Archive for the ‘Singles and EPs’ Category

Miss Kill – Drive

Posted: 21 July 2022 in Singles and EPs
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22nd July 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

If ever there was a song so steeped in idealisation and escapism, Miss Kill’s ‘Drive’ sets new heights. It isn’t that they’ve ditched their grungy alt-rock influences, but this new single sees the duo, consisting of Alannah and Felicity Jackson in a much more reflective mood.

As they pitch it, it’s more Chris Isaak and Tom Petty than their usual touchstones of Hole, Placebo, or Pearl Jam, and in context it makes sense. It’s certainly got the easy, breezy, radio-friendly airiness of that classic Americana, but it also balances grungy bite with pop tones in a way that’s reminiscent of ‘Malibu’.

‘Asked my babe if he’d come for a ride yeh. I really just wanna get in and drive Away / Through the sun with the music blaring / Driving past I got everyone staring / I don’t think we’re ever coming back’, they sing.

It’s that perfect image, that dream, of driving away, of cruising into the sunset, never to return, to something new and something better. It’s just like the movies, just like in the songs on the radio. Freedom! Liberation! Life!

Who doesn’t fantasise about this ever? Who doesn’t want to ditch their boring ordinary life and crap job and simply live life like a fairytale? Or, better still, a road trip? To jump in a car and simply drive is the absolute epitome of the fantasy of leaving everything behind.

Reflecting on the reality is depressing, but this offers hope and prospects, like it could happen. It’s not for me to say that it couldn’t, because well, know knows? Anyway, it’s three and a quarter minutes of uplifting, melodic time out of life where you can believe in the dream.

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Miss Kill - Artwork

cowman – crunch ep

Posted: 20 July 2022 in Singles and EPs
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27th July 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

The multi-talented, multi-discipline and perhaps, sometimes, not-so-disciplined Benjamin Heal returns in his Cowman guise, under which he’s been operating since 2005 with a new EP, his first in a decade, after previous creative detours with Coaxial and various other projects.

Over the course of a sporadic and low-key career, li-fi, slackerist Cowman has – impressively, whether by fluke or by design – appeared on bills with a slew of cred cult acts, including Ack Ack Ack, Gum Takes Tooth, Cove, Pifco, and John Parish. These notable highlights are well-deserved, but it’s a pleasure to witness cowman making a comeback, instead of simply revelling over former achievements.

Crunch is a magnificently loose knockabout and if Pavement comparisons may seem lazy shortcuts, they’re also entirely justified. But then… then… there’s a whole lot more. The first track, ‘Concrete Eyes # Turpentine’ , with its inexplicable punctuation, starts out a fairly straightforward, if angular indie kicker in the vein of Slanted era Pavement, with wonky, off-kilter guitars that sound vaguely out of key, but then spins off into an epic swirling expanse of psychedelic post-rock. The whole thing is almost ten minutes long, drifting into a long, sluggish drone in the final minutes.

There’s an easygoing picked guitar line that contrasts with jittery drums on ‘Concrete pink Dots’ before the distortion kicks in, and it does so hard, creating a dense whorl of noise that almost buries the drums, until they surrender to the barrage of din, and we find ourselves drifting in a cloud of hazy shoegaze guitar. It’s mellow, but it’s loud, and that’s where the hypnotic ‘Bloody Diffuser’ picks up as it embarks on another ten-minute sonic journey, a slow-smouldering soundscape heavy on delay and reverb. Switching through a succession of segments, where the transitions are jolting, flicking changes rather than seamless transitions, it’s by turns doom drone and psychedelic drone, but ultimately, it’s all the drone – and that’s a good thing.

Ordinarily, two versions of one song on the same release feels a bit lazy, but then again, I spent the 90s buying singles on three formats in order to obtain all the versions and B—sides, and I have a hunch that Benjamin is also well-versed in the maxi-single and the like, and it so happens that the cropped version of ‘Tobacco Eyes’ that rounds it off actually feels like a single that had it been released circa 92 would have been lauded in the press as being in the vein of Pavement and Truman’s Water. And in fairness, that’s just as true in 2022.

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KEN Mode – But They Respect My Tactics

Posted: 15 July 2022 in Singles and EPs
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Art of Fact Records – 15th July 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

The second single lifted from the forthcoming album Null, due for release in September, is basalt slabs of rock-solid riffery of the kind KEN Mode are worshipped for by their fanbase – and deservedly so.

