Wednesday, May 27

TNT006: new broadcast now available.

The New Thing broadcast 006 is now audible: point your ears in its direction to hear new music from Ulterior, Neils Children, and A Place To Bury Strangers, plus a diverse collection of sounds past and present. Listen here now or download it for later. Many thanks for your continued interest.

Monday, May 18

New Ulterior single.

Ulterior's next release will be a double-A side 10" single on DiscError Recordings, and is due in July. Track list: Sister Speed / Aporia. Listen up at www.myspace.com/electricityisblood.

1234 Shoreditch Festival - 26th July 2009

Last summer was a fairly good one, but what it lacked was a whole day in a park in Hoxton experiencing the sound and vision of the foremost pioneers of the London music scene. Luckily, the 1234 Shoreditch Festival returns to Shoreditch Park on 26th July this year to set this right. This year the numbers will be down (about 20,000 people are reported to have turned up in 2007) and the price will be up, but the £15 ticket price is well worth it for the extensive range of music across three stages between noon and 9pm, as well as access to ten aftershow parties in the area.

So, to cut a long story short, the artists already announced include Ulterior, Ipso Facto, KASMs, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, Hatcham Social, Factory Floor, S.C.U.M, Wild Palms, Project:KOMAKINO, Advert, O Children, V.E.G.A.S Whores, Relics, Silhouette, Sunderbans, and CC-SB, as well as New York noise titans A Place To Bury Strangers - and more to be announced. Rumours are rife about the headline slots, but we've heard only good things... all details here. This is one to get excited about.

Full lineup so far...
BANDS STAGE:
ADVERT // A GRAVE WITH NO NAME // AN EXPERIMENT ON A BIRD IN THE AIR PUMP // A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS // BANJO OR FREAKOUT // CC-SB // CHROME HOOF // FACTORY FLOOR // FLASHGUNS // HATCHAM SOCIAL // IPSO FACTO // KASMS // LION CLUB // O CHILDREN // POLLY SCATTERGOOD // PROJECT:KOMAKINO // RELICS // S.C.U.M // SILHOUETTE // SLOPPY SECONDS // SUNDERBANS // TELEVISED CRIMEWAVE // VEGAS WHORES // THE WARLOCKS // WILD PALMS // ULTERIOR // VIDEO NASTIES
ELECTRONIC STAGE:
**K // AUTOKRATZ // BOY CRISIS // DEATH TO THE KING // JOE & WILL ASK // KOOL KIDS KLUB // KRAZY BALDHEAD (ED BANGER) // LUNG ROTTER & SEVEN // MODEL FOR MEMORY // MICRON 63 // THE LOVELY JONJO

Thursday, May 14

Band spotlight: DEMONTRÉ

London's Demontré do post-punk, and they do it well. Clean, leaping basslines support a squall of occasionally psychedelic guitar (hear it scratch, hear it bend) to stir up cascades of frenetic indie noise. Name dropping? Liars, Josef K, the ubiquitous Joy Division, Pere Ubu or PiL perhaps? Never mind - it stands up on its own.


Monday, May 11

Today's releases.

A reminder for those who haven't to go out and buy the new albums from KASMS (Spayed) and Neils Children (X.Enc.), both of which are out today. Support independent retailers.

KASMs also play a free all-ages instore show at Rough Trade East this Wednesday to launch their album - arrive early to get a wristband.

Friday, May 8

Ipso Facto = 3.

Ipso Facto have parted ways with their keyboardist, Cherish Kaya, to continue for now as a three-piece. Their first show with the new lineup was at the Camden Crawl , where the group played with a backing track and unveiled new song Dreams of Justice. The band intend to stay without a keyboardist for the foreseeable future, and have also announced their intention to upload one song to their Myspace every week throughout the summer - the first being a cover of Lesley Gore's 'You Don't Own Me'.

