Posts Tagged ‘Post-Punk’

Bedsit – Dead Bands

Posted: 28 January 2023 in Singles and EPs
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26th January 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

The Hull scene has been simmering nicely for some time, and it’s a great advertisement for deprivation and off-the-track locations being melting posts for dark underground creativity.

We may have bid farewell to Chambers and Cannibal Animal, but Hull continues to throw up a wealth of dark and noisy bands, and while Low Hummer have been making some serious headway, along with BDRMM, there’s no shortage of acts emerging behind them, with Besdit making rapid progress recently.

The name is a fair summary. Anyone who as ever endured bedsit living will relate to the claustrophobic sensation of confined living. Bedsits -appropriately – carry connotations of meagreness, of low-budget gloom, and Bedsit really do convey that sense of claustrophobia.

The four-piece’s latest offering, ‘Dead Bands’, is the lead and title track from their upcoming EP, which follows up on 2020’s Pocket Toy EP. It’s a step up from the lo-fi grunge metal production of its predecessor, and sees the band consolidated on that blueprint, leaping from rough diamonds ready for development to something lean and mean, and dense and taut and truly outstanding.

It’s not just the production: the composition, the playing, the vocals, the lot – they’ve not sold out and gone super-slick by any means, but ‘Dead Bands’ is a dark, dense amalgamation of post-punk and grunge, and while it may be a celebration of bands gone before, it sounds pretty bleak in its mid-tempo, bass-driven way, paired with baritone vocals that border on the gothic. It’s a combination of the sound of 1985 and the sound of 1993 and it’s dark and its heavy, but it’s magnificently realised with some killer riffage and some blistering, blustery guitars squall and scream their way to the end.

There’s no joy to be found here, but it’s a glorious exercise in dark nihilism that has to be my single of the year so far.

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Sleep Kicks – Words in Vain

Posted: 25 January 2023 in Singles and EPs
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3rd February 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Aural Aggro regulars Sleep Kicks make a welcome return with their latest offering, ‘Words in Vain’. With a rumbling bassline and busy, effects-heavy guitars that soar tremulously, the opening bars of ‘Words in Vain’ smashes together The Fall’s take on ‘Jerusalem’ and Editors’ ‘Bullets’ – cathedrals of sound underpinned by an earthy thud, and this is one of those expansive, gut-pulling new-wave revival tunes in the vein of the early 2000s – think Interpol, Editors, White Lies – and it’s taut and evocative. There’s an emotional depth to the vocals, but there’s more than that: everything feels tightly packed and tense. And I can’t deny that I’m a sucker for that.

What is it about the post-punk template that endures? Why do these goth-tinged tunes have so much bite? It’s not simply nostalgia: hell, I was hardly born when this sound emerged in the late 70s and early 80s, and suspect that the turn of the millennium crop – the revivalists – were inspired by listening to their parents’ collections. And what goes around comes around, meaning the new bands emerging, in their twenties, have likely discovered the noughties revivalists via their own parents. But why do these cycles emerge?

I can’t help but suspect thee socio-political landscape has a fair bit to do with it. Rocketing inflation – not to mention strikes, droughts, and floods – mean parallels to the 70s are being drawn in the media, and for obvious and justified reasons. Social and economic troughs bring frustration, despondency, despair – and music which reflects that mood.

As troughs go, this is a deep one; we’re looking as escalating war and nuclear threat – same as in the early 80s – insane inflation and mass deprivation – with extreme climate, flooding, etc., etc, on top. People can’t afford to exist, let alone to live. And when things hit the bottom, art invariably rises to reflect the mood and present the voice of the zeitgeist.

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Listen: ‘Waiting For Your Good Days’ by Red Telephone

Posted: 23 January 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Cardiff post-punk outfit Red Telephone are set to release their highly anticipated debut album Hollowing Out on the 31st March 2023. The only single taken from it ‘Waiting For Your Good Days’ is out on the 20th January.

Listen to ‘Waiting For Your Good Days’ here:

Hailing from Cardiff, Red Telephone’s richly layered alt-rock could have emanated from a club in Blade Runner’s dystopian LA – combining angular guitars, Krautrock-inspired rhythms and New Wave-tinged synths with infectious pop sensibilities. Drawing on post punk and synth pop influences, the band has been catching the attention of DJs across BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 1, Absolute Radio and Radio X; with comparisons to the likes of MGMT, Super Furry Animals, Mitski and Berlin-era Bowie being drawn. The band have recently appeared at BBC 6 Music Fringe Festival, Focus Wales, Swn Festival, Other Voices and Llangollen Fringe, supporting Warmduscher. With previous single releases on Welsh-based labels Libertino Records and the Popty-Ping Recording Company, the band’s highly anticipated debut album is set to be released in March 2023.

