Loud And Quiet

We don’t dish out awards for the best EPs from the year (maybe we should, note that down), anyway, sir Was’s ‘Say Hi’ released back in June made up for the lack of a new Caribou release this year with its warm electronic tones.

sir Was is Joel Wästberg from near Gothenburg, Sweden, a saxophone-playing jazz and hip-hop nut who after studying music in his late teens took 15 years to hit on the sound of the music he truly wanted to make.

His proper debut album is ready, it’s called ‘Digging A Tunnel’ and comes out on City Slang on 10 March. he plays absolutely everything on it, apart from the bagpipes.

‘In The Midst’ is the lead single for it. It features sir Was dressed in a king’s cloak with a sword arriving at an island on a boat, riding a horse for a bit and then going to a rave. Great night out. Great song.

Spectres regularly seem to come at things from an original angle.

Back in March they released ‘Dead’. A re-release of sorts of their debut album. Except they’d asked their mates in other bands (Hookworms, Mogwai, Factory Floor) to reimagine, or in their words, “kill”, their songs.

Their latest track ‘Dissolve’ is seven and a half minutes of creaking feedback, whirring noise and doomy drums. The first track to be released from their new album, out in March on Sonic Cathedral, now has an unsettling new video.

It’s a creepy piece of work where the band turn themselves into an art installation, before everyone gets a bit aggressive and takes their clothes off…

Pillow Person has been a new name to many this past six months. Even her real name Sarah Jones is a new one for some. But you’ll sure have listened her her work in the past as drummer with everyone from the likes of Prey, New Young Pony Club, Bat For Lashes and Hot Chip. She’s in-demand.

A couple of months ago she explained the reasons for creating her new solo identity Pillow Person in our feature.

‘On Your Way’ is only the second single she’s put out. It follows ‘Go Ahead’ and its b-side ‘In My Game’.

From the short explanation that accompanies it, it sounds like the song is a rumination on the pros and cons of facial recognition technology as it continues to become more integrated in society.

It’ll be coming out on Moshi Moshi on 27 January.

Twenty odd days ago Run The Jewels posted a new song with collaborating producer Boots, called ‘2100’.

Just now El-P and Killer Mike have shared another new track with news that they’ll be putting out their third album (‘RJT3’) on 13 January 2017 (available in physical form here in they UK from the 20th).

Here’s ‘Legend Has It’.

It turns out Tim Darcy was doing double-time while he was making Ought‘s second, and most recent, album, ‘Sun Coming Down’.

After studio sessions, in the squeezed hours of the late evening and weekends, he was brewing a parallel set of new songs in a studio storage room that will reveal themselves as his first solo album in 2017. That’s why, he says, it’s called ‘Saturday Night’.

The frontman from the Montreal band kicks off this new endeavour with a track called ‘Tall Glass Of Water’ which you can hear below.

Thematically, he’s explained that the track, and the album, talk about rivers, and how as an artist the current and compulsion that propels one to make more music means you’re never quite sure if you’re sinking, swimming, drowning or well, trusting in your instinct, and doing a decent job.

Leeds band Bruising have just announced their new single (the dreamy, Breeders-ish ‘I Don’t Mind’ will come out on local label Beech Coma on Dec 2nd) with this video that pays homage to the great minds of our day: vloggers.

Each member of the group recorded and edited their own contribution. It’s the freedom of the Internet after all. I mean, do you think Lil Bub is arsed to run her ideas past anyone before putting them out there?! Of course not. That’s why Lil Bub is doing this rather than a claustrophobic office job.

Or, as the band put it: “We felt it important to make a video that showcased our unique talents for storytelling and personal brands.”

Catch Bruising live this December…

Saturday 3rd December – Fan Club at Rough Trade, Nottingham
Sunday 4th December – Hope and Ruin, Brighton
Monday 5th December – Picturehouse Social, Sheffield
Wednesday 7th December – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Thursday 8th December – Think Tank, Newcastle
Friday 9th December – Roll For The Soul, Bristol
Sunday 11th December – The Blue Moon, Cambridge
Monday 12th December – The Shacklewell Arms, London

Those paying attention will have seen that on Halloween Brighton band Gang released a video for their track ‘Dead’.

In that clip, the sludge rock trio enjoy an innocent road trip until everything takes a sinister turn. The car blows up, the dog runs into the woods, and they end up being tortured in a church never to be seen again. <Dramatic pause> Or, do they?

Now one keen conspiracy fan investigated their disappearance and has unearthed footage that sheds light on what may have happened. In this clip for new song ‘Enough Nothing’ there’s a lot of strange goings on, lets put it that way.

Chris Wade is the guy’s name, from Dog Brain Video.

“I developed an unhealthy obsession with finding the truth behind what really happened to my friends in Gang,” he says. “I did some digging, and came across a whole network of people who said they had seen some strange things in the area. But it went deeper. Much deeper. It wasn’t really my place to start digging around in conspiracies, so I passed it on to the guys over at Open Universe. I’m a big fan of their stuff!”

Along with the release of these two tracks, Gang has also confirmed that they will be appearing at 2017’s SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

They can also probably be found at the following places on the following dates:

London, The Waiting Room – 6 December

Brighton, Hope & Ruin – 7

Margate, Tom Thumb Theatre – 9

It’s nice to go out for a meal, but nothing’s quite like something homemade, is it? ‘Homemade’ is kind of the watchword for Brighton band Porridge Radio. They’ve created a series of videos themselves in the run-up to the re-release on vinyl of their debut album, ‘Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers’.

This one, for ‘Lemonade’, is the first. It features the band setting up their own business (making and selling lemonade) before having a marketing buzzword meeting, realising they can call it something else and charge loads of cash. This is our organic artisan bread loving era, people.

Here’s this honest recollection from the band about how it all came together:

“‘Lemonade’ is about desperation and frustration, but also not being able to take yourself seriously. The video was shot in director Fran Gonta’s living room after an afternoon of turning the place upside down. Two members of the band didn’t turn up to the filming because they were respectively too hungover and didn’t realise where they had to be. The rest of the band pretended they didn’t mind and got on with it.”

Check it out below:

After coming out on cassette via Memorials of Distinction back in August, Porridge Radio’s album’s been remastered by John Hz and will be out on vinyl next year.

You know what they say about albums, you wait six years for one and then two come along at once.

The Dears’ ‘No Cities Left’ is still a cherished record for us. But that was 2003 and it’s been six years since the Montréal outfit’s last studio album, 2011’s ‘Denegration Street’.

Now, there’s going to be two in 2017. The first one, ‘Times Infinity Volume One’, is out on 3 February. Shortly after, they’ll play a show at London’s Village Underground on 28 February. On a date yet to be confirmed next summer, part two of ‘Times Infinity’ will be released.

Talking about the releases frontman Murray A. Lightburn says: “Putting these two records together was like solving a puzzle: Volume One was about finding the edge pieces while Volume Two was about the middle pieces.”

They’re making the announced with a new track, the wonderfully titled ‘I Used To Pray For The Heavens To Fall’, accompanied by an animated video by Sinbad Richardson that tells the story of a beetle’s perilous journey into the city, building a rocket… The song is typically dramatic and anthemic from The Dears, too.

The Dears play their first UK shows in six years in February, this is where you’ll find them:

Cardiff, The Globe – 24 February

Bristol, The Fleece – 25

Leeds, Brudenell Social Club – 26

London Village Underground – 28