Skate punk band Totally Slow infuses melodic hardcore with a creative surf vibe and a 90s basement punk ethos. Their music is a blend of razor-sharp hooks and left-leaning politics, delivered amidst a wall of guitars. Eddie Sanchez (Night!Night!, Solar Halos, The Love Language) has recently joined on bass, completing the current lineup which includes Andy Foster, Chuck Johnson, and Scott Hicks.
Having shared the stage with various acts, from Agent Orange to Laura Jane Grace to Man or Astroman, they bring a diverse musical experience to their audience.
In celebration of their fourth LP, the band unveils the melodic punk anthem ‘Future Burns.’
Hot on the heels of their acclaimed EP Hex Domestic, Dragged Up release their new single ‘Missing Person’ on Rare Vitamin Records on 2 February, as digital, super-limited CD and cassette.
The single is taken from the band’s forthcoming album, High On Ripple, which will be released in April by Cruel Nature and Rare Vitamin Records.
Check the video here:
Missing Person was recorded by Robbie Wilson (The Kundalini Genie) and Chris Geddes (Belle and Sebastian), mixed by Tommy Duffin (The Cosmic Dead) and mastered by Sam Smith at Glasgow’s legendary Green Door Studio. The flipside is the a dub-dirge remix of the title track, entitled ‘Machine Person’.
Dragged Up are an off-kilter psych-garage proto-grunge band with a spoken word element, founded in late 2018 by Eva Gnatiuk (Violent Butlins) with Simon Shaw (Trembling Bells) and writer Lisa Jones. Chas Lalli (Vom) and Stephen Mors (The Owsley Sunshine) joined in 2019 and 2022 respectively.
Upcoming live shows (more to be added):
Feb 3rd – The Ferret, Preston (daytime)
Feb 3rd – The Source Collective, Carlisle (evening)
March 8th – Summerhall, Edinburgh (with Amateur Cult)
April 11th – Stereo, Glasgow (supporting House of All)
May 2nd – The Ferret, Preston
May 3rd – Big Hands, Manchester
May 4th – The Underground, Bradford
May 5th – Museum Vaults, Sunderland
(Click image to listen / purchase both tracks on bandcamp)
It’s been quite the year for Argonaut, as they land the final instalment for 2023 for their ‘open-ended’ album project Songs from the Black Hat, they started back in October of 2022, and which has seen them release a single a month this year, and despite being reduced to a three-piece due to geographical disparities, they’ve maintained their momentum.
One major benefit of doing everything DIY is having no constraints or dictations, and an open-ended album doesn’t have to conform to any rules of cohesion or length, and ‘Christmas No. 1’ is a bit different from the rest of the album to date – namely it’s an overtly Christmas song, replete with a soft-focus, shimmery, tinsel-draped video.
‘Musically channelling all the classic Christmas songs (6/8 timing, jingle bells, key change, anthemic coda singalong!) and lyrically tracing Lorna, Nathan and Deb’s first London Christmas to our last. Please download for free, play alongside Wham Shaky and Macca and have a number one Christmas and a punk rock new year!’
Watch the video here – best enjoyed with a glass of port, or maybe Bailey’s if that’s your thing:
Venera, the hypnotic, ambient duo featuring Atlanta-based composer/filmmaker Chris Hunt and James Shaffer (Korn), have shared a third, and final preview of the pair’s forthcoming album, Venera (Oct. 13, Ipecac Recordings), with today’s release of ‘Disintegration’.
“We hoped to explore drifting, gridless timelines of drums and guitars, which converge midway in a wall of harmony and chorale,” explains Hunt of the five-minute song that features drummer Deantoni Parks (Mars Volta, John Cale). He continues, speaking directly to the video, which also features words by author Blake Butler: “Blake’s text sees and explodes light and experience in a way that is deeply committed to density and emotion – an honest voice in ‘Disintegration.’”
