Archive for the ‘Singles and EPs’ Category

Pleb – Grease Trap

Posted: 4 August 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Human Worth – 7th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Having thoroughly enjoyed the churning racket of Leeds grindcore / sludge / infernal racket duo Pleb when they opened for Unsane at The Brudenell in April, the announcement of their debut EP being released on the esteemed Human Worth label came as excellent news. And even better news is that they absolutely deliver on the promise of the live show here.

The credits very much summarise the two players’ contributions, with D. Fraser providing ‘Guitar / Feedback Hell’, and S. Myles doing ‘Drums / Squawks / Grunts’.

This is one serious fucking racket, and it would be a massive letdown if it was anything else, with eight songs and a total run time of just over ten minutes. There’s no pissing about here, just squalls of feedback and rasping, rabid vocals barking away low in the mix amidst the churning dingy noise. But then, this was always going to be the case. Check their pedigree: between them, their CVs list Cattle, Grub Nap, Groak – luminaries of the Leeds DIY noise scene that’s been thriving in tiny pub venues and basements and rehearsal rooms and the like for an age. It’s a tight-knit, but incredibly welcoming scene that’s spawned countless bands all committed to making the most ferocious, ugly noise imaginable. And with Grease Trap, you don’t have to imagine it.

And despite being just the two of them, it sounds like a full band, the guitar signal split to provide grinding low end and raging feedback at the top simultaneously. The result is a devastating sonic blast that assaults the senses with all frequencies. But why Grease Trap? The band explain:

“A grease trap is a tank that folks stick under the sink in a place that deals with food, it’s supposed to stop clumps of food and fat from going down the drain. There was one down our gaff and we had to empty it when we first moved in and I’ve never smelt owt like it. Me and our lasses dad were boaking the whole time while carrying buckets of foul stinking water up and down the corridor to try and wash the bloody thing out. Feels like that’s where we’re at as a society at the moment, we had all this stuff in place to try and stop things from going wrong but everything is rotting from the inside out and it’s poisoning the water supply. Greed is absolute, hatred is being weaponised and apathy is apparently cool again somehow. These songs are about the world wide descent into Fascism, the dutty roz, that orange bastard, our entire generation not breeding cos we’re in a hostile environment, technology turning us inside out, our inability to face our own problems without decking it and a bunch of other fun stuff. It doesn’t offer any solutions but sometimes you need to scream into the abyss eh?”

Lacking a grease trap myself, and my house having been built circa 1890 and still connected to the original ceramic Victorian plumbing which connects to the (also Victorian) drain system, I’ve had to invest in a set of drain rods, which are subject to regular usage to unclog backups that threaten to plug my back yard. they seem to be caused predominantly by mini fatbergs congealed around masses of hair (which evidently aren’t mine). And I can confirm that the job is nothing short of rank, dragging out clods of stinking clumps of sludge. it still doesn’t stink as badly as Reform, though, or, judging by footage online, as much as Trump when he nods off and soils himself. Rotten politics, rotten behaviour, rotten intestines, it would seem.

This is all of the above compacted into the most intense sonic explosion. It distils the rage at the fetid state of Western culture and the sewer state of our politics, our media, social media and blasts with complete abandon, and titles like ‘CLODS OF SHIT AND BONE’, ‘THE BRUISES MEAN IT’S ON THE WAY OUT’ and ‘THE EYES MELT FIRST’ sound exactly as you’d expect. With Grease Trap, Pleb vent the rage in the rawest, most direct fashion. And it absolutely hits the spot.

PS fuck fascism.

AA

HW052_Pleb_GreaseTrap_CoverArtwork

Watch: ‘The Summer Talking’ by The Noise Who Runs

Posted: 4 August 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Alternative Pop / Electro-Rock firebrand THE NOISE WHO RUNS returns with ‘The Summer Talking’, a catchy sonic respite that disguises devastating social critique beneath shimmering indie-pop hooks. Sneaker Pimps legend Ian Pickering spins a tale of romance and nostalgia before spiralling into an indictment of climate denial, political inaction and humanity’s addiction to comforting lies. The striking video contrasts postcard-perfect holiday escapes with the growing environmental crisis, this song asks an uncomfortable question – are we sleepwalking through catastrophe while convincing ourselves everything will somehow work out?

