Links to music and articles in blue Another week of lockdown completed. Hooray! Anyone else feel like they’re in a witness protection programme? We’ve come across some great music discoveries this week. First up, Mister Strange, a Manchester four piece who describe their music as ‘wunder-fuzz’. They’ve released three tracks in the last month or so, all on Bandcamp; Iguana Thieves, a fireball of fuzz and wah garage-rock with hints of Oh Sees and Jimi Hendrix; Elevator Road, a magical onslaught of 60’s psychedelic rock taking in the Stooges and MC5; and most recently Interlude Pt 1, a laid back instrumental psych groove. It’s all bloody marvellous, and I for one can’t wait to hear more from them. If you’re wondering if any of this alchemy will be available on Spotify or other streaming platforms, their response is ‘when the time is right’. So there. Continuing the fuzz and traversing a line between the 60s and 90s music (maybe) are Dutch band Personal Trainer, who have just released an excellent single in Issue Box. Issue Box comes and goes in a blink of an eye with a touch of Dinosaur Jr giving the song that 90’s slacker feel. Also taking in the 90’s but this time in a trip hop vein are White Flowers. The band released their first two singles earlier this year, and we loved both of them. This new track Day by Day takes a slightly different path to its ethereal shoegaze predecessors. The shoegaze feel is still kind of in there, but this single adds a Twin Peaks Angelo Badalamenti element alongside a bit of Massive Attack and Portishead. Great stuff. Crack Cloud released a new track this week, the delightfully deranged Ouster Stew. It’s very early 80’s Devo meets Human League with a Haircut 100 sax solo and a drum wig out thrown in for good measure. We like. Similarly frenetic with some 80s influence going on, but nowhere near as mad is Muted Gold, the latest single from Irish band Silverbacks. The band have released a steady string of excellent singles thus far and this new one is no exception. Muted Gold is taken from their forthcoming album, which we look forward to hearing. Moving into slightly more commercial indie rock territory is Leah the new single by Warrington five- piece Filthy Tricks, who cite Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Doors, Sly and the Family Stone and the Violent Femmes as influences. Leah follows on from the bands’ debut EP ‘Run the River’ which was released last year and is a song written about guitarist Gerard Den Hoek’s personal experience of meeting someone who has made a massive change to his life for the better, having previously been in a dark place. The song is fittingly upbeat and positive, and I’d add U2 into that list of influence.
We don’t often do cool psychedelic pop on this blog, but I thought I’d make an exception for Chad, the latest single by LA based outfit All Things Blue. The song oozes summer and is a love song of sorts, about ‘having your heart dangling by someone else’s hook for too long’ and is taken from the band’s forthcoming debut album. We wrote about the single here and you can listen to it here. Last but not least this week is Can't See The Light, the new single by Romford’s The Wolfhounds. For those unfamiliar with the band, they originally started releasing music in the 80’s, with their single ‘Cut the Cake’ featured on the seminal C86 compilation, with perhaps their most notable single of the time ‘Anti-Midas Touch’. After a long hiatus, the band reformed and released ‘Middle Aged Freaks’ in 2014 and ‘Untied Kingdom’ in 2016. As was the case with Slowdive when they reformed and bought out their excellent eponymous album in 2017, time seems to sat well with the band, and Can’t See The Light sits comfortably alongside the current crop of politically aware post punk artists.
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Summer’s on its way. It will be possibly the oddest summers any of us have ever known, but we still have the music. Which brings me onto ‘Chad’ the new single from LA based outfit All Things Blue which oozes summer and breezy psychedelic pop. Chad is a love song of sorts, about ‘having your heart dangling by someone else’s hook for too long’ and is taken from the band’s forthcoming debut album. Speaking about the track, singer India said: ‘See-saws are fun until you're riding an emotional see-saw; when you want someone that doesn't want you, but makes sure to keep you around. Sometimes you only realise in retrospect; that person was just a Chad. Also, during the whole vocal take I was holding Jon's week-old baby boy which is why I laugh at the end cause he fell asleep’. The albums’ subject matter covers everything from pensive love songs to directly addressing social issues and political ironies; frontwoman India Coombs (otherwise known as Blue) herself compares the album to Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s ever-relevant novel ‘Love In The Time of Cholera’. So now you know.
