Loud And Quiet

A couple of years ago, already well into his sixties, John Carpenter, the legendary horror film director and composer, went on tour for the first time. He spoke to James F. Thompson in a rare interview at the time.

During that subsequent world tour, he was playing music from two new albums – ‘Lost Themes’ (2015) and ‘Lost Themes II‘. 

Now, along with members of his live band – his son, Cody Carpenter, and godson, Daniel Davies – he has rerecorded 13 of his classic movie themes which he’s compiled together as an album.

That includes famous eerie, dystopian sci-fi themes from the likes of Dark Star, Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Starman and Prince of Darkness.

‘Anthology: Movie Themes 1974-1998’ will come out on Sacred Bones on 20 October.

Carpenter has just shared one of the newly recorded compositions, ‘In The Mouth of Madness’. Dave Davies from The Kinks originally played the metal-riff – now freshly recorded by Carpenter’s son.

A good long time could be spent unpacking the happenings in the video for Xenoula’s debut track ‘Chief of Tin’. She arrives on the planet (presuming Earth) in a space capsule, then wanders around a rain forest like some kind of alien litter picker surveying objects with curiosity.

This is the first piece of work the new artist has shared. Xenoula is songwriter Romy Xeno, who partly grew up in South Africa before moving to the UK at the age of 16. More recently she left the city and upped sticks again to north Wales.

Home to the likes of Richard Dawson and Alex Izenberg, she’s signed up with the record label Weird World. An appropriate place, since that’s exactly the kind of thing she looks capable of creating.

Sam Dust (LA Priest, Soft Hair, Late of the Pier) has produced this first track – it has his strange sonic fingerprints all over it.

When Julien Baker wrote the nine songs on her debut album ‘Sprained Ankle’, she thought it’d be a success if her friends at school heard it. Maybe she’d head out on a DIY tour and play a few shows, she hoped. It obviously ended up reaching a lot more people.

It was an intimate piece of work. When Loud And Quiet’s Ian Roebuck spoke to the Memphis/Nashville songwriter last year, he described it as “‘Sprained Ankle’ – an intimate listen of young adult vocals and clean guitar and nothing else – deals with pretty weighty issues, like depression, anxiety and faith, but Julien’s directness still has a lightness of touch that resonates with every listen.” That interview is here, should you want to read it.

Matador Records ended up rereleasing ‘Sprained Ankle’, but now there’s news that Baker’s finished her second album ‘Turn Out The Lights’ and that it’ll be out, again via Matador, on October 27.

She’s just shared a new track from it – ‘Appointments’.

I always feel for those people, I really do. Whether they’re on the vomit-smelling strip of San Antonio or the high street in Camden, those souls giving out flyers for clubnights and pub crawls are just trying to get by. I always take one.

Charles Howl did that for a while when he was 18. He’d gone to Amsterdam for three days with mates when they finished school, and didn’t come back for a while.

“When they were returning home I didn’t see anything for me back there and so I stayed,” he says.

Anyway, recently the bassist with The Proper Ornaments has been back to spend his first meaningful time there since those days, to record an album. His second, following his 2015 debut ‘Sir Vices’. It’s called, ‘My Idol Family’ and comes out on 27 October.

The idea for heading back to the Netherlands was inspired by James Murphy – and the way he shifted LCD Soundsystem into a mansion in LA a few years back to record ‘This is Happening’. Howl, did his own version of that, on a slimmer budget and in Amsterdam.

“I’ve never thought that kind of thing is only for big bands with loads of money. So I researched places in Amsterdam and found a reggae studio on the outskirts in a suburb called Weesp. It included an Air B&B room and so I sub let my room in London and booked a month in the studio.”

Bobby Syme from The Proper Ornaments was his main collaborator for the project. Listen to the first track from it, ‘The Dinner Party’.

Thematically the album explores the subject matters of family, and idols. Some of those idols referenced include Lou Reed, John Lennon and Damon Albarn.

Photo by: Bex Day

Almost a year ago to the day, Slow Club released their fifth album ‘One Day All of This Won’t Matter Anymore’. That pretty much marked 10 years for the Sheffield duo – Rebecca Taylor and Charles Watson. An album every 24 months and tens of thousands of miles on the touring clock, they worked hard.

Natural then, that they’ve both decided to take a break and try something different for the moment. And Self Esteem’s debut single ‘Your Wife’ is different in an entirely refreshing way.

Self Esteem, of course, fluctuates. And this is a project in which Taylor can write about her experiences over the past decade but also express more of herself (both ups and downs, things which piss her off and things which make her laugh).

Her first track, ‘Your Wife’, is the first taste of an experimentation with a new sound, too. The electronic pop meets Fleetwood Mac pop track was produced by Django Django’s Dave Maclean.

