Dots & Dashes

Stars In Their Eyes: Star Horse.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:33:00 +0000

Star Horse are Andreas, Maja, Joel and Samuel, and together they're currently emitting electrifying, distortion-swept wonderment out of Stockholm. Everything else remains rather enigmatic at this moment in time, which is precisely how you get to feel it should be upon exposure to their eponymous EP as once it splashes up against you images and emotions flutter, appearing like hallucinatory swirls of crude oil swimming atop undeveloped 35mm. From the glimmering Slowdive-styled melancholy of opener Stranger right through to the haunting mellifluousness, droning vox and discordant guitars that ride high on a charge of dirge-like hum left to soak in distortion until all but entirely saturated with the stuff on the highly climactic self-titled track, Star Horse's initial EP is a bewilderingly acute beast. While the inevitable full-length can't be completed soon enough we're quite contented with Last Night's Haze on endless repeat in the meantime...

Star Horse.

On the Horizon: Vraiment Magnifique, La Femme.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:52:00 +0000

It's not merely the censured artwork centred on bits and pieces of genitalia that's stirring up quite the fuss around Le Pré-Saint-Gervais' La Femme, for the likes of Sur La Planche evoke a risqué sordidness reminiscent of all-too-inactive brash hip-hop hipsters TTC. Lifted off 2010's Le Podium #1 EP, its tinny production values align the troupe with Suicide whilst whippersnapping guitars recall the copious lines of Phil Manzanera circa '79, and it continues to titillate. There's a quintessentially Gallic sultriness and purposefully slinky throb underlying the track that's also bolstered by the claps of the dismembered hands of members of various '60s pop girl groups. Séduisant à l'extrême.

More contemporary material however sees the now-sextet veer off on an exhilarating detour towards the pulsating badlands of industrial as ratchet clanks emulate sonorous church bells on the sepulchral From Tchernobyl with love. It's not quite riding the unchartered waves of 'surf trance' as they profess yet its lugubrious march and wistful chants are again strangely enlivening. It's concluded by the sort of concerto usually associated with cliché-ridden cinematic oeuvres set in eerie abodes and spectral spaces, effectively adding a deathly tinge to the general enlightenment.

From Tchernobyl with love is snatched from their Paris 2012 EP, and its eponymous track is exceedingly expressive of Berlin, a little like Alec Empire obliterating the minds of all within the Watergate with a brain-emulsifying strand of hybridised techno until the sun rises only for it to sink immediately back beneath the horizon, cowering in chilled affright.

La Femme play the Relentless Garage Feb 1st.

La Femme's Soundcloud.

On the Horizon: Bobbing. Observer Drift.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:29:00 +0000

Observer Drift is the appositely hazy moniker of Bloomington, Minneapolis' Collin Ward and Corridors is his first full-length, outed during the opening moments of 2012. If it may have wafted on by discreetly then, here is now and now is time to indulge. Akin to Daniel Bedingfield, he writes quirky pop hits in his bedroom/ basement although that's just about where the similarities end: Ward works in a pizza place while Bedingfield – at least when last spotted – looked as though he'd chomped his way through a fair few, the floor of his 'workspace' potentially lined with empty, grotty, passata-stained cardboard crumpled beyond much recognition. More relevantly however in place of producing vaguely disconcerting garage hitz this particular wunderkind conjures the mood of a lonely buoy bobbing about awkwardly off the coasts of the Balearics, caught in devastating longing for attention like the reticent introvert amidst the glitterball flicker of a woefully sobre school disco. Such strong imagery may only be conjured by equally potent soundtrack and that's precisely what Ward has fashioned, the title-track providing the esoteric yet inviting highlight of a record brimming with genuine ingenuity.
<p>&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://observerdrift.bandcamp.com/track/corridors"&amp;amp;gt;Corridors by Observer Drift&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;</p>

That said the entirety of Corridors is worth investigating and subsequently losing the self to, giving in to daydream and St. Lucia-like tranquility. Stream the thing via Ward's Bandcamp.

Another Invada Invasion...

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:21:00 +0000

Here's a photo of a prepubescent Geoff Barrow thwacking a drumkit that practically engulfs his wiry frame. Whodathunk at the time whoever took said photo (and evidently neglected to employ the camera's redeye reduction feature) that the above kiddo would go on to establish one of Britain's most persistently progressive labels in the imperial guise of Invada and propel perhaps the country's bestest band? Irregardless, Invada this week released its 2012 sampler and here are our highlights...

First up: new one from the first lady of Invada, Anika, whose cover of Chromatics' In The City rattles along at a rigorous tempo that initially seems foreign to, and ultimately incompatible with her drawled baritone. However in pushing the cadence and looking to a more recent past than previously in search of a propulsive form of progress our intrigue is reenergised as we shuffle to a spectacularly twitchy and still-schizophrenic disco number.

Relocating to Barrow's beloved West Country and there sticking a little closer to brief are Bristol-based shoegazers The Fauns who, in keeping heads down and diligently labouring away on slapping psyched-out layers on the blank canvas that would otherwise be pure, simple and downright tedious silence, allow Alison Garner to wash their sound with light and impressionistic vocals. Sun Is Cruising sounds like the woozy inner workings of an aerophobe at lift off, and looks set to feature on their sophomore LP, expected early summer.

Shouting, guitar squealing, and pedal stomping like it's nineteen ninety-five, Thought Forms unleash another behemoth of a thing in Ghost Mountain as frail acoustics initially tiptoe about static drum framework, prior to a controlled, collective descent into the uproarious aforementioned chaos.

While Barrow himself has become entangled with the wirings of a new-fangled project with esteemed composer and previous Portishead collaborator Ben Salisbury – entitled DROKK and ignited by intrigue in Judge Dredd's hometown of Mega-City One – it's new Beak> material hacked out of the trio's forthcoming follow-up for preview that really grasps the imagination. Eggdog is slightly more hi-fi than previous endeavours, a warbling organ engendering the feel of a lost Bond classic bruised to a tragic shade of vermillion in the back-room of The Croft, clamorous brat-next-door drums and increasingly funereal accompaniment perpetuating this prevailing sense of the bloodcurdlingly slaughterous.

Yatton meanwhile, aired at last summer's Portishead-curated I'll Be Your Mirror, is perhaps the pick of the bunch: a riveting slab of mesmeric thunderclap spasm, it hinges on a compulsively rousing analogue quop that's engrossingly metronomic to the point of the motorised.

This year's Invada Sampler also features wonderfully unorthodox hip-hop from Katalyst, deranged and DIY francophonic proto-funk from The Veees, and Scarlet Rascal & The Trainwreck's startling debut effort, The Haunting. There's brightness located within all this Invada-rooted darkness and in the era of the multifarious mixtape, here's one in all but designation that's as formidable as any.

Live: Livreddere. Casiokids, Cargo.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:33:00 +0000

Gawky synthpop scamps quivering in corners Bergen's Casiokids may once have been although in the wake of their third and debatably most muscular full-length, Aabenbaringen Over Aaskammen, they return to the tenebrous caverns of London's underground to sell out Rivington Street's swankiest subterraneous railway tunnel, Cargo. It's our inaugural Eat Your Own Ears show of 2012, and it left us stupefied; asinine beam indelibly etched from ear to ear; genuinely thankful an irrepressible festive greed never resulted in the gnawing of aural receptors...