It crashes in hard, grinding low-end dominating, before the guitar splinters treble over the grumbling bass that drives the verse. Jesse Matthewson’s hard, shouted vocal style is savage, and the vocals sit fairly low in the mix; the splinters that do cut through are cutting ‘I’ve got / nothing more to say / You’ve got no reason to listen’. As the band put it, it’s ‘an existential crisis, set to music’, and ‘in Matthewson’s words, the song illustrates a turning point where one’s disappointment transforms into resignation.’ It all adds to the overall nihilistic force of this beast of a tune.

If both the production and the accompanying promo video serve to convey a sense of the band’s energy and sheer power live, then the UNSANE T-shirt Jesse’s wearing provides a fair reference point for this slice of sonic savagery. That said, it does signify a shift from predecessor, Loved (which still has one of the most memorable album covers of recent years). It’s a little less frenetic, less manic than, say, ‘He Doesn’t Feel Pain Like He Ought To’, and the sound is geared towards being denser, heavier rather than harsher. And it packs a mean punch alright.

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KEN mode will hit the road in September for a string of Canadian shows, followed by a headlining slot at No Coast Fest in Denton, TX, alongside Metz, Young Widows, and more. Stand by for news of more touring.

Sept 23 – Winnipeg, MB, CA @ The Good Will Social Club – w/ Vile Creature, Mares of Thrace

Sept 24 – Saskatoon, SK, CA @ Amigos Cantina – w/ Vile Creature, Mares of Thrace

Sept 25 – Calgary, AB, CA @ Palomino Smokehouse – w/ Vile Creature, Mares of Thrace

Sept 26 – Edmonton, AB, CA @ Starlite Room Temple – w/ Vile Creature, Mares of Thrace

Oct 30 – Denton, TX @ No Coast Fest – w/ Metz, Young Widows

False Heads – Thick Skin

Posted: 12 July 2022 in Singles and EPs
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Scruff of the Neck

Christopher Nosnibor

False Heads preface the arrival of their new album, Sick Moon, which is due at the end of September with the single ‘Thick Skin’, produced by Frank Turner.

Front man Luke Griffiths tells it straight when discoursing on the single’s inspiration and purpose, saying ‘“Thick Skin’ is about how much I f****** hate the current political discourse. To me, politics seems to be completely and utterly middle-class from left to right – class has been seemingly removed from a lot of left-wing politics.”

It’s hard to argue when the leader of the Labour opposition, supposedly the party of the workers, is a knighted ex-lawyer. Small wonder the workers are applauding RMT union head Mick Lynch as the voice of the people, since he’s the only one who’s really telling it like it is, and using his platform opportunities to explain just why everything is so fucked. No-one else is talking about how wages aren’t the issue in the “cost off living crisis”, it’s the fact that wages are being suppressed to preserve profits. People are struggling while CEOs rake in staggering salaries and bewildering bonuses and shareholders reap megadividends at the expense of the poor cunts who do the work and so effectively make those profits possible.

Griffiths goes on: ‘It’s also about social media politics. That kind of rage and vitriol is some form of lashing out for mental health problems and it’s like a form of addictive behaviour. I understand this, dealing with depression and having a history of drug abuse, and I understand how difficult it is to not let that rage inside you come out in vicious ways. But I just feel like social media has allowed a million different forms of religion, nationalism and tribalism to be completely normalised. Our brains are rotting and there is no hope, and every time I feel like there is I’m stung again.’

Again, it’s relatable on a mass scale. Religion is no longer the opium of the people: it’s social media, and it’s divisive, crushing, and debilitating.

‘Thick Skin’ packs all of this into two minutes and forty of guitar-driven grunge with a radio-friendly edge that sits between Asylums and DZ Deathrays, in that it balances attack with melody, big guitars with strong hooks. It’s a cracker!

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Philipp Rumsch Ensemble – μ: of transfiguration x resonance

Posted: 11 July 2022 in Singles and EPs
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Nynode Intermedia – 27th May 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

In case it needed restating, the pandemic really dig screw everything up for everyone. I’m not even going to go there again now.

As the press release that accompanies this new EP from Philipp Rumsch Ensemble, the Leipzig based composer, pianist and sound designer Philipp Rumsch and his twelve-piece ensemble ‘had the finger on the pulse when they released their concept album μ: of anxiety x discernment.’

