the less permanent

this is a thing I wrote about Bella Union/a Bella Union gig at Union Chapel:

The appeal of London’s Union Chapel as a live music venue is in its simplicity as much as its grandeur. It’s hard not to appreciate the cavernous ceilings and air of reverence in the main hall, but essentially, when an audience is sat facing the small stage, nestled into the rows of seats, the experience becomes a fairly uncomplicated example of what is beautiful about a good live performance. You can forget about dancers and strobe lights, in this environment, only one thing takes center stage – the sound. Despite the impressiveness of the room there are no frills, in the best possible way.

A similar thing could be said of Bella Union records. A label with a reputation for quality, an incredibly strong discography and an authenticity that many a major label would love to buy; their success simply comes from an ethic of artistic freedom and nurturing over exploitation and is measured in the beautiful records they help to produce.

A luxurious line-up, then, of four Bella Union acts: Alessi’s Ark, Lone Wolf, Mountain Manand John Grant, sharing a stage at Union Chapel for an evening, is quite a proposition. One that TLOBF would’ve found it monumentally hard to pass-up if we’d wanted to, which we emphatically did not, especially since we were given a chance to interview each of the frankly brilliant acts performing on the night.

Alessi’s Ark

Hi Alessi, I really like the Sole Proprietor EP you put out on Bella Union.
Thank you!

I’m looking forward to the album, what’s happening there?
Well, I am in the middle of recording, I did some recording in Wales just before I went to do a tour in April and then I did a bit more last week in Brighton with the Willkommen Collective, Sons of Noel and Adrian, they’re people that I got to tour with and just got to know from playing places and being on the same bills and they’ve become friends of mine, they’re really comfortable to play with and easy to be around. So I did some recording with them and yeah, just working on it. I guess the Autumn is when I want it to be finished, but I feel like maybe it will be finished before then…

Going well? (more…)

After the lo-fi rockout session that was the Mexican Teenagers EP it should have been abundantly clear to us that Kaki King’s lateral ‘progressions’ from record to record are little more than the difference between the methods that she selects to express herself. Lo and behold, Junior opens with a rock song about spies. Who had a mind to disagree?

The word ‘genius’ is banded around a lot, often far, far to lightly. If it were possible to justify use of the term in a musical context, citing an artist with a fluent ability to use music as a pure vehicle of expression with true flair, beauty and a beguiling sense of apparent effortlessness, then this woman is surely a valuable reference. It’s entirely possible that Kaki King, however, is not a genius. A safer description might profile her as an immensely talented musician and composer with impeccable technical ability and inspiring imagination. And if this sounds unduly sycophantic, you manifestly haven’t spent a dreamy evening alone with her albums.

(more…)

because aside from all of the plans you make, when a new Broken Social Scene record is due to show up and soundtrack it nothing can fail. the new double a side is out now. if I made a habit out of blogging about record releases then there would be a lot more (boring) posts on here, but really this is significant because it’s the first time hearing the music that I’m going to wear out until September while I do stuff like wear t-shirts outside, go to barbecues and drink cider with ice in it.

anyway, make up your own mind and take a £1.80 punt

“The Forced To Love/All To All Double A-Side single is out now via iTunes and GalleryAC.”

Post has been boring for ages. This is mostly because it’s been winter when everything is shit. But now Spring is here and Alex from Thee Single Spy has sent me a promo copy of their new album. They have tracks from it up on their myspace and have loads of gigs coming up.

1. Thee Single Spy are good live. People say good things about them on things like twitter.

2. The album production/tweaked arrangements from the demos/new dynamic makes the whole thing sound like a ‘fully formed entity’.

3. It’s all slowly building, dark, crooked, broken down rock music but with rousing, billowing crescendos. Like a gig under a dead tree in the rain but they’re serving free ice-cream.

4. Get it.

Airplanes by Local Natives from Infectious Music on Vimeo.

awesome video too.

best song ever written about someone’s grandad ever.  credit due to Gerlin of neon enlightenment for twittering me about local natives first.

