What’s the big news coming out of SXSW? Not sure? Oh, well, who cares because obviously the most important thing is that Snapped Ankles – the London trio, who as you can see above, look like enchanted shrubbery – have a new track to share.
It’s called ‘I Want My Minutes Back’, and it’s really good.
Apparently they’re now based in east London and have signed to The Leaf Label (appropriate), but we prefer to think that they’ve made this new song and then scurried back up the Mighty Oak they clambered down from.
All anyone could talk about when The Orielles first emerged a couple of years back was their young age. In fairness, they did appear have an almost unnatural songwriting wisdom given their years (14/15) at the time.
But, now it’s time to move on from that. The Halifax threesome – Sidonie B Hand-Halford, Esmé Dee Hand-Halford and Henry Carlyle Wade – have signed with Heavenly Recordings and recorded a bunch of new material.
They’ve just shared a new track, it’s called ‘Sugar Tastes Like Salt’ – an 8-minute Gang of Four-style lick driven by an old disco beat which turns into something all together more feral.
At the end of last year, after touring around the world Show Me The Body went back to their native New York and played five shows in each of the five boroughs each with a different bill of artists.
While they were doing that, they had use of a studio space in Lower Manhattan.
They used the time wisely, and recorded a new mixtape, ‘Corpus I’ coming out on 24 March. It features an impressive bill of collaborators including Denzel Curry, Princess Nokia, Nolife, Moor Mother, Cities Aviv and others.
And if you’re looking for a slightly gross distraction, check out the video Show Me The Body have made for their recently shared track ‘Trash’.
Julian Cashwan Pratt from the band is taking a perfectly normal shower until…
The track list for the mixtape is as follows:
1. Intro 2. Trash 3. You Thought What You Saw Was It (feat. Eartheater) 4. Hungry (feat. Dreamcrusher) 5. In a Grave (feat. Denzel Curry, Eartheater, Moor Mother) 6. Taxi Hell (feat. Justin Flammia) 7. Just A Slither (feat. Negashi Armada) 8. Halogen (feat. Mal Devisa) 9. Stress (feat. Cities Aviv) 10. My Whole Family (feat. Skunk Rott, Chris Wilson, Pierre Botardo) 11. I’m On It (feat. Casino Theo) 12. Spit (feat. Princess Nokia) 13. Cyba Slam Fif World Dance Party (Uppa Echelon dance remix) 14. Everything Hate Here (feat. Moor Mother) 15. Two Hands (feat. Nolife) 16. Why you lying (feat. Babyglock, Tony Seltzer) 17. Proud Boys (feat. Dedekind Cut)
There’s been a reoccurring theme from the stuff we’ve written about on our Listening Post this week, and that’s been protest. From Tel Aviv’s Noga Erez putting a left-field pop slant on her disagreement with inherited power through to Stevenage punk band Bad Breeding announcing new state of the nation album ‘Divide’ along with an essay about, among other things, the consequences of Nigel Farage’s poisonous rhetoric.
GNOD aren’t shying away from all this either. At the end of the month they’ll release a new album, and the title gives more than a weighty hint as to its contents: ‘JUST SAY NO TO THE PSYCHO RIGHT-WING CAPITALIST FASCIST INDUSTRIAL DEATH MACHINE’.
It’s out via Rocket Recordings on 31 March. But before then they’ve got a new, combative, 12-minute track called ‘Stick In The Wheel’ to share.
If this is your first introduction to GNOD then we’re happy for you – for 10 years the Salford-based collective have been making uncompromising music. Frankly there’s a vertigo-inducing depth of material to get into from the collective, but also at the hands of their dozen or so associated side-projects. Still, this is a more than decent place to start.
“It seems like we are heading towards even more unsettling times in the near future than we are in at present,” says Chris Haslam from Gnod. “2016 is just the beginning of what I see as the establishment’s systematic destruction of liberalism and equality as a reaction to the general public’s loss of faith in their system.”
“What is going on in the world politically at the moment is killing souls, killing joy and love. It’s important that music continues to empower people and I think as an artist of this time you need to try to do that.”
GNOD are going on a lengthy tour this spring, here’s where you’ll find them:
Todmorden, The Golden Lion – 13 April London, Electrowerkz – 14 Paris, Instant Chavires – 15 Brussels, Mag 4 – 14 Tilburh, Roadburn – 20/23 Geneva, Cave 12 – 25 Lyon, Sonic – 26 Torino, Blah Blah – 27 Ravenna, Bronson – 28 Lubiana, Gromka – 29 Krems, Donau Fest – 30 Prague, Klub Famu – 2 May Berlin, Urban Spreee – 3 Gent, Gouvernment – 4 Brighton, Green Door Store – 6 Cambridge, Portland Arms – 18 Bristol, The Island – 19 Bristol, The Crypt – 20 Bristol, Church of Saint John – 21 Newcastle, Cluny – 24 Aarhus, Tape Denmark – 30 Aalborg, 1000FRYD – 31 Copenhagan, Loppen – 1 June Gothenburg, Truckstop Alaska – 2 Malmo, Plan B – 3 Stubnitz, Turnitz- 4 Cardiff, Moon Club – 8
The spotlight is on Hull this year, which hopefully means a few people will pick up on the local music scene there and bands like Vulgarians.