We like this tune, it's cool. You can listen to it here. In today's interview, Mark Glenister talks to Chris from Frauds from a socially safe distance, about fake news, recording a second album and learning to rap. Firstly, how are you? How is Mikey? We are both well thank you, I’m furloughed but Mikes actually working harder than ever teaching guitar online. Do you have a daily routine, are you learning anything new as everyone else seems to be? Most days I wake up anytime between 8am and 11am followed by a swift caffeine intake, a shower, daily ramble to our local wetlands and then return home via the off license for some evening brews. I’ve been trying to keep myself busy trying to learn new disciplines and I’ve spent the last week learning how to rap (cringe I know). It’s not really for anything other than trying to get deep into something creatively that doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m already feeling the benefits of this as it opens up huge doors in terms of rhythm and flow, which is very important to me as a singer. There’s not gonna be any rock/rap frauds just yet as I’m saving that for my mid-life crisis. Are you seeing this lockdown as a time to be creative? And has it changed the way you view the industry? The main thing that I think has come from this is the realisation of how fragile everything is and how much we all take for granted. All the work that’s being done for crowd funding is amazing and at the very least its going to buy people some time in order to recalibrate how these venues/spaces etc can be run in the future. It’s all so difficult to predict but for all of our sakes I just hope within the next 2 years we can see some kind resemblance to normality. I think the main take away from it all from a specifically arts & culture perspective is that the industry really isn’t protected as well as it should be. Things need to change and places of significant cultural need to be protected at a Government level much like nature or heritage sites. Photo by Rhi Lee
As a band are you doing anything for the fans? A lot of online gigs and Q&As seem to be the norm for a lot of bands, how easy or difficult is that for you as a group? How has this impacted your side projects? Earlier this year we recorded our second album and have pretty much finished it now. We had planned to start getting stuff out there around this time, but we are now taking the time to refine everything and make this release something very special. In terms of online gigs we have done just one so far as we are apart from each other we’ve really had to think differently about how we can put something across that is of a decent quality. We took part in Dork Magazines Homeschool festival over the bank holiday weekend and we made something bespoke for it. We are going to do a couple more, but the writing process is a lot different and we are reworking the songs to sound good with drum machines etc. We will also probably do a few cover’s as that’s always a laugh, just want to have as much fun as possible right now and bring the smiles. With the lockdown being extended, does that effect plans for tours, singles, albums? Absolutely it’s difficult to know what the “right” thing to do is, especially as we’ve put so much time into making something that you want to support and get in the ears of as many people as possible! Again, we are working on releasing something soon but it’s top-secret hush hush type stuff. As a fan I know how much I miss going to gigs, for the music and for the social aspect, is this something that you miss as well? Oh massively! It’s our social lives as well and it’s really hard living without it. It always felt like something you could rely on, we’d often just go to gigs on our own and know we’d see people we know or meet someone new. The community spirit is so important for so many reasons and I’m itching to get back to it. When we can we will be throwing a massive party with a load of bands and fun stuff to celebrate. How important are your fans at this time, I know and I speak from experience, a lot of merch is being purchased to help bands, and I know you have a great connection with fans generally so are they an important aspect of getting through this? Definitely but for us we haven’t been hit badly at all, so we would rather use our platform to share for other people who need the help. I really feel for all the bands who have had amazing tours and life changing festival experiences ripped away from them, I just hope they get to do them eventually as this games a hustlers game and the amount of time and effort that goes into these things are enormous. We both have jobs and income, as the band doesn’t financially support our personal lives at all, so we are not asking for anything as it doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. Despite horrors of this pandemic, the lockdown seems to have a created a lot of really positive community action, and for once social media is being used mainly I a positive manner – Do you want life to return to normal once this is over, or would you like people to be using this time to evaluate their lives and start be part of communities and positive social change All of the above, life is fragile, and it would be nice to think that after this we can all be more