Posts Tagged ‘Lockdown’

Videostore – They Closed Down The Videostore

Posted: 20 April 2021 in Albums
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Christopher Nosnibor

Videostore continue to make the most of lockdown, with the pair banging out a second mini-album, comprising three of their recent singles along with three brand new tracks. Does the title have a significance? Does the end of lockdown mark the end of Videostore as Nathan and Lorna return to work and also reconvene with Argonaut? Perhaps time will tell, but for now, this is a document of the effects of life in confinement – or, as they put it, ‘what happens when you are locked down with Disney plus and Taylor Swift and Spacemen 3 CDs for company.’

It’s an interesting blend, but also a hybrid that works and is distinctively Videostore: scuzzed-out lo-fi pop songs that articulate ennui and nostalgia with a rare energy. As ever, it’s the contrast between Nathan’s worldweary monotone baritone and Lorna’s light, lilting, airy tones that really distinguish and define their sound.

It starts off with single cut ‘Superhero Movies’, a lively blast of choppy guitars where they ruminate on the disparity between movies and life, whereby everyone aspires to be a superhero from the comfort of their sofa. Media and unattainable aspiration is also the focus of ‘Your Perfect Life’. ‘Halfway There’ is a middle-aged lament that finds Nathan mulling over the passage of time, and in its downtempo mood and delivery, I’m reminded of The Fall’s ‘Time Enough at Last’, and even the semi-spirited call of ‘techno techno techno techno’ and a swerve into synth territory near the end can’t lift the melancholy mood – that’s a job for the blistering Pixies-like blast of single ‘Your Mind’, which stands out even more in context.

Low-key single ‘Anglepoise’ marks another return to Brix-era fall stylings, and there’s something affectingly sad in the sound of tiredness, of defeat. The last song, ‘Go’ is the biggest surprise of the set. It’s not a cover of the Moby track, but it is an all-out electro dance banger. It’s incongruous, so say the least, but there are some trademark squalls of noise among the trancey synths and insistent beats.

They Closed Down The Videostore may only contain six tracks, but it’s their most diverse work yet – and if the store remains open, the indications are they’ve no shortage of ideas to pursue.

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Yair Etziony – Further Reduction

Posted: 11 April 2021 in Albums
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False Industries False – 23rd April 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

None of us was ready for this. Separation, detachment, deaths, a relentless media frenzy… New normal? We haven’t had a moment to process, not really: it’s been one thing after another, and any time for reflection has simply slammed home another level of horror as the realisation of the harshest realities not only of the present, but the possible future hit us. There are people and places we may never see again, but existing in the moment has afforded little time to really assimilate this prospect. ‘All art made in this period has been impacted by the shifts 2020 brought on the world, so why deny it?’ asks Etziony, and it’s a fair question: even art not specifically or directly influenced by the events of the last year will have been affected in some way, and the psychological impact of a year of global lockdown, apart from friends and relatives will likely take significantly longer to truly unravel.

How adjusted do you feel to talk to people or otherwise act normally in proximity, in your workplace, in public, general? How many of us have become desocialised, socially awkward, uncomfortable around others? How many with social anxiety have

And so it was that, as the blurb details, ‘Yair Etziony wrote Further Reduction after returning from Israel to his home of Berlin in September last year. In his own words, something in him “snapped” as he realized that many of the places he knew and loved had simply stopped existing.’

It begins with expansive, resonant ambience, and continues with more of the same: Further Reduction is an album that’s constructed around rhythmic pulsations and slow ebbs and flows. Take, for example, ‘Caves of Steel’, which is a definite ambient work, but one which points towards quite definite structures and sounds of a solidly percussive nature.

The first track, ‘Reploicaset’, transitions from sparse ad echoic to a full, building, slow-moving swell of sound. It maybe evocative of scenes of life beneath the oceans, as jellyfish pulse through deep waters There are a passages or extended tranquillity, but also of unrest.

Short vocal samples echo through the waves om both ‘Polar Vortex’ and ‘Recreate and Update’, and these moments disrupt the long, slow droning eeriness of the album as a whole – although this is very much a positive, adding texture and new layers of the uncanny as slow-shifting tones turn and reverberate. By ‘Service Recovery’, everything has been reduced to a scratching, hovering drone that hovers and hums, and the final stages of the album are ominous, unsettling, and taper down too a slow conclusion, whereby we’re left with nothing but silence to reflect upon, just like those dark night when the conversation stops and we find ourselves alone in the world, wondering precisely how we fit, who – if anyone – cares, and what will be next.

