We Were Promised So Much.....

Hot New Track: MIA - Bring The Noize

Sounding like every song in the world but like nothing you’ve ever heard before, MIA is back with ‘Bring The Noize’. A fittingly raucous title for a song that is heavy on beats and confident in swagger. With earthquake inducing bass and quick fire tribal stabs, MIA sounds as colourful and vibrant as ever.

This is the first slice from MIA’s fourth LP, Matangi.

Album Review

Artist: Deap Vally

Title:Sistrionix

Record Label: Island/Communion

Release Date: 24^th June 2013

Rating: 9.0/10

Quick calendar check, we could have sworn its 2013, but there’s something a miss, something doesn’t feel right. When you’ve got electro artist Grimes releasing a long and completely accurate blog post about the objectification of women (Click here for full post) and Beyonce curating the Chime For Change Festival to raise awareness around the empowerment of girls and women globally, it’s evident that equality still isn’t a 50/50 split. Endorsers of the Grimes’ blog and strong women in their own right, Deap Vally are two fierce LA chicks that strut and howl enough to make any man’s balls shrink, equally their back to basics blues rock is the primal shot in the arm anyone with two X chromosome needs to get heard. Having garnered attention with rip-roaring slices of gutter rock in the shape of ‘Gonna Make My Own Money’ and ‘Baby I Call Hell’, Lindsey Troy (vocals/guitar) and Julie Edwards (drums/vocals) are all set to unleash their blistering debut record, Sistrionix. By the title you can already guess that this is a no messing call to arms for all female-kind. Not in a finger wagging “independent woman-look-at-the-junk-in-my-trunk” way, the LA duo are hell bent on carving their place in a male dominated vanguard with the sheer oomph of ravaged blues rock propelled by larynx distorting vocals, visceral fretwork and the kind of tub-thumping normally reserved for a muscle bound colossus.

The appeal of Sistrionix is two fold, for the early adopters having singles and fan favourites, ‘End Of The World’, ‘Lies’ plus the aforementioned nuggets amassed amongst a bevy of box fresh material gives the album a greatest hits feel (yes we know the sounds a little wanky, but the tunes speak for themselves). It’s telling of Troy and Edwards’ craft how the newer material and the older, more established slabs of blues stomp tessellate with ease. When you’ve got the primeval clatter of ‘Baby I Call Hell’ nestled up nicely to ‘Walk Of Shame’ it’s evident that when it comes to filthy rock ‘n’ roll trickery, these gals have it in spades. The latter is the first “new” track on the band’s debut and it’s a sub two minute blast of intermittent surges, the uncompromising crossroads where drums and guitars collide at high speed. The track may start like Deap Vally have thrown their kit down a stairwell but it climaxes in a volley of handclaps and Edwards bashing her drum sticks together which provokes a swaggering beat. It doesn’t need spelling out, ‘Walk Of Shame’ is the joyous celebration of the stride home after unexpectedly getting lucky the night before. “Last night was a nice surprise/I’m still wearing last night’s eyes” Troy cheekily delivers. Suitably the hip-shaking sassiness segues into ‘Gonna Make My Own Money’ where the two-piece whip up a siren-esque storm with guitars that lacerate and a kit that sounds like it’s begging for forgiveness. From one song about impromptu booty calls to another about generating your own kerchingo, these girls aren’t wall flowers, they are goddamn venus fly traps!

To echo the sentiment from Grimes’ blog, the chauvinism of man is shown up in all its sleazy glory, ‘Creep Life’ tells the story of a “dirty old man” preying for some “tender meat” to the sound of Troy’s graveled, sultry coo, along with Edwards’ drum rolls that come down like village destroying avalanches. It’s the sinister fuzz of Troy’s riffs that really set the scene for a track about a dirt bag. ‘Raw Material’ lives up to its name with stop/start assaults that are brutal and venomous. “Get your hands of my raw material/it’s up to me if I’m ethereal or visceral” delivered by a pair who drip determination and conviction. ‘Woman Of Intention’ harness a more soulful edge to Troy’s vocal chord destroying voice however this isn’t to say Deap Vally’s sound is diluted during this sophisticated romp, quite the contrary, forgoing sporadic barrages of blues dipped destruction this fuzzy number illustrates a more expansive, less harsh sonic blueprint.