Watch the video here:
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Several guests join Hunt and Shaffer on the self-produced Venera. Parks (Mars Volta, John Cale) also contributes to ‘Erosion’ and HEALTH’s Jacob Duzsik contributes vocals on ‘Ochre,’ and Alain Johannes lends his voice to ‘Triangle.’
Aural Aggro faves Pound Land have unveiled an eye-bleeding, brain-melting video for the track ‘Liar’. It’s taken from their recent Singles Club compilation, released last month on Cruel Nature, which collects all the digital singles released between April 2022 and April 2023 in a physical form. It also emerges ahead of new album Violence which is out next month.
The third single from Swedish act Darkplace is their first to feature vocals, and is not a cover of the Gary Numan hit.
The band are described as ‘a mysterious new Swedish dark dream pop/post-punk group whose forthcoming debut album, About The End Of The World, is a conceptual work inspired by the bleak landscape of the Stockholm suburbs that birthed them.’ They go on to say ‘for the members of this highly secretive group, it is not just about the music. They perceive themselves as more an art project that happens to be exploring and commenting on the state of the world through their chosen mediums of music and video.’
Is a band mysterious if they tell you they are, or does that undermine the mystery? Surely a lack of disclosure is mysterious in itself? If I’m overthinking, it’s almost certainly a consequence of their overexplaining, although I am entirely on board with the idea of an act taking their art seriously to the point of fully inhabiting that space. When it comes to concept-based creations, you have to fully believe in it, otherwise, how can you expect anyone else to?
When it comes to Darkplace, context counts for a great deal, and to provide this, I shall quote liberally here: ‘Centred around an alternative reality – or is it just a grim present and future? – the album is being unveiled gradually via a series of videos based on animated digital paintings for each of its tracks… Their new single, ‘Cars’ […] sees the story move on to a man who travels north following cryptic messages written on highway signs that only show up in the blast of his headlights. Is he the only person who can see them and follow the trail? Darkplace cryptically state that “trying to escape this psychotic, slow burning apocalypse is not easy. Nowhere is safe. These weird structures and phenomena seem to occur everywhere, all over the world. Nowhere is safe!”
Perhaps somewhat ironically, the slow-burning apocalypse of which they write is accelerating at a pace no-one can keep up with, and half the planet is on fire now, quite literally, although this afternoon I read of hailstorms of biblical proportions in Germany and Italy, smashing car windscreen and requiring snow ploughs to clear the streets. It really does feel like the end of the world, and there’s a strong chance that is truly is.
Detached from the narrative of the album, ‘Cars’ stands well as a standalone single. It’s a taut, dark (of course) slice of post-punk inspired tunage, and while its lineage is clearly one that can be traced to the early 80s, it’s equally indebted to the school of the early 00s, which brought us Interpol and White Lies. What goes around comes around, and here in 2023, times are the bleakest they’ve been since the early 80s, with the added bonus of climate change threatening the collapse of civilisation and life as we know it. It’s dreamy but driven by an insistent beat and nagging guitar lines, and if the vocals, floating in reverb, evoke The Charlatans or Slowdive, and there’s perhaps a hint of Doves in the mix, the energy is more reminiscent of early Editors. Lyrically, it’s anything but uplifting, but the musical counterpoint really sweeps you along, making for an exhilarating three minutes.
I miss 2005. It might sound crass or lame, but I really do. Sure, I miss being in my twenties, and I miss not having the responsibilities I have now and I miss still studying and I miss being as alert and edgy, but more than anything I miss the sense of life and future that 2005 offered. Musically, it was a good – exciting – time with a new wave of post-punk influenced bands coming through. Interpol dropped Antics in 2004 and Editors began to break in 2005, and there was a real groundswell of excitement around the new-wave renaissance as spearheaded by bands who really channelled a certain Joy Division-inspired darkness.
With ‘Drive By Argument’, Real Teeth capture that spring of excitement, but without sounding nostalgic. It may seem a contradiction, but then, that was how it was in 2005, too. The emerging bands drew on the past, but didn’t sound like they were trying to recreate it. And the same is true of Real Teeth.
