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SoundsXP Presents

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

Reading Rainbow/ Billy Green/ Sparrow and the Workshop/ the Garlands/ The Sugarplums/ Victoria and Jacob/ Cloud Nothings
Singles roundup

Article written by Ged M - Mar 29, 2010

Philadelphia’s Reading Rainbow release their single on the San Diego label run by Dee Dee Dum Dum Girls and Crocodiles’ Brandon Welchez. ‘Restless’ (Zoo Music 7”) is the pretty familiar by now Spectorish lo-fi dream pop that we all love but the ritualistic, ultra-rhythmic beginning is definitely a pleasant surprise. Percussion is the powerful engine that drives that song and also ‘Into The Void’, which sounds like the Ramones timeshifted to the 60s, while ‘Stephanie Says’ is a fuzzed up and dirtied down version of the Velvets that rightly isn’t too respectful of the original. The more you listen, the more you hear with this single. Myspace

Billy Green composed the music for Sandy Harbutt’s 1974 Oz-plotation biker movie Stone: Take The Trip (think Easy Rider in Slouch hats) and ahead of the soundtrack release Finders Keepers have released a limited edition 7” single of music and dialogue not on the CD. In line with Aussie movies of the 70s, it’s mental, full of counter cultural lingo (“Wow! What a freaking scene!”) and biker sounds. ‘Stone Is A Trip’ is fuzzed up acid funk, heavy on the wah wah pedal, while ‘Death Trip’ weirdly mixes electronica and digeridoo. Hats off to the FK crate diggers for tracking this down and good gritty fare it is too. Label site

Sparrow and the Workshop’s ‘I Will Break You’ (Distiller Records) is fierce folk-rock, from the hard-hit acoustic guitars to Jill Sullivan’s highly distinctive voice – a little touch of Karen O maybe, a big dollop of Grace Slick. The folky touches are redoubled on b-side ‘Giant’ with sawing fiddle added to guitars and drums. They’re a three-piece that washed up in Glasgow from England, Wales and America and on this excellent form all the glossy heritage mags are going to descend on them like flies on guano. Myspace

Swedes take on Americans on the fourth release from none-more-indiepop Atomic Beat Records (OK, apart from Cloudberry). ‘Open Arms’ and ‘Tell Me’ from the Garlands live up to your Scando-pop expectations, with their bright, chiming pop and fjord-pure vocals from Christin, containing a tot of Razorcuts, a soupçon of Smiths and a pinch of Primitives. Baltimore’s The Sugarplums add a romantic, Orange Juice jangle to ‘April Again’ but the brilliantly titled ‘Joyce’s Bicycle Gang’ is a little too pernickety for these ears.
The Garlands’ Myspace
Sugarplums’ Myspace

Cambridge’s Victoria and Jacob have given up the acoustic guitars that graced their first record and concentrated on synths and various electronic trickery, but they haven’t discarded their pop sense. ‘With No Certainty’ (Voga Parochia Records, 7” and download) is poetic dream-pop, with a touch of the junkshop experimentalism of the Shortwave Set: all the weirdest “synthetic” sounds are achieved by looping and distorting Victoria’s voice. The dark synthpop of ‘There’s a War’ is full of grumbling electronic interference, in contrast to which Victoria sings sweetly about our yin and yang natures: “there’s a war between our developments and our animal”. A marriage of innovative electronica and good pop that works.
Myspace

The Cloud Nothings’ ‘Morgan’ (Group Tightener Records 7”) is limited to 250 copies but is worth finding in any format as the Ohio group rampage through a very catchy wonky-pop song that oddly namechecks Arthur Conan Doyle and can’t be dislodged from your brain even if you wanted shot of it (and you won’t). B-side ‘Another Man’ is a rhythmic, dirty-noised echo of the Modern Lovers and very fine it is too. Myspace

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