Sunday, May 3

REVIEW. The Horrors - Primary Colours

THE HORRORS
PRIMARY COLOURS (XL)

I was going to set myself the challenge of reviewing the new Horrors record without namedropping any other bands, but after a number of attempts I gave up – for anyone even vaguely familiar with the band’s reference points, it’s practically impossible to listen to more than a few seconds of anything they’ve done without a ‘hey, that’s a bit like…’ moment. On the other hand, despite the rubbishing their debut album Strange House got both at the time and in the first reviews of the new album, it's worth bearing in mind that its best bits managed to lift it off the well-trodden Sonics/Cramps/Birthday Party path and transcend the obvious influences to create something which hinted at an original musical vision.

This basic approach has been repeated with the new album, Primary Colours, except that the obvious touchpoints have diversified and time-shifted, and now range from Kraftwerk and Neu! to Joy Division and The Chameleons to My Bloody Valentine and The Stone Roses. In fact, The Horrors seem to go out of their way on Primary Colours (never mind the new-boots-and-haircuts approach which has seen them tone down the more Mighty Boosh side of their public image) to challenge the sometimes justified preconceptions about their music. The title and cover are invitations to psychedelic synaesthesia which contrast the monochromatic look of their debut, and Faris Badwan’s lyrics are prominently different, focusing on doomed romance rather than the abstract blood-soaked imagery of Strange House and even setting a direct challenge on ‘Sea Within a Sea’: ‘will your dreams stay rooted in the shallow?’.

There’s also an electronic element, which won’t surprise anyone who’s kept up with the band’s forays into everything from Throbbing Gristle to acid house – the switch from Rhys Webb’s screeching organ to the range of analogue synthesizers deployed by Tom Cowan on Primary Colours seems to have facilitated the band’s liberation from their garage rock roots, and they make the point by starting the album with an ambient electronic throb before opening track ‘Mirror’s Image’ takes off with a glide guitar sweep, and, forty-five minutes later, ending the last bars of ‘Sea Within a Sea’ with a fade into pointillist Kraftwerk arpeggios.

Apart from the new synthesizers, the predominant changes are as that Joshua Hayward’s guitar has been possessed by the spirit of Kevin Shields, and Badwan now sings a lot more than he screams – in fact, there’s an emphasis on melody throughout which seemed almost totally lacking on Strange House. Forthcoming single ‘Who Can Say’ and ‘Do You Remember’ are particularly memorable, with the latter propelled by a Charlatans-style backbeat. There’s a tendency throughout to favour instrumental hooks over vocal choruses, which is mostly very effective – in fact ‘New Ice Age’ suffers for its dominating chorus by sounding far too similar to the old material. Apart from this, the weak points are fairly few: ‘I Only Think Of You’ takes My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Slow’ a little too seriously and outstays its welcome by a good four minutes, while ‘Primary Colours’ comes across as just a bit dull, a harmless Interpol-style ditty between the evocative lurch of ‘I Can’t Control Myself’ and the genre-bending ‘Sea Within a Sea’.

Allowing for these few slight misfires, though, Primary Colours is an excellent lesson in record-collection rock done right. Just as Strange House was garage-but-not-quite-garage, but better than that because of its diversity, this is a skilful pastiche which can’t be easily categorised, presenting a clearer vision of musical intention than the debut while also being a much more enjoyable listen. With over five decades of rock’n’roll’s descendants now readily available via the technological revolution, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for any band to maintain a separation from their influences. Primary Colours is an ideal guidebook on how to embrace those influences not for the sake of musical splicing but to make something new and exciting out of them.

Saturday, May 2

Spotlight. : WHITE ROGUE

Today's buzzwords: 'dark', 'noisy', 'industrial', 'abrasive'. All can be conveniently applied to White Rogue, the pseudonym of Londoner Craig Pierce, who crafts brilliant shards of noise-rock in the studio whilst under the influence of Joy Division, Swans, and Cabaret Voltaire. At its best, though, this transcends verbal allocation. Listen well.