Up first however are FAMY, who seem to be attempting some faux mystique à la Crystal Fighters and wind up sounding like a cross between bad Islet and bearable Rumble Strips, thus bad either way. There's not enough erotic nudity (or 'nudité') out there to be excavated from the grimiest ends of the internet and stuffed on the Facebook page to possibly enamour further to their oh-so-eloquent yelps and yowls: asserting – perhaps jovially – to originate from 'Mediterrasia', spick-and-span accents belie such futile attempts to culture the esthétique française they positively crave. They may recite French verse in a lengthy intermission, yet sonically they merely relate to LOTP diving out into the recycled tropical waters to have flooded lo-fi of late. They soon recede, washed from memory as a tide of bods splashes up on the shores of the stage.

The highly luggable Casio keyboards then emerge as Beck-alike Ketil Kinden Endresen and Fredrik Øgreid Vogsborg placidly tinker with catastrophic tangles of wiring. Inflated into a sextet for the show it's immediately apparent that these particular 'kids have now grown up. That's not to say that the infectious exuberance of the show has been diluted; if anything it's becoming forever more concentrated. Nor can it be inferred that the Norwegian popsters have matured musically for their restlessly relentless off-kilter disco tendencies continue to incite compulsive pogoing, to paint beads of sweat onto the iciest of brows, to inveigle dubious aromas into seeping out from underarm areas. But in this cramped and restrainedly chaotic atmosphere, Casiokids come of age.

They almost instantaneously hit their stride in letting Det Haster! fly, its staccato strings traded in for pulsating bass and meticulously processed lines of synth that seep into the very lifeblood of us all. Right here, right now. So-called 'moments' are ubiquitous, occurring often enough to incur a comforting state of delirium: the skittering Metronomy-ish 'awkpop' of Golden Years, dedicated genuinely and gladdeningly to Stephen Bass of superlative London label Moshi Moshi, bounds energetically in one ear and out the other like a bouncy ball flung from Booji Boy's fanny pack, before the afro-infused funk of Olympiske Leker fills the air, jostling with particles of pure humidity endeavouring to evade the penetrative rays of omnipresent emerald laser. Perhaps joshing, they proclaim the track to have been written for London's Olympics and while few of the throng fess up to having procured a ticket or two for the group stages of the mens' handball or the Taekwondo quarter finals, were Casiokids to curate the Opening Ceremony rest assured we'd be clamouring to bundle in, battering on the BT Tower for ever-illusive corporate ingress. London Zoo unleashes the mutilating sentimentality of Mew and unites it with a celestial, Casio-based bliss, while Finn Bikkjen is transmuted into syllabic singalong with rudimentary, arpeggiated wonk and wobble offset by every whisper of organic shekere shakery.

Much ado has always been made of their election to sing in their native Norwegian despite their English fluency (which is tonight, once again, exposed to be exemplary) yet when hissed through towering PA systems, that which is blurted tends to blend into an amalgam of variable harmoniousness regardless. Tonight however language becomes irrelevant, their every lyric sounding ever more comprehensible to all ears ignorant of this charming Scandinavian lingo, the understated intricacies behind the patently gleeful ebullience softly accentuated. Closer Fot I Hose morphs into an extensive activity in dub as instruments are chopped and changed, crashed and walloped; the ceiling opens up to piss confetti; we're cajoled into a digital scream-off with those crammed into The Cluny 48 hours previously; and a girl who seems never to have caressed the smooth neck of a Telecaster stabs at it wildly, painfully yet inexplicably tunefully and somehow in keeping with the joyfully unruly nature of this spectacular beast.

With Cargo transformed into a paradisiacal indie disco where all wandering eyes are met and a disc jockey with glinting discoballs for peepers spins unheralded hit after futurological pop belter, last night Casiokids saved my life and filled my legs with lactic acid.

Deco Child Reborn.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:20:00 +0000

Eighteen months ago or so we interviewed a quietly enigmatic, if audibly excellent producer known by the vowel-affronting moniker of PRDCTV. Maintaining a similar level of soul while reinserting the fundamental cruxes of the English language, PRDCTV reemerges from Oxford's murkiest shadows, resurrected to return as Deco Child. An EP entitled Pray dropped late last year on Ninja Tune although if you missed it first time round it's still indisputably worth a spin. And then another, and another, ad infinitum. The highlight however is the title-track: five minutes of swelling house, otherworldly vocal samples, and sonorous rhythm. It waxes and wanes playfully, tantalisingly, eventually crescendoing fully and with forceful menace before inevitably petering out, leaving you with nothing but exhilaration-indebted exhaustion to contend with.
Pray

Deco Child's Soundcloud.

Live: Big Things. Towns, Barfly.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:52:00 +0000

It's some point well beyond ten and diminutive yet devastatingly absorbing Towns frontman James MacLucas is demonstrably berating indeterminate bands born of suburban civilisations akin to their native Weston in size, stature, population and what have you, along with the wilting of a punk ethos that's led to the hypocrisy of purveyors of said genre taking to the streets in boldly emblazoned skate memorabilia. London, by their own measure, is a bit of a "fucking weird" one, their primary qualm derived from the difficulties entailed when attempting to locate valid parking space yet starry-eyed, loose-lipped and spring-heeled they remain, celebrating only making a minor loss on the night with another round of any old whisky. Here's one they did earlier...

Coiled at the feet of a bill including hotly-tipped yet knowingly quirky and equally irksome analogue electropop outfit erm... Outfit and indie flimsy from the tenacious, if atrocious Fiction, Towns represent the ravenous and rabid underdog outsiders, incongruous to all around them and infinitely more engrossing than the lot. Surges of impeccably engineered shoegaze emanate from Jon-Paul Beaumont's hollowed-out howler of a Gretsch, their overwhelming verve barely concealed by forcibly straightened face as they tear into forthcoming single Just Everything with the avid heave of a leashed hound angling for blooded game laid agonisingly, tantalisingly out of glinting-toothed range. Barely do swells of pedalboard manipulation abate before we're hauled back to a hazy Utopia circa '94 by the seething and strident majesty of Gone Are The Days as the gleaming guitar sheen of The Seahorses glosses wondrously over an increasingly vibrant rhythm section and gently dissonant vocal harmonies. For while the brace of bands that follow strive, struggle, and ultimately botch futile endeavours to whip up maniacal vehemence via a circumspect blend of already-approved influence, Towns are unashamedly and inextricably clamped to the decade to have accommodated their formative years: they continue to emulate the music they revere to in turn breed their own for which they exhibit equivalent enthusiasm, subsequently remaning true to themselves and their record collections.

They beef things up with new one Marbles, before baying for blood and spitting woozy spirals of heady abstraction on a maddening Heads Off, the track as loose and languid as ever although its melding now mirrors the clingy tightness and tensity of spandex-enhanced denim. The exuberant Fields is omitted, left behind somewhere between here and there on the M4, before they end with a gloriously emphatic Everyone's Out that eventually descends into MacLucas rubbing a newly acquired Jaguar up against a nearby amp in all the right ways, drawing an almighty splurge of feedback from its unsuspecting valves. In blacked-out trainers and breton stripes tonight, a definitive style has been cultivated aesthetically to accompany their distinctive and distinctly nostalgic aural outlet while this substance itself indubitably remains, fortifying and intensifying as it ferments with time. Never were there a more appropriate time to hit the Scotch and "run around in fields all day"...

On the Horizon: Alpine Warble, Swiss Alps.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:06:00 +0000

If we've become preprogrammed to a large extent to all too often merely hock up scarcely reconfigured regurgitations of meticulously scribed press releases, no such exercise may be applied to Swiss Alps purely as there's next to no information available. Anywhere. They're to release a four-track EP at some point next month on Pyramid Lake, while their Bandcamp tags suggest they originate from Pennsylvania and that they're keen on maintaining an outwardly lo-fi aesthetic. From here on however the music's left to do the talking, while we attempt to do the hyping: following on from the sprightly – if slightly claustrophobic – '80s-lilted introspection of Riptide Lore, Little Dipper is considerably more cute. Sounding somewhere along the meandering lines of lost Hope Of The States material chewed through the homely analogue frequencies of Boards of Canada tapes as Brad Hargett and Johan Duncansson improvise harmonies atop snow-capped dreaminess below, it's a conglomeration of sugary sweetness and all manner of aurally sumptuous things nice that's as wistful as it is warbling.
<p>&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://swissalps.bandcamp.com/track/little-dipper"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Little Dipper by Swiss Alps&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>
Swiss Alps' Bandcamp.