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Photo by Faith Clarke

Listen: ‘Night Fell’ by Hibou

Posted: 6 January 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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HIBOU is back with new single ‘Night Fell’, along with the announcement of a new EP ‘Arc’ (due 13 January 2023).

Floating through a breezy blend of gossamer vocals, twinkling instrumentals and lush textured melodies, “Night Fell” is a delicate and jangling track that paves the way for Hibou’s new EP ‘Arc’.

Born in Seattle and now based in Paris, ‘Arc’ is Hibou’s first release since his 2019 full-length LP ‘Halve’ and the new body of work sees the artist emerge from his lengthy silence and reel listeners right back into the glistening whirlwind of his sound.

A delicate blend of lo-fi alt-pop, nostalgic shoegaze and diaphanous dream-pop, Peter Michel (aka Hibou) spent the summer writing the EP along the Canal de l’Ourcq, before recording in various apartments, bathrooms and rehearsal spaces in Paris. Engineered and produced by Michel himself, the multi-instrumentalist also performs vocals, guitar and bass on each track, with drums courtesy of Jase Ihler.

A dreamy and diverse project, ‘Arc’ melds together a rich amalgam of sounds: from the delicate and dazing “June”  to the buzzing and buoyant “Already Forgotten” and from the eerie twanging guitars on “Devilry” to the stormy, seesawing soundscapes on “Upon The Clouds You Weep”.

Taking its name from “an electric arc between things, or arc lightning”, ‘Arc’ is both sentimental and stylish with its carefully composed melodies seeming to tap into long-forgotten, hazy memories from the past just as easily as it does bolster hope for the future.

Inspired by shoegaze greats both past and present, Hibou’s elegant arrangements are hard to pin down, falling somewhere between the indie-rock tinted musings of Beach Fossils and DIIV, the folk-flecked intimacies of Alex G and the tenderly tormented sound of The Cure.

Listen to ‘Night fell’ here:

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Distant Animals – Everything Is Fucked And We Are All Going To Die

Posted: 27 December 2022 in Albums
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Panurus Productions – 2nd December 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Panurus Productions are renowned for their favouring of pop and jaunty indie on their catalogue, but as the title suggests, they’ve really excelled with the saccharine-sweet, shimmery Christmas bauble stylings on this December release by Distant Animals, the vehicle for Daniel Alexander Hignell.

The accompanying blurb sets the pitch for ‘A scuzzed out synth/noise/punk affair… straddling a range of genres but never settling on any one of them for long, shifting around with an angry, anxious energy directed at our bleak status quo.’

Granted, this does mean it’s nowhere near as abrasive as recent releases from Trauma Bond or as dark as Carnivorous Plants, this is a hybrid form that coalesces to convey the sound of post-industrial nihilism.

The synths drive and dominate the sound, and they’re layered into thick, foggy swirls pitched against grinding, fuzzy-as-fuck sequenced bass and a drum machine that’s largely submerged beneath the swelling squall. The opener, the eight-and-a-half-minute ‘Greetings from the MET Office’ builds and builds into an immense wall of sound, the guitar adding layers off noise and feedback rather than melody. There is a tune in there, somewhere, and vocals, too, buried in a blitzkrieg that sounds like Depeche Mode covered by My Bloody Valentine and then remixed by Jesu or Dr Mix and the Remix.

‘Phase Down and Sweat to Death’ gets dubby, with samples and snippets cut in and out of the mix, and actually finds a murky, echo-drenched groove in places, before veering off on myriad detours.

As titles such as the title track and ‘Panning For Shit In The Shallow End’ intone, this is far from a celebratory collection, with the delicate and brittle-feeling ‘Hegel’s Violin’ sounding like it could have been penned by The Cure circa Seventeen Seconds, and yes, it’s fair to say that there are what some may refer to as ‘gothic’ elements to the brooding sound.

If songs titles like ‘Fondly Remembering When Primark was a Woolworths’ and ‘They Didn’t Have Snowflakes In 76’ might suggest that Hignell’s been gorging on the Memberberries, but on the evidence there is, buried away in trudging industrial sub-zero trudges and stark, oppressive abstraction, this couldn’t be further from the truth, and we can appreciate these compositions as critiques of the multi-billion-pound nostalgia industry and Brexit Britain, where narrow-minded twats get dewy-eyed all over social media reminiscing over false memories of a golden age that never was. ‘They don’t make ‘em like they used to…’ It’s patent bullshit of course, but so many subscribe to this that, well, it must be true that The BBC haven’t screened Monty Python in decades because they’re woke lefties (and nothing to do that after airing it in 2019 for the fiftieth anniversary, the rights were purchased by NetFlix), and Stranger Things is only good because, well, it’s like The Goonies, isn’t it?

