Friday 26th February 2010
OLD MONEY IV – 20/02/10 – PHOTOS
Friday 26th February 2010
d’Eon – “Prochaine Station”
Named after a Montreal train station, there’s a neat literalism to d’Eon‘s “Prochaine Station”, because, yknow, it sounds remarkably like a train and is charged with a slight French (house) bent, but remaining singular enough to have its own identity.
I’m always unsure how conscious the naming process is; where the artist’s intention ends and my interpretation begins, what I’m projecting, what’s actually present. Whichever way you look at it though, d’Eon did a pretty good job.
And while we’re identifying similarities, I’m reminded of that same train that Michel Gondry had sailing into Paris in “Star Guitar”, except this engine isn’t heading for the suburbs. d’Eon has his controls set firmly for the heart of the sun. I’m getting on Trainline right now.
(Photo: Rianna Cox)
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Thanks to Kev from No Pain In Pop for the tip off. You can buy d’Eon records from here and here. Look out for a d’Eon/Tough Love hook up in the very near future.
Tuesday 23rd February 2010
LONELY GALAXY – “HAVE A HEART”
At first I thought a lonely galaxy an impossibility – how can you be alone amongst all this stuff? There’s shit everywhere. Listening to “Have A Heart” though, it’s clear that this Lonely Galaxy is not so much a description as a desperate wish for solitude, to just be left-the-fuck-alone. And for good reason it seems, because someone has resoundingly had their heart snapped in two.
There’s a ton weight of heartbreak coursing through these languorous 7 minutes, heartbreak that stretches to the ends of space but still can’t escape itself, or, more importantly, the one – the one! – that did the breaking. A requiem written in extended coda, “Have A Heart” stretches from the resigned dissolution of a relationship to finding redemption in something newer, brighter, coming up over that hill, and coming from inside too – I’m alright, at least I have a heart!.
And in making that declaration as if it’s a saving grace appears another impossibility – how can hope be found in the one thing that hurt you? I guess only love can break your heart. I guess that’s true romance. That’s something worth holding on to.
Lonely Galaxy – “Have A Heart”
(Photo: Sam Coldy)
Monday 22nd February 2010
MINKS – “FUNERAL SONG”
Are Captured Tracks inventing these bands in a Brooklyn factory (Factory!), inking one-album-deals before a profile view is even registered or a show played? With Minks they’re once again channeling Biff Tannen’s almanac, all prophetic ambition, but, y’know, intentions good instead of evil. At least I think they’re good, because they’re becoming awful tyrannical in their dominance…
In some respects, their prescience echoes a pre-internet age, bands not ubiquitous before signing up and reaching out. And in doing so, I guess what Captured Tracks are affirming is the importance of the label, still. The need for both a validated mark of a certain aesthetic and a point of access – a medium! – like Rough Trade, Dischord, Sub Pop. Ah, to be mentioned in the same breath!
That said, “Funeral Song” is not entirely in sync with the rest of their catalogue. Yes, there’s a consistency with Blank Dogs in the swirling synths and the less than glossy production is pure lo-fi chic, but there’s something slightly further reaching here, a more grandiose statement underlying the bedroom roots that stretches beyond either garage rock amateurism or post-punk gloom.
Despite the track title, there’s a piercing rush of hope in the nasal vocal that’s just one part removed from Costello. “So long summertime, I’m not coming back” they sing with unerring conviction, offset against a sprightly new wave hook that swoops and crashes as if that wave could at any second spill over into a ocean, a natural will to something bigger, better, more. It’s in that aspirational drive that Minks and Captured Tracks make perfect sense together, not so much flattering the latter’s foresight as affirming a vision shared.
(Photo: Sasha Litvintseva)
Friday 19th February 2010
SPECTRALS TOUR WITH GIRLS
Acting as a neat precursor to the release of TLV035, the Fair Ohs/Spectrals split 7″, Spectrals go out on tour next week with Girls, playing two dates either side of three London shows. It’s a sporadic set of shows, taking in Brighton (Feb 22nd) and Southampton (Feb 25th), then Manchester (Mar 2nd) and Birmingham (Mar 3rd), in a sweet defiance of London-centricism (save the three dates in between, of course).
Significantly, the last of the dates in the capital is an all-day affair launching the zeitgeist-defining (although I know they’ll baulk at the claim) compilation released through Paradise Vendors and Italian Beach Babes; the labels run by Male Bonding and Conan Graffiti Island respectively. Here’s a link to details of that show, which you’d be a little foolish not to attend – there’s about a billion people already confirmed on Facebook as it is, if that means anything. You can also buy the record here, which features, among others, Spectrals, Fair Ohs, Not Cool, and Male Bonding and Graffiti Island themselves. And it’s £8. Deal!
Buy the Fair Ohs/Spectrals split 7″ here and receive a code to download the record for free.