The four-piece have just shared this new video for their track ‘Hands Around The Waste’, directed by Aidan Razzall from Weirds.
Following up their debut release ‘Life’s Successful Death’ last summer, the track is going to appear on a new EP, ‘Almost-Instinct, Almost True’, produced by MJ from Hookworms, out on 5 May.
It’s creepy.
Connor Cheesman from the band has this to say about it all: “With Hands Around The Waste, we always felt it had a real jazzy, disco feel in parts, which really is a totally foreign world for us. I mean, it still has that heavy punch to it, but it was sonically something we certainly hadn’t touched on before. We wanted the video to reciprocate that feel. So, we present to you… ‘Steve Dream’. A perverted ’70s hypnotherapist.”
Having just been on tour with The Wytches, Vulgarians also have announced a hometown show at Hull’s Polar Bear venue on 26 May. It’ll finish off their recently announced UK headline tour. Here are the upcoming dates.
Brexit, Trump, Farage. Let’s face it, that stuff is like pouring petrol on the flames of a band like Bad Breeding.
Over the past four years and a bunch of releases, the Stevenage punks have railed against the misrepresentation of the working classes, the ever-extreme manipulation by the media and, well, the general political and socio-economic state of Britain.
It wouldn’t have escaped your notice that the last 12 months have been extraordinary. Even though they released an album less than a year ago, following the European referendum Bad Breeding got back to recording to try and “make sense of the confusion and misdirection that was so prevalent last summer.
“In some ways it’s an attempt to resist the impulse to collapse under the weight of perpetual distortion packaged by certain sections of the British media, but at times we simply found ourselves instinctively lashing out in bewilderment at what was unravelling around us.” It’s that, with what they describe as “moments of pretty difficult personal trauma for us, too.”
The Stevenage punks will release their second album ‘Divide’ on London label La Vida Es un Mus on 7 April. A week later they’re playing two nights at London’s Sebright Arms on 14 and 15 April.
Jake Farrell, the band’s collaborator, has also written an essay. Entitled ‘An End To Silence’, you can read it in full below. And, honestly, do – it’s a impassioned bit of writing.
Seattle band Chastity Belt have always delivered their message with no little humour and self-depreciating wit.
Their 2013 debut ‘No Regerts’ had that, so, too, did 2015’s ‘Time to Go Home’.
But for their latest one, called ‘I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone’ and released on Hardly Art on 2 June, they say they’ve adopted a more serious tone.
While the video for the lead track ‘Different Now’ is a pastiche of Temple of the Dog’s video for ‘Hunger Strike’, the track reflects their new found directness. We think it’s superb.
Back in the autumn of 2016, Noga Erez’s debut track ‘Dance While You Shoot’ caught a lot of peoples’ attention. Including ours.
Gemma Samways spoke to her in one of her first interviews. At that stage, Erez was giving little away about what was to come. But now, a few months on, her debut album is complete and has a title, ‘Off The Radar’, and it will be released on City Slang on 2 June.
In the video for new track ‘Toy’, Noga performs on a roof top wearing a black hood, flanked by two dancers. It’s all set against the backdrop of the cloudless blue sky of her home city of Tel Aviv.
“The lyrics while short,” she says, “are meant to show the contrast between someone who disowns his ‘crown’ vs. someone who embraces the privilege, entitlement and influence and uses it for their own personal needs. They become self-absorbed and destructive. Showing how quickly and easily power can corrupt a person.”
Making music is often about overcoming obstacles. For some that might be writer’s block, others it might be the finances.
For Russian trio Gnoomes it was a slightly more complex scenario.
Before the Perm band set out to record their second album ‘Tschak!’ some members of the band were walking down the street when they were picked up by police and jailed (they were drug tested, and weed was discovered in their samples). They were locked up for five days. Afterwards, they had to attend regular testing to attest that they were completely clean.
But it meant the follow-up to the psychedelic band’s debut, was made, well, without any psychedelics. It wasn’t a challenge they were expecting.
Meanwhile, at the beginning of the process vocalist Alex Pyankov also narrowly avoided being conscripted into the Russian army.
So in a way, the existence of this stark album, recorded in an old soviet-era TV and radio station building, is a bit of a triumph. On it there are blasts of industrial noise, there are melodies and there are subtle more electronic tinges compared to their first outing ‘Ngan’.
Listen to ‘Tschak!’ below. It’s out on the wonderful Rocket Recordings on 10 March. The album is available to pre-order now on LP/CD and digitally.
