Loud And Quiet

In the run-up to this year’s Primavera Sound, Barcelona, we’re asking a handful of artists to take a look at the line-up and compile a playlist of their favourite tracks by other acts also playing. Have a listen – Julia Jacklin, Noga Erez and Japandroids have already taken part in this mini-series.

Next up are The Black Angels. They know a good festival when they see one. Co-founders of Austin Psych Fest, they’ll be back in Spain this year to perform at Primavera. They play the Ray-Ban stage stage on Thursday 1 June.

“The Zombies’ ‘Odyssey and Oracle’ is an all-time favourite although we are also inspired by the interesting rhythms and moods of these artists from the upcoming Primavera line-up. This collection of songs weaves past and present sounds that seem to channel a primitive world. We are more than honoured to join the Primavera line-up this year.”

Listen to their choices below (bare in mind, the odd track isn’t available on some of the platforms).

Junun – There Are Birds In The Echo Chamber
Aphex Twin – We Are The Music Makers
Wand – Cave In
Front 242 – Headhunter
SURVIVE – Hour Glass
This Heat – 24 Track Loop
Royal Trux – The Inside Game
Flying Lotus – Melt
Nicolas Jaar – Three Sides of Nazareth
Gas – Narkopop 8

The Black Angels’ latest album ‘Death Song’ is out now.

South London band Meatraffle released their debut album ‘Hi-Fi Classics’ in 2015.

You might remember they’re the rabble who have gloriously daft names like Tingle Mackerel who plays guitar, Cloudy Truffles on bass and Fats McCourt behind the kit. They’re lead by trumpet playing vocalist Zsa Zsa Sapien.

Recently the Brixton outfit have been back in the studio recording, but they won’t be making a second album. Nope, in a bid to avoid the curse of the ‘difficult second album’ they say they’ve decided to skip straight to the release of their third one.

As of now, they do have some new music to share, though. The track is titled ‘Brother’ and comes out as a 7″ single via Moshi Moshi Singles Club on 14 July.

They’ve provided some background about it: “‘Brother’ is about the platonic love you have with your friends (sex is forbidden). It’s about sharing and having things in common. The ups and downs, of course – about who buys more rounds of drinks than the others. It’s a dry orgy, that’s all it is.”

Here it is:

They’re performing some shows, this is where they’ll be:

London, The Social (Celebrating 40 Years of The Fall) – 23 May
Bristol, Gravy Train @ The Crofters Rights – 10 June
Liverpool, International Festival of Psychedelia – 22/23 September

Photo by: Rob Newton

If Brian King and David Prowse weren’t in Japandroids they’d probably easily snare a job with the Barcelona tourism board or Primavera‘s in-house press team.

Next week – the main programme kicks off on Thursday 1 June – they’ll join hundreds of other artists in performing at this year’s festival in Barcelona. They’ve been before, and judging by this message they’ve sent us, they can’t wait to get back.

“Primavera is by far my favourite festival in the world. It’s in a amazing waterfront location in one of the greatest cities on the planet, and it has the best atmosphere of any festival I’ve ever been to. But above all that, the reason it’s my favourite is because it consistently has the best line-up out of any festival in the world.”

That’s true, time and time again Primavera delivers.

“This playlist bounces around between a bunch of genres and eras, but I think that is fitting for a festival like Primavera. The line-up is all over the map, with the only common thread being that it’s incredibly inspiring and creative music, regardless of genre.”

Here’s the list of tracks Japandroids have compiled. They’re the latest in our mini-series before it all happens, you can also hear mixes put together by Julia Jacklin and Noga Erez.

Frank Ocean – Nights
Aphex Twin – Analogue Bubblebath
Sleaford Mods – I Feel So Wrong
Grace Jones – Nipple to the Bottle
Run the Jewels – 36″ Chain
Priests – Pink White House
Operators – Evil
King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard – Sleep Drifter
Julie Doiron – Lovers of the World
Arab Strap – Flirt
Angel Olsen – Sister
Magnetic Fields – Love is Like a Bottle of Gin
The Zombies – Changes
Van Morrison – Astral Weeks

Japandroids’ album ‘Near To The Wild Heart Of Life’ is out now.

This photo of DIY duo Freak Genes says a lot about them and their debut album, ‘Playtime’.

Andrew Anderson is the guy on the left – Charlie Murphy is the one holding his head. It’s a necessary situation for the two of them – they don’t live in the same place and only meet up to either record or play a show. It’s also a pretty silly photo, and, having played in various punk bands in the North of England (The Hipshakes, Proto Idiot, Black Tambourines, Red Cords), silliness is something that the pair are embracing.

“Freak Genes is all the silly ideas that would normally be ignored,” they say, “the stuff that’s so simple it seems stupid.”

We’re not really sure where Murphy lives, but Anderson is in Manchester, which perhaps accounts for ‘Playtime’ sounding like and old Buzzcocks record.

It’s refreshingly daft, but also there’s more to it that the band will have you believe when they say it was made “using instruments we can’t always play, and recording equipment we don’t truly understand”.

Cult garage label Alien Snatch! seem to think so. They’re releasing the album later this month. But first, here it is in full.

You know Josin? No. Good, nor did I until this past weekend.

Listen to ‘Feral Thing’, and it sounds like a track that could have been lifted from Thom Yorke’s ‘The Eraser’ sessions, with her languid vocal and twitchy sonics.

But it’s the video which makes the whole thing even more stunning.

Josin says she made up most of the choreography on the spot. It’s filmed among the precarious rock formations, deep ravines and rushing mountain rivers of Slovenia’s beautiful Julian Alps. It was done with just one cameraman/drone pilot, Marc Neckermann.