empathetic to each other. Nice people like you and pretty much everyone I know feels this way, but I don’t think that feeling is mutual across this island. This situation is so politicised, and I’m worried about it tbh. I think it could potentially turn into a seriously toxic situation and be worse than Brexit. People have sadly died as a consequence of this and a lot of money has been spent. I hope I’m wrong but the world that we’ve made before this is that of where you opt into our own echo chambers of confirmation bias. You can think up the most ludicrous idea and I’ll guarantee you that you can find an “article” that will support your theory. Fake news is more rife than ever and people are scared to shit. Fingers will be rightly pointed and hard questions will be asked and it’s difficult to know what the social reaction will be at this point and how the political parties twist the narrative. However, this turns out we will be fighting the good fight in our day to day interactions and will do all we can to keep people as upbeat as possible. Tough times are ahead and strong communities will be key to riding it out and hopefully we can bring more people into this world who maybe feel a bit lost, angry, upset with all that is happening and we’ll be around for a beer, some music and loads of hugs. Our next interview with Avalanche Party is published on Monday In today's bands in Lockdown interview, Mark Glenister catches up with Adam from Brooders. Firstly, how are you? How are the rest of the band as well? Hi Mark, we’re all doing ok thanks for asking! Myself (Adam (singer/guitar) and Speare (Bass) live together so we’ve been spending a lot of time chilling out and actually having some down time from the usual chaos that usually ensues life. Sadly though as I work as a freelance sound engineer/show rep/teacher/studio engineer a lot of my work has dried up as of lately which is a shame, but we’re remaining optimistic in the house and spending a lot of time playing board games, working on new music and drinking red wine which is passing the time nicely. Speare is a barista, and with the hospitality industry in snooze mode he’s out of work at the moment too. Liam (drummer) is a lorry driver outside of his musical sphere, and still works back in Derby so we’ve been missing our weekly visits, but we are looking forward to making loud noises with him again very soon. Do you have a daily routine, are you learning anything new as everyone else seems to be? For the first five weeks or so we had a pretty steady routine of waking up early and convening in the kitchen for waffles or some form of hideously unhealthy breakfast. But we’ve slowly descended into a bit more of a lackadaisical lifestyle over the last fortnight. We all have played a lot of monopoly together though and found ourselves doing that almost routinely together for a while, no table flips so far too, so I’m calling that a success. In terms of learning new things though, I’ve been messing around with a few new projects and teaching myself to play drums a bit more seriously and Speare has spent a fair bit more time honing his guitar skills. He’s moving between DIIV sort of style stuff all the way to King Krule. Whereas I’ve been writing music that strays somewhere between My Bloody Valentine, Tool and QOTSA. Liam has been spending time doing more with covers too and posting things online. Us two are a little more shy about that sort of approach, but we’ll show people one day what we’ve been up to I’m sure! Are you seeing this lockdown as a time to be creative? And has it changed the way you view the industry? I would say that its changed my view on the industry in a few ways. We’ve seen such a positive community response come from the industry for struggling musicians/venues/professionals and its been a very wholesome effort from all involved. Companies like HMUK, The Musicians Union and even the national Lottery have been banding together to support freelancers like myself and business owners all around the UK. With things such as #Saveourvenues surfacing over the last few weeks too its been amazing to see a collective effort to pull together in times like these. Theres often a lot of rivalry and intense competitiveness in some walks of the music industry and its been amazing to see everyone just pushing this aside for a greater good. The only way I think we can all see our industry surviving is by jumping on the same wagon and supporting however we can. However on the other side of that we’re also seeing some incredibly creative things stem from all of this. People doing online gigs/fundraisers, compilation albums ('Songs For The National Health Service' and 'Come Stay With Me' being our personal favourites), collaborations left right and centre and so much more going on. Its amazing to see so many people coming together with such a wholesome message of support and positivity in such dire circumstances. When this is all over we’ll raise a glass together and celebrate the wonderful things that people have done, but until then we’ll raise our glass from isolation. As a band are you doing anything for the fans? A lot of online gigs and Q&As seem to be the norm for a lot of bands, how easy or difficult is that for you as a group? How has this impacted your side projects?