Suffice to say the majority of the record centres around the position of women in the present day, but there are moments when the album takes a detour to different realms. ‘’Bad For My Body’ is a rollicking sprint through a barroom brawl, you can almost hear the pool cues being smashed across skulls and glasses shattering when Troy yelps “If our mother’s only knew the trouble that we get into” sung like a true outlaw. Equally album opener and traditional live set closer “End Of The World’ is a chainsaw riff indebted clarion call to humanity, to just fucking get along.

It would be horribly cliché to state with Sistrionix, Deap Vally are “sisters doing it for themselves” but in all honesty, Aretha Franklin your words sum up these LA dwellers to a T!

Artist: The JCQ

Title:  Mechanical Young

Record Label:  Hassle Records

Release Date: 17^th June 2013

Rating: 7.0/10

Mechanical Young is an appropriate title for the new LP by post-hardcore types, The JCQ (formerly The James Clever Quintet) due to its adolescent bouts of unrelenting energy while the intricate aspects to the record harness a machine like level of complexity. Like with anything that references the dual unpredictably of youth and machinery, the band’s sophomore LP is a turbulent affair which at times shows glimmers of a band unafraid to push themselves sonically whereas there is the odd glitch that could do with some network tinkering.

Notably it’s when expectations are high, or the band set a standard that hints at a clear album highlight is when Mechanical Young falls short of the mark. LP opener and free download ‘Ghosts Diffuse’ grinds into play with an elongated intro that is a pure scene setter. As the curtain raiser roars into motion you get the impression Mechanical Young is going to pounce into attack formation after such an extravagant parting shot but once the five piece snap into shape, ‘Ghosts Diffuse’ feels labored and dampened by studio constraints. You can hear the song battling to be heard but the sound is muddied and no matter how much the unit seem to rage with untamed abandon the overall results feel anticlimactic. In a similar vein when you glance at the tracklist and you see a section of songs that run as such – ‘No Kind Of Man Pt1’, ‘iii’ and ‘No Kind Of Man Pt2’ – you pray for an epic three part odyssey but in reality this triple offering is one fairly good song split in half by a piano interlude that lacks any kind of tension builder. ‘Pt1’ does a good job whetting the appetite with its surging riffs and punk tendencies however once the interlude calls intermission the momentum is lost, meaning that once ‘Pt2’ clicks back the dynamic shift has a lot of ground work to make up, and instead of resulting in what could have been an ambitious triptych of punk meets theatrical leanings feels hampered and prematurely neutered before it had time to strut like a proud peacock.

When the cogs and gears of Mechanical Young are well oiled, the LP is unstoppable, other than the direct gut-punch of ‘Plainview’, it’s evident that when The JCQ flip the script and ignore time signatures and what’s expected of a punk band they produce the goods. ‘Plainview’ is a searing blast of visceral guitars and pounding drums with vocalist Jack barking out his lyrics like a deranged Darryl Palumbo (at times The JCQ take on a Head Automatica-type guise), “get on your knees/bow down to me!”. On ‘Resurrection Revenue’ you are greeted with a JCQ that is driven by funky percussion and a looping bassline/guitar riff combo that has a menacing slant about it. Take At The Drive In but strip away their unrelenting barrage of noise and keep their swagger, this is what they would sound like. All the shimmying and shaking leads to an almighty breakdown that sounds like The JCQ are disposing of their instruments into a trash compactor, the pure carnage the band spew out is brilliantly chaotic. ‘Aspidistra’ manages to squish a whole album’s worth of ideas into five minutes with a song that incorporates twinkled piano, percussion breakdowns and unpredictable fretwork. Again the charm of this beauty is when the quintet slips into breakdown mode and exploits their cacophonous side. For a band that roped in the services of Pelle Henricsson and Eskil Lovstrom (the chaps behind The Refused’s seminal, The Shape Of Punk To Come) it’s perhaps a surprise that your senses aren’t always destroyed, which ‘Amidship & Afloat’ proves thanks to the song’s shimmering rhythms and smoky aesthetic. ‘Ruin Age’ caps off the album after the disappointing ‘No Kind Of Man’ series of songs and again The JCQ sound vibrant and unhinged with an album closer that surges, peaks and troughs into a slow gnaw of dissonant noise.

