Posts Tagged ‘single stream’

Watch: ‘Happy (Boy Harsher Remix)’ by Danny Elfman

Posted: 29 October 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Danny Elfman has unveiled a brand new music video for Boy Harsher’s remix of ‘Happy’, the latest visual to accompany his recent remix album ‘Bigger. Messier’ [Anti- / Epitaph]. Complete with unsettlingly saccharine smiles, laughter and cheerleading choreography that feel like a warped VHS tape unearthed from the deepest depths of the 1980s, the music video brings to life the duo’s darkwave pop rendition of the song with the help of directors Muted Widows and Elfman’s creative director Berit Gwendolyn Gilma.

Watch the video here:

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The release comes just in time for Elfman’s highly anticipated back-to-back concerts on October 28th and 29th at The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, CA, both of which will feature Boy Harsher as a special guest. Entitled Danny Elfman: From Boingo to Batman to Big Mess and Beyond!, the live concerts will see Elfman presenting expanded, full-length versions of his internet-breaking, critically acclaimed performances at Coachella Music and Arts Festival earlier this spring. His first official career-spanning headline performances, both nights at the iconic Hollywood Bowl will feature Elfman backed by the same rock band, orchestra, and choir that he played with at Coachella, as they perform songs from Oingo Boingo; his solo career, including his 2021 album ‘Big Mess’; as well as a plethora of his film scores and television themes from Alice in Wonderland, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Simpsons, and more.

The audience will be transported into Elfman’s vision and magical world; with his haunting compositions brought to life on stage and enhanced by visuals on the big screen. Fans who didn’t make it to the Coachella shows or those who were there and want to experience an extended version won’t want to miss it.   

The release of this music video also arrives on the second anniversary of the release of Elfman’s original version of ‘Happy’, serving as a full circle moment for him and a return to the origin of his expansive and wildly ambitious Big Mess project: the track that ignited it all two years ago. A biting social commentary, ‘Happy’ marked the first taste from Big Mess upon its initial premiere in October 2020 and saw the 4x Oscar nominated, Grammy and Emmy Award-winning artist deliver the unexpected yet again – just as he has all throughout his incomparably prolific career.   

Following the release of ‘Happy’ along with several other dynamic singles and aesthetically inventive videos, Elfman officially debuted ‘Big Mess’ in June 2021 to widespread acclaim. Clocking in at 18 tracks, the kinetic double album finds Elfman breaking bold new ground as both a songwriter and a performer while joining forces with drummer Josh Freese (Devo, Weezer, The Vandals), bassist Stu Brooks (Dub Trio, Lady Gaga, Lauryn Hill), and guitarists Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails, Guns N’ Roses) and Nili Brosh (Tony MacAlpine, Paul Gilbert).  

Always continuing to push the envelope, Elfman then unveiled ‘Bigger. Messier.’ this past summer –a brand new genre-defying album of remixed and reimagined versions of music from ‘Big Mess’. The 21-track project is comprised of collaborations and guest vocal features from a sprawling array of artists including Trent Reznor, Iggy Pop, HEALTH, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Zach Hill of Death Grips, Xiu Xiu, Squarepusher, Ghostemane and many more. With the help of his collaborators Gilma and Stu Brooks, and his longtime manager Laura Engel, Elfman enlisted a unique arsenal of artists to use the original Big Mess songs as their canvases and experiment in their own distinct voices.   

Both ‘Big Mess’ and ‘Bigger. Messier.’ channel the riveting unpredictability that has pulsed through all of Elfman’s projects to date, from his early days with the theatrical Mystic Knights to the rock band Oingo Boingo, to his prolific work scoring over 100 films & television series including Marvel’s new blockbuster Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Noah Baumbach’s buzzing new film White Noise, and Tim Burton’s highly anticipated new series Wednesday.

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Photo by Jonathan Williamson

Listen: ‘Imposing Hammers Of Cold Sorcery’ by High Command

Posted: 18 October 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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High Command shares a second track from their forthcoming full length album Eclipse of the Dual Moons, arriving 25th November via Southern Lord and produced with Seth Manchester. The new track, ‘Imposing Hammers of Cold Sorcery’, is a hefty and atmospheric track which tells the story of a perilous quest. In the band’s words…

“’Imposing Hammers Of Cold Sorcery’ is a sonic conquest of ancient lore. A testimony of fortitude peering into the eyes of obliteration. Following an attack from a celestial horde, the Four Realms are cloaked in apprehension. On a fabled whim of the long forgotten Guild Of Sage, Dikeptor & the Infernal March must endure the frozen winds and scale the perilous cliffs of the Serrated Peaks. What lies beneath the clouds is a formidable mystifying power."