Let Yourself Be Overwhelmed, Fair Ohs.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:24:00 +0000

While the Pharaohs may have dwelt amidst and been ceremoniously embalmed within pyramids planted atop Ancient Egyptian sands, Fair Ohs seem set to build upon Salt Flats, the east London trio's latest single this week released via X-Ray Recordings. Continuing to emulate West African funk while channeling it potently through crackling, nostalgia-flecked psychedelia à la The Cryan Shames, the result is an inebriating and more significantly exhilarating brew of lo-fi jubilation, skin-splitting bongo backdrop and fleeting fretboard trickery from lead vocalist Eddy Frankel. Reminiscent of Bos Angeles were they intent on creating the delectable rather than remaining hellbent on the outrightly lethargic, it's now available on limited 'flexi-postcard' format (that'll be a customisable postcard to feed to the eye of the needle then).
Salt Flats - Fair Ohs by X-RAY RECORDINGS

Fair Ohs.

Interview: Figurative High Fives with Wild Flag.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:26:00 +0000

If December represented a rather frivolous month filled with excess, intrigue and ATP then January, by (excessively, almost unfairly stark) contrast feels all the more enthusiasm-exhausting, ultimately, utterly dismal. How fitting then that come the first of February, the time by which we'll all presumably be waving white socks in surrender to the relentless sombreness of the worst month of the Gregorian calendar, Wild Flag return to cajole us back into a mirthful sense of worth. Are we in need? To paraphrase the self-professed "veterans", Oh Yeah. Ahead of the quartet's debut UK show at a wet-through Lexington we caught up with a jet-lagged, if typically jovial Janet Weiss in a Premier Inn neighbouring the bursting bin liners of the Islington Academy. Neil Young's Heart Of Gold splutters through tinny speakers in a tawdry café reception, and as it transpires that's the precise flaxen hue of vital organ which palpitates within Weiss' ribcage over 20-odd minutes...

"This'll be interesting" she groans, unenthusiastically inaugurating an entire afternoon's worth of promo. Having barely shaken bleary-eye syndrome (frontwomen Mary Timony and Carrie Brownstein are yet to awake from long-overdue slumber) and with a thought or two perhaps still lingering in an aeroplane somewhere over the sea, she concedes that "it can get a bit much, yeah. Especially when a day merely becomes an idea. When you're told: "OK, this is what you've got to do today", from the wrong side of a 20-hour journey, it initially feels a little overwhelming. But once you sit down with whoever, you know, it's alright."

Something of a fantastical line of work it may seem, industriously pitter-pattering around the globe with the primary aim of dishing out supremely dynamic post-punk although it's not without its snags and stumbling blocks: "It's a great job so I shouldn't have a thing to complain about although you are tired quite literally all the time", Weiss' words intermittently blending into sweet amalgam between every squelch of nonchalantly masticated gum. "You don't really get a ton of sleep as a musician but other than that it's not so bad."

A centripetal element of Wild Flag's existence is of course the self-titled debut full-length, a bewilderingly cohesive lesson in crunch control that's quite the antithesis of "bad". With four compulsively creative bods on board (Weiss at least defiantly affirms: "There's no way I can sit around and not play music for a whole season while Carrie works on Portlandia so I've got my own other bands I'm in and wanna start, ideas I have about music"), you'd maybe contend that the songwriting process could potentially represent a rather knotty predicament. Contrarily, it appears to be anything but: "I think it's an extremely collaborative work. The ideas for the songs started in various and numerous places, often with Mary or Carrie coming out with a melody or riff. That's then the skeleton of some songs, which we all go on to flesh out together, mutating it as we go. Others came from a keyboard line that came when we were just goofing around in practice and we'd then tell Rebecca [Cole, keyboards] to keep playing the same fragment over and over again if it sounded all that great. So I guess some is constructed ahead of time, while other bits are made up in our practice space. We're still learning how to write together."

That the record could teach a plethora of malingering slackers a thing or two is evident testament to the collaborative thrust of a debut that's been widely and indeed wildly heralded, although Weiss perceives the live show to be the quintessential component to the essence of the band. "We did a few little tours when we decided to actually become a fully-fledged band, booking these small, sweaty, crowded venues in which we could sort of figure out our personality as a band, to see what we really were both in a live context and in general too. Above all we had to be an engaging prospect live as if there's no chemistry then there's no point in going forward. It was then on the second of those tours when we went to SXSW that we really got our footing and only then did we feel that there could be something exciting there for us." To say that they've piqued excitement at every turn here in the UK is to understate the impact the band have had on end-of-year lists and umpteen individuals across – judging from crowds thus far – diversified generations. Impactive and impressionistic, rarely have opinions been more united of late.

"I guess as a concept it's about chemistry and energy, very much about letting go and feeling alive. Sharing experiences with other humans, and ultimately playing music that's accessible to people and makes you wanna move, to become immediately involved", Weiss expresses with similar vivaciousness to the sentiment of such declaration. And while she may be innately and moreover irreplaceably involved with what she brands the band, a "project", she too waxes lyrical about the end product: "I would say this is one of the best records I've ever worked on, for sure. It really accomplished what I felt it should and that's very rare, that you have an idea as to how an album should be and you actually follow through and obtain that. I think that just came with the experience of us all having contributed to so many records."

Turning a little more philosophical, the comparison between Wild Flag and the records of the numerous bands Weiss has previously had a hand in self-explanatorily accentuates just how exceptional an effort it truly is: "There have been other times when I've not really known what the focus was, nor what we were looking to get out of the recording process. For instance with the last Sleater-Kinney record, I wasn't entirely sure what the hell that was gonna sound like - we'd never worked with Dave [Fridmann, producer/ Flaming Lip] before and therefore we spent a really long period of time not only getting to know him, but also getting to grips with the material in the studio. This time though, to me, I could see, hear, and feel what it was supposed to be like and we just had to make that happen. That said I think all records, in so many ways, can prove to be equally relevant and I guess time will tell more than anything. I think it's a great record; we'll just have to wait and see how it holds up over the next ten years!"

To remain not only in a general public consciousness but also in the memory of whatever Apple-manufactured product we're fiddling with to reproduce our preferred musical tastes in a decade's time is an audacious aim, yet there are suggestions of the truly timeless within Wild Flag material thus far: the doo-wop bridge that joins one uproarious chorus of Romance to another; the unsettlingly human, sweated-brow schizophrenia of Something Came Over Me; the ramshackle riot grrrl shudder of Racehorse. While we'll have to wait and see whether the proof was ever hurled into the pudding, the correct musical ingredients have been whisked with an inspiriting eagerness on Weiss' behalf: "My expectations are always high; I put the same pressure on myself that others do so I feel it as much internally as anything else. With every record I try – whether I in fact do or not – to mine some different territory and with a new band I think it's important not to overstate things on the debut record. You wanna give people an introduction to who you are and little to nothing more."