…

bandcamp

If you didn’t play Final Fantasy VII to death in the late nineties then you might not get this. If you did then you and I are kindred spirits and this the greatest collection of songs you will hear all year. I mean, seriously. Fuck yes.

EDIT: So the link stopped working. The bandcamp site for this album is gone.

Team Teamwork’s tumblr offers some explanations. Gutted about the cease and desist on ‘Ante Up’ because that was my favourite.

For those of you who missed it - here is an alternate place to download the album. Do it quick, don’t miss it.

Is the British latter-noughties penchant for for bone-china Scandinavian voices and imported fresh-air pop finally reaching it’s zenith with the turn of the decade? Hopefully not for Swedes Janne Kask and Kalla Kåks who together form Lake Heartbeat, Trust in Numbers being their opening shot on scandophile indie –pop purveyors Service.

Immediate contemporary comparisons gravitate towards Phoenix and their seemingly like-minded, unabashed, soft-hitting pop stylings. But while Trust In Numbers is undoubtedly on-the-nose in an era of painfully self-aware post-post-modern inside-out irony, there’s a glassy shell of sadness and that lends this album a certain cloudy-eyed charm.

At Trust in Number’s core is a featherlike melancholy that flutters down like snow on a deserted beach resort.  It constantly thrums under the sheen and sparkle of Dan Lissvik’s midas production. Outwardly a swirling procession of crisp dream pop, under the steady drift is a throbbing kernel of sadness that adds weight, like a solitary, drooping raincloud in a summer sky. (more…)

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This is a photo taken by Sonny Malhotra of Aisha and her friend Eva. I have had this song by her in my head for ages. I keep singing the line ‘Leave the branches bare, we’ll fill them in another year.’ - it’s a beautiful line, sung beautifully. Plant Your Feet is a really, really good song. We recorded it in a basement a while back and while the recording itself is a little rough around the edges, it’d be a real shame to let this sit around on a hard drive without anyone hearing it.

Aisha’s Myspace

Oh yeah I forgot to add – this is from when Art and Things met up with Aisha.

Originally published on The Line of Best Fit.com

Odd Blood, Yeasayer’s follow up to 2007’s All Hour Cymbals is due out on the 8th day of February in this bright, fresh new year. I spoke to Ira and Chris about pop music, visual aesthetics and if the American indie music scene has started to lead the way over the British.

TLOBF: So first I want to talk a little bit about your perceptions of indie in the UK at the moment, because you guys maybe have some early British indie influences but how do you think that compares to current the scene in UK.

Chris: I don’t really know what the indie scene in the UK is, to be honest actually. I don’t know if there even is an indie scene here.

See now I would say that East Coast American indie is producing some amazing stuff right now.

Are we East Coast American Indie?

Yes. For the purposes of this conversation, yes.

Hahaha, okay. We can play that game!

(more…)

My friends and I have made another zine. It’s the Raw Canvas issue, Raw Canvas are the arts group based at the Tate Modern who invited us to do an event there. If you would like to read this issue of Art and Things please look underneath this paragraph. Thanks.

In a classroom, in Ontario, in 1995, a Canadian instrumental band practiced in a classroom with the words Do Make Say Think pinned to the walls. Presumably intended as some sort of vague philosophical inspiration for a class of Canadian eight-year-olds, this loosely related configuration of four verbs inadvertently became a piece of Canadian post-rock history when in 1999 the band (now called Do Make Say Think, obviously) released an instrumental album entitled Do Make Say Think that was bursting with intelligence and personality.

Fourteen years later, Do Make Say Think are also the names of the four tracks on their sixth studio album Other Truths, which, perhaps rather spookily, contains some of the most likable work the band has produced to date. It would appear that these four words posses some sort of mysterious power. A bit like The Numbers from Lost, but with actual meanings, not just made up ones to keep you watching a-secretly-really-rubbish television show.