‘Panning for Shit’ is sparse, minimal electro that borders on Krautrock, and is the sound of drowning, not waving from our turd-encircled island, and there are many elements of this album which seem to align with the bleak perspectives and sounds of early industrial acts like Throbbing Gristle. But, to be clear, these are simply touchstones, rather than direct comparisons. Everything Is Fucked And We Are All Going To Die may evoke a sense of familiarity and a strange sense of déjà-vu, but ultimately presents a unique view and amalgamation of influences and stylistic references, and herein lies its true strength.

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The Yets – The Yets

Posted: 18 December 2022 in Singles and EPs
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12th December 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

The eponymous debut EP by South Carolina indie pop-rock duo The Yets is steeped in the tropes of quintessential vintage alternative pop, absorbing a range of influences, while keeping a clear eye on classic and ultimately accessible forms – embracing Fleetwood Mac and Cocteau Twins in equal measure, as the press release suggests with remarkable accuracy.

Robin Wilson has a superb voice, delicate, emotive, easy on the ear, and at the same time rich and gutsy. It’s key to the sound of The Yets, and the six songs on this debut EP really showcase both her versatility and that of their songwriting.

There’s a weird booming sound – not quite a beat, not quite a bass note – that cuts through the mellow drift of ‘Waterline’, and it’s one of those things that once you’re attuned to it, you can’t detune, like the duck in Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’ or the cowbell on ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’, but if you can ignore it, it’s a superbly-executed song with a clean guitar chug that keep it moving along nicely while the lead guitar chimes and washes melodically.

‘Remember’ is perfection, a layered, easy alt-rock tune that’s Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’ and it floats along in a dreamy drift that closes out with a delicate guitar solo.

They strip things right back for ‘Lesser Evil’, which swings between brooding indie and moody post-punk with hints of Siouxsie, before spinning into ethereal shoegaze territory on the dreamy ‘Letter to a Boy’, which really does find the band revelling in the misty ethereal shadows of Cocteau Twins.

‘Fades to Grey’ makes an obvious reference to Visage, and the band’s 80s leanings are on clear display, but that’s where the connection severs: this is a smooth, atmospheric rippling piece with chiming, echo-heavy guitar that owes much to Disintegration-era Cure, and ‘Happy Now’ builds on that thickly atmospheric sound with a loping rhythm and layers of vocals that really fill out the sound as the guitars and it’s the most overtly goth song of the set.

With a broad pallet of tuneful wistfulness and textured, layered instrumentation, coupled with some smart and sensitive production, The Yets have landed with a seriously accomplished debut: there’s a lot happening here, and there’s a significant range but at the same time a cohesive feel to it.

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The Yets 4 - photo by Gordon Backman

Photo: Gordon Backman

Watch: ‘Spiral’ by Berries

Posted: 6 December 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Berries totally grabbed us with their debut album, How We Function.

Taken from said debut album,  ‘Spiral’ showcases everything we dig about them, and the new release comes ahead of a UK headline run in March 2023, plus a run of Winter shows with Skinny Lister this December.

Steeped in BERRIES’ trademark craggy, contagious rhythms and earworm choral hooks, it’s another fine example of the band’s melodic noise-driven rock in full flight. A track about concealing our innermost struggles and the escalating repercussions it can cause, vocalist Holly explains:

“’Spiral’ is about how easily we share insignificant details about ourselves but struggle to open up about serious matters through fear of seeming weak or vulnerable. And how what we do share with people is often for the satisfaction and approval of others and not for ourselves.”

Blending distinctive melodies with inner-battles we’ve all faced, ‘Spiral’ is a quintessential BERRIES cut plucked from the band’s new album How We Function (out now, via Xtra Mile Recordings); an album ostensibly about mental health struggles and how we can overcome them.

Watch the video here:

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BERRIES – UK DATES

December

08 – Manchester, Gorilla +

09 – Newcastle, University +

10 – Bristol, Thekla +

14 – Leicester, The Y Theatre +

15 – Wolverhampton, KK’s Steel Mill +

16 – Leeds, Stylus +

17 – London, Islington Assembly Hall +

March

27 – Nottingham, Bodega

28 – Leeds, Santiago Bar

29 – Manchester, Gullivers

30 – Bristol, Mr Wolfs

31 – London, Oslo

+ w/ Skinny Lister

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Watch: ‘Mary in the Black and White Room’ by IST IST

Posted: 5 December 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Before we wave adieu to 2022 – IST IST – pause for reflection with the philosophical: ‘Mary In The Black And White Room’.