At the moment we’ve been looking into the idea of getting something developed to support charities that we’re really fond of first and foremost as they are the ones who will be providing the biggest blanket of support for the creatives/scene around us. We do however want to support upcoming artists on the scene whilst also looking at the bigger picture. We’re trying to pull something together so keep your eyes peeled. We would have been getting involved with the Come Stay With Me compilation too, but sadly with Liam being back home throughout the lockdown it was seeming to be more and more difficult to sort from our end to much success. However I had the pleasure of recording the Dense track that will be on there, so I like to think I've played small part at least for now. We are currently looking at putting a collaborated effort (between myself and Sam from Dense) onto a different compilation that our friend Max from Bloodhound has been working on at the moment in support of a charitable cause. So hopefully that will come to fruition very soon! Aside from that we’ve just finished a sale on our store where we’ll be using the money to get going with the next set of recordings once the lockdown is finished which we can’t wait for. We may end up doing a Q&A at some point too if we have enough folks with questions. To be honest though we’ve often considered doing online shows, but with our style of music its really tricky to articulate the energy that we really want to deliver, so as a result we’ve held off for now. We did discuss the possibility of doing something just before lockdown, but sadly it was not to be. Its a bit suckish as we all miss making music together, but the day will come again soon. It has allowed our side projects and efforts to flourish though to some degree. With our setup at home we can record a full band setup, but without a drummer to the standard of Liam we’ve struggled to get the quality we’d like. So its been fun finding folks who have their own setups at home and are keen on writing music together through the miracle that is dropbox. With the lockdown being extended, does that effect plans for tours, singles, albums? To be honest its affected all that it can for now I think. We should have been out and touring at this current time, but we’ve put that on the back burner for now. We had recently just released our new single Drone too with a music video so we were excited to tour with that for a bit at least before we move onto the next chapter. With 2019 being primarily recording and releasing singles we were looking forward to getting into the swing of playing live once again, but we’ll just have to wait that one out for now I guess! Bigger things in play at the moment as far as the health of the world is concerned so we aren’t letting it get to us. As far as singles and albums is concerned though we’ll be back into the swing of that once we can jump into the studio and finish writing again. We were working on something exciting, so that will have its time yet! As a fan I know how much I miss going to gigs, for the music and for the social aspect, is this something that you miss as well? Absolutely. I can’t stress enough how much I miss gigs at the moment. I worked in a live music environment 3/4 days a week in my job and loved all the elements of live music in all departments. The socialising especially is a big factor of what I miss, but i feel like that will have its time again when all is safer and better in the world, and hopefully live music will see a sharp resurgence when people feel comfortable enough to attend shows again. There's such an amazing community of people that usually attend our gigs though and we miss them dearly, but its been so appreciated the support that a number of them have provided since this lockdown started. Whether it be buying merch, checking in on us or just liking and sharing our posts. It all helps! How important are your fans at this time, I know and I speak from experience, a lot of merch is being purchased to help bands, and I know you have a great connection with fans generally so are they an important aspect of getting through this? MASSIVELY important. What is a band without people there to listen in, enjoy their music. The merch purchases are