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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

The Dirtbombs/ Marble Valley/ Amanda Applewood/ Being 747/ The Projects/ Dignan Porch
Singles roundup

Article written by Ged M - Mar 23, 2010

The Dirtbombs’ last album We Have You Surrounded contained an 8-minute electronic squiggle called Race ‘To The Bottom’. Now you can buy it in its full 23 glory (Cass Records 12”). Basically it’s Mick Collins fucking with you; the only organic elements (I think) are deeply buried drums while the rest of it has synths burping and oscillating tones – oh and I’m sure there’s the sound of someone racking up a high score on an original tabletop Space Invaders. In the 80s this was the sound of people feeling out the limits of electronic music so now it’s sort of retro, and it wasn’t actually that good even then. Listen only if extremely alienated. Myspace

Marble Valley’s ‘Super Sober EP’ (Sea Records) is a tour only CD that’s entertaining but ephemeral. As befits the band of ex-Pavement and Silver Jews drummer Steve West, it has the studied looseness of those bands without the genius spark. ‘Artificial Pistols’ is a David Berman like title with Pavement-like loud guitars while ‘Parlez Vous’ has a catchy little keyboard riff married to some irritatingly throwaway lyrics. There are little hommages to Echo and the Bunnymen at various places but the best track is the Breeders-like ‘Waco’, although its lyrics (which you suspect they worked on intensively) are frustratingly trite (“I’m the cat in the hat/ with a baseball bat”). It’s a fun listen with echoes of West’s previous bands but you long for the heft of the originals after a while. Myspace

We received a missive on a Penguin Books postcard from the punctiliously polite Miss Amanda Applewood, commending her latest single 'Pretend (We're In Love)' (Too Young To Die Records) to us. This beautifully brought up child of Oxfordshire has a name that sounds like a third former at Mallory Towers, and her songs have a pining, schoolgirl romanticism about them (the B-side is simply titled 'I Love Boys' and the cover looks lifted from some comic like ‘Misty’). You might already be familiar with her from playing keyboards and recorder with The Boy Least Likely To and, like that band, her solo work has a similar summery, sugary feel. Her passionate, pastoral English pop isn't right for everyone but if you're fond of TBLLT, you won't choke on her sweetness. One to play in the dorm after Matron announces "lights out". Myspace

In this case “pop” means “popular science”. Being 747 have released two chapters of their 55 minute rock opera on the history of evolution, Amoeba to Zebra, which has been touring schools for 18 months. The more musically satisfying track is the quirky pop of ‘Shake Your Backbone’ (Wrath Records, CD and download), sounding like a teenage B-52s. ‘Reigning Reptiles’, a spoken word account of the development of dinosaurs, has a didactic but fun feel. It’s like Sesame Street meets Richard Dawkins, learning while you bop. Myspace

Ah, those crazee Projects! A different line up (just Graeme Wilson and Alex Lawton-Mawdsley left from the band that we saw so often when on Track and Field) but as playfully artrocking as ever. ‘A Million Crimson Roses’ (MPLS Ltd, 7”) is a cover of a romantic Russian hit by Alla Pugacheva, here sung by Mira Ladytron in the same melancholic-east-of-the-Urals style as the original, accompanied by bleeping synths. On the other side is a cover of Los Brincos’ ‘Flamenco’, a 1965 beatpop smash by “the Spanish Beatles”, delivered with an insistent keyboard riff and much howling. This is much art happening as a record, and almost feels like it should have a manifesto attached but ‘…Roses’ at least is worth hearing if you liked the Projects Mark I. Myspace

From London but on a US label, Dignan Porch make low-fi woozy pop in their own distinctive and attractive style. Both sides of the single are short but wonderful; ‘On A Ride’ (Captured Tracks 7”) is essentially a feeling captured in a riff and a refrain but very pretty – like a long, expelled sigh of pleasure. The B-side ‘The Day Things Changed’ is like a small and intense Modern Lovers, with buzzy guitar patrolling the background. Don’t know much about the Porch but would like to hear more, and longer, songs! Myspace

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