This track is lifted from PIckering’s new (and now acclaimed) Re: GenX album, a fearless uncompromising record that puts an entire generation (and society itself) on trial. Addressing war, consumerism, inequality, media outrage and the collapse of collective responsibility, he sounds a warning siren for a world in freefall. Blending dark electronic textures with anthemic alternative rock, The Noise Who Runs is one of alternative music’’ most fearless voices, offering a brutally honest examination of the choices that have brought us to the brink.

AA

Built around the repeated refrain, “It’s just the summer talking”, the song explores the promises we make when sunshine, nostalgia and hope temporarily blur our view of reality.  Balancing melancholic indie-pop with widescreen alternative rock, it follows dreams of escape, new beginnings and forever as they gradually reveal themselves to be fragile seasonal illusions. Beneath the relationship story lies a wider reflection on the comforting stories we tell ourselves—about love, our lives and the future itself.

AA

Noise Who

Blacklist Union – Madame Butterfly

Posted: 3 August 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

31st July 2026

Just the other day, I was contemplating – and discussing with my daughter – how practically every style and fashion had been recycled in the not so distant past, or was in otherwise back in vogue, with the exception of hair rock and spandex. But then I came to the new EP by Italian ‘alternative’ rock / industrial act Noir Addiction, and while it was predominantly a conglomeration of industrial and grunge, there were some strong hints of music from the time that settle forgot. I’d assumed it was a singular exception, but then I caught Greek act Dismiss just last week and noted how their hybrid of punk and hard rock invited comparisons to both Amyl and the Sniffers and Lita Ford, and now there’s the video which accompanies Blacklist Union’s latest single, ‘Madame Butterfly’, and the growing evidence is starting to suggest otherwise. Sonically, it’s very much steeped in 90s grunge, at least in the verses… but the choruses, and visually… we’ll return to this after we’ve unpacked the rest of it.

The accompanying notes provide few surprises by way of context, explaining how the takes its title ‘from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly’ but ‘is a world away from the opera’s tragic tale of unrequited love. Instead, it serves as a heartfelt love letter from frontman Tony West to Lorraine Lewis of Femme Fatale’.

Femme Fatale still stand as one of the definitive glam metal / hard rock bands of the period 1987-1990, and Lorraine Lewis was a classic rock pinup, who would also front Vixen between 2013 and 2025.

‘Madame Butterfly’ is the lead single from Blacklist Union’s forthcoming album, The Good, The Bad And The Notorious, due for release in spring 2027. The release follows the acclaimed single ‘Jackson’, Blacklist Union’s reimagining of the Johnny Cash and June Carter classic, which paired Tony West with – yes – Lorraine Lewis for a duet ‘blending outlaw country, punk attitude and rock ‘n’ roll swagger.’ Tony West must have been creaming his skinny jeans.

‘Madame Butterfly’ is unreconstituted, back-to-the-source, glammy hard rock, the likes of which we haven’t really seen in a long time. The fact that it does incorporate grunge elements indicates just how things have changed in the last thirty years, given that grunge was a rebellion against precisely this. But… different times. Pandemic. World war. Shit on shit. Somehow, lately, it feels easier to forgive.

AA

Lorraine Lewis & Tony West pic

Smutclub Ldn–Elephant

Posted: 3 August 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

31st July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

We really do seem to be experiencing a Nu-Metal renaissance right now. And of all the genres I would have put money on sinking without trace, it’s Nu-Metal, which felt like a flash-in-the-pan fad in the late 90s. The idea of crossing rap and metal wasn’t entirely new even then. Aerosmith’s collaboration with Rum DMC may have sown the seeds, but it was most definitely a meeting of rock and rap. The collaborations which featured on the Judgement Night soundtrack in 1993, however, very much brought rap and metal together, and set the precedent for what Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park would go on to do. Helmet and House of Pain? Faith No More and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.? Slayer and Ice T? These were some fierce collisions of rap and metal. This was radical. But that was 1993 – and what a time to be alive! And now it’s 2026. Thirty-three years have elapsed. Holy shit. It’s not exactly ‘nu’ anymore. Is it? Perhaps it’s time for a rebrand. And since we’ve had Post-punk and even The New Wave of New Wave, how about Nu-Nu Metal, or ‘The Nu-Metal Revival’ or ‘The Nu-Metal Renaissance’?