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Sky Valley Mistress – Sky Valley Mistress acoustic sessions EP

Posted: 11 March 2021 in Singles and EPs
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New Heavy Sounds – 26th Mar 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

It was supporting the mighty Black Moth at their final gig at Leeds’ Brudenell a couple of years ago where I first encountered latest New Heavy Sounds signings Sky Valley Mistress. If the world hadn’t gone off the rails, if live music hadn’t been halted, there’s a very good chance that Sky Valley Mistress would have been well on the way to stepping into the gap left by Black Moth, with their no-messing riff-centric brand of rock, having honed their sound and style in front of more live audiences. Because this is how bands so often evolve, and build fanbases. Everything was perfectly positioned…

Still, credit to the band for not resting on their laurels or simply waiting for life to resume, and for maintaining their profile with this new EP, picking up the slack after their lockdown tribute cover of Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Every day s Exactly the same’ back in June of 2020, which feels like a lifetime ago. Back then, lockdown still had an element of novelty, it felt like there was an opportunity to use the time gifted creatively, and that maybe the ‘new normal’ could afford something beneficial despite the closure of public spaces.

That optimism has given way to fatigue and a widespread sense of emptiness, , and the acoustic sessions EP very much feels like the stop-gap that it is. Unable to write, rehearse, record, and perform together as a full band as they usually would, laying down an EP containing acoustic versions of songs from their debut album, Faithless Rituals, and coincidentally – or otherwise – marking the anniversary of its release.

To their credit, they’ve done something a bit different: there’s a synth bass that growls in the low-end regions on ‘You Got Nothing’. It returns to bookend the EP on the reworking of ‘She Is So’. In between, acoustic guitars and piano provide the main musical accompaniment to these stripped back reworkings. And they are well-executed, and as such, hard to fault – and makes you long even harder for live shows and for new material proper.

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Ben Wood & The Bad Ideas – Soho

Posted: 3 January 2021 in Singles and EPs
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31st December 2020

London-based alt-rock quartet Ben Wood & The Bad Ideas have certainly been keeping busy, and ‘Soho’, released on new years’ eve, is their twelfth – and understandably final – single release of 2020.

There have seen various debates as to the sagacity of releasing a single a month over an album with attendant singles, not least of all around the logistics of promotion (with many suggesting it’s easier to promote an ‘event’ like an album release and building up said release and marketing it with singles rather than the singles being the event in themselves, but 2020 has undoubtedly seen a shift in how music is consumed.

Attentions spans are different and while everyone needs something to look forward, the future always seems to be a distant horizon: in this context, a monthly delivery and a more frequent level of engagement feels ‘right’ somehow, fostering a much-needed sense of community and sustained contact.

With Wood and co inviting comparisons from across a broad range of touchstones spanning The Gaslight Anthem and Arctic Monkeys to Elvis Costello & The Attractions and The Associates, ‘Soho’ is a quintessential indie tune with jangling guitars pinned to a tight rhythm section. It’s not just a Smiths meets Wedding Present throwback stylistically, but a song that captures the essence of classic indie rock tunes of yesteryear, merging boy-meets-girl with kitchen sink drama while throwing in appreciative references to Marianne Faithful. It does very much call to mind the time when Morrissey was someone who wrote relatable songs, before he became quite explicitly an embarrassing racist bellend who rendered is entire back-catalogue unlistenable. More than we hate it when our friends become successful, we hate it when our heroes reveal themselves to be vile, obnoxious pricks.

Ben shows no such indications, thankfully, and ‘Soho’ is an accessible, melodic slice of clean indie pop. It’s accompanied by a video that sees Ben wandering the streets of London, and seeing them bereft of people is strange, unreal almost. There is traffic, busses and bicycles, but benches are empty and the Eye is static.

This, of course, is the world in which we find ourselves, and in counterpointing a song which very much centres around the ordinary, the everyday, with the extraordinary times of the now, Ben Wood presents a striking statement that’s very much a summary of 2020.

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Ben Wood _ The Bad Ideas - Soho Cover

Salvation Jayne – Remixes EP

Posted: 4 September 2020 in Singles and EPs
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7th August 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

Having built themselves a solid fanbase since their formation in 2017, with a series of single and EP releases, supported by some live shows primarily in their regional territory of Kent, Salvation Jayne have been going from strength to strength.

As has been the situation for so many bands, lockdown has put paid to pretty much all activity: gigs simply can’t happen, rehearsal rooms and studios have been closed, and it’s not been feasible for many artists to record at home for various reasons, not least of all not being allowed indoors together.

Despite all of the hot air and rhetoric and the unprecedented use of the word unprecedented, the 1918 so-called Spanish flu pandemic bears remarkable similarities to the present, and it’s like we’ve learned nothing in the last century. However, two major differences are that in 2020, we have the Internet to connect us, to spread misinformation, and to perform live streams and so on, and exchange chunks of audio.

