Loud And Quiet

Ian Svenonius has spent enough time in music – more specifically punk rock ‘n’ roll – to know what it is. Know how it works. Know that if you don’t have some fun with it and its familiar tropes you’ll quickly go insane. After “a lifetime in the trenches” playing with the likes of Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Weird War, XYZ and Chain and The Gang (there’s more) and writing a number of books (try Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group for starters) last year he went solo under the name Escape-ism. He announced the project with the instructively titled debut ‘Introduction to Escape-ism’.

Now, it’s time for Stage Two. On 7 September Escape-ism will release their second album ‘The Lost Record’ on Merge. The engaging myth of the ‘lost record’ continues to gain traction – those albums often initially overlooked or never released gathering dust in someone’s tool shed to one day be discovered and gloriously celebrated as an excavated classic. Escape-ism say they’ve done that but just cut out all the faff in the middle – all the decades, and the waiting. Basically just cut to the chase with a classic.

In an accompanying essay announcing the release Johnny Sincere (ahem!) writes:

“The process a record has to go through to be “lost” – and then found again – is arduous. It’s also quite risky, since most lost records are really just lost: tossed aside and forgotten forever.

So, when Escape-ism – the most exciting group in the world – announced its new and highly anticipated release ‘The Lost Record’, it created a commotion. For some, it seemed unfair for Escape-ism to jump ahead of the usual protocol and not go through the degradation that a historic “lost record” suffers: the endless time spent in a bin in the basement or a remote warehouse. Unshipped, unloved, unappreciated.

But for Escape-ism, it seemed easier to circumvent the rigmarole and just get on with it.”

‘The Lost Record’ is being previewed by this new song ‘Nothing Personal’. Ian explains:

“It’s a super-8 movie filmed by Alexandra Cabral and featuring Zumi and Ariana Papademetropoulos. The song and video explores the moral system underpinning capitalism, and visually contextualizes it as another aberrant and sinister cult ideology.”

Escape-ism have also announced a UK tour, they’ll be calling at:

Moth Club, London – 13 September
Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow – 14
The Crescent, York – 15
The Peer Hat, Manchester – 16
TBA, Margate – 17
The Rose Hill, Brighton – 18

Photo by: Alexandra Cabral  

It’s literally just over a year ago that audiobooks wrote ‘Hot Salt’. Almost to the day in fact. As the duo, Fine Art student Evangeline Ling and music producer David Wrench, explain in our recent interview feature the song came to them on the longest day of 2017. “We just wanted something we could dance to on summer solstice,” offered Wrench. “It happened by accident, we just said, ‘oh, we’ve written a pop song.'”

It’s a really good pop song, and now it’s one with a really good video. One where the twosome mostly dance in a field, but somehow make it infinitely more interesting than that sounds. To be honest, it’s not unlike audiobooks’ infectious live show which is a total, unbridled blast.

audiobooks released ‘Gothenburg EP’, they debut EP, back in April on Heavenly Recordings.

Julia Jacklin has a new band called Phantastic Ferniture who are releasing a debut album on July 27 via Transgressive in the UK. It’s a great record, but the track I can’t get enough of is ‘Fucking ‘n’ Rolling’, and that’s because of this video.

This video is the perfect embodiment of what all music videos should be – people so into the track they’re miming that they’re running around and making their arms move in ways that they usually wouldn’t. Every now and then there’s a kick or a spin. You could do this and probably have!

It’s what we all can’t help but do at a wedding when ‘Gold’ comes on. You know that musicians don’t actually grab the air in music videos but you’re doing it anyway and waiting for someone to tell your better half that they think you could be in a band.

This is one addictive video – the track itself is killer, Jacklin keeps widening her arms to the camera and Elizabeth Hughes inexplicably runs around in circles like a happy 5 year old. And you need Ryan K Brennan to be poe-faced as he peddles around them, otherwise it might seem a little too much.

I’m going to watch it again.

The baddies in old NES and SNES games were characters like Bowser. The video for Liverpool band Eyesore & The Jinx’s debut single may resemble those old console favourites like Super Mario Bros., but the characters chasing them down are much scarier. Y’know, people like Donald Trump and Theresa May.

‘Gated Community’ is the trio’s self-produced first track, recorded in a building that used to be a slaughterhouse. The garage-band say it’s a song that tackles the Western World’s fascination with borders in the Brexit-era.

Speaking about the single, they add:

“‘Gated Community’ is an ode to the factions of society that are determined to make the tiny island we dwell on that bit smaller. The enforcers of every arbitrary border.”

Check it out below:

Having previously play alongside the likes of DUDS and Downtown Boys Eyesore & The Jinx will be playing a bunch of festivals this summer including – Liverpool Sound City, Smithdown Road Festival, West Kirby Love and Liverpool Calling.

The Onyx Collective have truly earned the label ‘collective’. Its core members are a tight-knit group – leader Isaiah Barr on alto and tenor saxophone, Austin Williamson on drums, Walter Stinson on upright bass and Spencer Murphy on electric bass. But the cast of New York titans they’ve worked with expands much further. Their live band has featured acts ranging from Nick Hakim to Princess Nokia, Dev Hynes, to Wiki, while its members have humbly contributed to the latest work from David Byrne and Ibeyi (Isaiah played in their live band).