Josin’s story: She’s German artist, Arabella Rauch. Both her parents are opera singers. Until recently she was pursuing a career in medicine, studying in Nice, France, before giving it up to commit to music.

“It has never been my plan to dance in front of a camera for one of my songs, but somehow this idea got its own way,” she says of this new clip.

‘Feral Thing’ the latest track to be released from Josin’s debut EP, ‘Epilogue’, which comes out via Dumont Dumont on 2 June.

In September, Los Angeles foursome Froth will realise a bit of a dream of theirs. They’ll be heading out on a US tour supporting one of their favourite bands, Ride.

“We found out about Ride just from listening to a lot of the Creation Records stuff from the 90s,” they explain. “We’ve been influenced by that era of music since we started the band so the fact that we get to be label mates and tour with a band that helped shape that movement in music is a huge honour for us.”

So, in celebration, Froth have put together a playlist of their top 10 favourite Ride songs (in no particular order). Ride have got wind of this, and have responded.

“Hello Froth, I was blown away that you made a Ride mixtape… Thanks! Like the tracks you chose, it’s good to see a b side like ‘All I Can See’ in there, and it made me happy to see a couple of our new tunes in there too. I’m a big fan of your band, especially like the track ‘Passing Thing’, hopefully you’ll do that one when we play together in the States? All the best, Andy Bell.”

So, yeah, sounds like everyone is going to get along just swimmingly.

Listen to Froth’s mix below, on either Apple Music or Spotify.

Before that tour, Ride will release their new album, ‘Weather Diaries’ – their first album in 20 years – via Wichita on 16 June.

They’ll also be playing the following shows and instores around the release.

London, Rough Trade East (instore + signing) – 19 June
Oxford, Fopp (signing, 5.30pm) – 20 June
Kingston, New Slang (instore) – 22 June

They also recently shared a clip of them performing ‘Home Is A Feeling’ at this year’s BBC 6 Music Festival in Glasgow.

Back in February Froth released their most recent album ‘Outside (briefly)’. Here’s the video for their track ‘Sensitive Girl’ because why not.

Sudden heartbreak is a powerful force, as Manchester songwriter Elle Mary knows all too well. She was writing folk music until a relationship she was in ended abruptly and things changed.

Afterwards, the songs she began to write – dark, electric, spidery noir-rock – became a sort of view into her subconscious. A way of analysing the feelings she was struggling to articulate otherwise. She gave it a new name, Elle Mary and The Bad Men.

And sometimes a symbolic physical gesture helps put a full stop on a chapter, and a capital letter on the next one. In the video for her new track ‘Pretend’ she picks up some clippers and calmly shaves her head. It’s the kind of video where you’re really only ever going to get one-take. It makes for a transfixing clip.

‘Pretend’ is available available now on all digital platforms via Sideway Saloon/Kartel Music Group.

Elle Mary have some upcoming live shows, you’ll find them here.

Manchester, Soup Kitchen (with Molly Burch) – 31 May

Kendall Calling festival – 27 July

Ahead of this year’s Primavera Sound, we’ve asked a handful of artists playing the festival to take a scan down the line-up poster and put together a guest playlist of their favourite acts who’re also on the bill.

You can already listen to the playlist put together by Julia Jacklin.

It’s an important show for Tel Aviv’s Noga Erez, mostly because she’s playing 24 hours after she releases her debut album into the world. She plays the Barcelona festival on Saturday 3 June on the Bacardi Live stage.

Noga Erez says: “The line-up for this year’s festival, damn, I’ve been dreaming about seeing so many of these artists. I’m so excited to be a part of the festival as well. Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’, for instance, was playing on repeat throughout the making of my upcoming album. It had such a strong influence on me, and on this record. It feels so right that this will also kind of be an album launch party, as the album comes out the day before this show.”

Here’s what Noga’s chosen. You can listen to her guest mix below via Apple Music or Spotify, whichever you prefer.

Kate Tempest – Europe Is Lost
Run The Jewels – Legend Has It
Aphex Twin – Windowlicker
Red Axes – Sun My Sweet Sun
Frank Ocean – Pink + White
Sinkane – U’Huh
Bon Iver – 33 “God”
King Krule – Easy Easy
Flying Lotus – Dead Man’s Tetris (feat. Captain Murphy and Snoop Dogg)
Mitski – Your Best American Girl

Noga Erez’s debut album ‘Off The Radar’ is out on 2 June via City Slang, check out the recently released video for the title track below.

It’s the liberating sound of two people who stopped worrying and decided to concentrate on having a good time.

Blood Red Shoes‘ Laura Mary Carter and Natalie Chahal (aka Natalie Bang Bang) have been doing this music thing long enough to know that when you’re having a laugh and feel a chemistry follow your instinct.

They’re old friends from London, and as the story goes, they went to Los Angeles, and while eating tacos outside the Playboy Mansion on Valentine’s Day, came up with Shit Girlfriend. They describe the project as “a DIY period-punk femme explosion meets the sticking out tongue emoji.” The don’t overcomplicate things, they write, and they record. It’s the sound of care-free reckless abandon.

After releasing ‘Mummy’s Boy’ earlier this year, they’ve just shared a new track, ‘I Don’t Wanna Die’.

Here they are: “When we’re out together, we’re always having a good time, getting ourselves into bizarre and hilarious situations. We thought we ought to make songs about it.”

‘I Don’t Wanna Die’ is part of a double A-side release coming out on PNKSLM Recordings on Friday (19 May). Listen to it below.

The release is available to pre-order and they’re heading to Brighton this week to play The Great Escape.