(more…)

Smashing Pumpkins and this 90′s aesthetic were a ‘major formative influence ‘  and continue to influence me. The grainy, hissy VHS this was ripped from only adds to the romance and makes me want to downtune half a step and play guitar for a few hours.

You know what you should do today? Buy a Kaki King album.

(more…)

The resurgence in the file sharing ‘debate’ since Lily Allen said something or other is interesting and amusing because everyone is wrong.

Although ‘heyyy you big meanies! downloading hurts small artists’ might be a point, to a cynic like me it just seems a more convenient heartstring puller than ‘file sharing hurts overpaid exploitation experts who have never played a note of music in their life and cynically exploit a creative discipline for profit and listen to U2 in their Mercedes SLK’s.’.

People who want free music without admitting to stealing v greedy major labels.

They can both fuck off.

But of course, major labels and pop stars have always given oh-so-much-of-a-fuck about the plight of struggling young bands up until now. Fuck that.

And of course if you download it and like it you’re definitely going to go to a gig and buy a t-shirt and three copies of the self-released EP the artist has had to release after the album sold 1,000 copies and they got dropped. Yeah, cause you’re a real fan with 800gb of music on your external HD that you never listen to. Well done, you prick, enjoy standing at the back and talking.

(more…)

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Hey, you. You like Iceland? You like things like spending a summer evening listening to the vinyl re-issue of Start Breaking My Heart and drinking Asahi from the bottle? Sure you do, you’re cool, you listen to music on blogs and stuff.

You know what else you like? This track called Yfirskin from the  new Kippi Kaninus album called Happens Secretly.

Kippi Kaninus Myspace.

Murmurings about the The Low Anthem and their fantastic live performance started to rise into a unified chorus of excited hyperbole of late. They recently played at the amazing Union Chapel and gave another stormer, I met them for breakfast the morning after the epic night before.

Hey guys, did you enjoy last night?

Yeah!

So you were playing like a telephone theramin thing how did you come up with that?

Ben: I was walking down the street talking do to a friend on the phone and it was one of those weird moments were talking without realizing that were were walkig on the same street. So I run into the guy, we’re still on the phone and he says ‘Oh hey, look at this’, takes the phones and puts them against each other and they make this sound. It actually sounds different over here because of the mobile phone networks.

I also heard that you guys had an organ duel at one point…

Jeff: Hahaha, that’s like the only time that’s going to happen! What happened was… it was our first trip over to Europe, we needed to get an organ to play so we ordered a second hand, but then we also decided to get a new one just in case the second one didn’t work. But it turns out that they both worked so we thought, hey we’ve got two…

Why not use them?

Jeff: One was ordered from a historical organ store and another was from ebay for £26! The cheap one was completely out of tune and Ben went in the night before the gig and tuned it up.

Uh-huh, how long did that take you?

Jeff: Ben got sick afterwards, he came down with like the Black Lung… because this organ was like 100 years old.
Ben: There was dust in the bellows. Right? And I opened up and there was just all this…

Dust inside! Of course!

Man, I was sick for weeks after that.

Ohh, man! So you caught a disease from an Organ.

I love doing it though, I mean it’s just so beautiful, the workings and inside, the craftsmanship.

Breakfast arrives, including sausages.

Ben: Do people say sausages for mike checks over here?

(more…)

The Bella Union Stage is back, a bastion of talent and musicianship in the depths of er, the Wireless Festival.

This year, Bella Union showcase an incredible lineup of Bella and non-Bella bands on a comparatively tiny bandstand, bobbing gently on the ocean of corporate sponsor tents and within earshot of the intermittent ‘performances’ from the nearby UGG boots fashion show installation. (Yes, really. There’s ripe for parody and then there’s just rotten.)

Jesca Hoope

(more…)

Yo La Tengo have an album called Popular Songs out in September.  I’ve listened to it and it sounds bloody fantastic. The veteran trio were recently in town to play at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and I caught them before they flew home, to talk about playing in the UK, keeping it fresh and popular songs.

