MUSIC FAN'S MIC -

Audiovisuals: The Hundred In The Hands - Pigeons Here’s...

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:15:37 +0100

Audiovisuals: The Hundred In The Hands - Pigeons

Here’s the clip for Brooklyn duo The Hundred In The Hands’ new single ‘Pigeons’, the first to be taken from their self-titled debut, due out September 13th via Warp Records. Great video. Great song. Consider us excited about the record then!

Listen to the Foals remix here:

The Hundred In The Hands - Pigeons (Foals XIII Remix) by thehundredinthehands

Manic Street Preachers' 'Postcards From A Young Man' Gets A Tracklisting

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:47:13 +0100

(It’s Not War) Just The End Of Love
Postcards From A Young Man
Some Kind Of Nothingness
The Descent (Pages 1 & 2)
Hazleton Avenue
Auto-Intoxication
I Think I’ve Found It
A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun
All We Make Is Entertainment
The Future Has Been Here 4 Ever
Don’t Be Evil

Nice. Twelve tracks, so eleven opportunities for better songs than ‘(It’s Not War) Just The End Of Love’, which is a decent lead single and nothing more. From what we’ve been told about it thus far, sounds like this could be the sequel to ‘Everything Must Go’ (to a certain extent). This is very definitely a good thing.

Record is still due on September 20th, despite various reports suggesting otherwise. We at MFM remain optimistic about it.

The single’s out a week earlier, on the 13th… with five(!!!) brand-spanking-new b-sides.

AUDIOVISUALS: Calories - FFWDKeeping to our routing of one...

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:35:38 +0100

AUDIOVISUALS: Calories - FFWD

Keeping to our routing of one Calories-related post a day, here’s the video for ‘FFWD’. It’s the third track on new album ‘Basic Nature’, a subject of our writing yesterday.

[Thanks to DiS]

Soundcloud: The Drums - Book Of Stories

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:58:15 +0100

If you’re yet to invest in the debut Drums album, let the record’s highlight insist that you do.

EP: Under Alien Skies - Powder

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:09:00 +0100

words: Jamie Milton

Every so often, amidst the stampede of summertime songs that define a season but slowly step aside, there stands an offering of real longevity, a song that will sit by your side for many a summer; many a season. ‘Fyodor’ is as much a winter song as it is a summer one; as much a log fire as it is a glow of the sun. But there’s something peaceful and calming that comes when listening to the song as you admire the outside blooming.

Not so long ago, we established that ‘Fyodor’ was something special. A song that released today by someone of the stature of say, Snow Patrol, could top charts and woo a large percentage of the population. But Under Alien Skies should remain quietly confident at the idea that they could achieve just that themselves. In them is the possibility to move the sturdiest of hearts, and in ‘Powder’, their debut EP they prove their capability of doing just that…

The backdrop of these five songs are warm, seeping synths, casting eyes upon the diverse majority of the EP. ‘Cracks’ pays respect to pre-‘Feels’ Animal Collective; gentle acoustics amongst an abstract song structure. In its seven minutes it goes from latin guitars to complete obscurity.

‘Bloodsport’ is the real beach comber amongst the pack; a swift, upbeat number that could do wonders to a currently static electro-pop scene. ‘Anime’, on the other side of the spectrum, keeps to the idea of electronics but hones in at a more experimental form of craft, capable of sounding entirely at ease if placed as part of a Holy Fuck record.

But even ‘Called id’, a 40-second-long interlude piano piece, gets the heart racing. And it’s for that reason that Under Alien Skies emerge as something of a coup for (according to last.fm), their 52 listeners.

To anybody reading this, I urge you to add to the small minority of us left dumbfounded by the talent on offer.

9.0

Download the EP now.

yvynyl: WU LYF - i got dem wu wu busted teef spitting it...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:59:50 +0100

yvynyl:

WU LYF - i got dem wu wu busted teef spitting it concrete like the golden sun god

~~Emmanuel~~ Fabien just tweeted at a bunch of us that we needed to watch this video. Yeah, we needed it. Incredible stuff.

Good luck finding any info on these dudes. They may be from Australia or ‘nu babylon’ or somewhere, but its not clear. They have a penchant for wiping away any definable characteristics of their myspace or many tumblr acct’s, but you can send them £15 for ‘membership’ in exchange for what, I don’t know.

