What We've Been Listening To This Week...TV Priest, Life, SANS, Protomartyr, Farfisa, Dream English Kid, Van Houten

By Jon Milton

Links to music/features in blue.

How you feeling friend? A few weeks ago, TV Priest (whose Spotify profile features those four words only) released their debut single House of York to much critical acclaim, and have followed it up with a new single ‘Runner Up’ this week. According to the band, the single is about ‘white goods, work ethic, guilt, game shows, not dancing at the Christmas party, 4 car garages, meal deals, spam folders, lotteries, carrots and sticks’ and it is excellent, post punk at its finest, beginning and ending in feedback, staccato guitar, driving rhythm section and furious vocals ‘here’s what you could have won!’. We hope to have an interview with the band sometime this week to explore the subject matter further and find out about more about them, but in the meantime, you can listen for yourself here.
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Another big tune out this week was the IDLES mix of ‘Switching On’. Big because both bands are of course established music heavyweights, and also because the mix itself is BIG. It’s a beast, bringing industrial 80s 12-inch remix sounds and chugging beats to what was already a great song. Powerful stuff from two bands that we’ve featured on the site in the last month. You can hear the mix here, and read the interviews here and here.

Also bringing the noise this week were SANS, whose new eponymous EP features three bruising missives. We know not much about the band, other than they’re from Bristol and released their debut album Misophonic Songs last year, but on the evidence of this, they will certainly merit further investigation and scrutiny in the future. Listen to Aztec Drips, the lead track on the EP here.

Protomartyr let us in on another track from their forthcoming album this week, Michigan Hammers, snarling contemptuous vocals combined with a frantic, scampering backing. Given the three singles out to date, all of which show varied sides of the bands’ repertoire, the album should be very interesting, and certainly one to look forward to hearing. 

If all that noise doesn’t float your boat, you might want to check out the new singles by Farfisa, Dream English Kid and Van Houten. We came across Manchester band Farfisa on the excellent Owed Summer charity compilation with their song Simon’s Bridge, and this week they released a new single Out of My Mind. Out of My Mind has a lovely 60’s psychedelic vibe, all jangling guitars and bright vocals reminiscent of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ by that old band from Liverpool everyone still goes on about.

Also based in Manchester are Dream English Kid who have released I See Red, a song that starts off like something from an Ibiza chill album from the 90’s but then morphs into brooding psychedelia to great effect. You can listen to and read about the song, and find out more about the band here. Over the other end of the M62 in Leeds Van Houten released their rather engaging lo-fi psychedelic pop single ‘Better than This’ on Friday via Come Play With Me, which you can find out more about here.