Hey guys! Did you enjoy last night?

Georgia: Yeah it was kinda strange but that’s part of the deal I guess, you never know what it’s going to be like…

I heard the acoustics were pretty strange…

Ira: Yeah it was fine while we were playing, it was just the interactive portion of the program that was an unexpected challenge.

You just couldn’t hear the questions?

Ira: Yeah

Georgia: I don’t know if you were there but we had a lot of people ask us questions so and sometimes when we do this people will be raise their hand and it’s much easier but like all corners of the room were yelling stuff back! And there were so many accents!

Ha… so a Mancunian stands up and it’s like ‘…. One more time?’

James: We’ve been doing this sort of show all around Europe and I love that once we finally get to the English speaking cities, still nobody understands a word that anybody says.

Don’t worry, I’m the same. Anybody North of London and it’s “HELLO!? Would you like some shortbread?”

Hahaha…

(more…)

Me v Joe from Black Lips:

Alright, what brings you to England?
Obligation

Hahaha!
Contractual Obligation. No no no! Ha, we’ve been trying to focus on the UK. Because a long time ago we, uh, the very first time we came over to Europe was like 2003 or 04… it was like an underground tour and everything was going decently enough over there but as soon as we came to the UK for a week it bankrupt our tour, we were getting like £15 a show and like no food, no accommodation, no anything and we got really discouraged by that and gave up on the UK for a very long time. Until recently, the past two years, I guess about two years ago we started coming back, giving it another chance and ATC [management] are helping out with co-ordinating everything so now yeah we’re back.

Things are different now that you have a label and management to pay for shit now?
They are.  I mean we’re still broke! But at least people come to the shows.

And you have guitars that work and stuff now…
Yeah yeah, that always helps too!

So do you have things you like to do when you’re here?
Erm, we don’t always have a huge amount of free time when we come here but it’s always fun to hang out in East London, Shoreditch and Old Street over there, that’s always a lot of fun. Lots of pretty girls to look at and talk to, always a party going. It’s always a pleasure to go to Glasgow, great people, always a rager, heavy night when we’re there. I usually leave hungover! I wish I had more time to stick around and check out museums and things but y’know we’re usually pretty busy while we here, it’s always pretty intense.

So you’re doing gigs at the moment…
Oh we have about four weeks coming up, two weeks are in the UK plus one show in Ireland and then to the continent. We used to hit areas around the Mediterranean a lot more which I guess we all enjoyed because y’know, great food, awesome people who love to party and the weather is beautiful most of the time but we haven’t had much of a chance to do that as of recently although we are going to play Primevera in Spain which is going to be fun we did that about two years ago and we did Benicassim, we had to fly to Spain do Benicassim and then fly straight to Russia, which was awesome because it was kind of a dream for me and I guess we got in there at just the right time before the economic collapse because I wouldn’t recommend anyone go there right now, it’s a little bit dodgy.
Was it a bit crazy?
As usual, yeah. I mean we were in the centre which is kept clean and free from homeless people and freaks and things, so we didn’t get to see too much of that but. There are people out there who just don’t seem to have much to lose or just don’t give a fuck.

(more…)

New York post-folk chamber-pop merchants Grizzly Bear’s second full-length studio albumVeckatimest is finally out on Warp records next week, and the band were recently over in Blighty to play Jools Holland and ATP v The Fans. Between these two things I met them on a fresh spring afternoon on Shepherd’s Bush common to talk about Veckatimest, touring with Radiohead and Twitter.

All tomorrow’s parties this weekend. That’s a cultural experience in England, going to a Butlins in Minehead, really.
Haha, yeah?

Do you guys have anything like that in the US?
There’s nothing where you stay there… I mean 6 flags America has hotels nearby….

Chris Bear: Yeah but nothing out in the country like that.

I’m going to the Breeders one, I’m gonna miss you guys.
It seems that they do so many of those now there’s like every week or something! There’s a Halloween one? The Christmas one. The programming with the bands is crazy awesome.