But while the Nu-Metal scene of the late 90s was dominated by blokes venting versions of adolescent rage (although Fred Durst was nearing 30 when Limp Bizkit released their debut album, and there always felt like a sense of arrested development hung around the genre – older guys making records for disaffected teens), the current scene is altogether more diverse, and most significantly, we’re seeing female-fronted acts like Eville breaking through and kicking arse.

Smutclub Ldn share some common ground with Eville, as is happens, with whacked-out pop autotune colliding with skull-crunching riffs. And as such, ‘Elephant’ is a brain-melting identity crisis of a single: clocking it at precisely three minutes, it’s a mental mash-up of nu-metal, emo, and pop, all brought together and heated under compression, with explosive results.

The verse riff is a gnarly, churning beast which chugs and undulates menacingly, the chorus sounds like it belongs to a completely different song, and the breaks and bridges are something else again. How do you switch between hands-in the-air anthem and brutal slam-dancing and back again, and again, in just three minutes? ‘Elephant’ is positively schizophrenic, and love it or hate it, it’s the most inventive thing you’re likely to hear in 2026.

AA

Smutclub Ldn Promo image 1

Watch: ‘Ghost Piano’ by Martin Virgo

Posted: 3 August 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Martin Virgo is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer who worked with musical luminaries such as Björk and Massive Attack in the early 1990s before going on to enjoy global success with his own band, Mono, later in that decade.

Almost three decades on, Virgo is releasing his debut solo album. Entitled Ghost Piano, it can be seen as a prequel to his hit-making years. Classically trained in composition and piano at the Guildhall School of Music, he had developed a taste for Chopin, French Impressionism, the austere strangeness of Erik Satie and the minimalism of Philip Glass and Brian Eno. However, he then hooked up with Nellee Hooper and began a career in pop music that also led to work composing for cinema and TV commercials. These included an award-winning ad for Help The Aged.

“I came to the point a couple of years ago when I wanted to create something that was completely stripped of all the frippery and distractions of modern production techniques,” explains Virgo. “I wanted to write music that had a sense of lineage, but within a very distilled style. I also wanted to take a break from the world of digital audio production, so all the tracks on Ghost Piano were recorded live by myself on a Steinway model B acoustic grand piano, with the cello on the title track played by Nick Cooper (The Michael Nyman Band).”

Hear the title track here:

AA

Ghost Piano contains eleven evocative pieces in which the listener can hear the ‘ghosts’ of Chopin, Debussy and Satie playing in the absinthe soaked atmosphere of late 19th century Paris. “You can hear those influences on this album, although I think there are also traces of my time working with Björk on Debut, Massive Attack and Nellee Hooper on ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ and ‘Safe From Harm’, Shara Nelson on ‘Friendly Fire’ and Alanis Morissette on ‘Still’ (from the film Dogma),” Virgo adds. “These were all formative creative experiences for me. By the time I came to write and produce Mono songs like ‘Life In Mono’  and our album Formica Blues, I had embarked on a quest for a more European sounding harmonic and melodic palette.”

AA

9e681ce42ef606a232b24a2e41cb3c1231d91fcb

Watch: ‘An American Ideal Of Beauty’ by PIG

Posted: 2 August 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

UK industrial glam maverick Raymond Watts aka PIG has released a brand new single, ‘An American Ideal Of Beauty’, on Metropolis Records. Co-written with old friend Marc Heal (Cubanate, C-Tec), who provides a co-vocal and synth work, the song also features Günter Schulz (ex-KMFDM) sharing guitar duties with Watts’ regular songwriting partner Jim Davies (ex-The Prodigy and Pitchshifter).