Mechanical Young hints at a band with a myriad of enticing ideas and with the odd system upgrade here and a tweak or two in the right places, The JCQ should be positioned to release iOS-LP3 sans any performance problems or bugs come 2015. 

Hot New Track: No Age – C’mon Stimmung

Discordant, brash and unhinged, ‘C’mon Stimmung’ is the first slice of aural punishment to be taken from No Age’s fourth LP, An Object. Sounding like a band testing their instruments to the limit, Dean Spunt (vocals, drums) and Randy Randall (guitar) have roared back into the public consciousness with a track harnessed around yawning guitar lines, pummelled drums and vocals that are yelped like Spunt is undergoing some kind of god-awful surgery (in a good way).

Wrap your lugholes round this beautiful mess and whet your appetite for 19^th August 2013, when An Object is unleashed to maraud like a feral beast.

Introducing…Febueder

Any band that cites a Novation Pad as a key instrument to their wares is definitely worth your time, how cool does that shit sound?! A Novation Pad, that’s some Batman gadgetry right there! Quirky three piece, Febueder are that band, a band that have limited themselves to the confines of drums, bass, vocals and guitar but with the added layers of samples, electronics and all manner of other technical titbits.

The trio – made up by Kieran Godfrey (vocals, guitar, cornet, keyboard, sampler), Harry Summersgill (bass, Novation Pad!) and Sam Keysell (drums, alesis sampling) – are a swell of beguiling contradictions, they openly restrict themselves to a traditional band set up but candidly tinker with all kinds of trickery to create their sonic trademark. Ah yes, Febueder’s sound, think Alt-J but a little more relaxed or Foals at their jam-friendly best. It’s intriguing that a band can sound so tightly wound whilst maintaining such loose rhythms, equally the group that call Ascot home strike an ambient note with sparse arrangements that on the flipside are complicated and awkward but beam simplicity. Confused? Good, because Fedueder are a band that recognise aural boundaries, but with a shrug of the shoulders and a cheeky chuckle these limitations become easily dissolved.

Febueder are readying their latest EP, Soap Carv which is due for a worldwide release later this year via Castle Recordings. Two snippets from said EP have surfaced online in the shape of ‘Alligator’ and ‘Galeo’. Both tracks demonstrate the inventive bent the three piece possess, showcasing an awkward sound which channels their imaginative tendencies. The former hangs off a recurring bass throb that ricochets from a looped vocal tick and off kilter percussion stabs. The latter is a tightly wound, unpredictable so ‘n’ so that feels like a spring ready to ping at any moment. Again contradictions play a masterful part, with sedate drums that charge, an appeal that feels sparse but undeniably cluttered.

The trio might just be the musical equivalent to a Rubik’s Cube, being that Febueder are far more complicated than they seem but indisputably fun.

https://www.facebook.com/Febueder

https://soundcloud.com/febueder

https://twitter.com/Febueder

https://twitter.com/castlerecs

Colours: Singer Wanted! 

COLOURS

“The chromatic polynomial counts the number of ways a graph can be coloured using no more than a given number of colours”.

COLOURS is a project that was derived from the mind of Christopher Reynolds (UK) in 2012. Using innovative ways to express their passion for experimentation, Colours are currently working on a debut EP. This involves digital collaboration between musicians, incorporating an array of musical influences. Colours are promoting an experimental and progressive metal style reflecting Tesseract, Periphery, Circles and more. ‘Amber’ is their debut track – see their playthrough video on YouTube.

They are currently auditioning for a vocalist. For more information visit www.facebook.com/coloursofficial or email coloursofficialband@gmail.com.

Colours members:

Christopher Reynolds - Guitars

Stratos Kountouras - Bass

George Montes - Drums

Hot New Track: Nine Inch Nails – Came Back Haunted

Back in 2009 Trent Reznor decided to park Nine Inch Nails in the garage to sit idle, so he could pursue some other endeavours such as his auxiliary project, How To Destroy Angels and of course the NIN man took a foray into motion picture soundtracks scoring for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network which he won an Oscar for. When most people “pursue” other projects, they build a shed or take up water colour, not Reznor though he marches to the sound of a different drum beat.