To a certain extent however introductions had already been made prior to the full release of the eponymous foundation. Wichita's daffodil sticker on the UK release of the record reads: 'featuring members of Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Quasi, and the Minders'. Hardly unknown outfits nor are Wild Flag, it may be perceived, a "new band". However these individuals come together to cultivate a sum exponentially greater than its already-great parts, and Weiss concurs: "A vital element of this band is the chemistry between the four of us and of course we wanted to utilise that, to have a writing situation in which we were all not only participating but also contributing." Lyrically however, it's Timony and Brownstein manning the ship: "I don't really think that any of the lyrics are so much deliberate as they are personal and Mary and Carrie write lyrics in very different ways which gives the record great diversity, as well as a decent sense of binary perspective. There have been so many great bands with two writers and this is just another one of those situations", this grandiose statement somewhat casually brushed off. "I feel that Mary's lyrics are much more impressionistic while Carrie's can be read or listened to and you get what she's on about. Mary's come across a little like a painting from which you can then derive a sense of feeling. They may be more emotionally-rooted."

"Beyond that though, musically, we had no idea as to what was going to happen; that remained a mystery to us, as well as to the listener." As a result of previous endeavours however it'd be unwarranted, if understandable were Wild Flag to be branded a side-project, an oft-awkward tagline that Weiss, rather refreshingly, has few qualms with. "It doesn't really fit although I don't really mind the concept nor us being branded as such. That said, I don't think Wild Flag really feels like a side-project at all. I've been in numerous bands throughout the duration of my whole musical career but few have been quite so concentratedly focussed as when the four of us are together. Obviously everyone can and does go off to commit to other projects and be in other bands though, we don't have any stern rules in place dictating against alternative activities or anything..."

With artistic license to roam and work on whatever more or less whenever comes great freedom, if a complete lack of normality: "As a musician you have no stability whatsoever. None, zero. And it's getting progressively harder to make a living off it. Touring really does feel like the final hope of making any money from within, and that of course can be really gruelling, you know? It also takes up a load of time you might otherwise wanna spend recording too although the memories collected on the road offer pretty much the best bit of what we do."

And what they do is irrevocably Portland, the musically fertile land in which Weiss, Brownstein and Cole are rooted: "It's so significant for music to have a context and to have come out of a definitive place. I'm so thrilled to live in a place that effectively imprints itself on you and I think bands from Britain, to us, have a really distinctive quality as Portland bands may to you." Given such a city-centric sound, the ineluctable truth is revealed: "There really are just a lot of musicians there - you're endlessly bumping into comrades on the streets We've got our very own Crib over there who we're very proud of, our Gary Jarman who we love, but I think it's a particularly easy place to be in a band. It's a hugely satisfying place to be in that context - it's a real community there."

Attentions inadvertently, if inevitably turn to TV, even if Weiss doesn't even have one to call her own: "I can't say I've seen all of them..! There are things to make fun of there, just like anywhere but the show [Portlandia] centres around making fun of the things you love the most, you know? A rib-poking in your own torso as it were. There are some silly things out there, but it's ultimately out of love for the place." And the love for the place 75% of the band call home, transmitted through Weiss, is palpable. "Whether it was where we went to college or in moving to Portland we always found ourselves in this sort of community, growing up around our peers. It helps keep you focussed and distracts you from other things that essentially don't matter. All I wanted to do when I became a musician was to impress the other musicians around me. I didn't care about the press, nor the record companies; I just wanted to be good enough at my instrument that some other drummer may come up to me and say: "Good job!" That, or just to merely have my ability in any way recognised."

This is of course a compliment that's all too easy to bat Weiss' way the following day, her bizarrely melodious rhythmic techniques blowing the show along from the shadowy rear of The Lexington's minuscule stage. As Weiss herself states, "there are lots of fireworks going off at all times, a lot of tensions in constant struggle: pushing, pulling, really different personalities. But it's a tension that's almost impossible to coherently describe. It's an energy and it's what makes writing music so much more invigorating than, you know, writing about music as there's absolutely no substitute to actually being there. As the drummer it feels as though it's my job to harness this tension and interpret it to somehow make it move forward and be propulsive and interesting, and not just crazy and completely haywire." They rattle through the work with aplomb and that, to Weiss, "is sort of what being a new band is all about, you know? You're kinda scrambling there a little to begin with although there are definitely tons of advantages to starting a new band: for one people are so excited by it all. We were too though, especially by the thought that it'd be the only stab we'd ever have at a debut. That makes things so direct and simple in a way. It's only later that you have to start worrying about reinventing yourselves for each individual record. Only then do things start to really get challenging I think."

Of the debut however, Weiss accredits its scruffy impeccability, its controlled dissonance to their relentless touring of the aforementioned perspiration-doused shoeboxes of the United States, to avoid the direct transition from practice space to studio but also to ensure the songs maintain a ragged rawness. "We don't have the leisure of over-rehearsing, what with Mary being based over in Washington but I think there's a fine line between practising enough and practising too much. You don't wanna be sick of the songs before you even get to play the show, you know? And sometimes if you're out on tour that's just what can happen so you've got to make sure that you take enough time off to listen to and play other music. To rejuvenate and refresh the drive to do what we do well and not merely get by and in turn get away with it."

While your Christmas wish list may have now been fulfilled (or if not the disillusioning contents of said list at least bundled callously onto eBay), with our colloquy taking place prior to the festive period Weiss was reservedly buoyant with her hopes and dreams: "As with every other band I've ever played with I'm just praying we get to make it another day! It's not the easiest thing to perpetuate and we're still figuring it and ourselves out. I hope we can write some challenging new music together, go to some different realm and push what we've already done, making it more exciting all the while. And I hope we get to travel the world and have a really great time together. Although I do like the familiarity of going back somewhere and driving through different neighbourhoods here and there and remembering places – and I do have some really great memories of London – there's definitely an attraction to the unknown, to going places we've not had the chance to make it to previously, whether that be figuratively, musically, or quite literally."

Islington's Premier Inn may now be added to the figurative geographical pin board of traced steps, and Janet pledges: "Next time I'm sat at this very table, in this very hotel round the back of wherever we are, I'll remember this." Saviours with nothing left to save? On your Racehorse...

Wild Flag play Camden's Electric Ballroom February 1st as part of an exhaustive European tour...

Journeying On. Kathleen Edwards, Voyageur.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:35:00 +0000

Swells of clean and pure slide guitar, surges of croonsome backing vox, and loaded ultimatums of "moving to America" all collide within the opening minutes of Voyageur, Kathleen Edwards' fourth full-length, contributing to a prevalent sense of yep, you darn well got it, Americana. While Edwards may hail from the picturesque, windswept lands north of the border and inhabit Ontario's lakeside capital, she recently conceded that the menace of expatriation contained within opener Empty Threat may yet carry significant portent. Irrespective of nationality however, Voyageur is the sound of a supremely competent songsmith coming into their own with every scintilla of dignity still firmly lodged within the scrapbook.

Intermittently and indeed very much occasionally an element of overly earnest solemnity seeps into the work as on the segueing Chameleon Comedian on which Edwards draws an explicit parallel between she and said reptile, extended metaphor culminating in the line: "I just hide behind the songs I write." Although this may have rung true with previous efforts, it's the almost painstakingly plaintive and moreover plain sentimental feeling that gushes throughout that sets Voyageur apart and subsequently ensures Chameleon Comedian perceptibly stands out, and does so quite incongruously. To clog and clot this free-flowing exposing of wounded sentimentality thus seems counterintuitive, and its precise and consistent circulation is once again arrested on agonising closer For The Record: hung, drawn, and quartered over seven-odd minutes, Edwards' lamenting of being left "out to die in the sun", condemning allegorical crucifixion for purely wanting "to sing songs" seems an exercise in hyperbole, in literary excess. While she may contend that her "blood is thick but it still runs" – thus effectually protracting this particularly overelaborate metaphor we're here perpetuating – it's an agonising overdramatising of a track that's otherwise, musically, quite impactive as wispy guitars wrangle the churchly warble of an organ seated deep within the mix.