“I wanted to distil and hone the sound of the current PIG album, ‘Hurt People Hurt’, so inviting my old partners in swine Marc and Günter to join Jim and myself in the studio seemed the perfect blend of brutality and beauty to feed, fertilise and transmogrify the hog into Hogzilla,” Watts explains. "This new single was the first result of our work as a quartet, hammered in the heat of the anvil of hurt.”

A stunning video for ‘An American Ideal Of Beauty’ directed by E Gabriel Edvy for Blackswitch Labs can be seen here:

AA

The recording sessions produced three more new songs, each of which has been remixed by contemporaries that include Stabbing Westward’s Chris Hall and  Combichrist. All eight tracks are collected on Dirt Box, an EP that will be issued on 4th September, a week after the commencement of PIG’s ‘Hurt People Tour’ of North America. The 44 dates are to promote Hurt People Hurt, which received stellar reviews upon release in late May, and include performances in Chicago, Los Angeles and Austin as part of the Cold Waves XIV festival.

b83c3790cd812aa1026d020f7db10b281acaef62

Watch: ‘Do-List’ by Eilir Pierce

Posted: 31 July 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Most artists begin with a single. Eilir Pierce waited until his 40th album.

Released on July 10th, 2026, ‘Do-List’ is the first official standalone single from the Welsh artist  and filmmaker after more than 30 years of music-making, 39 self-released albums and over 500 songs.

Having spent much of his career operating outside conventional music-industry structures, Pierce recently moved from Wales to Glasgow to begin his most ambitious project yet.

His forthcoming 40th album, Half-Time, is a synth-pop musical about moving to a new city and attempting to become a pop star in middle age. Featuring guest appearances from Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap and Mercury Prize-nominated Welsh artist Gwenno, the project will also become a live stage show and film, with Pierce performing a full run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.

‘Do-List’ captures the overloaded mind behind those plans.

The song races through tasks, ambitions and unfinished ideas as Pierce tries to impose order on everything he believes he needs to achieve. Each completed tick provides a smaller reward. Meanwhile, the jobs continue to multiply.

“I make lists because I’m overwhelmed,” says Pierce. “Then the list becomes another thing overwhelming me. I tick something off, feel satisfied for about three seconds and immediately notice the other 27 things I haven’t done.”

He adds: “I also refuse to call it a ‘to-do list’. The ‘to’ is completely unnecessary. That kind of inefficiency is exactly how lists get out of control.”

Built around tense piano and an increasingly agitated vocal, Do-List developed with Glasgow producer Gavin Thomson into a darker arrangement of drum machines, synth textures and strings.

Its clipped, spoken verses carry the blunt repetition of The Fall and the  deadpan detachment of Dry Cleaning. The chorus opens into something more exposed, with echoes of early Daniel Johnston and the eerie consolation of the Lady in the Radiator from David Lynch’s Eraserhead.

At the centre of the song is Pierce’s hope for an afterlife free from unfinished admin: “Heaven is a place with no list.” For a moment, the song escapes the pressure of constant productivity. Then another task arrives.

‘Do-List’ is Pierce’s attempt to write a direct pop song after three decades of working largely on his own terms. It is also the first item in an increasingly unreasonable plan involving an album, musical, film, Fringe run and bid for middle-aged pop stardom.

Perhaps Pierce was born in the wrong era.

Or perhaps releasing a debut single after 39 albums is exactly the point.

AA

Untitled design - 1

Watch: ‘Hats Off’ by Argonaut

Posted: 31 July 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Fun, funky and fabulously 80s-influenced, Argonaut have just released their latest video single, ‘Hats Off’, filmed and produced by Dave Meyer.

The single is taken from their new album, Interrupted, that despite the upbeat single in contrast plunges into the past year’s abyss, documenting breakdown, burnout, dementia and depression, alongside nostalgia, hope and healing.

The extended mix single of ‘Hats Off’ is out today.

Here’s Lorna to tell you all about it: “’Hats Off’ is the sound of the summer past and present, memories bought back by looking at old photos from when I was younger. I found a hat in a charity shop which reminded me of one I wore in a picture from when I was 15. Around this time I also took a photography course so I incorporated the camera and darkroom imagery into the lyrics. The synth sounds and bass are influenced by 80s bands such as Japan, Duran Duran, INXS, Human League – which worked well with the words.”