Rumbles came from the NIN camp in February of this year that Reznor was beginning to rev the engine behind the wheel of his primary vehicle.  A slew of live dates were announced and a new unit of troops were rallied in the guise of Robin Finck, Adrian Belew, Josh Eustis, Alessandro Cortini and IIan Rubin for NIN’s sensor destroying performances. After amassing his personnel and laying the ground work for the start of a globetrotting tour Reznor has finally unleashed the first spoils from NIN’s downtime. The first song to be taken from Nine Inch Nail’s eighth studio record, Hesitation Marks, goes by the name of ‘Came Back Haunted’ and it’s a buzzing and droning slice of pure NIN magic, and it’s as if Reznor and his posse of hired guns have never been away.

Constructed around a foreboding womp of noise that splinters off into blemishes of sonic warps, ‘Came Back Haunted’ takes the restrained malevolence of Nine Inch Nail’s Ghosts I-IV work and shoe horns it into Reznor’s more abrasive yet accessible work. There’s the euphoric rush of the chorus with Reznor sounding confident and powerful, combined with a breakdown attributed to a guitar that sounds like a drill channelling through the earth’s core meshed with all manner of multi layered flourishes of beats, digital chirps and tweets that makes ‘Came Back Haunted’ sound like a classic NIN track in the making. If Reznor has been occupied with How To Destroy Angels, the volatility of ‘Came Back Haunted’ sounds as if our talisman has actually succeed, the crushing sound of rough ethereal noise is bound to shake some occupants out of heaven.

‘Came Back Haunted’ is the type of aural punishment that only Reznor and NIN could make, it’s harsh yet pop, brutal yet delicate. You can almost picture Reznor beavering away in his underground bunker like a super villain toiling away at Hesitation Marks thinking “world domination is mine, allllll miiiiiinnnnnnnneeeee!!!”

 All hail NIN, we salute your cacophonous return!

Hesitation Marks comes out 2^nd/3^rd September via Columbia Records – pre-order here – http://www.nin.com/

Hot New Track: Dancing Years – Borderline (Free Download)

Melding pin drop silence, swirling layers of baroque instrumentation and a careering eruption of noise, this is ‘Borderline’ a hot new track by Dancing Years, taken from their Rise Up The Sun EP. Formerly known as Joseph and David, Dancing Years are a six piece from Leeds who combine the earthy tones of accordion and violin amongst the more traditional clatter of drums, guitars and piano. When meshed together the Yorkshire based band make a stirring, melancholic aural calm that is punctuated by waves of powerful, deconstructed cavalcades. If musically Dancing Years sound like a desolate, emotional voyage, then David Henshaw’s bruised, weathered vocal is bound to tug at the heart strings, on ‘Borderline’ the vocalist can be heard croaking out “We always try so hard/It’s the little things that tear us apart”. These emotive vignettes tumble down effortlessly, delivered by a man you truly sense has loved, and indeed lost.

‘Borderline’s use of serene tranquillity and rousing layers of ornate musicianship build the song to a thrilling crescendo where the song reaches its tuneful, yet chaotic climax, only to then glide to a sedate close.

Enthralling and captivating, ‘Borderline’ is a testament to Dancing Years’ impassioned vigour.