a HUGE financial support for us as a band, but just to know that people are whacking our music on at home and enjoying themselves is fantastic in itself and we appreciate it all massively. The amount of fans that become friends over time though is ace, as we really do try and connect with people who have taken an interest in what we do. And more importantly, folks who have enjoyed our music often have a million band recommendations of their own and its always good to talk new music and find out what’s on the rise, its how I’ve discovered amazing bands like Crows, Calva Louise, Strange Bones, Squid, Black Peaks, All Them Witches, God Damn and a number more in the past. Despite horrors of this pandemic, the lockdown seems to have a created a lot of really positive community action, and for once social media is being used mainly I a positive manner – Do you want life to return to normal once this is over, or would you like people to be using this time to evaluate their lives and start be part of communities and positive social change? If I’m being honest, I think the old normal is dead. I think we’ll find our feet with a new way of life for a while and we’ll have to adapt to that accordingly. People will be more socially inclined to make an effort with other people, I think folks will generally be making an active effort to show a huge amount of positivity on the other side of all of this too. Its important that this change takes place though. As a nation and a world I feel that we’ve all become too cynical and stand off-ish with one another and I like to think that once this all settles down the community around the world will be closer together as we’ve all suffered together. However dreadful this time has been we’ve seen kindness from all stretches of the globe and hope for a brighter day from everyone we’ve encountered. That's got to mean more than all of this, and I hope people will follow suit. Our next interview with Frauds will be published tomorrow. Here's another set of fascinating insights into the lives of the bands that keep us sane. In today's interview, all four members of USA Nails talk to Mark Glenister about life in this never-ending lock-down and their need to keep creative and learn new skills such as animation. Firstly, how are you all? Steven - I’m good thanks. Busy with work and adapting to working from home. I’ve set up a bit of an office in the spare room, I had to because I was spending most of my time wanting to hang out with my 6 month old baby. Gareth - I'm doing well, I am a "key worker" apparently so am also still working (from home). I am keeping well and finding enough stuff to do day to day to not go mad. I know I'm one of the lucky ones in that respect. Dan - I'm fine. Tom - I’m fine too. The band are a bit weird but they always were. Do you have a daily routine, are you learning anything new as everyone else seems to be? Dan - I work within the events industry so naturally my work has disappeared for the foreseeable future so my daily routine involves a lot around not procrastinating and keeping busy with my other projects. Steven and Gareth inspired me to look into recording at home so it's been fun learning that. I also screen print and do a lot of art work, so that crops up in my routine day to day. Every day is the same but different. Steven - My routine is fairly fixed. Up at 6:30 to hang out with the little one. Work 9-4. Then usual bedtime routine. I’ve been trying to do something creative in the evenings - making music, videos, painting - if I’m not knackered like. Tom - I set myself some new practice routines for drums. 2x 1hr sessions everyday. I think it helps my mental health to achieve this at the very least so I don’t feel as if I’ve done fuck all. I’ve also got into cycling on those shonky bozza bikes (public London bike hire thing). Gareth - Routine...just about yeah. Pot of coffee, followed by work, followed by exercise and/or some drumming, followed by re-runs of the office or something creative like video-editing or making weird music. I've also decided to learn how to animate, which we'll use in an upcoming USA Nails video hopefully. It's taking ages. Are you seeing this lockdown as a time to be creative? And has it changed the way you view the industry?