This new single arrives as the Manchester post/punk frontrunners also confirm a series of UK headline shows for April 2023, with dates in Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham, Birmingham, Bristol and London. Tickets will be on sale this Wednesday (7t December) at 10AM here.

A reminder of their keenly-anticipated third album ‘Protagonists’ (slated for Spring 2023 via Kind Violence Records), the track finds the band revealing one of its most cerebral, synth-driven moments.

With shades of classic OMD, The Cure and New Order, ‘Mary In The Black And White Room’ effervesces in the darkness with its potent blend of layered synthesisers, darting basslines, and labyrinthine lyrical intrigue.

“Mary…” is inspired by a thought experiment proposed by the philosopher Frank Jackson that has since become known as ‘the knowledge argument’ (or ‘Mary’s room’). Hypothesising the work of a scientist called Mary, who exists in a black and white world where she has extensive access to physical descriptions of colour, but no actual human perceptual experience of colour; Jackson’s theory wonders whether Mary will gain new knowledge if she actually experiences seeing colour.

Speaking about the track, IST IST’s  Adam Houghton says:

“Mary in the Black and White Room is about trying to figure out if experience trumps knowledge. See ‘the Knowledge Argument’ where the subject, Mary, exists in a black and white world but has extensive descriptions of colour, but you don’t know if she knows what they actually look like until exposed to it. Really interesting stuff.”

Absorbed by themes explored in Jackson’s theory of physicalism, IST IST create an unconventional love-song-of-sorts. As if reaching out from another dimension, frontman Adam Houghton delivers a cascade of cryptic couplets and non sequiturs in his rich baritone, looking to add colour to a world that could be so much more than monochrome.

The single arrives with an official lyric video created by Shaolin Pete, which elegantly reflects the themes explored in ‘Mary in the Black and White Room’. Watch it here:

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Ketamine Kow – Shoe Shopping

Posted: 5 December 2022 in Singles and EPs
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Warren Records

Christopher Nosnibor

On witnessing Hull band Ketamine Kow playing live low on the bill supporting Mannequin Death Squad a little while ago, I found myself feeling exhilarated and fully charged by the raw energy of the performance and 100% sold on their punk energy, and I wrote as much after the fact. So it’s nice to see my enthusiastic comments repeated in the press release for their new single, ‘Shoe Shopping’, and it certainly doesn’t disappoint.

A nervous, but soft jangling guitar yields to a welter of everything going off all at once and at a hundred miles an hour and they charge headlong into a raucous blast of driving alternative rock that channels post-punk and grunge as much as it does classic vintage punk, while Adam Stainforth rants about uncomfortable shoes.

If that sounds like facetious fluff, it’s far from it, and Stainforth’s explanation of the song’s subject matter shows a depth and reflection that may not be immediately apparent based on first impressions:

“The song battles with the idea of gender identity being a lot like a pair of shoes,” he says. If you have a good comfortable well-fitting pair, then you don’t think about it and as you walk about you aren’t constantly thinking about your shoes and their comfort. But if your shoes are too small, or there’s a pebble in them, it’s all you can think about. Every step is annoying and you don’t want to do anything else until you fix the problem and your shoes stop hurting. So, I think in that sense most people probably can’t conceptualise the feeling of their gender well, because it just fits right and always has – and therefore it’s hard to imagine how all the small, normal things just constantly feel wrong, even if you are alone in your home.”

Put simply, there’s more than just all-out attack happening here, although the full-throttle, furious delivery is, unquestionably, a major draw. With the momentum they’ve built – and the speed at which they’ve gained it – this year, 2023 is looking like being a stormer for Ketamine Kow.

Listen: ‘We Become Strangers’ EP by The Bleak Assembly

Posted: 27 November 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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We Become Strangers is the debut EP from the new darkwave project, The Bleak Assembly, a collaboration between Kimberly of Bow Ever Down and Michael Smith of Fiction8.  While there are a few electronic textures here and there, We Become Strangers is straight-up post-punk and darkwave. Guitars, drums, and songwriting with hooks for days.  This EP sits more comfortably alongside Siouxsie & the Banshees, ACTORS, and Bootblacks than it does VNV Nation or Covenant.

Add to that list Skeletal Family, Ghost dance, later March Violets. It’s pure vintage mid-80s goth.

Regarding the nature of ‘change’ that inspired the EP, Michael Smith states, “if there’s a theme to this EP, it’s in recognizing how we’ve changed as artists and as people. What if you met your younger self and your younger self didn’t even recognize you?  That’s what We Become Strangers is about.  Kimberly goes on to say, “It’s a strong feeling of ‘being cut from the past’.  It’s a little alienating but also very liberating.”

Listen here. Do:

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