Swords and metal go hand in hand. That’s what crossover thrash band High Command say, having turned heads with their debut album Beyond The Wall of Desolation (2019).

“Our love for the bay area in the 80’s is certainly no secret. Besides some of the more obvious influences we have I think we were much more comfortable exploring some of the less obvious stuff we hinted at with the first record. Particularly traditional heavy metal (Dio, Mercyful Fate) the south’s interpretation of the bay area (Exhorder, Obituary, Nasty Savage, Devastation, Rigor Mortis) first wave black metal (Bathory, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost). Of course all of this executed with the discharge, Cro mags, Sacrilege DNA that runs through our veins”.

But it’s not solely metal music which influences the band, who cite the lustful violence of Robert E. Howard, Michel Moorcock, Jack Vance and many other legendary pulp writers of the 20th century as an impetus for their expansive storytelling.

“People would also be surprised to hear we drew quite a bit of inspiration from the music of Ennio Morricone, especially in regards to writing some more of the epic, grandiose passages and chord progressions.” says the band.

Now, with their second album, Eclipse of the Dual Moons, the band take their love of storytelling a step further, deepening and widening the world of Secartha, the realm of High Command’s songs. The band place themselves as omniscient narrators of the world they have created, and say that they are inseparable from Secartha and its people.

“It’s one thing to make a good metal record, but it’s another to put on top of it a sort of overarching story that makes sense to listeners. The whole High Command project is enriched by lyrics articulating characters, a world, and trials faced within it. We want our records to be immersive and leave listeners with a feeling they’ve experienced something bigger than the music.”

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Listen: ‘Leisure Centre’ by Blacklisters

Posted: 17 October 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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The buggers keep doing this: disappearing, then coming back, with no forewarning, no fanfare, with more killer noise.

And so here we are: ‘Leisure Centre’ crash-landed today to herald the imminent arrival of a new EP, out next month.

It’s as good as anything they’ve ever done. ‘Leisure Centre’ has the same kind of nagging, repetitive riff that features in so much of their work, from the definitive early songs like ‘Trick Fuck’ through to more recent classics like ‘Shirts’. And if anything, ‘Leisure Centre’ sounds like ‘Shirts’ on heavy tranquilisers: slow, stumbling, lunging, all the weight and all the murk. And of course, it’s all about that big, churning riff. It sounds a whole lot like Pissed Jeans. This is very much a good thing.

If the rest of the EP is half as good, it’s going to be a corker.

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Listen: ‘Lightrays’ by Ascends

Posted: 16 October 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Swiss five-piece metalcore group Ascends have just shared new track titled ‘Lightrays’ off band’s debut album Lost in Gravity, which is set for release on October 28th.

Listen here:

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Formed in 2008 under the name I, The Deceiver, Ascends is a five-piece group from Sion, Switzerland playing a powerful and electrifying mix of progressive metal, metalcore and post-rock.

Following a 5-track EP, numerous shows in France, Germany and Switzerland and some line-up changes, it was in 2015 with the arrival of Marco Romero (Nakaruga and ex-Breach The Void) on vocals and Simon Vuignier (Catch My Story) on bass that they decided to change the name to their current moniker. This new lease of life gave the band the opportunity to change their musical identity too, adding different textures and influences into their already eclectic sound.

Their debut album Lost In Gravity clearly demonstrates a band stepping out their comfort zone, finding a striking balance between melody and brutality. Mixed and mastered by Nicolas Delestrade from Novelists, Lost In Gravity deals with several themes, detailing the problems of the human being, its solutions and the consequences.

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Listen: ‘Thin Ice’ by Leatherette

Posted: 14 October 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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To coincide with the release of their debut album Fiesta, Leatherette have shared their latest single ‘Thin Ice’, a turmoiled love song about taking risks. They explain: “Musically, it’s a nervous mid-tempo post-punk-ska orchestral tune, sort of Talking Heads-esque. Lyrically, it is quite representative of our approach, both as people and as a band. An approach that can be summed up by the famous Winston Churchill’s quote: ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going’. We learnt, as musicians and young adults, that things tend not to work properly way more often than they do. But it’s not a big deal, It’s actually what makes life, love and art so special”.