Notwithstanding the odd moment of the lackadaisical and/ or somber however, the journey one assumes once aboard Voyageur is oft igniting and momentarily heart-racing: the expeditiously-paced anthemia of Change The Sheets injects gusto into the guts of the LP, and provides a continuous climax of clattering drums, battered cymbals and reverberating guitars that ring out as if pleading to be airlifted out of this mélange of glorious despondence. Similarly the retro rock stomp of Mint works understated wonders, while the Sarah McLachlan-like Pink Champagne sounds perfectly deflated as it quietly crescendoes. However in amongst it all are two contrasting pieces to laconically (and therefore efficiently) demonstrate Edwards' finely tuned craft, besides her capacity to vibrantly picture the gravely dismaying and the truly jubilant or, effectively, the highs and lows of love: the ecclesiastical hues and lyrics of desperate loneliness within her House Full Of Empty Rooms are soon finely offset by the stentorian thrums and yet another barnstorming chorus during the bright, breezy, and barnet-dishevelling Sidecar.

Bon Iver and Norah Jones are in there somewhere too, but then you knew that already. Edwards knows you already know too. She remembers and respects that; she recognises she's lucky to have been granted an opening into your life. Yet we too ought to appreciate and usher her in for we're lucky to have been proffered a record so fraught with raw desolation, with the outpouring of an agape heart, its contents here rattled and emptied, strewn like the contents of an upturned suitcase on inhospitably firm flooring. Wherever Kathleen may reside, keep Voyageur close at hand.

Roar & Raucous, Graphics.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:16:00 +0000

While Sarah Palin first coined the term Mama Grizzlies in reference to her hope for a sloth of right-wing maternal units to protect the future wellbeing of their cubs (and indeed the future itself), UK bass producer Alfie MacGibbon (aka Graphics) could quite feasibly rewrite the definition beneath one of the English language's finer terms sure to remain ostracised from the OED with his track of the same name. It dropped today on Made To Play, and impressively juggles the low-end pulsations of early SBTRKT with way-out-warped vocal samples, distant glitters, and a menacing sense of rapture. Faint plinks of kalimba evoke an impression of a more coherent Konono Nº1, while vox reminiscent of Rooty-era Basement Jaxx lend a carnivalesque ambience to an obscenely strong effort.

Graphics' Soundcloud.

On the Horizon: If This Is The Last Dance... Beach Moms.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:19:00 +0000

New York City may not boast too many tranquil sands, while its familial ethicality may also be conceivably questioned yet more than compensating for all that schtuff (or lack of) is 18yo Lucia Arias' Beach Moms. First encountered before bloating out over Christmas via this emotionally inflamed take on Craft Spells' Your Tomb, latest cut Dance To Dances is a rather more fleshy hunk that initially recalls Real Estate's subtly superlative eponymous debut, before flaring up and out into an effervescent sonic blotch of sprightly verve that embodies more wild life than a worldwide tour with Martin Courtney et al. Lyrics of second chances "on a beautiful dancer" jive with spring-heeled, treble-soused guitars to culminate in a record worth savouring and indeed saving for that ignominious last waltz of the night.
Dance To Dances- Single

Beach Moms' Soundcloud.

On the Horizon: Golden. Retriever.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:52:00 +0000

From whichever side of the fog of the Tyne a band may originate, those hailing down upon us from the northeastern-most reaches of Ingerlund often come bearing abrasion, distortion, a seething sense of jolting and disjointing vitriol. Retriever however unapologetically shatter the mould as they present us with a true gem of a track in Happiness Falls: sure, the rolling thunder of a bass line that rumbles within spits and crackles with untamed overdrive that's mildly redolent of much of The Chapman Family's debut yet it comes smothered in a vivid lusciousness, in a reconstruction of sounds sooted over times past to conjure an overriding aesthetic that's overwhelmingly actual. The Newcastle-based outfit waded (metaphorically, presumably) across the aforementioned stretch of famed flume to reach Mackem badlands where the track was recorded with Neil Bassett of Hyde and Beast, crisp production values augmenting the spiralling whammy bar-smudged guitars and impressionistic washes of shoegaze that embellish this quietly glorious super chunk. Thank St. bloody Valentine it can, as of today, shack up in your harddrive for the hefty levy of a single click...
Happiness Falls by RETRIEVER

Retriever's Bandcamp.

On the Horizon: Bella Luna, Poor Moon.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:46:00 +0000

While the moon may rarely be spotted lurching over the lateral, literal horizon keep an eye on the stars for Poor Moon. With the ink still moist on a deal with Bella Union, given the sultry and suppressed euphoria of People In Her Mind it's a unione that can indeed be qualified as outrightly 'bella': of a Lanterns on the Lake ilk via Soft Bulletin-era Flaming Lips the track is lifted from Illusion, a debut EP we're now anxiously awaiting that's pencilled in for an early Spring release. Comprising brothers Peter and Ian Murray (aka The Christmas Cards) and a couple of absconding Fleet Foxes (Christian Wargo and Casey Wescott), the project born of gentle dins in house parties and basement dens already bears enough promise to fling off 'bit-on-the-side' aspersions that'll all too soon be cast by all and sundry.
Poor Moon - People In Her Mind by Bella Union

Live: Hollie, Sophy, Suki Starting to Happen. Novella, The Shacklewell Arms.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:25:00 +0000

With a Jing Jang here and a Jang Jong there, barring the ever-illusive Joe Lean remnants of the inferred major-screwing, LP-scrapping troupe are scattered ubiquitously throughout a seething Shacklewell Arms. Tonight's bunch, adjudged on pure and simply superficial old attire, are out in force to witness TOY whip a four-legged Dalston-centric residency into knowingly lackadaisical, forcedly monochromic action. Conversely, those here congregated muster minimal enthusiasm in indulging in Ralegh Long's brand of lightly melodramatic, folk-lilted chanson: somewhere on the side of the long, lonesome, and meandering road between scrapbook emperor Jeffrey Lewis and perennial prog titans The Tangent, his is a set laced with understated impressionism, interwoven with strands of the lyrically engrossing and it's as dear as it is intermittently dour.

Cometh the hour (9.20pm); cometh the women (and man) of Novella. As drums are tinkered and guitars tuned, the front few rows are suddenly overwhelmed by male omnipresence, cameras protruding from many a chest as testosterone levels within the room hit palpable, somewhat perturbing zeniths. As attractive as they may be and as bewitching as Hollie Warren's iced vocal susurrations are it's their restless gambolling from one genre (and with that, aesthetically, era) to another, underpinned by the grittiest and greatest elements of grunge, that's most winsome: opener She Searches is sustained by a veritably baggy bottom end courtesy of illustrator-cum-bassist-cum-guitarist Sophy Hollington that props up visceral shards of heavily phased, distortion-doused Gibson chomp while Strange Times sounds like Courtney Love fronting Superchunk as it quivers through ravaged PA that'd question what it did to deserve such punitive salvo. Were it personified, and imbued with a sense of definite being... Then before you're afforded a gasp of respite they're sounding akin to a modern-day Popguns were Wendy Morgan et al. holed up in the grimiest endz of Shacklewell. If you're still struggling to gauge the strength of this particular set, that they neglect the latest, and indeed thus far greatest globule to descend from the Soundcloud (the sensational Santiago) suggests a burgeoning audacity, a resolute belief in their own ability that belies their status as an emerging act just commencing the doing of the Dalston rounds.