For Salvation Jayne, exchanging chunks of audio wasn’t conducive to the creation of new material, but did facilitate a quite unexpected project, whereby other people could put their spin on cuts from the band’s back catalogue by means of some remixes.

For this project, they’ve enlisted a diverse array of collaborators: John Tufnell (Saint Agnes) – Black Heart; Jericho Tozer (SKIES) – Coney Island, Baby!; Eden Gallup (Violet Vendetta) – Cortez; Sara Leigh Shaw (The Pearl Harts) – Juno; Fuji Hideout – Tongue Tied, Tiiva – Jayne Doe. And at launch, they donated the proceeds of sales from Bandcamp to Refuge.

Witnessing bands so sorely deprived of income using their art for the greater good has been one of the most heartwarming things about lockdown: infinitely more meaningful than clapping for NHS workers in a display of virtue-signalling solidarity, artists making genuine sacrifices for charities spanning foodbanks, support for the homeless and mental health support shows where the real heart is. It’s always the grass roots acts passing up on Royalties, too, not fucking Bono imploring punters to donate, and that’s significant too. This is real charity.

It also matters that the product is of a certain quality, and this really is there: these remixes showcase the breadth of Salvation Jayne’s material, which may be rooted in solid alt-rock with more classic twists, but are well-suited to adaption.

The Saint Agnes Lockdown remix of ‘Black Heart’ explodes in a blast of abrasive noise and steers the song into a kind of early 00’s Pitchshifter industrial noise and distortion space, with pounding percussion and slabs of overdriven guitar backing Chess’ fuzzed-out vocal. With more disco-orientated verses, it shouldn’t work, but it does, and what’s more, it packs some real groove.

The Pearl Hearts’ take on ‘Juno’ is another stomper, disco beats cranked up to industrial strength, and this take also has a much harder edge than the original, and it works surprisingly well, as does ‘Coney Island, Baby!’, when SKIES sub the post-punk feel of the original version with something slower, heavier, more industrial, then sling in some epic strings on top. The result is pretty spectacular.

‘Cortez’ is a standout in the SJ catalogue, and to hear it pumped up, grooved up, and sped up is a major rush, and the same is true of ‘Jayne Doe’, released in May of this year and here given a radical and full-on dance reworking. It may divide the fans but it’s important that the band continue to push their parameters instead of limiting their horizons. Ultimately, this is what the remixes EP is all about: Salvation Jayne may be a rock band with a certain post-punk leanings, but above all they’re a band who don’t want to be pinned to a style, and a band with range, and these remixes showcase both the sound and progressive attitude perfectly.

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Healthy Junkies – Last Day in L.A.

Posted: 26 August 2020 in Singles and EPs
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28th August 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

‘Last Day In L.A.’ is the lead single from the UK quartet’s forthcoming album Forever on the Road, which promises a mash-up of psychedelic rock, punk, grunge and goth. They’ve toured relentlessly since their formation in 2011, gathering a respectable international following along the way, and kicking out four albums and a bunch of EPs, too.

Listening to this reminds me that I had been due my first day in LA in May, on my first proper family holiday in over a decade, but the 2020 happened – or didn’t – and life activity was suspended. But, filtering through all of the shit of the last six months, the trade-off is that while the absence of live music has left a gaping chasm in the lives of many, including mine, (although I’m fortunate to only have been impacted socially and spiritually, rather than financially unlike so many bands, sound engineers, roadies, and so on), many artists have found ways of using the time off the road to record and release new material, and this is true of Healthy Junkies.

‘Last Day in L.A.’ may not represent a major departure from anything they’ve done previously, but it’s lively, vibrant, and has a proper late 70s / early 80s vintage feel, but equally, it’s got a grunge-pop element, as well as a corking hook and the kind of riff that totally grabs you.

There’s also a certain sassy spin thanks to Nina Courson’s vocals, ad it all adds up to an exciting single and an enticing prelude to the album.

Watch: ‘Lockdown’ by Thrillsville

Posted: 21 July 2020 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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When an act comes as being recommended for fans of STABBING WESTWARD, Nitzer Ebb and <PIG>, we’re all ears here at Aural Aggro. and ‘Lockdown’ by Thrillsville doesn’t disappoint, mixing a dark bubbling synth bass groove and tense vocals with a bold, bombastic chorus, it’s a strong effort.