I’ve been following Ed on twitter.
Oh, okay…

What’s this Snoop Dogg thing?
We… we really just wanna hang.

Yeah?
Chris Bear: We just really think he’d be cool to hang out with.

Is it because maybe he could do a rap with your band name? Like Grizzle Bizzle something…
Yeah that would work really well…  hanging with the bizzle.  And all that business.

Chris Bear. Yeah that could work really well.

I just like his phrasing! it’s just like… soothing… in a way.

Edward Droste

He got banned from the UK for a while.
Oh really?

Yeah I think there was some shit about drugs or something…
Oh that’s horrible, I just think it’d be cool to hang with him… He seems like a cool… I mean in terms of huge cultural icons, I think that he’s got a good vibe and I think it’s pretty admirable that he just remains like really mellow and stoned, like all the time. Like on the television. (more…)

This weekend I was at the Camden Crawl with Anika.

We saw some bands, some good, some bad. Banjo or Freakout were bloody awesome. We went to the pub with Alessi, The Ark and friends and family on both evenings which was nice, and really helped the weekend along. Alessi’s Ark were fantastic. Above is a picture I took of Alessi onstage with a disposable camera without looking through the viewfinder. Originally it looked bad, but then I ran it through Photoshop to make it look even worse.

Anyway The Horse is an really nice song. Watch the video. (more…)

While we’re on the subject of receiving post – Charlot Webster sent me something a while back. She’s a musician, one of those people that plays everything, sings and writes songs,  the girl everyone wants to be in a band with. Her material is really good, it’s ‘melodic’ and ‘elegant’ and ‘steeped in her fluency in the language of beauty’ she’s like Brighton’s answer to Feist/Cat Power or something. Have a look at her myspace. After the ordeal of uploading that Single Spy track earlier I didn’t bother to ask Charlot for a track, just click the link instead.

Anyway, as you might’ve worked out from that photograph up there, Charlot does a mixtape exchange which is a brilliant idea. I spent a whole evening sitting in my room recording my favorite tracks off of CD onto cassette tape, getting them in the right order. Then I packaged it off and sent it down to Charlot. I got a tape back from her a few days later. It was probably amazing, but a couple of days later my amp broke so I can’t listen to tapes any more (or my records or my laptop on the big speakers). Anyway, never mind. The point is you should look at her and maybe send her a tape. (Charlot, if you’re reading this and you get a load of tapes dumped on you that you didn’t want, sorry.(I’m sure she does want your tapes really))

POINT ABOUT POST NUMBER TWO.

Amber got the spoons I sent her.

I like sending post. It’s good to paint the envelope and put little extras in there too. Post is fun. Incidentally, the word Amber on that jiffy bag was exactly how I pictured it in my head. I fucked up the SPOONS bit though.

Never mind.

Oh yeah, I forgot to say I went to see Animal Collective last night and it turned out to be pretty good. That felt important enough to add.

Right, so I made a post about this artist called Rosie Roberts who I interviewed for Art and Things maybe a week and a bit ago. Loads of my readers on here have been viewing the post and  people have been e-mailing/facebooking/talking to me about how much they like her.

So here’s some more, the art that she did for the Thee Single Spy album cover ( I took a couple of shots of it to fill space):

(In hindsight I realize I should’ve taken a picture of the back, not just two of the front. I’ll update this tomorrow)

I met their frontman Alex and interviewed him for Art and Things a couple of weeks ago. You can learn more about them and how to get hold of one of these wicked little vinyls (for free, I think) on their myspace – (if that turns out to be lie just e-mail him- what do you want from me?)

You can listen to an awesome track called Smoke That Tea by Thee Single Spy by clicking the play button below this paragraph. Make sure you listen to the whole thing because a) it comes together beautifully about halfway through and b) Alex sent it me in .wma (fair enough) but it ended up taking me ages to get this uploaded and to work properly. Like hours. So listen to it and make it worth my while. Please.

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