Take a listen:

‘Your Wife’ is being released on limited edition 12″ via Kick And Clap on November 24.

Over the years David West‘s been involved in almost too many projects to mention, but here’s a few. Right now: Rat Columns, Rank/Xerox and Liberation. In the past: Lace Curtain, Burning Sensation and Total Control.

In other words, the Perth-born New York-based musician is a guy who likes to keep busy.

And he’s got a new album ready. It’s called ‘Cherry on Willow’ and will come out under the title David West with Teardrops. It’s him, plus collaborators, Teardrops being “an open ensemble of friends and collaborators”.

Some of those collaborators past/present are involved, too. Including Mikey Young of Total Control and, personal favourites, Eddy Current Suppression Ring who has produced it.

He’s just shared the new video for the new track ‘Swan’s Beat’. The whole thing has a murky swagger, and could be the soundtrack to a ’70s cop show. Or something.

West has a neat way of putting it, describing the video as “an exploration of high definition footage given a low definition scrambling treatment with a theme of ‘exotic confusion'”. So, enjoy some exotic confusion.

‘Cherry on Willow’ will come out on Tough Love on 20 October.

People my age were lucky to grow up in Southend-on-Sea when we did. The clichés of the Essex town all rang true – the Novas with down-lighting and dump valves, the rude boys that drove them, the dicey arcades, and the public appearances at clubs called TOTS by Beppe Di Marco from Eastenders. There was actually plenty to enjoy within all of that, and then a punk club called Junk started up playing not UK garage but rare garage rock 7-inches. From Junk came The Horrors and Neil’s Children, around the time that These New Puritans got going. It gave the alternative young people of Southend something else and for a time inspired a handful of other club-nights and vintage shops.

Following the end of Junk and the ascension of its bands, Southend slowed back down and returned to its default settings somewhat, but in recent years that’s been changing once again, with the opening of the South record store, renewed life in a pub called The Railway and now the formation of Southend Records – a new label from Rebecca Gillieron to promote experimental music from the town and the surround estuary area.  

On October 13 the label will release the debut album by The Plan; Gillieron’s own group that started as a side project to her trio Wetdog, and now includes members of other DIY bands like Vic Godard’s Subway Sect, Private Trousers and The Ghosts.

The record is called ‘Nervous Energy’ (out 13 October), which brings us nicely to the tumbling post-punk of new single ‘Annotate The Text’, which is over within 93 seconds.

Gillieron, who sings and plays guitar in the band, says of this first track:”I used to be an editor, so this was probably written whilst I was meant to be working, and it’s about taking control of reality, embellishing the best features of your existence, deleting negative factors, shaping the positive elements.”

If you think Margate’s good, you really should check out what’s going on beneath the surface in Southend-on-Sea.

It won’t come as news to you that the world is having a bit of a stinker of late. And there will be a generation after us who, quite likely, will wonder what the hell was going on?

Detroit band Protomartyr’s forthcoming new album ‘Relatives In Descent’, they say, is a piece of work which questions the general “unknowable nature of truth”. It’s not a concept LP, but that overarching question weaves its way throughout the album.

Last month, the band’s latest chapter was introduced with the brilliant single ‘A Private Understanding’.

Now, they’ve put out a new one – ‘My Children’ – and announced a UK tour for later this year. Honestly, you’d be a fool not to go to one of the shows.

‘Relatives In Descent’ is out via Domino on 29 September.

Sauna Youth are supporting at these shows, too:

Brighton, The Haunt – 12 November
London, The Dome – 14
Manchester, Deaf Institute – 15
Newcastle, The Cluny – 16
Glasgow, CCA – 17
Dublin, Whelan’s – 18
Leeds, Brudenell – 19

Rejjie Snow is the kid who grew up in a suburb of Dublin but moved to a couple of different college towns in the US when he secured a football (soccer) scholarship at the age of 17.

Anyway, it’s left him with something of diverse set of roots. Now he lives in London, still visits his grandma regularly back in Ireland but also spends a decent amount of time back in America because of the record deal he’s signed with US label 300.

That doesn’t just come out in his hybrid delivery, but also in the visuals that surround it. He goes back to Dublin in the video for ‘Virgo’ a new track he’s just posted.

In it, Rejjie hangs out in his home city, while kids play basketball while riding a horse, mess about with miniature motor bikes and a bloke rides around on a quad bike wearing a balaclava.

It’s also a departure from the old school hip-hop sound heard on his earlier work, but a summer tune nonetheless.

Rejjie Snow spoke us to us earlier this year about his background, his plans and forthcoming debut album, ‘Dear Annie’.