AA

Making the music video

Kath & the Kicks – Sleep

Posted: 30 July 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

3rd July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

For so, so long, the UK music industry was so London-centric that it actually hurt. The music press would flock to all the regular London haunts within spitting distance of their offices and declare that they’d just witnessed the next big thing. often, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, because said bands found themselves in the national press, but because London is so huge, they rarely needed to venture beyond the M25. There were moments in time when cities in the North spawned scenes which were simply impossible to ignore – Manchester in the late 70s and again in he 90s, Sheffield in the 80s, and Leeds, also in the 80s – as much as the press tried to look the other way there. But over the last fifteen years or so, Leeds has consistently birthed acts of a remarkable quality.

It’s true that, living in York, I may be prone to a certain Leeds bias of the kind which tinged the London-based press historically, but I still have to travel to the next county to see shows in Leeds, which requires both time, effort, and expenditure. In short, the quality has to be there to motivate me to go. But more to the point, this is not a matter of settling for what’s accessible. In the late 80s and early 90s, I yearned to live in London because it seemed that’s where I needed to be to discover the most happening music. This is not the case anymore: the Leeds scene is positively foaming with exciting acts, more than I can even keep pace with.

During this time of new band emerging on a weekly basis, Kath and the Kicks have been beavering away, building a following through a steady live schedule and a flow of exhilarating releases, the latest of which is ‘Sleep’.

Pitched as being for fans of Skunk Anansie, Siouxsie Sioux, Muse, Guano Apes, No Doubt, and The Runaways, ‘Sleep’ brings together slugging grunge riffery and doomy / goth vocals with a subtle pop edge – that is to say, amidst the ethereality and posed drama, there’s a melodic accessibility. Here, they bring the kind of guitar-driven heft, blended with soaring melody, that invites comparisons to heavier contemporary acts like Cwfen (and given that Sorrows was one of my top albums of 2025, that’s no small compliment).

Their name may carry connotations of a middling, middle-aged pub-rock band, but Kath & The Kicks bring full-throttle power, and properly kick arse with gutsy guitars and a distinctive dynamism, and with ‘Sleep’ they bring it all together into a densely-packed guitar-driven blast. Top drawer.

AA

Kath & The Kicks Promo shot 2

Listen: ‘Open Sea’ by Eye

Posted: 30 July 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

EYE, the band formed by Jessica Ball (Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard) return with a reworked heavy-psych bliss-out of a unreleased track and taster of new things to come from the Welsh heavy dark-wavers who gave us Dark Light, an acclaimed debut album in 2024 on New Heavy Sounds (Cwfen, Shooting Daggers, Death Pill).

An ethereal dark-folk intro of clean finger-picking and Carpenter synth lulls us into a sense of false calm before Ball unleashes one of her most crushing MWWB-esque fuzz riffs. By revisiting the track Ball has now delivered one of her most memorable melodies with a huge chorus recalling Mammoth Weed in full flow – Blackwater Holylight, Faetooth eat-your-heart-out.

A stand-alone track for the time being but Jessica explains where things are going…

“The release of ‘Open Sea’ was quite unexpected in a way! We had initially recorded it in Foel Studios with the intention of it being on our first album Dark Light. For whatever reason, it didn’t make it on the album. It’s a song I had written a very long time ago, and it’s funny how you can favour your new material over the old stuff. I also wasn’t keen on the vocal melody anymore.

Well we recently came across it again, and I decided to have a go at some new vocals with fresh ears as enough time had passed. I liked what I did, so we sent it to Chris Fielding to work his magic… What came back was a fierce track that we absolutely loved. So I’m glad it is seeing the light of day.

Since the release of Dark Light, we’ve been playing a few select shows and working on our live sound a lot more. I’ve also been writing and working towards our second album. This single (Open Sea) has inspired me to make next album a lot heavier, and bring back the riffs!”

Listen to ‘Open Sea’ here:

AA

EYE 2026 - 2

Older Entries
Newer Entries