Friday 21 August 2009

Off the beaten Tracks

Friday is a good day.

It's a day to dream of shenanigans that lye ahead over the coming weekend. It's a day to switch between doing work you get paid for and the various tabs you've opened on your desktop...Facebook anyone? And it's just the best day to take advantage of said slackness and discover the brand spanking new music that sit's unexplored across the vast vastness of the blogosphere.

Here's a few i've inadvertedly stumbled across today:

Warm Heart of Africa-(Feat Ezra Koenig):-Just when you thought Ezzy couldn't be more like Paul Simon...
















We Are Water-Health: Taken from 'Get Color', their forthcoming second full length. It duly makes light of '2nd album issues' in just over 4mins of pure, unhinged glory.



















To The Dregs-Wavves: Nang, sick, ill, heavy, deadly, dope.















Dominos-The Big Pink: Undoubtedly my favourite new British band. One listen of this and you'll be humming the shit out of it for weeks.

Monday 10 August 2009

DEFINATELY YACHT
















YACHT are a Portland band I'm sure I'll be sticking with for much longer than a summer.

Signed to James Murphy's DFA records, home to LCD soundsystem, Prinzhorn Dance School, Hercules and Love Affair and Holy Ghost!, the embarrassingly talented duo of Jona Bechtolt and Claire L Evans make the dreamiest most trippingly positive music around. And every single person in the entire music industry that actually matter, adores what the duo are putting out.

Like a new age healer, Bechtolt produces triangular stimuli that incorporate a collection of ever changing elements. Live music, PowerPoint visuals, immersive audio and shamanistic video's. It's an experience that goes way beyond any thing produced on stage today and it's a forage into a brave new world that looks nailed on to succeed.

New Mystery Lights, their debut album, marries the pure hedonism of Animal Collective and the forward thinking drive and funk of Eno and ESG. It's a masterpiece in physical form and it's out now to own. Released 4th August.


A DUMP AND CHASE. WARM UP THE BUS HOCKEY. OR SHOULD THAT BE YACHT?


Since May I've seen Portland 4 piece, Hockey not once, not twice, not thrice but four times. It's been a blast. Mind Chaos, their brilliant debut record, is due out August 24th and it really is very very good. I wont be getting it though. If truth be told, I'm bored of the band. Our relationship is as stale as that 3 day old slice of Hawaiian beside your desktop.








Bare in mind I've only known the band all of 4 months max and have invested time, effort and dollar into them. Just when the fruits of their labour should be budding an overwhelming sense of overkill has dampened any excitement i might have for perhaps the most important month of their time as a band.

It's sad and i fell kinda bummed but in the 4 months together I've not paid for a single gig, all were free, and I've heard every single track off the LP more times than perhaps any record I physically own.

The problem for as far i can see, you may think otherwise, is that Hockey have been way too accessible. Their first London gig was in December 2008 and they've since moved to the capital for what can only be described as a full on UK, record label, chart assault. Of course, it's worked a treat. They've played not only IOW, Glastonbury, Great Escape, Camden Crawl, Levi's sponsored shows and worst of all T FUCKING 4 ON THE FUCKING BEACH. I guess that shows the width of audience they're aiming at and why not. They'll chart well and sell truck loads of records but I, and i guess a fair few others too, wont be sticking around to dangle the teet.

RETURN OF THE (ball)SACK

I could just write an article on my favourite new band and let the fact that I've not posted anything on this blog since May slip by the wayside, just like our much-mangled, almost non-existent summer has. That would, however, be very rude and I do like to think/hope/pray that out there somewhere is a dedicated follower of our inconsistent scribbings.

For me personally this sunless summer has been heavy busy. It started with three sick days in Brighton for the Great Escape festival and finished with a week long gig-fest that saw me take in and review five shows in five days, all of which were sprayed across the musical blogosphere like the territorial piss of an alley cat. You can find them all here and here on Levi.com so have a butchers and let me know what you think.

It's not all been work though. I managed to survive the violent brain-cell hammering of Glastonbury which, it has to be said, was my favourite of all time. The Big Pink, Bon Iver, Fucked Up. Crosby, Stills and Nash, We Have Band, Man Like Me, Alberta Cross, Kap Bambino, Florence and the Machine, Animal Collective and Blur were all bands I'd, for one reason or another, had never got to see until one glorious weekend in Somerset. RAD.

And that has pretty much been that. Same old really. We caught some other live shows over the past couple of months, most noticeably the Black Lips and Mika Miko in Camden, Crocodiles nang show at Bardens and Wavves at the Old Blue before his lame ass breakdown at Primavera. Pussy.

You'll get to read about those and a whole host of other crap that I've got lined up over the next few days so hang tough and keep tuned.