www.dancingyears.com/

https://soundcloud.com/dancingyears

https://twitter.com/dancing_years‎

https://www.facebook.com/DancingYears

Artist: Queens Of The Stone Age

Title:…Like Clockwork

Record Label: Matador Records

Release Date: 3^rd June 2013

Rating: 9.0/10

“No Man Is An Island” the famous poem by John Donne is something that would resonate with Queens Of The Stone Age head honcho Josh Homme; an ethos of collaboration and togetherness has shaped Homme’s musical output since time began, from his somewhat revolving door primary project QOTSA, to the Desert Sessions in which the talisman enlisted the likes of PJ Harvey and Bobby Gillespie, amongst others to get lost near The Joshua Tree, equally Mr Homme hooked up with Dave Grohl and John-Paul Jones for the majestic Them Crooked Vultures. After touring/recording with TCV, producing Arctic Monkeys and touring QOTSA’s self titled debut in early 2011 it’s now time for Homme and the gang to unleash their sixth LP,…Like Clockwork. The collaborative notions seep into the five piece’s new effort as you would expect, the roll call for …Like Clockwork is as follows – Dave Grohl, Alex Turner, Jake Shears, Trent Reznor, Elton John, Brody Dalle, Nick Oliveri and Mark Lanegan. Instead of this being a crass “QOTSA and Friends” LP or some kind of self congratulatory vanity project, each contributor adds an intriguing layer to QOTSA’s desert rock stomp. While some guests are more prominent than others Homme and Co’s latest record never slides into a sonic trip through the band’s Facebook friend’s list.

Back in 2010 Homme’s heart stopped beating, this happened during knee surgery, something that to all intents and purposes is a routine operation. Doctors had to revive the goliath like man with a defibrillator and what followed this shock incident was a four month respite with Homme bed ridden, mentally and physically exhausted from his near death experience. Homme has recently commented that after this sobering moment he felt “pieces of me were missing” while the time after this harrowing moment is regarded by Homme as “the fog”. Understandably following such trauma, Homme was bewildered, unsure if he could make another record, in short he needed some help from his nearest and dearest. In an unpredictable moment of clarity, Homme reached out to Nine Inch Nails man, Trent Reznor. Initially Homme wanted Reznor to produce the new QOTSA LP but due to other commitments this didn’t materialise. The NIN protagonist does however appear on the schizophrenic sounding ‘Kalopsia’. This is a song that begins like NIN at their most ambient before a jackbooted stomp ransacks the tranquility in a cavalcade of noise. It’s like a tug of war between good and evil or to tap into Homme’s psyche, a turbulent journey through the hell of nearly losing your life.  Although Reznor’s fingerprints don’t factor on album opener ‘Keep Your Eyes Peeled’ or the solitary piano driven ‘The Vampyre of Time and Memory’, the NIN man’s influence has permeated QOTSA’s aural blueprint. The LP opener is a slow grinding beast, like a feral animal caged against its will with the tightest of leashes around its neck. While the latter is a more considered voyage into the mind of Homme, the frontman recalls themes of longing and isolation with the odd shard of vulnerability, “I want God to come and take me home”.  It’s the combination of haunting piano and electronic fuzz that recalls Reznor’s industrial outfit and one that adds a theatrical string to QOTSA’s bow.

Homme maybe reflecting on an exposed time in his life but this hasn’t stopped the rock monster in churning out the kind of desert rock stomp you’d want from QOTSA. ‘My God Is The Sun’ is the outfit at their firebrand best firing out scorching riffs with a stop/start tendency. This is one of Grohl’s tracks also, so essentially the drums sound like they have been battered to death. ‘If I Had A Tail’ (contributors Grohl/Turner/Oliveri) struts and swaggers with Homme sounding like a demented preacher. Here you’ll find down played funk and serrated fretwork that cuts to the bone. ‘Smooth Sailing’ acts like a non-camp version of ‘Supermassive Blackhole’ thanks to the tracks dirty swagger and taut rhythms. Elastic and robust, it’s like the sonic equivalent of launching a rubber ball down an elevator shaft. When Homme combines the bruising nature of QOTSA with the recurring notions of vulnerability you get the crushing ‘I Appear Missing’, the frontman can be heard muttering about being shocked awake while wearing a hospital gown, a clear reference to his surgery trauma from three years ago. There’s a holy yet sinister concept to ‘I Appear Missing’ akin to being confronted by angels wearing knuckle dusters in the dead of night.

The title track rounds of …Like Clockwork with Homme again in contemplative mood, this is QOTSA at their most stark yet engrossing. “One thing that’s clear/It’s all down hill from here” but instead of sounding defeated Homme carries this off with an assured defiance. Cinematic strings then swell and surge bringing the LP to a chilling halt. Through all the trauma, doubts and near death experiences QOTSA have rallied against the odds to produce an album of raw, confessional emotion, all with a little help from Homme’s friends.