Lyrics like “Can’t stop touching my face,” “Don’t even know what day it is anymore,” and “Losing my f*cking mind” convey the mental and emotional strain the crisis has had on all of us.
"This song was directly inspired by the unrelenting restlessness of being “stuck on lock-down.”  In essence it’s a romantic song about longing for a normal night on the town.” – Rani Sharone (THRILLSVILLE)

Check the video here: you won’t regret it 9and besides, you’ve probably not got anything else to do):

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Videostore – Your Mind

Posted: 20 June 2020 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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19th June 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

I’m always pleased to hear from Nathan Argonaut, because it invariably means he’s made some new music. He and Lorna have certainly been keeping busy writing and recording under their Videostore moniker while under lockdown, and sire enough, his most recent missive came with a link to the ‘brand spanking new single from the Videostore, written and recorded in the doldrums this week!’

It does very much seem to have been one of those low weeks for many, myself included, so a new sliver of their choppy lo-fi indie makes for a welcome arrival. Better still, it’s a corker: the drum machine is half-buried in the verses beneath a thumping fat bass and sustained synth note. ‘Over thinking, over drinking solution friendly messy ending’ the intonate in monotone, encapsulating the ennui with wonderful simplicity and precision.

Prefacing the lyrics, the BandCamp release, features the line ‘We must be out of our brilliant minds…’ On noticing, I then spent the next half hour – and more – watching first the video for Furniture’s 1986 single ‘Brilliant Mind’ followed by a slew of contemporaneous content. Such is my mind-blank distractibility. I forgot to finish the review and instead went on an epic mental diversion.

And then the guitar detonates all over everything, an overloading blast of distortion, and I’m reminded of the obliterative wall-of-noise bursts on The Jesus and Mary Chain song ‘Taste The Floor’.

‘Your Mind’ is an explosive release of tension that fizzes and flames all over, landing somewhere between The JAMC and more recent peers Scumbag Philosopher. It’s also quite possibly their best work to date.

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Watch: ‘Every Day is Exactly the Same’ by Sky Valley Mistress

Posted: 17 June 2020 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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“It seemed to make a lot of sense to strip it back of all the industrial electronic sounds and leave it with just a guitar that sounds like it’s lost in an empty void, because that’s pretty much what’s happening to every town and city around the world right now”

For Sky Valley Mistress the lockdown couldn’t have come at a more challenging time, you see March 20th was the release date of their debut album Faithless Rituals an album that had already had a rocky road to get to the finish line and as momentum grew and everything started to fall into place the reality that the world would soon be standing still and for a period of time the band would have to sit back and not be the centre of the universe albeit for a short time has been testing. With all promotional duties and tour commitments shelved and working out the challenges of lockdown Sky Valley Mistress have simply just got on with it.

Seeing the band live is a sight to behold and the real frustration is that the “Faithless Rituals Tour” and the preparation that went into it hasn’t happened and when it does it can’t help but be different from the Pre-Covid version, we know venues and live music arenas won’t be the same, but we also know as a band Sky Valley Mistress won’t be the same, they haven’t really took to or got the luxury of performing streamed shows but instead have been putting together enough material for a second album and even though its all been done from a distance the band have never been closer and when the time is right they’ll be working in the studio.

To begin their lockdown endeavours and armed with Trent Reznor’s Tambourine which Max & Kayley required live from a Nine Inch Nails Scala show in 2013 they have recorded a version of ‘Everyday Is Exactly The Same’, each part has been performed, recorded and mixed remotely and strips back their usual sound to create a sombre version of this 2005 NIN classic, accompanied by a video created, directed, edited and featuring Kayley filmed in Isolation.  

Watch the video here:

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Watch: ‘Immunity’ by Long Distance Calling

Posted: 14 June 2020 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Long Distance Calling have launched the new video for latest single ‘Immunity’.

Germany’s most internationally successful instrumental rock act, recently are set to release their seventh studio album ‘How Do We Want To Live?’ on 26th June 2020.

They’ve just launched the third and final track to be released prior to the album’s release, and you can watch the video for ‘Immunity’ here:

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The band comments: ‘Please check out the 3rd single of our upcoming new record "How Do We Want To Live?".

The song is called "Immunity" and we hope you’ll enjoy this tune as much as we do!

The video is very special for us. Some of the footage was shot by our community during the Covid19 pandemic.

Many thanks to all the talented filmmakers out there. On one hand the video deals with the fact, that the digital world we are living in has so much to offer as we are able to communicate with people from all over the world and share important information.

On the other hand all the technology and digital platforms are being misused to spread lies, hate, weird conspiracies.

Of course we are an instrumental band. But that cannot stop us from shouting against racism, xenophobia, homophobia and all that bullshit that is going on during these strange times right now.

So let us use this technical progress and this crisis to make this world a better place!’

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