One of the new decade’s best marketing schemes gathers more steam.

And WU LYF are from Manchester, UK - sharing the same studio as HURTS, Lost Knives and Egyptian Hip Hop.

Introducing: Little Loud

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:45:00 +0100

Words: Gareth O’Malley

If you’re a producer, there is no better way to make your presence felt than by getting some remixes picked up. Even better if your first few remixes include some heavy hitters.

Brighton’s Will Phillips, working under the moniker of Little Loud would know all about this. He’s not been in the game for long, but the man’s already spruced up Au Revoir Simone, Memory Tapes and HEALTH, among others. In other words, he’s got a serious amount of clout.

Now he’s only gone and taken on Yeasayer, turning ‘Madder Red’, one of ‘Odd Blood”s highlights, into a synth-driven monster. The irresistible vocal hook’s been given new life, and the uplifting song somehow manages to soar even higher than its original incarnation - that is quite the achievement.

Next in his sights is Goldfrapp: Phillips is lining up his take on ‘Believer’, to be included on his first mixtape, due late August, alongside all his other remixes and his first original material. It should be interesting to say the least. Much like his take on Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dancing In The Dark’, which you can have along with the Yeasayer rework. Little Loud knows what he’s doing, that’s for sure.

Download: Yeasayer - ‘Madder Red’ (Little Loud remix) // ‘Dancing In The Dark’ (Bruce Springsteen cover)

AUDIOVISUALS: Caribou - ‘Sun’ Taken from the...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:35:08 +0100

AUDIOVISUALS: Caribou - ‘Sun’

Taken from the immaculate album ‘Swim’.

AUDIOVISUALS: Holy Ghost! - I Know, I Hear Disco-tastic new song...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:03:00 +0100

AUDIOVISUALS: Holy Ghost! - I Know, I Hear

Disco-tastic new song from Brooklyn-based project Holy Ghost!, lifted from the EP ‘Static on the Wire’, out next week.

INCOMING // This Is The Second Album Of A Band Called Adebisi...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:55:43 +0100

INCOMING // This Is The Second Album Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank

Out 20th August in Ireland via the completely brilliant Richter Collective, and the following Monday (23rd) in the U.K. via the equally as amazing Big Scary Monsters.

Listen to, and download, opener ‘International Dreambeat’ below:

Adebisi Shank - International Dreambeat by Nialler9

[via]

Samplings: Calories - Basic Nature

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:26:00 +0100

Words: Gareth O’Malley

This one came pretty much out of nowhere. (Read: I hadn’t been keeping up at all) Calories’ new record, ‘Basic Nature’ has surfaced, however. Due for release on Setpember 13th, you can get all the info here.

While you’re at it, you can also hear a few tracks from the album. The four songs that have been made available for streaming at the album blog are all quite different from each other, too, marking a clear expansion of sound from last year’s ‘Adventuring’.

We have the short, sharp shock of ‘The New X’; an acoustic, non-album track (!) in the form of ‘Thirteen’; the uptempo grunge-pop of ‘FFWD’; and a seven-minute epic that goes by the name of ‘The Brink’.

The trio have clearly raised their game, and the album displays even more proof. It’s a wonderfully mature record from a band who never seem to keep still - keep in mind there are four other songs from the ‘Basic Nature’ sessions available on EPs and such. Long may this speedy - and brilliant - output continue.

Download: Let’s Pretend That We’re Older

Free download: Les Savy Fav - Let’s Get Out Of HereTaken...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:08:00 +0100

Free download: Les Savy Fav - Let’s Get Out Of Here

Taken from the leaked new album, ‘Root For Ruin’.
By the way, the band want their money back.

Dominant Legs, of whom Ryan Lynch (former guitarist of Girls) is...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:29:00 +0100

Dominant Legs, of whom Ryan Lynch (former guitarist of Girls) is one half of, are prepared to release their debut EP, ‘Young At Love And Life’ on Lefse Records.

‘Clawing At The Walls’ might just be the song that introduced you to the band last year. A remarkably tight, slow-burning and infectious summer jam, reminiscent of Belle and Sebastian, but with a signatory American-summer drive.