The single is accompanied by ‘a collage video from short clips of dash-cam footage of London from 1999’, and that’s probably more nostalgia-laden than the song itself.
But, propelled by a rhythm that’s packed with stuttering fills, a groove-driven bass and choppy guitars, it’s got a lot going on, with nods to Radio 4 and Gang of Four thrust to the fore in what is a busy and multi-layered cut. With a vital energy and dynamism, not to mention some well-placed changes in tempo and tone, ‘Drive By Argument’ is straightforward on the surface but has more going on underneath, and is worth taking some time to chew on.
Birmingham quintet TNL VZN describe themselves as ‘the product when the aggression of 90’s alternative rock and grunge collides with melancholy and angst of 2000’s Emo.’ Certainly, what goes around comes around, and there does, almost invariably tend to be a twenty-to-thirty year cycle in music. It’s interesting to witness, not least of all because it seems less the case that the new generation rebels against the music of the one before, but instead recycles and recreates it. Formed in 2021, TNL VZN are dipping into the music from around the time they were being born, the music of their parents – but with heartfelt lyrics that speak to their own generation.
‘Night Terror’ builds from a simple verse that combines aching minor chords with a half-sung, half-mumbled vocal that feels remarkably intimate and soulful, before breaking onto a beefy riff-driven chorus and instant hook.
Their touchstones are Gilt, Paramore, Halestorm and The Pretty Reckless. I have to admit that while I’m not mad keen on the first three, I do have something of an appreciation for The Pretty Reckless, and would say that this is very much on a par, with some solid songwriting, a strong delivery and a tangible emotional quality that gives it that vital edge. When they say they’ll soon be ready to conquer the world, it’s hard to disagree.
Allen Epley (Shiner, The Life and Times) has released a video for "Evangeline" off his recent debut solo album Everything, out now on Spartan Records.
“We wanted something simple but stark and beautiful. Having a solo record and figuring out how to do things like videos for it is strange for me because I’m usually doing it with a band. So after many potential scenarios, we decided to just get some simple close up footage in my garage in Evanston. Clayton Brown who made the video, (who was also first drummer in Shiner!) grabbed some beautiful shots of Chicago via the Blue Line and it absolutely matches the kind of sadness and sense of melancholy that the song carries in it. There’s a theme of escaping and wandering throughout the record so this was perfect” – Allen Epley
‘2072’ is the new single from Kety Fusco’s album The Harp, Chapter I, due for release on 3 March 2023. The composition of this track is based on a live granulation of Kety’s electric harp, combined with drone sounds created with a pulsating massager on the soundbox of the 47-string classical harp, and vocal reminiscences emitted by Kety with scratchy screams inside the harp soundboard, which decorate this post- classical sound.
On the single & accompanying video, Kety says, “On 13 January 2072 I will die: this video is a reminder of what it was. My melody will accompany me in my passing, reminding me that the world was beautiful before I arrived. I did not love the world I was living in and that is why he did not allow me to stay any longer. Forests precede civilizations, deserts follow them. It’s not my phrase, but I like it”.
All sounds on ‘2072’ are produced by an 80-kilo wooden harp, a carbon electric harp and live electronic manipulation. Kety Fusco and the harp met when she was six years old, and they have never left each other since. After years of studying and perfecting with the classical harp, Kety embarked on an exploration of non-traditional harp sounds, made from objects such as hairpins, scotch tape, wax, stones, hairpins, and so she says: "The harp was born in the 7th century, when the air was different, the tastes and experiences had nothing to do with today’s world and to this day I cannot think that there is no evolution: that is why I am designing a new harp instrument, it will still be the same, but contemporary and everyone will have the opportunity to approach it; in the meantime, welcome to THE HARP”.
Kety Fusco launches new album The Harp, Chapter I at London’s prestigious Royal Albert Hall on 3rd March 2023.
Aural Aggravation 