Thursday 18th February 2010
THE RADIO DEPT – “HEAVEN’S ON FIRE”
The Radio Dept almost came too soon, forerunners to the shoegaze revival that acutely gripped the blogosphere last summer, and continues to still (and I say blogosphere because how many people outside of the GvB readership have actually heard of half of those bands?!). Which is ridiculous when you consider that they were always revivalists.
Never really pioneers, The Radio Dept were simply doing what Scandinavians have been doing since forever, expertly absorbing the fragility and melodicism of indiepop into the sonic adventurism of where it went next; My Bloody Valentine, basically – their career arc a blueprint for a nation. So it’s no surprise that there’s nothing new here, they just kept on keeping on. But there’s an intriguing footnote.
The Thurston Moore sample that opens “Heaven’s On Fire” jars at first, apparently incredulous to the song’s tropical lilt. And perhaps even more so given that they’ve made a pop song that not so much burns a “bogus capitalist process” as plays into its hands as we begin to see the chillwave transgression from blog fetish to mainstream concern. But then maybe therein lies the critique.
Radio Dept didn’t come too soon, they came exactly when they needed to. Before, now, after, it’s all the same when you’re true. Once the tide turns in the capricious blogosphere and we’re back on some alternative anti-lo-fi trip, The Radio Dept will still be going, transmissions from their own satellite heart, caught in their own orbit just outside, in the stars, strung out in their own firey heaven waiting for the earth to roll back around in line with them again.
The Radio Dept – “Heaven’s On Fire”
(Photo: Sannah Kvist)
Wednesday 17th February 2010
OLD MONEY IV
Tough Love Records presents…
OLD MONEY @The Stag’s Head, Dalston
Saturday 20th February
Radiant Dragon – 22:30
Dam Mantle – 21:45
Seams – 21:00
Tough Love DJs
Home.Under.Ground DJs
Becoming Real DJ
FREE entry
20:00-01:00
Thanks again, as always and forever, to Ralph Wilson for the poster.
Thursday 11th February 2010
COLD PUMAS – “TROPICAL GUILT”
These pumas are cold because they’re not animal, but machine, an engine heart clad with sleek sheet aluminum skin. But they’re not boxfresh, instead occupying that same shitty (possibly inner) space as HEALTH and Male Bonding, rusted around the edges, technology about to collapse in on itself, a kinda inverted dead-end future technology that doesn’t mean progression.
But the gears don’t quit clicking, the engine just about turning over. And then suddenly, it’s as if they find some renewed momentum, a power-up that surges them forward, but only for a second. And then the cycle starts again, Cold Pumas running laps around Saturn’s rings, stuck in some cosmic race to nowhere, no waving at the stars.
Hardly anything changes here. It could go on forever. Somewhere else, it probably is.
(Photo: Dave Geeting)
Tuesday 9th February 2010
TLV033 LAUNCH SHOW, 05/02/10, BIRMINGHAM – PHOTOS
CALORIES
WILLIAM
YOUVES
(Photos: Rory Barber)
Tuesday 9th February 2010
BEATERS – “FISHAGE”
Ten years have passed since I downloaded my first MP3 using Napster. To say a lot had changed since then would be like beating you with a plank of wood with the word ‘obvious’ painted on it. We know it’s no longer a pre-requisite to own anything tangible,let alone pay for it. We know that patience is no longer a virtue, but something worthy of Papal status. Anything approaching anticipation is easily thwarted by careless/predicated ‘leaks’. So, while physical media finds itself replaced by intangible files and lines on a screen, what’s left of the old world? And what are the new rules?
Listening to Beaters, it’s clear that post-punk isn’t going out of fashion any time soon. “Fishage” finds them cast in a Wild West caper, in hot pursuit of some hectoring Liars-alike Apaches. Evolutionary concerns are slurred, bass burbles and sheet metal clangs in the distance. This burial ground isn’t quite cursed, rather more a place of sly humour and tasteful shabbiness.
But still I’m haunted by these rules. When I was a boy, I’d be certain to find out as much as I could about an artist I was listening to. Now I wonder with the casting off of prior moral duties if this should perhaps also be forgotten. As a result, the most I could bring myself to find out about Beaters was that they were from San Diego, California. The post-hippy consensus is that the ‘Golden State’ quit being so just after The Manson Family commenced door-to-door house calls, long before Rollins and co flew the Black Flag. And yet, the thought of a group of young Californians making music for sewer dwellers and C.H.U.D.‘s doesn’t quite sit right with my immediate preconceptions.
But then, looking at those awful Californian Tourism adverts on TV, you’re reminded that Conan The Barbarian is their head of state. That’s enough to keep me awake at night, as I lie in wait for a new set of rules to take hold.
Liam Manley
(Photo: Square Eyes)
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Thanks to Matt Flag from the Fair Ohs for pointing us in the direction of this song. He’s releasing a selection of Beaters’ songs through his cassette imprint Suplex very soon. More details here