Steven - I have to be creative. I’m terrible at expressing myself any other way. As for the industry, I guess the way we operate hasn’t massively changed, other than not rehearsing and gigging. Dan - Yes, I guess it's natural to lean on your creativity at a time like this. We are doing a couple of cover compilations. We all did three songs each. I guess this links in with wanting to learn home recording etc. Gareth - Normally I would never have given myself the time I've got now to experiment and produce the things I have done in the past few weeks . So that's been pretty great really. I feel really bad for people who rely on entertainment and events for a living, I know many of them are really struggling at the moment. Tom - I’ve been furloughed from my workplace so this was definitely a time for me to be creative and do some video editing and write a bit of music. My views on the industry haven't really changed. I don’t think it’s affected us as a band as it would full time touring bands. I guess it’s given us a little more time to get some artwork and music videos done which is always nice. As a band are you doing anything for the fans? A lot of online gigs and Q&As seem to be the norm for a lot of bands, how easy or difficult is that for you as a group? How has this impacted your side projects? Dan - We've got a few things lined up to be released. I'm in a couple of other projects (The Eurosuite and Health Plan) and have releases coming up. Steven - I did a couple of solo sessions for our friend Tom. They’re up on our Bandcamp. They money raised goes to Mind. We’ve been busy making videos for songs off our next record and made a couple of EPs of covers too. Again cash goes to charity, Refuge. I play in BLKLSTRS too and we’re preparing our 3rd record, should be out really soon. Dan (Nails bassist) and I started making some music before lockdown together too. Dan recorded a bunch of vocals and emailed them over to finish the tracks off. It’s good to keep the mind busy. Gareth - I also did a session for Tom also with my solo garb. As Dan says, me and him (he's a busy boy) pre-lockdown started a synthy no-wave band called The Eurosuite, and we have a record that is currently being mixed, so that's holding our attention a fair bit. On top of that I'm doing a series of stupid "drum covers" on social media to raise money for the NHS. Tom - Cutting together some music videos for the new album release. For once, it seems we’re well ahead of getting everything ready for it. With the lockdown being extended, does that effect plans for tours, singles, albums? Dan - I can't see any gigs happening this year unfortunately. I hope i'm wrong. Steven - In short, yes. We had to cancel our US tour. Gareth - Yeah cancelling the US tour was a huge downer, obviously. But the release of our next record (which has already been recorded) is kind of on course for the moment. As a fan I know how much I miss going to gigs, for the music and for the social aspect, is this something that you miss as well? Dan - Yes me too, I will miss the gigs both playing and as a punter. I think what I miss most though is the people and the friends I made either by going to gigs or being in bands. I'm sure I will see them all soon. Tom - I was happy as Larry for the first couple of weeks of furlough but then I went a bit mental for a day and felt the urge to go to a music venue and get really pissed. I didn’t do that of course, I just video messaged a mate, played music loud and got really pissed. Steven - Prior to lockdown I wasn’t really going out much. I’ve recently become a Dad and it’s changed me a lot. If I’m out I just want to get home really. I’ve always been a bit of a drinker, but mostly to cope with feeling socially awkward. I miss the loud sounds and laughs though. How important are your fans at this time, I know and I speak from experience, a lot of merch is being purchased to help bands, and I know you have a great connection with fans generally so are they an important aspect of getting through this? Gareth - People who dig us and support are as important as they ever were. We've seen a steady stream of merch getting bought off our online store which is great particularly as we're still trying to get some of the cash back that we spent on the US tour that we had to cancel *sob*. But yeah it feels like folk are buying more and interacting more than they normally would which is lovely. Despite horrors of this pandemic, the lockdown seems to have a created a lot of really positive community action, and for once social media is being used mainly I a positive manner – Do you want life to return to normal once this is over, or would you like people to be using this time to evaluate their lives and start be part of communities and positive social change? Tom - This time has made me value the simple pleasures of going out to see a gig or playing one, so I hope to continue to do that as soon as I can, and be part of that community. Steven - I’d like to see people continuing the niceties. There’s a bit of a backlash against people singing songs on acoustic guitars on their social media pages but I say go for it. If you don’t want to watch it, don’t press play. But if it makes someone feel good to play a guitar and sing then they should. Social media is great for staying in touch but I do struggle with Zoom conversations and the like. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing friends and family. I’ll probably be a bit nicer to be around too! Gareth - I think Steven mostly struggles with Zoom because the speaker function on his phone doesn't work properly. We've tried to have band chats and stuff but I've had to get pretty good at lip reading and that. I agree with Steve that there's a lot of "nice" stuff happening, and I'd hope that'd continue. In terms of what happens when this is all over, if it ever is, the main thing I'd like to see is people not voting for the Tories. The UK has the second highest death toll (and rising) in the world at the time of writing this, in my opinion there hasn't been nearly enough outrage about how catastrophically things have been managed. I live in hope that we'll see them out at the earliest possible opportunity. Next up: Mark speaks with the Brooders, which you can read on Friday. |
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