We loved previous single ‘Sunbathing’ so much we even made the press release for this one. Look at those quotes! They’re all on the money, too.

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Listen to ‘Thin Ice’ here:

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Listen: ‘Away We Go’ by Holy Coves

Posted: 5 October 2022 in Singles and EPs
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Ahead of the release of the debut album, Druids and Bards, out later this month on Yr Wyddfa Records, Welsh alt-rock/indie act have released a further single in the shape of ‘Away we Go’.

Hear it here:

Championed by Gary Crowley on BBC Radio London and Playlisted on Amazing Radio’s A List, with BBC Radio Wales support from Huw Stephens and Adam Walton, North Wales Indie-Psych Band Holy Coves have had quite a year so far. They share a brand new single called ‘Away We Go’ before their highly anticipated new Druids And Bards album is released via Yr Wyddfa Records on the 14th of October.

Through long time friend and Producer David Wrench, Holy Coves were put in touch with Texan Producer Erik Wofford (The Black Angels / Explosions In The Sky) and have built quite a magical working relationship, one where Wofford found himself on Mixing and Mastering duties for the material and certainly contributes to their new sound.

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Listen: ‘Fiesta’ by Leatherette

Posted: 2 October 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Italian post-punk band Leatherette have just released ‘Fiesta’, the title track from their debut album out on 14th October via Bronson Recordings.

One of the darkest, smokiest tunes of the record, ‘Fiesta’ is a minimalist, abstract love tune about absence and distance. The band explain: "We wrote the theme thinking of jazz standards, while the title and the atmosphere were inspired by Hemingway’s homonymous book. And there’s brushes and 7th chords and a sax solo in the end".

Listen to ‘Fiesta’ here:

The latest single from the album, Fiesta follows previously released tracks ‘So Long’, an extravagant and catchy slice of modern post-punk, full of rugged noise and crushing melodies and ‘Sunbathing’, an irresistible punk-shoegaze anthem.

Leatherette are, by their own description, “five shy guys who sometimes get off the stage and punch people,” a quintet whose car-crash of jagged noise, twisted love and dark, anguished melody has delivered a remarkable – and eminently combustible – debut album. 

The group are based in Bologna, but all hail from different towns in Italy. These five young men – singer/guitarist Michele, bassist Marco, drummer Francesco, guitarist Andrea and saxophonist Jacopo – are united by a profound need to make music, to express themselves naturally and honestly.

The group bonded over wildly differing influences – everything from midwestern emo gods American Football, to Berlin-era Bowie, to James Chance & The Contortions, to rap and electronic music – to create a dense, passionate, articulate sound of their own.

You can file them near fiery post-punk kindreds like Shame and Squid, or unhinged 90s noisers like Unwound or Hoover, or squalling No Wavers like James Chance, but the truth is there are few bands like Leatherette that walk this Earth.

Their first full-length, Fiesta follows an EP, Mixed Waste, recorded during lockdown. The songs on Fiesta precede the Covid era, though the group spent the pandemic rewriting and overhauling their maiden batch of songs at leisure. 

The result is an astonishing and remarkable debut: poetic, caterwauling, broken and beautiful. The album title is “a reference to the bullfights in Pamplona,” the group say. It’s no empty metaphor. “Bullfight is a strange ritual,” they elaborate. “And we’re against bullfights, but they’re fascinating in an iconographic way. And also metaphorically, violence flows on both sides, but in a feastful way. It’s similar to a concert, really – you’re expressing violent things, in a physical way. And people react to that, which is wonderful, which is fantastic.”

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Listen: ‘Joy Thief’ by Dosser

Posted: 5 September 2022 in Singles and EPs
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Agh. We shouldn’t dig this… but we do. It’s kinda grunge light, a bit Weezer (ugh),and early Foos (meh) but then it’s also a bit Bivouac, and so on, and it’s hard to hate it in a nostalgic kind of way…

Over the past decade, it’s become increasingly in vogue for bands to pay lip service to 90s alt rock, but many of them capture only the most surface level cosmetic elements, missing the critical components that defined that decade’s underground scene. A chorus pedal, a Big Muff, and a flannel don’t go far on their own merits. To put it bluntly, many groups fundamentally do not “get it”. But Baltimore, MD’s Dosser absolutely does.