Dominant Legs- Clawing Out by Music Fan’s Mic

Initial Thoughts: Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:02:45 +0100

Words: Gareth O’Malley

Where is the chase, and how do I cut to it? Right then. New Arcade Fire. This is cause for celebration, especially so because I’m just going to come out and say that ‘The Suburbs’ is better than ‘Neon Bible’ by a country mile. Not that that would be hard. I’m not complaining, though; the 2007 sophomore record is good, but that’s it. Just good. And when you open your account with an album as powerful, as downright stunning, as ‘Funeral’ (I dare you to tell me it doesn’t sound every bit as good, five years on), ‘good’ simply will not do.

The band have expanded their sonic palette, with impressive (and often breathtaking) results. So much change has taken place, in fact, that this ‘Sprawl’-ing record (boom boom) is quite simply a delight to listen to.

The mid-tempo shuffle of the opener and title track sets the tone, Win Butler’s evocative lyrics displaying a lyricist who has found form once again. There were more lyrical clunkers on ‘Neon Bible’ than I could care to count (the whole of ‘Windowsill’, for instance), but Butler’s slip-ups have become infrequent once again: ‘In the suburbs, I learned to drive, and they told me we would never survive’ serves as a fine introduction.

This is followed by a venture into more familiar territory. ‘Ready To Start’ is the first U.S. single, and I really think it’s a poor choice. If any song on ‘The Suburbs’ could be considered the band’s safety net, it’s this. Granted, the song is great, with the group doing what they do best, but if ‘The Suburbs’ is anything, it’s an album known for its risks.

Much better is the five-minute piano-driven melancholia of lead U.K. single, ‘We Used To Wait’. Like many songs present on the record, it’s like nothing they’ve done before, and is absolutely fantastic.

I’ve had a few listens, and I know that there’s still plenty of time for ‘The Suburbs’ to grow on me. Hopping between styles like it’s going out of fashion, throwing curveballs like there’s no tomorrow, the album is made to surprise. The biggest surprise, however, is just how well it all comes together. At just over an hour in length, it’s an effort to listen to - but it seems that the collective’s third album is their most rewarding.

Initial Thoughts Rating: 8.6

[Stream ‘The Suburbs’ and ‘Month of May’ here]

Stream: Grinderman - Heathen Child

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:27:02 +0100

|To be released on Mute. Sept 6th.

Stream: Manic Street Preachers - (It's Not War) Just The End Of Love

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:50:00 +0100

Set to appear on ‘Postcards From A Young Man’ unless they find another book of Richey Edwards’ lyrics.

INCOMING: Calories - Basic Nature ——-Basic Nature...

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:18:00 +0100

INCOMING: Calories - Basic Nature

——-

Basic Nature 1
You Can Be Honest
FFWD
Orchard Girls
The Offer
Habitations
Endlessly In Light
Basic Nature 2
Mortal Boys
Even Stephens
Let’s Pretend That We’re Older
Altitude Sickness
The Brink
New Cross

[blog devoted to the record is here]
[your opportunity to pre-order the record is here]

Crystal Castles: Baptism

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:50:00 +0100

Words: Gareth O’Malley

When you think about it, there are actually a good number of viable singles on Canadian noiseniks Crystal Castles’ second self-titled album, which is why I honestly believe the wrong song’s been picked as the third track to be lifted from the record.

‘Baptism’ doesn’t have the out-and-out pop sensibilities of a track like ‘Suffocation’, but it’s a fine song nonetheless, driven by pattering synths and the anguished howls that Alice Glass has become so fond of.

Add to that an absolutely massive chorus, and you start to see my point. This works as well as ‘Celestica’ and ‘Doe Deer’, even though the three songs are about as different from each other as you can get. The new single (released tomorrow) is wonderful and plain weird in equal amounts: Crystal Castles in a nutshell.

Live: Wild Nothing (Brighton Audio - 24/07/10)

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 08:51:00 +0100

words: Jamie Milton
scribed for MusicOMH

Looking at the sparse, parted crowd attending tonight’s gig, you assume that a substantial amount of Wild Nothing’s demographic audience have buggered off elsewhere. Shoreditch, to be precise. 1234 festival, a buzz-band congregation, is a one day-event you’d have expected to see Jack Tatum and co. billed for. And it clashes with tonight’s proceedings.

That’s the only means for justifying how poor the turn-out is when you consider the impact debut album, ‘Gemini’, has had over the year. Its textural, dream-pop delights have led to it becoming one of the few releases truly benefiting from an excitable, word-of-mouth buzz.