The show hinges however on the joyful frivolity and engaging naïveté of a 'new band': Warren's lyrics are, in this setting, incomprehensible and largely inaudible, buried somewhere within a wondrous (if perhaps unintentionally) Dinosaur Jr.-ish melange of a mix; false starts and miscommunications arise periodically, primarily between the band and their latest drumming recruit; and their song order is dictated by scribbles of scarcely decipherable setlist. Moreover they exhibit an endearingly unequivocal and undisguisable, Dando-esque apprehension towards the live show, cowering behind drawn curtains of meticulously kempt hair as they clunk through "new one" He's My Morning, a pulsating hunk of overdrive scented with essence of Lemonheads. Dirty blues lickety-splits forcefully into Sonic Youth on sixth of six You're Not That Cool and following a murmur or two's thanks they recede from spotlit view. Something's starting to happen, and said something feels as ferociously invigorating as we pasty, anaemic Brits will come to the ferocious invigoration of Wild Flag for the foreseeable.

On the Horizon: Shaun Hencher Going Virals.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:05:00 +0000

Viruses of varieties electronic and noxious are obviously inherently bad, while "going viral" may these days be perceived as innately excellent news for all involved. Whether or not Virals, the latest musical endeavour from Worcester's Shaun Hencher does indeed "go viral" or for that matter go on to infect many harddrives can at this point only be sketchily hypothesised. However what's instantaneously evident is that this newfangled project from the once-Lovvers man, and in particular Magic Happens, will surely see Hencher make a fair few more friends. Scheduled for release at the end of the month via SEXBEAT, it's a contagious, slackened-tied stomp throughout which Norman Blakian vocals eddy giddily about scruffy yet irrecusably clean guitars and a right old rollocking bass.
Magic Happens

Virals' Bandcamp.

Pairing Up w/ Sister Cities.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:08:00 +0000

Based in the deep and dusty heart of Arizona but with Dubliner Keith Walker and Mexican Ana Barraza at the fore, Sister Cities appositely embody a uniting of nations and with that musical styles and substances. Your Heart, lifted from the veritably strong, emotionally scatty Pockets EP of last November, sees Stars' whimsical eruptions of sentimentality seared on clattering, askew cymbals as Barraza's subtle vocal swells bleed into the ascending strains of a gloriously tumultuous chorus. Twinned with its impeccable production and acutely inspiring instrumental manipulations, it makes for a seething dream of a number.
Your Heart

Sister Cities' Bandcamp.

On the Horizon: Hot & Heavy w/ J£ZUS MILLION.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:57:00 +0000

Equipped with typically trippy artwork and bang-on moniker, J£ZUS MILLION can be considered well primed to scale siege on the comfortingly introspective blogosphere within which some/ many/ too many of us reside both diurnally and of course nocturnally. Redolent of Starslinger's glee-inducing hip hop hack-ups, new cut That Heat is filled with crackling whoops and a boisterous rhythm that builds and builds until its towering construction topples, slumping to silence in seemed exhaustion. Irrespective of the pound sterling stylisation, this J£ZUS walks upon the land of hope and glory and even at the practically prepubescent age of seventeen, it's scarcely preposterous to suggest further glories await...
That Heat

J£ZUS MILLION

Lower Dens Lifting Us Higher.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:42:00 +0000

While the above artwork accompanying the below stream of Lower Dens' forthcoming single Brains may suggest a seismic shift in the Baltimore outfit's general interests and genuine intentions (a veer towards stadium-shaped arenas of the hopelessly soulless perhaps), any such trepidation is soon allayed as Jana Hunter's inimitably comforting baritone soothes through the core of five rock-solid minutes. Perhaps more abstract than the material encased within beauteous debut full-length Twin-Hand Movement (transhumanism now apparently accounts for a paramount influence), they remain as dynamic, diligent, and serenely efficient as ever, Nate Nelson's clicking hi-hats propelling vague washes of slackened guitar string as a typically protuberant bass line courtesy of Geoff Graham regiments proceedings. The antithesis of what Sleigh Bells threw up as a first single from a sophomore record yesterday, Brains is a quietly compulsive reintroduction to a discreetly remarkable band.
Lower Dens - Brains by Ribbon Music

The resurrection of Lower Dens – or least follow-up record Nootropics (to be released via Domino imprint Ribbon Music) – is pencilled in for April 30th.

Interview: Canada Dreaming, Kathleen Edwards.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:46:00 +0000

2011 may prove to be the year Kathleen Edwards recalls as the twelve months that made the Torontonian singer-songwriter. That said it could just as easily have been the year to break her: despite embarking on a European tour with the universally-venerated Justin Vernon under the household-infiltrating, BRIT-acknowledged, show-stealing, Grammy nomination-sweeping Bon Iver moniker her support slot on the second of two London shows at the Hammersmith Apollo was greeted by the most indecorous indifference one may care to envisage. Similarly, anyone who's ever painstakingly pieced together a record will be all too cognisant of the bristling desire to just release the darn thing once committed to churning tape. However to contextualise and put Kathleen's predicament into perspective, Voyageur, her fourth and finest LP proper was all done and dusted over six months ago and has since been left to get, well, a little dusty. Now, at long last, thankfully for Edwards and aficionados of dumbstriking Americana everywhere its release is imminent...

"I finished the record in May and I think the tracking was finished in June so yeah, it feels like I've been twiddling my thumbs for a couple months now. You invest so much time in a project and you dump a lot of baggage into it and think you're gonna release it out into the world immediately, but in the case of Voyageur it felt a little like the whole thing evaporated for a while back there. It feels good to reach the point at which it's about to come out though, basically."

Explicit frustrations and niggling sensations to gauge the general reaction of the general public aside, did any advantage arise from such a lengthy, and seemingly excruciating delay? Edwards' patent vexation subsides: "When you're making a record you rarely have the opportunity to stand back from it because obviously you're in it from day one. From writing the songs, to in my instance being a co-producer and all that stuff, there was a definite point at which I had completely lost all perspective, and with that any sense of whether it was even good or not any more. So to take a break from it was really nice, and then it was equally so to come back to the material in preparation for my band rehearsals and similar stuff."

An unwantedly extended means to a very much desired end, when it comes to the final product there's a sprightly glee within the songstress: "I really feel as though it's my best work - I feel so proud of it and it challenges me still in the sense of trying to find ways of doing it justice within a live context. That's been great because previous albums have felt a little like live songs committed to record which made them a little bit easier to convert thus as I say, Voyageur has represented more of a challenge, and it's been really rewarding in that sense."

In many respects the way in which we digest and interpret contemporary music – and particularly albums – is of course on end product in place of process. However with Voyageur Edwards set about constructing definitive impressions and moods of flesh to mould about its skeletal musical structure: "I really worked hard even from the moment I was conceptualising what it was that I was wanting to do: it had to be something that was different in a far and away sort of a way from what I'd already done, and I wanted to show that I had a greater capacity for more varied musical styles. I'm sorry - I'm having a hard time trying to articulate it. And actually, that was my problem." Thus she embraced the self-imposed trials surrounding the fabrication of a record which has already received quietly propitious critical acclaim from broadsheets and broadband-clogging independent sites alike. However her perceived status is an element of her personality (or at least public persona) that remains somewhat problematic: "I don't really see myself as the artist I'm often being described as these days. Yes, I write songs and yes, I love roots music and the history of Americana. But that's not really how I regard myself. I would go to like Tallest Man On Earth concerts and his crowd would be filled with 25-30 year old kids. Not kids, but early college/ late high school listeners and I just realised that young listeners love real songs just like anyone else; they love the roots element of music just like anyone else; and it was just that I hadn't found a way to record my songs that did justice to the fact that I feel as though I fit more into this world than that world. This time around I think I really did that."