Where many of their contemporaries are little more than thinly-veiled pop punk acts doing retro cosplay, Dosser gets at the core of what made 90s guitar rock such a compelling force. From leads that hearken back to early Weezer, massive riffs that evoke Jawbox, and razor-sharp pop-rock sensibilities that bring to mind the Foo Fighters’ debut LP, this is a band synthesizing the best parts of various forms into their own potent formula.

Formed in the summer of 2018 by Will Teague, Bret Lanahan, Eric Dudley, and Max Detrich, Dosser’s debut LP finds a band playing at a level well beyond what their short lifespan might suggest. Coming out on Really Rad Records in January 2023, Violent Picture / Violent Sound is about as strong an opening volley as it gets.

Of the track, Dosser’s Bret Lanahan (guitar, vocals) says: "Since I was a kid I’ve struggled greatly with crippling anxiety and depression. I didn’t understand when I was younger what either of those things were and always thought something was wrong with me or I had something bad inside me making me feel this way. I used to have this kind of weird day dream a lot that if I could just open up my chest and let whatever was inside of me that was making me feel so terrible just spill out, maybe I would feel better.

It wasn’t a bloody scene or anything like that, I guess it was just the only way my younger brain could picture getting rid of bad thoughts. As I got older and had a better understanding of what mental illness looked like I was able to get help in the form of medication. The song goes back and forth with the feeling of being trapped in one of two corners that I think are pretty common in people trying to deal with or treat mental illness. Either you treat it with medication and get to a point where you feel almost nothing at all and totally empty, or just deal with it and have such intense feelings that you can hardly bare it. Finding a release is the hardest thing to do. The lyrics are fairly simple but they hold a great weight for me."

Listen to ’Joy Thief’ here:

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Photo: Zack Pohuski

Listen: ‘If I Ask Her’ by 7ebra

Posted: 26 August 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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7ebra are a new duo consisting of 25-year-old twin sisters from Malmö, who grew up playing music together. Inez plays electric guitar and sings, Ella plays a keyboard, organ and Mellotron – whilst manually playing drum samples with her feet – as they both sing haunting harmonies in a way that only twins can.

Beautiful but punk, minimalist but epic. The duo have already made their mark on the Swedish music scene with support slots for Bob Hund and The Dandy Warhols. ‘If I Ask Her’ is the addictive debut single and the first taste of their Tore Johansson (The Cardigans, Franz Ferdinand) produced debut album that will be out early 2023 on PNKSLM Recordings.

Listen here:

Live
Aug 25 – Stockholm, Sweden – Hus 7 – w/ Ghost Woman
Aug 27 – London, UK – The Shacklewell Arms
Aug 28 – London, UK – TBA
Oct 20-22 – Rotterdam, Netherlands – Left of the Dial Festival
Dec 2-3 – Gothenburg – Viva Sounds Festival
(more dates TBA)

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Listen: ‘Auto-Da-Fé’ by Heddlu

Posted: 23 July 2022 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Heddlu is the new musical project by Rhodri Daniel. The Ceredigion native was a founding member of renowned Welsh band Estrons who had a major impact on the industry having gained rave reviews from the likes of NME, Vice, DIY and Clash to BBC Radio, Radio X, Ultimate Guitar, The Guardian and Independent.

After finishing the band in 2019, Rhodri became aware that his hearing was severely damaged. Years of touring the live circuit had taken their toll, Rhodri ultimately being diagnosed with hearing loss, tinnitus and severe sensitivity to noise. The effects were so acute, Rhodri was unable to be in the same room as other people, leave the house or play music for almost a year.

A chance encounter with a retired record producer, who’s old forgotten studio on the slopes of the Cambrian Mountains was filled with antique synthesisers, inspired Rhodri to consider music once more. Advised to get outdoors to aid recovery, he embarked on a three-month hike spanning 900 miles of the entire Welsh coastline, where he conceived the new project and was inspired to write the music in his head, to be recorded upon his return. Serendipity led Rhodri back to music, and Heddlu was born. Meaning ‘Police’ in Welsh, from the words ‘peace-force’, Heddlu’s music has been true to its name, offering a force of peace to the songwriter.

‘Auto-Da-Fé’, Heddlu’s 3rd single, (meaning ‘Act of faith’ in the Spanish language), is named after the trial that heretics and apostates faced during the Spanish inquisition, before being condemned. Sung from the dual perspectives of a judgemental inquisitor, and the artist himself, the song conveys a sorrowful and tumultuous scene, echoing how we continually put ourselves on trial for the things that we have done.

Listen here:

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