Anxiety peaked globally barely a month later, and the world was held in the grip f panic for the best part of the subsequent two years.

The album, ‘recorded partly with the use of a special binaural recording technique to create a three-dimensional soundstage…was praised by Electronic Sound, BBC, NDR and many more. Furthermore, the release assured the band’s recognition being one of the most exciting large ensembles in Europe.’

But you can’t lug a large ensemble round Europe when it’s locked down and there’s travel chaos and no-one knows what the hell’s going on, and it’s not easy to collaborate with international artists other than digitally either. But, two years in the making, it’s finally landed: ‘the rework EP μ: of transfiguration x resonance is finally seeing the light of the day. Four artists / collectives contemplating on the album’s material from different points of view by deconstructing the core material and putting it together in new ways. The prestigious lineup consists of musicians and sound artists from the ensemble’s creative environment. Jana Irmert (collaborations with, i.a., Jóhann Jóhannsson), Shramm aka Jörg Wähner (Apparat, Bodo Bill, Dieter Meier and many more), Moritz Fasbender (the most recent project of musician Friederike Bernhardt) and the string trio Toechter (Lisa Marie Vogel, Katrine Grarup Elbo and Marie-Claire Schlameus) each contributed one track’.

I’m almost inclined to steep back and applaud the fact they’ve simply done it, and that’s not sarcasm. As a taster, Jana Irmert’s ‘Echo’ is being released as a single.

There’s something quite intriguing in the very concept of a single from a work like this, and it challenges the conventional function of a single in some respects. At heart, the single over many years has served as – primarily – a promotional tool to shift album units, by providing a snippet of the album that shows its best side, so to speak. Historically, it was released in the hope of achieving radio or other coverage, or even a chart position, to boost album sales. And perhaps this will also do that: after all, the soft, undulating organ drones and soft wafts of analogue synth, and trilling oboe, amidst the sounds of winds and waves are soporific and mesmerising in their slow atmospherics. It’s soft and appealing, and so, so agreeable. In these troubled times, we need more untroublesome music, and this fits that bill.

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Cat SFX – Binman

Posted: 10 July 2022 in Singles and EPs
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It’s Creation Baby – 1st July 2022

From Cat SFX’s social media – or specifically, Cat Speranza as the face and embodiment of CAT SFX, you could be forgiven for forgetting that there’s a band happening. But why should all social media be about promotion, about the dayjob? For many artists, life inform art, and so the everyday – the shit, the weirdness, the boredom – is all integral to the making of the art.

Since their inception a couple of years or so ago, the London four-piece have had a blistering run of singles, and now look to cement their reputation as an exciting band on the rise with their debut EP, from which title track ‘Binman’ is the lead cut.

It’s an edgy post-punk effort, starting out with a taut, jittery verse with hints of early PJ Harvey before settling into a solid groove that nods to the musical stylings of Garbage, as well as The Jesus and Mary Chain circa Automatic and 80s pop era Psychedelic Furs.

‘I’m no good / never said that I was, never said that I could’, Cat sings in the breezy chorus. It sound so effortless, almost throwaway – which is fitting, since this is a song about kicking out the trash, when you are the trash, but at the same time, carries so much honesty, so much sincerity, so much realism, it’s impossible not to be completely hooked, completely sold. Because this, THIS is what perfect pop is. It’s not flimsy, throwaway, disposable, meaningless: pop resonates, grabs you, gets into your head with a catchy tune but at the same time hits you and stays with you. Cat SFX know this – they don’t say it, they just deliver it.

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Binman

Moni Jitchell – Clear EP

Posted: 9 July 2022 in Singles and EPs
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Gold Mold Records – 7th July 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Moni Jitchell don’t piss about, and in deference to that attitude, neither shall I: this EP is an absolute blinder. Crashing in somewhere between Blacklisters, and Daughters, or like Pulled Apart by Horses on speed, it delivers five fast ‘n’ furious cuts in as many minutes, and it’s not hard to figure how the Glasgow duo scored a slot supporting Mclusky earlier in the year with their brand of irreverent, full-throttle shouty noise that’s too angular to be punk, but too punk to be metal, and too metal to be math… The fact they’ve appeared alongside Leeds noisemongers Thank is perhaps a fair indication of the kind of racket they make.

