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Friday 6th April 2012
All Day BBQ Festival

Sparrow and the Workshop
6 Day Riot
The Nuns
Singing Adams
Y Niwl
Colours
Dignan Porch
+more tbc

The Windmill
Brixton
Price tbc

On Our iPod

Golden Grrrls - New Pop 7”

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital (album)

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester (album)

Throwing Up - Mother Knows Best 7”

Howling Wolf - Complete Chess Masters 1951-60

The Ketamines - A Rotten Bond/1 Yr (from Oddbox Singles Club Pt 2)

Cardinal - Hymns (album)

Proper Ornaments - Taking the Gamble Out of Buying 12”

Darren Hayman - January Songs (album)

Various: Marshall Teller EP 12”

Latest Forum Posts

Single/Download Review

Panda Bear/ Peaches/ Effi Briest/ Alan Vega/ The Black Hand Gang/ The Silent Boys/ Darker My Love/ The Zephyrs
Singles Update

Article written by Ged M - Aug 15, 2010

A limited edition vinyl taster for the forthcoming album, Panda Bear’s 'Tomboy' (Paw Tracks 7")avoids some of the more weirder and more abstract ideas of Animal Collective for rhythmic experimental pop, full of beats, layers and loops. It's a little aloof at first but then begins to thaw in a hypnotically engaging way, not unlike the experience of hearing the Person Pitch album, and we all know how indispensible tracks like the magical 'Comfy in Nautica' have become. On the flipside, 'Slow Motion' lives up to its title with languid, layered electronica. Myspace

Blast First Petite have issued a series of limited edition 10” EPs to mark the 70th birthday of Suicide’s Alan Vega. The latest one is distinctive for the artwork – a massive, recently spent, tattooed cock and balls in full medical detail – so don’t ask your granny to buy it you for Christmas. As is usual on these EPs there’s one original – Alan Vega’s crooning ‘No Tomorrow’ from his 1995 album Deuce Avenue – plus two covers. Peaches’ version of ‘Jonny’ is minimal electro and of minimal interest but Effi Briest’s Universe is much better: dark, stripped down, intense, almost tribal, with shades of the Slits. That saves the release but previous volumes – including the Horrors and Springsteen – have been more interesting. label site

There’s a rock pub a few streets away from me in Bromley where the classic 60s/ 70s blues rock sound of Glasgow’s The Black Hand Gang - loud guitars and the odd power ballad - would go down well. There’s one song on the 'Bloody Hands EP' (Killahertz), ‘Swords’, that sounds a bit like the Queens of the Stone Age but it’s anti-junkie sentiment is actually really nasty: “I see you breathing, what a waste of life…if I saw you sleeping I’d stick my boot in your eye”. Another Glasgow band like Orange Juice would pet your kitten, this lot would fuck it and eat it. And, oh shit, now they know where I live… Myspace

Virginia’s The Silent Boys were formed in the 1980s and on hearing ‘Princess By The Sea’ (Walrus Records) don’t you just know it: the bands I could cite after hearing them are an indiepopper’s wet dream: Felt, Orange Juice, the Go Betweens, the June Brides, Monochrome Set, the Smiths, the Chameleons, the Church… I could go on like that because there’s nothing much of the Silent Boys in here, just those artists that inspired them, like the jangling guitars of Maurice Deebank and the vocals of Grant McLennan. The fun of playing spot-the-influence soon dissipates and there’s only one track – the title track - that really stands out as going beyond the sum of its inspirations. But it’s great if you want time to have stood still in 1987. Band site

You might have heard of Darker My Love from their spell backing Mark E Smith as the Fall when MES's then bandmates abandoned him in America. They did an excellent job on Reformation Post TLC! Their own material is psychedelic rock and the single 'Dear Author' (Dangerbird Records) sounds like Beck-meets-the Beatles, but a second division version of both. Myspace

The Zephyrs’ single 'Creative Faith' (Club AC30) sounds more impressive the more you hear it, though it's hard to pin them down to any particular sound: you might call it psychedelic-folk, which would be nearly right, but how to acknowledge the modest amount of post-rock that lies behind the gradually expanding atmosphere or the Felt-ish guitars that bubble away smoothly? Delicate, but with a lot of hidden power, this is one Scottish band worth exploring. Myspace

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