this.
The new EP from the awesome Milk Teeth, we’re big fans of their noisey-grunge like punk music. Following on from their brilliant debut album Vile Child. The lead single Owning Your Okayness is a pop-fuelled, stomp-along jam with an infectious chorus.
Here is our brand new music video for ‘Prism’. We filmed it in an abandoned care home where we spent a day freaking ourselves out in the hallways and abandoned rooms of the house. ‘Prism’ is taken from our new EP ‘Be Nice’ which is out now on Roadrunner Records.
‘Owning Your Okayness’ is taken from our new EP ‘Be Nice’ which is out now on Roadrunner Records.
“Roadrunner is the home of the bands that we grew up listening to and who have influenced our own sound today,” says vocalist/bassist Becky Blomfield. “They work with the best and we are so stoked to be welcomed as part of the next breed of artists with the potential to inspire the next generation. Our teenage selves were kicking about in little towns not knowing where we would end up, and almost a decade later we can say Slipknot are our label mates. Not bad for a bunch of kids from Stroud.”
Citing Cyndi Lauper, The Cure, and Culture Club among their influences, Swimming Girls have delivered their dazzlingly 80s-indebted debut single. Mixed by Marta Salogni, who’s previously collaborated with artists such as MIA, Sampha, and Shura, “Tastes Like Money” is a sweepingly cinematic slice of nostalgia that glistens gold. With the intoxicating vocals of lead singer Vanessa Gimenez gliding over blissful waves of shoegaze, it’s an unflinchingly ambitious first offering that’s packed full of the kind of irrepressible exhilaration that comes from being young, lucky, and in love. Dark Dream-Pop
An ambitious young group that seem pre-destined to be standing tall by time this upcoming festival season is over, The Shimmer Band possess a rare trait of producing songs that are instantly memorable yet their appeal doesn’t diminish after repeated listens. Aligning massive stadium conquering hooks with a sound that is uncompromising and resolutely of their own devising, the band have sought to build on the momentum of their recent UK tour with new single ‘What Is Mine?’ the Bristolian lads have now put out this ace new single, The psychedelic rockers are in full flow here, with Tom Newman’s voice oozing out in trippy heaven like the Avon’s answer to Primal Scream.
A track that is billowing with self-belief and exudes that rock ‘n’ roll swagger that many strive for but few ever attain, their latest offering is a heady mix of intergalactic synths and guitar-based bravado that is sure to strike a chord with those seeking something which uproots from mundane, half-baked offerings and heads into another realm.
Articulate as Spectres may be, but the word ‘compromise’ doesn’t enter into their vocabulary. Which is just as well. Because when it comes to pushing the boundaries of sonic resistance they’re one of the most confrontational acts on the planet right now.
Not just by way of their music, which isn’t just an uneasy listen, but often an unsettling one too. But also their ability to question the conventional norm and upset the mainstream applecart on more than one occasion.
Which is just as well because Spectres wouldn’t have it any other way. Having been an integral part of Bristol’s vibrant underground scene for the past five years – not to mention 50 percent of the band being responsible for creating revered independent Howling Owl Records , Spectres‘ status as innovators in one of the most creative regions on these shores is all but assured.
Their debut, 2015’s “Dying” , proved to be a coarse exercise in experimental noise rock that made anyone who’d previously mistaken them as shoegaze revivalists eat their own words in the process. Intense, brutal and relentless in equal measures, it served as a kick up the backside to many of the band’s peers who’d spent a lifetime resting on their laurels.
So it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that their latest album “Condition” takes that template – if one ever existed then bleeds it to death before prodding at its decomposed remains from every angle. It’s hard to envisage what goes through Joe Hatt and his three accomplices’ minds when arriving at songs with such desolate titles as ‘The Beginning Of An End’, ‘End Waltz’ or ‘Coping Mechanism’ but it sure as hell isn’t pretty.
Harsh swathes of mechanical noise greet the listener from the outset. Opener ‘The Beginning Is An End’ is as uncompromising as we’ve come to expect from the West Country’s finest exponents of sonic terrorism. ‘RubberPlant’ takes an even more abrasive stance where guitar strings have the life scraped out of them while Andy Came’s percussive interludes run the death march through its soul. Lead single ‘Dissolve’, already the most aggressively disturbing eight minutes of music set to tape in 2017, acts as an early centre point for the album. Menacingly executed, its slow building musical arrangement reminiscent of a prisoner being led to a torture chamber while metallic objects clang unceremoniously in the foreground.
If you’re Spectres and going to write a song called ‘Neck’ chances are it won’t be a simple lesson in human biology. Instead it’s a vitriolic slab of brutal noise that doesn’t hold back for the entire duration. “Sometimes I wonder…” declares Hatt on ‘A Fish Called Wanda’, possibly the first song to ever be named after the John Cleese movie. That it has little to do with the script shouldn’t come as a shock. Delivered with a brooding intensity that’s become Spectres‘ forte, it serves as an exercise in controlled intimidation via the medium of sound.
‘Welcoming The Flowers’ and ‘End Waltz’ continue Condition’s relentless desire to bludgeon the senses, while ‘Colour Me Out’ and closer ‘Coping Mechanism’ both reveal themselves as epic maelstroms of sonic bliss. The former acting as the deceptive calm before the latter’s incendiary storm brings the record to a sedentary end.
Condition should come with a label on the front advising “Approach With Caution”. However, its creators’ intransigent desire to confound and confront should be applauded. Spectres: simply are one of a kind.
The Fat Angel Sings 