Loud And Quiet

So, we’re hoping Melbourne’s King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard took a rest over the christmas break, because their calendar in 2017 looks ridiculous. At the end of February, they will release the first of five – that’s not a typo, yes five – albums this year. They’ll also go on tour.

First up is ‘Flying Microtonal Banana’. The collective have already shared spiky first single ‘Rattlesnake’, and now they’ve just put out ‘Sleep Drifter’. This new track clocks in at less than five minutes, which frankly for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard is brief.

They’re back in the UK in the summer, playing Field Day festival, plus dates in London and Manchester.

A few days back Oakland four-piece RAYS shared this new track ‘Drop Dead’.

On first listen it sounded fine. But it’s track we’ve kept coming back to, so it must have something about it.

Their collective pedigree is proven. In the past Stanley Martinez, Eva Hannan, Troy Hewitt and Alexa Pantalone have played with local bands with excellent names like Life Stinks, Violent Change and Dadfag.

The foursome are working with Trouble In Mind Records – based in Chicago and home to the likes of The Paperhead, Morgan Delt and Ultimate Painting – for their debut album coming out on 31 March.

‘Drop Dead’ is produced by Kelley Stoltz. When you listen, it comes as no surprise to learn it’s mastered by Mikey Young who has previously worked with Melbourne’s Eddy Current Suppression Ring, because it reminds us a lot of them.

There’s some good noises coming out of Newcastle right now.

At the end of this week Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs put out their blistering three-track debut album ‘Feed The Rats’ (read our review).

Also from the area are Tough Tits (coincidently playing a show with Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs on 20 January at London’s The Lexington). They’re Ayesha (vocals/guitar), Liz (drums/shouts) and Hells (bassist/vocals).

Last June they released their debut EP ‘Hairless’. They’ve started 2017 by sharing two belting new tracks, ‘Anxious’ being our pick of the pair.

Danny Brown’s ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ album got a lot of end of year big ups as 2016 came to a close. Rightfully so. It came top five on our list.

Now, the guy responsible for the a lot of the production on that album (10 tracks) has appeared with new music. Lewisham’s Paul White has shared ‘Everything You’ve Forgotten’, a mix of almost half an hour of unreleased music. The majority of it is instrumental, although Danny’s voice does pop up.

White’s released a number of records, including a collaborative concept LP with Open Mike Eagle in the last 12 months, Right now, he’s working on more solo stuff due to come out later this year.

In 2014, after 19 years of nothing, Creation cult band Slowdive resurfaced for a string of shows starting at Primavera Sound. Daniel Dylan Wray was there and spoke to Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead moments before they went on stage.

In that interview they alluded to making a new record (their fourth, following ‘Just for a Day’ (1991), ‘Souvlaki’ (1993) and ‘Pygmalion’ (1995)), but have remained quiet since that summer of touring. It was looking like they’d slipped off once again, with Goswell working with Mogwai’s Stuart Braitwaite on new project Minor Victories.

Today, though, they’ve shared this new track, ‘Star Roving’, via a new deal with Dead Oceans. There’s no mention of a new album just yet, but, c’mon, bands like Slowdive don’t sign single deals these days, do they?

We’ve returned to our office after our extended New Years break to a mountain of new music. In the pile we found ‘Chew’, the forthcoming, fourth album from Nashville band The Paperhead, who I’ll admit to being completely unfamiliar with.

This new record, released via Trouble In Mind on February 17th, though, has been taking the edge off of our early January.

‘Dama de Lavanda’ is the only track out there at the moment, but it’ll give you an idea of where this trio get their kicks from. They are proud obsessives of Sixties British psychedelia, although it’s on this song where they seem to have spent the whole of their trumpet budget. Still, it should give you an idea of what to expect from ‘Chew’ when it arrives next month. Strange how they don’t look like a band interested in the music of the late ’60 and early ’70s, though.

See if you can count how many separate tracks go into this new song from Ariel Pink and Weyes Blood. It’s not short of 4, as the West Coast friends skip from Pink’s typical singer/songwriter fare to blasts of opera from Natalie Mering, followed by what sounds like a completely different song for one passage. Then a calypso folk demo interlude with a definite skip in the recording tape.

The pair will release ‘Tears On Fire’ on a new collaborative EP called ‘Myths 002’ via Mexican Summer on January 27 (they recorded it in the middle of the desert, naturally), who put out Merings’ albums already, and will reportedly release their first Ariel Pink record later this year.

You know when people say “you’ve gotta laugh… otherwise you’d cry” – that feeling of humour in the face of drudgery remains at the heart of Nottingham duo Sleaford Mods, whose new album is called ‘English Tapas’ (released via Rough Trade on March 3rd).

It sounds like Sleaford Mods, if you heard ‘Key Markets’ in 2015, breakthrough LP ‘Divide And Exit’ in 2014, or, possibly, ‘Wank’ (yes ‘Wank’) from 2012 – salty spoken word over rudimental bossanova beats, where Jason Williamson’s barbed tongue is having a laugh while simultaneously despairing at the state of things. It’s how the duo have continued to appeal in our troubling times, where a billionaire like Sir Philip Green can get away with selling a company for £1 whilst knowing full well that he’s spent his workers’ pensions.

Here’s how Sleaford Mods imagine Green, pratting around on his yacht without a care in the world. Remarkably, that’s just their mate dressed up.

As Williamson says of new track ‘BHS’: “Buy a company, run it down, take the money, fuck the workers, it’s legal.”

When Benjamin John Power isn’t doing Fuck Buttons he is Blanck Mass and he’s made two great albums in the past, 2011’s ‘Blanck Mass’ and 2015’s ‘Dumb Flesh’.

He’s just announced there’s a new one on the way, ‘World Eater’ will be released via Sacred Bones on 3 March.

The artwork for the LP is a close-up crop of an animal’s bare teeth and pink gums, and Power has this to say about its creation. “Fear and hope are both parts of our human make up, but it’s the way that we act upon these feelings that is of concern to me – to understand the beast or to become the beast.”

The first track he’s shared from it, ‘Please’, marks a meatier, less-ambient sound for Blanck Mass. Definitely worth almost 8 minutes of your time.

Blacnk Mass play London’s Rich Mix on 27 April.