Tatum’s rise from bedroom songwriter to sought-after artist with an album to his name has been typically speedy, comparable to the rate at which Surfer Blood and Best Coast sprung to success : one good song, one important blog singing your praises and you’ve got a masterplan to implement. That “one song” of Tatum’s was Summer Holiday; a gorgeous, sweeping nod to Pains of Being Pure At Heart. Not one of a kind, but enough to convince people that he’s something special.

Summer Holiday is disposed of three songs in, and receives the highest quantity of respectable head-bops from the largely static audience. Tatum’s vocals which on record are drenched in reverb and more a component to the song than a vital centrepiece, meet nothing in terms of effects, here. And although his voice is noticeably commanding and undoubtedly able to hold its own, you get far less of the nostalgia and the drama that blows you away on record.

The live band’s sound as a whole fails to replicate the textural, dreamy atmospherics of Gemini and although each member does his best to add energy into the lifeless crowd by jolting their respective instruments and looking ready to pounce, the results are largely unsatisfactory.

Set-opener Chinatown all-but blows you away with its beautiful blend of inventive percussion and light keyboards patterns and is a noticeable highlight. But much of the set, particularly when the pace is skewed and taken down a notch, fails to muster up the hazy, infectious escapism spread across a debut album that announces Tatum as a genuine man of ideas. Tonight’s gig doesn’t dispel this idea; the talent is merely still emerging from the clouds and will do nothing but progress.

Wild Nothing - Summer Holiday by Music Fan’s Mic

Best Coast - Crazy For You

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 08:03:00 +0100

words: Jamie Milton
scribed for MusicOMH

Bethany Cosentino, until recently, was part of an obscure California-based psychedelia outift called Pocahaunted. Although to some extent, they rose to popularity, it’s incomparable to the success that Cosentino has harbored under the more streamlined pop direction of Best Coast, in the space of just over a year.

And when you compare the two acts, you’d never guess that one led to the other. Best Coast, as a live outfit, consist of two members of Pocahaunted and one Vivian Girl. That’s not a great deal of difference. So what inspired Cosentino to swap her drone rock for infectious lo-fi punk? One guess would be that it’s all because of boys.

In an interview with Urban Outfitters, Cosentino said; “The reason why I think my lyrics are so straightforward—and a lot of my songs are about guys or situations with guys—is because I have a tendency to not say that stuff in real life.” Indeed, Crazy For You begins and ends as a girl-wants-boy drama, its components being some of the most direct, attention-seeking songs you’re ever likely to come across.

Boyfriend commences proceedings in the most suitable of circumstances; it’s a song of desire, of feeling caught up in an indeterminably-long stage of aching for someone. The opener precedes a mix-match of emotions, sorted between Costenino’s compliments (“I just want to tell you, that I’ve always loved you”) to her apparent frustration and heartbreak (“When you leave, you take all my money, you take all my weed”) right onto confusion and despair (“I don’t even know why I care as much as I do, I just want for you to tell me, is this real or are we through?”).

What’s remarkable however - and surprising - about Crazy For You is its versatility. Cosentino emerged last year as a drug-friendly, tv junkie that happened to write good songs. Here, her evident love affair with 60’s pop and DIY rock intertwine and out comes an album that adjusts its pace, energy, attitude, at a whim, but never fails to entertain. Our Deal is a grandiose, 50’s ballroom swinger whereas Happy is an obnoxious, ill-mannered, modern punk gem. And all throughout, there isn’t a single song that feels out of place and uninvited.

Not only is this an album displaying its obsession with a certain male, it’s equally unafraid to declare its devotion to the city of Los Angeles. The sunrise, pine tree, gentle waves that appear on the album cover not only characterise the content inside the record, but also the state of California. The cat that graces the front, note; has its backside cut out in the shape of the state. These are carefree, sunny songs that embody the spirit of an altogether charming part of America.

California, and the ongoing boy troubles, have had their effect on Cosentino. And behold, here arrives the first “star” from a productive lo-fi music scene. That’s because she’s the first out of the bunch to display her personality, to prove to the world that she’s got something to say. And boy has she said it. All of this achievement is encompassed in album closer When I’m With You; a drop-dead terrific twenty-something anthem. Fairly simple but impossible not to adore: that’s Best Coast.

8.8

Kid Cudi, Best Coast & Rostam Batmanglij - All Summer by Music Fan’s Mic