Only they make it louder and faster, and distil everything to the most absolute optimum potency. The songs are formed, with defined structures and ‘clear’ shape – but compacted to black-hole density, clanging and slamming every whichway, frenetic, kinetic, jarring, jolting, whiplash-inducing blasts of sonic violence.

Grant Donaldson’s drumming is solid and holds everything together through wild tempests of stuttering, stop/start guitar that veers between driving riffs and splintering shards of atonality. The vocals are manic, screamed, and unintelligible, but it doesn’t really matter, as there’s no time to dwell on these things. There’s no time for anything at all.

‘Not a Change’ is a mere thirty—three seconds long, with guitars that buzz like a helium-filled wasp trapped in a hot greenhouse. ‘Split’ is only a second longer, while the ten-second ‘Skelp’ is over before it’s even started.

It’s one of those short sharp shocks that leaves you stunned and sweating, and completely buzzed.

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Third Lung – Lo-Hi

Posted: 29 June 2022 in Singles and EPs
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1st July 2022

James Wellls

Third Lung have been kicking out singles at a remarkable pace over the last year or so, and continue their forward trajectory with ‘Lo Hi’, a song that’s cut from the core of emotional turmoil that’s likely relatable to many. ‘Lo-Hi’ is about how people can find themselves ‘alone not knowing how to move forward. Until, they find the courage to ask and faith in their friends and loved ones to utter the 3 most beautiful words, I Need Help.’

That those words are beautiful, I might question, and would probably disagree with – they’re clunky, awkward, and to many of us, embarrassing, uncomfortable, desperate, a last resort, an admission of failure. But, as the band say, ‘One of life’s most encouraging yet hardest lessons to learn is to trust the people closest to you, with you’.

There’s nothing clunky, awkward, embarrassing, or uncomfortable about the song, though. ‘Lo-Hi’ straddles influences from U2 to The Associates; it’s another big-hitter with arena potential, and surely it’s only a matter of time before they achieve it.

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Insolace – I Won’t Cry

Posted: 29 June 2022 in Singles and EPs
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1st July 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

London / Brighton quartet Insolace consist of Millie Cook (vocals), Conor Hyde (guitar), Sam Bryant (bass) and Onyi Olisa (drums), and I suppose you could reasonably summarise ‘I Won’t Cry’ as one of those ‘strong’ songs – one whereby the ultimate message is one of empowerment, despite it’s primary theme being of mental struggle. Here, against a backdrop of busy, accessible math-orientated jangle Cook pitches lyrics about being in the place of the supporter to someone who’s struggling.

Sonically, on the one hand it’s kinda buoyant emo, and even a bit poppy, but on the other, it’s got a bit of a 2004/5 vibe that I have a certain nostalgia for, which is something I never expected – a time when every other band was jangly, noodly, mathy, and some if it was fun, but ultimately you only need one Explosions in the Sky, and so many Spokes style acts, and probably only one Wintermute…a nd then my brain pokes me with a reminder of Everything Everything. And then you reach a point where less is more, and actually, just a little variety goes a long way.

But it’s easy to be critical, and over time, things do change. Where’s all the noodly math-rock now? Some of it’s here, it seems, and ‘I Won’t Cry’ feels like a 21st Century response to The Cure’s seminal classic ‘Boy’s Don’t Cry’. I Won’t Cry I Won’t Cry’ is busy, and a shade technical. But it’s crisp, and has a solid hook, and for that alone it deserves a wide audience.

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Ivory Skies – Bring Me Up

Posted: 22 June 2022 in Singles and EPs
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17th June 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Blackpool isn’t exactly a roaring flame on the musical map, hanging in the shadow of Manchester and being more geared toward tourism than seemingly existing as a place to live in its own right. Sure, Jethro Tull originated in Blackpool, along with – although some time apart – The Membranes, and Alfie Boe – but it’s hardly indicative of a cultural melting pot with a thriving scene to represent it.

Ivory Skies may – or may not – change that. Formed in 2019, they’ve released a couple of singles already, and scored support slots with Kyle Falconer from The View, and The K’s, which puts them on the fringes of the bigger leagues.

Perhaps it’s a coastal town thing: ‘Bring Me Up’ calls to mind the uptempo punk / indie crossover sound of Southend-on-Sea’s Asylums, and it’s buoyant, energetic – inoffensive, but certainly not lacking in a bit of bite, yielding four minutes of melodic, guitar-driven joy with a dash of realism.

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Ivory Skies - Artwork

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