While we're unfortunately all too aware of this modern love of carefully, categorically compartmentalising whichever form of art it is that we're exposed to on a diurnal basis (and moreover of emotionally slanted hearsay), it'd be seemingly pragmatic to analogise Edwards' latest to the work of the aforementioned Justin Vernon, her bewhiskered rumoured beau and co-producer of Voyageur. His namechecking has become the unfortunate unavoidable, the inexorable inevitable while he himself is, in Kathleen's glinting eyes, "somebody who is sort of at the pinnacle of musical success." Of her rapport with Vernon she remains ambiguous, humble, deferential almost: "I just happen to be one of the people with whom he's worked" she proffers reticently. "There are times when it's an absolute blessing and it's certainly opened a lot of doors for me but the downside is that you feel as though it takes away much of the quality of the work and the world may merely view it as just another notch on his belt. It just makes me feel like saying "um... actually I'm here in the shadows of his name and you know, it's kinda my song..." But I mean that in the way that you take the good with the bad and really, as far as I'm concerned, there is no out-and-out bad."

Amorous inclinations aside, the coming together of the pair within a musical context was rendered wholly explicit when Edwards packed together a guitar or two, strapped in as many accompanying musicians for the ride, and set sail for Europe to open up for Bon Iver. Come late October she would wind up in west London, the svelte figure onstage a mere speck in "an impossibly large room". It was something of a harrowing experience for the enthralled onlooker, and one of Edwards' more testing moments of the tour: "To come out and play for a band as heavily anticipated as Bon Iver were that night and to be able to connect... I mean there were people listening down the front but it's hard to feel as though you're actually playing to them when there's 5,000 other people in that room who just aren't there to see you. It's a losing battle. I could've come out and done a 10-minute fucking Steve Vai guitar solo and I would've garnered the same reaction, you know? There were some other shows on that tour during which people were dead silent and other nights people were just plain chatty. It wasn't the easiest thing to do, but it's a good way to cut your teeth!"

Whatever the fundamental basis of their partnership, both parties seem contented with the work and the intentions behind their rather comprehensive collaboration: "Justin knows my motives weren't based on working with him because of his name and to me, the quality of the work feels like the reward. So all the other stuff, how people talk about it or how it gets heard, and who's listening to it and for what reason, that's uncontrollable. And effectively it doesn't matter: if someone's willing to listen to it because his name's on it then I'm really lucky. And I have to remember and respect that."

She continues, determined, intrepid, undaunted: "I just have to go out and do my thing and take or leave all that other stuff. But I think the nice thing is that this isn't my first record, and nor is it the first time I've toured so I feel as though I'm fairly well grounded on my own two feet. However with this record in particular all my shit is now out there for people to discover. And when you already feel vulnerable about the mistakes you've made or the things you've done and you're subsequently trying to change as a person, it's a very raw and vulnerable time." Unprovoked, thoughts ricochet back almost instantaneously – or perhaps instinctively – to Vernon's divine intervention: "I'm of course extremely grateful for this opportunity. Justin's... [she stutters, choked up sentiment barely audible above the crackling drone of the wireless] you know, the Bon Iver thing... it's kinda like every musician's dream: they make the records they wanna make, they do everything on their own terms, and they're very..." At this precise moment the train of thought grinds to a halting silence.

Irrespective whatever their intimacy, professionally, Edwards seems to be Bon Iver's most charmingly devout fan. Her words and sentiments again gathering momentum, she hypothesises: "Let me put it this way: the other day my friend Julie said to me: "You know, there are so many people putting out music these days, and there are so many records. Every-fucking-body and his cousin is like in a band and putting out a song or something and every one needs context in order that we're able to acknowledge what makes it different from anybody else's. So everyone has a story. But the nice thing is that your story is real. It's true; it's not been tweaked, distorted, nor pumped up to be something that more people will pay attention to. It came from a really true place, and you never have to apologise for that." So if Justin's name is on every review of everything I do, so be it. That's not something I have any say in. But I can also go to sleep at night thinking you know what, all this stuff came from a truly real, honest, and earnest place. And I don't feel bad about any of that."

Something she may conceivably still feel a little uncertain about however is the election to keep soft-as-snow-underfoot single Wapusk separate from the completed LP and its finalised tracklisting. Despite its subtle majesty and wispy brilliance, she remains resolute: "Wapusk isn't on there because I wanted the record to be ten songs long. And when I was really having to make some hard decisions about whether it was going to be this song or that song, I realised I could put Wapusk out prior to the full release as a teaser. You know, still release it and have it as a part of this project we've been working on. We just didn't feel as though it had to be on the final record." Musically its acoustic dwindle is a little removed from Voyageur as a gloriously fully-formed whole, but thematically too it is of another space, another time: "Wapusk was rooted in a different experience. Voyageur, meanwhile, is about a particular snapshot in time and it purely didn't fall into that timeframe. It sat aside from that period and it was also the first track that he [Vernon] and I worked on before we were even co-producing a record together. As a result there's something that sets that track aside for me. I mean I really love it but I also didn't put it on the record because I didn't think it was good enough to be on there."

The key to the ignition that judders the bounding Cadillac of a record that is Voyageur into slick locomotion is Empty Threat, during which Edwards rubbishes the notion of "moving to America", jovially relegating it to the realm of nonsense. However when questioned as to how full a threat it may have become in the past six months or so, Edwards concedes: "You'd be right in thinking that I'm thinking about it [relocating to the US of A]. I live in Toronto though. This is my home. But I'm currently very good at writing my own prophecy." Whether or not this prognostication will result in Edwards fulfilling a geographical relocation southwards, her identity as a Canadian – albeit one who embodies a particularly seasoned wanderer – plays an imperative part both in her music and her essence: "My two biggest influences are Canadian geography and sex in Canada, even if so much of my writing process occurs while I'm moving around the place. It's difficult to explain why me being Canadian has had such an impactive influence on me, but it just has. It's the little details: it's like when you live on a street, and every day you leave your house, and you walk down your street, and every day you look at the same houses, and you see the same front doors, and there's this familiarity. But there's always something you notice that's different, a little detail that you'd never previously twigged. And then the next day when you're walking down that same street you recognise it as part of your association with that walk, the new detail. And I feel as though Canada's like that for me. There's all these details of my childhood and my everyday life, and they build and build to create this image in your life, this root system in your heart and so much of that is just based on where you're from. And I think that's true for everybody."

Whether it be national newspapers or Canadian banknotes ("they're so cute! They're pink! And blue!" she later chirps with youthful exuberance), if the record may paddle in the shallow ends of Americana it's indubitably and authentically bathed in Canada. However once upon a time Edwards entertained the thought that it might be "the last kick of the can." At 33 years of age and with a decade of relatively tireless plugging already in the trunk retirement's hardly beckoning, although her candid admission instils a certain degree of melancholy: "I thought to myself: "If this is the last record I get to make, I gotta make it count." Then once it was finished there were times at which I reflected: "You know, Springsteen didn't make Born To Run 'til his third record", and that was like a launchpad for him. It represented the beginning of so much. A big record for me in a similar sort of a way in the last two/ three years was The National's High Violet. It was huge and made such a significant impact on me: I had tried tirelessly to be into that band before, and I tried to listen to their older records yet it never really grabbed me. And then when that record came out I got it. It became my entry point, and I love that record so much. It allowed me to then go back into the older material and I got it all. Is that what's gonna happen to me? I don't know. But I feel very validated knowing that I've done something that I believe to be a better representation – or at least a very comprehensive presentation – of who I am both as a person and a musician and I really worked hard to be more diverse musically this time. And I think I did it. If this is the last record I ever make, then so be it."

Voyageur is released via Rounder Records on Monday, January 23rd prior to Kathleen's return to London to play Islington's very own exorbitantly branded O2 Academy come February 28th.

Live: Bin the Vicodin. A Winged Victory For The Sullen, Cecil Sharp House.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:37:00 +0000

The scarcely illumined signpost cowering slenderly in January gloom before Cecil Sharp House reads: 'The English Folk Dance And Song Society'. And while the lavish compositional work of Adam Wiltzie's latest (and questionably greatest) project, A Winged Victory For The Sullen shan't provide any such sort of frivolous gaiety, there's a fair amount of aerobic exercise taking place down in the basement. Rigorous folk dancing betides below to the soundtrack of the excessively jaunty violins that emanate from within, the sort of scene typically set in dubiously sinister TV-only period drama and from the outside looking in, the view refracted through condensation-flecked windows purely accentuates quite how toe-shrivellingly bracing it is in NW1 tonight.

Thankfully, therefore, Wiltzie is on (already practically frostbitten) hand to proffer not one but two perceptible breath-snatching shows. First he's joined by Belgian chanteuse Chantal Acda to perform under the guise of sleepingdog, the duo daintily tiptoeing through the sound of the most crestfallen and melancholic Christmas envisageable. Stranded on the deserted, snow-strewn borders of where new-folk meets Michael Nyman's fluid yet sparse oeuvres, Acda and Wiltzie perform a rather arresting seminar in the straining of already-overwrought tension (as on the carol-like despair of Polish Love Song), in dimly-lit, gloom-ridden ambience (Scary Movie). Crying out from the depths of the mix however are Wiltzie's heavily processed drones of cerise Explorer that evoke the guttural resonances of the gargantuan organ that makes St. Paul's moan come Sunday morn and in this deferential, nigh on consecrated stately 'House the components of With Our Heads In The Clouds And Our Hearts In The Fields are imbued with an almost satanic simplicity which is all too easy to impotently sell yourself to. Fiendishly splendiferous stuff.

And so to AWVFTS, and the trading of Acda for LA-born, Berlin-based maestro of minimal, Dustin O'Halloran. The scintillating chemistry that reacts when he and Wiltzie collide was evinced wonderfully in the pair's eponymous LP of yesteryear, a stunningly comprehensive piece of neo-classical splendour. Yet in the live setting their coalition seems mildly diluted: charting opposing poles of the stage interaction is restricted to a slowly motioned nod of the head here; a piercing eye-to-eye there, a string trio aptly enrobed in black dwelling in the vast tract between the two composers. However tonight was never to revolve around that which may be perceived by the human eye and in this school assembly-esque setting, from the discomfort of plastic chairs and ligneous pews in this faintly amphitheatrical space, while there's little to admire visually the five beings that enchant us so are indeed barely visible. The odd violin bow emerges from the auburn soils of shade and versos of enthralled minds like newly-sprouted virescent shoots on the nervous system-perforating We Played Some Open Chords and Rejoiced, for the Earth Had Circled the Sun Yet Another Year, while bedroom lights in what looks a remote home discerned against darkness through the room's only agape window flicker in synchrony with both parts of the phantasmagorical Requiem for the Static King. The quintessentially sombre A Symphony Pathetique follows with each track drifting, wafting into that which proceeds it like smoke of a twilight hue softly whispering beneath the warm hum that lingers above a billiard table, sparingly irradiating the auditorium as they smoulder. The ceiling quakes as if teetering on the perilous verge of breakdown during All Farewells are Sudden, Wiltzie's every thrum of guitar resembling a cascade of crystal destined to shatter magnificently on snaggletoothed boulders, before the ever-stupendous Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears concludes a truly inspiriting, if not exactly enlivening collection of "seven songs about broken hearts and dead people."

An added extra is then unfurled from within the context of a brief (if somewhat ambling and perhaps extraneous) encore. Sumptuously harmonious it may be, but its seemingly incomplete complexion pales in comparison with the fully-grown cinematic grandiosity of all which precedes it. And visually? Well, we'd require an era-defining, by all means modern cinema-revolutionising ocular accompaniment to do these works of staggering beauty any form of distinguishable justice in said territory...

Comeback Kids, Sleigh Bells.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:31:00 +0000

They've taken their sweet time to return to pummel the tranquil waters of ear canals worldwide, have Alexis Krauss and Derek E. Miller... And while our sweet teeth may have ached for something/ anything to follow up the sensationally reckless Treats, Brooklynites Sleigh Bells, famed for their "scrappy and very catchy electropop" (his words; not ours) look set to induce corporeal damage of all varieties all over again when sophomore LP Reign of Terror drops next month. That'll cover the ears and the grey matter between, while legs, lungs, and other internal organs get the treatment when the duo retake to the road in a few weeks (they play Camden's Electric Ballroom March 1st). Here, however, is Comeback Kid, the first single to be crowbarred out of the aforementioned forthcoming record. Its intro smattered in Skrillex by way of malfunctioning MacBook, we're swiftly whisked back to thunderous drum machine patterns and Miller's dexterous overdrive onslaught. It's a return to form electrifying enough to engender mild whiplash, before a twisted '80s power ballad-based chorus tends to any overworked muscle, Krauss hushing: "you'll go away but you'll come back some day." At their most symbiotic and in terms of song structure systematic here we are, back for more.

Sleigh Bells.

The Low Sun Quietly Dawning, Dirty Three.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:51:00 +0000

Irrespective of the continued entanglement of the various ones of the Dirty Three with a contemporary artistic conscience (paths have previously led to painting, Peej and Ally Pally), their collective presence has been gravely missed. Six years, three months, and a further six days have passed since the release of Cinder, a nimble-fingered beast of gentle disposition, one capable of untangling the most obstinate of emotional knots and although perhaps not a direct consequence of their absence, times since they've been a-troublin'. However next month, quite fortuitously for anyone and everyone feeling fragile around this typically lugubrious time of year, Bella Union are to release what the rather stupendous label are already branding a 'remarkable new album' in the form of Toward The Low Sun. Right here, right now however, skulking in the shadows of the blurb, Rising Below awaits. Something of a deconstructed symphony, Warren Ellis' hurried gushes and scrapes of violin waltz with Mick Turner's quite desolate open-string melancholia to marching drums that gather momentum, later breaking into a perspiration-inducing canter, before finally adding graciousness and great passion as they gallop toward crescendo and inevitable dwindle.
Dirty Three - Rising Below

Having given Alexandra Palace a good lashing alongside Nick Cave at the inaugural London leg of ATP's I'll Be Your Mirror last year, Ellis returns to the outer fields of north London this May with Turner and Jim White in tow as they precede co-curators of this year's sophomore bash Mogwai on Saturday, May 26th. More info on this year's I'll Be Your Mirror featuring the likes of The Afghan Whigs, Melvins, Codeine and Slayer can be found here, with ticket links and bobs available here.

On the Horizon: Further Bedazzlement From Behind Acid Glasses.

noreply@blogger.com (Dots&Dashes) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:34:00 +0000

Way back when (or at least last October) JPEG Hoarder, serotonin smuggler Nick Burk (aka Acid Glasses) got refused entry to the UK, tripping up on stringent Visa controls at one of Heathrow's innumerable terminals when we'd all hoped to be tripping out to his hazy sonic snapshots down The Old Blue Last. If you're yet to kiss and make up with Burk, you'll be pining to smother the Memphis youf in smooches, thanks, and praise by the time you hammer Linen Wall down your lug holes: another nostalgia-saturated cut of off-kilter synth poppery, it's as dazed and concise as My Pale Garden and comes plastered in artwork evocative of Eric B. & Rakim painted in a vague shade of late-'80s Midnight Oil artwork.
Acid Glasses - Linen Wall

Acid Glasses.