If it wasn’t already obvious, their music bleeds with NYC spirit – all the sweat, dirt and grime that goes with it. On ‘Lower East Suite Part Three’, their debut album, released this June, they’ve paired their sound down to the rawest elements, recording in a DIY setting to capture the messy reality of their city.

Early single ‘FDR Drive’ is as punk as jazz music gets. The drums bubble with a restless, caustic energy, while the ominous bassline acts as a gritty underbelly for Barr to soar over. His sax playing is evocative and powerful. The track could wind on for another five minutes without breaking the spell. Give a listen below:

‘Lower East Suite Part Three’ is out 15 June on Big Dada.

The Onyx Collective will support Kamasi Washington this month on the UK leg of his tour.

Regardless of their motivations south London outfit Black Midi have chosen not to share much, if any, recorded music on the Internet since they got going. That’s not to say they’ve been elusive. Anything but. The foursome have actually been playing regularly in London for the past year or so, often stepping on the stage at The Windmill in Brixton – as well as other places – multiple times alongside the likes of Shame and Warmduscher.

While they may have pals and admirers in that part of town, they have very little in common musically. In fact, Black Midi’s frenetic concoction is more akin to the math-rock of Battles or Hella. Live it’s incredibly impressive.

Now, the foursome they’ve recorded a track in the NTS Flesh & Bone studios in Hackney – which we recommend you check out below.

Whether he’s crafting a night-ending banger or a subtle ambient track, Matt Karmil makes music with a few principles in mind: simplicity, space, repetition. The UK-born, Stockholm-based producer picks his textures, beats and samples carefully. Only the ones that can reveal something deeper after they’ve been looped countless times will stand up to scrutiny.

At least, that seems to be how he works. Each sparse element feels purposeful. It can’t be luck. What’s more impressive is how he contorts these sounds to get into the listeners bones. 

Take ‘Mortals’, the latest single from his upcoming album, ‘Will’. Its fuzzed-out synth and earthy kick come in and out of focus, growing hefty and dissolving gradually. Self-recorded city noise fills in the gaps, like we’re woozily moving from basement clubs to neon alleyways and back again.

The track takes influence from the hypnotic landscaping of GAS, while its structure feels like a classic club tune turned inward. After playing with sunny deep house cuts over the past few months, ‘Mortals’ returns to nighttime soul-searching . It’s just one part of a continuous piece that makes up the new album, but even on its own, Karmil has pulled us along for a journey.

‘Will’ is released on 27 April by Smalltown Supersound

Some days the world gets a bit much. That’s the impetus behind Echo Ladies’ recently shared track ‘Bedroom’. A song about “the need to be left alone”. “To isolate yourself and be in your ‘safety-zone’, which in this case is a/the/your bedroom,” they explain. “However, after too much time alone and in isolation maybe you start to go a bit insane.”

The Swedish shoegaze trio (Matilda Bogren, Joar Andersén and Mattis Andersson) have now made a video to go with it. There’s a bit of mystery going on. Featuring the three band members there are some nose bleeds, a car journey, an unexplained pair of monster claws… it’s directed by their friend Ebba Ågren from the band Wy.

“We just played the song for her and said we had a vision of a video in a hotel room,” they add. “A week later, she had a whole concept figured out and we found the hotel room in Vellinge, the same small town outside of Malmö where Mattis from the band grew up.”

Echo Ladies’ debut album, ‘Pink Noise’, will be coming out via Sonic Cathedral on 8 June.

This week they’re playing their first shows outside of their native Sweden, and they’re in the UK. Catch them at:

Bristol, Rough Trade – 10 April
Nottingham, The Angel Microbrewery –  11 April
London, The Social – 12 April

In 2017, Loud And Quiet‘s Daniel Dylan Wray wrote about the story of Gnoomes – the three-piece “stargaze” outfit making music in Perm, a Russian city so isolated it makes London-Glasgow look like two short stops on the bus. It’s 22 hours on the train to Moscow.

That was around the release of their psychedelic second album ‘Tschak!’ which was made, well, without the aid of any psychedelics, after members of the band had been imprisoned after traces of weed had been found in drug tests by the authorities.

Put it this way – in recent years the members of Gnoomes have been making music under the harshest of circumstances.

A year on drummer Pavel Fedoseev, who makes music under the name KIKOK, is about to release a self-titled EP (out Friday 16 March) via Fatima Yamaha’s Magnetron Music label.

In Pavel’s words:

“I wanted to make a release with what I already had – a simple Korg Electribe er MK-II drum machine. I started to jam with it in a minimalistic way, but then I decided to merge my techno experiments into a more dreamy atmospheres and I bought a few synths (Alesis Micron, Arturia Microbrute) and a sampler (Boss Loop Station 202). My main goal was to take some harmonies from My Bloody Valentine stuff, add some Italo disco beats, mix it with the weird samples and see what will happen. Speaking of conceptual part, my Komi nation which I belong is a dying ethnics. There are only 90,000 Komi people left, that’s why all my tracks on the EP are called in Komi language and sometimes I say the words in it.”

Not that you’d want to separate the music from that context, but isolated on its own it’s a mesmerising piece of work. Listen below: