Loud And Quiet

Art is Hard is a great indie label. Visit their site and there’s an invitation for bands to send them demos, with a note which says “even if you have a really bad name we’ll probably give you a listen”.

Once a month the generous people at Resonance FM hand over their radio station to us for an hour.

For Loud And Quiet Radio we like to keep things simple; playing new music we’ve discovered in the past few weeks.

That means for episode three (broadcast on 24 November) there was new music, an intellectual discussion about Christmas songs and a funny story about a British acting legend. Listen back below, and find the full tracklist.

What we played:

HMLTD – Stained
Totally – Falling Apart
Wall/Merchandise/Parquet Courts – Fire Dance
Noga Erez – Dance While You Shoot
Tom Furse – Listen
Alyusha – Moshi Moshi
A Winged Victory For The Sullen – Prologue Iris
White Dog – Locked Out
Video Nasties – Albatross
Adia Victoria – Horrible Weather

Listen back to episode one and episode two.

Angel Haze grew up in a family environment where music was frowned upon. So, by in large it just wasn’t there. She only really had permission to listen to music when she was 16. It meant that upon releasing her first music in 2011, the Detroit-born New York-based 19-year-old she was still happening on something new everyday, enjoying the sense of discovery that most of us get to experience 10 years earlier. She’d talk about coming across Eminem and American soft rock as she went along. It was unpretentious, honest and engaging.

A couple of years later her excellent debut ‘Dirty Gold’ arrived, followed by 2015’s ‘Back To The Woods’. This year she’s been quiet, but it looks like a second album proper is taking shape. The first music from that is ‘Resurrection’.

It’s an intense display of Haze’s lyrical dexterity, and a reminder that she’s capable of being totally formidable.

Vinyl subscription clubs are, of course, all the rage these days. But for six or seven years now Too Pure Singles Club have been doing their thing very well. The deal for next year is the same, sign up for £50 and you get sent a 12″ single every month in 2017. For example, were you in the club this year you’d have bagged releases from the likes of USA Nails, Cassels, Grief Tourist, Menace Beach and a bunch of others.

In 2017, the first release will come from Family Scraps – MJ (Matthew Johnson) from Hookworms.

The vinyl will feature two tracks, ‘Mistakes’ and, on the flip side, ‘It Follows’. Listen to ‘Mistakes’ below, arguably one of the most beautiful, mournful, melodic things he’s done. The guitar solo reminds us of a young Graham Coxon as well.

Both songs were recorded at MJ’s Suburban Home studio is Leeds, one either side of the 2015 Boxing Day floods which caused a lot of damage in the area.

Good news is that following this there’s going to be a full LP released from Family Scraps in 2017, too.

Lots of artists dub themselves as “outsiders”, but you feel that Italian psych-band Julie’s Haircut, now well into their third decade, can genuinely lay claim to the title, if indeed you know them at all. There simply weren’t that many Italian bands breaking through that were influenced by the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Spaceman 3 back when they formed in mid-’90s. So when Luca Giovanardi from the band says: “We have always been outsiders,” you kinda get it.

Seven albums down, and with cult status back home secured, they’ve just announced their eighth record – the colourfully titled ‘Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin’. It’s extra significant because they’ve also signed to Rocket Recordings, the UK label behind GOAT and, most recently, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs.

Here’s the record’s lead track, ‘Gathering Light’, from the pleasingly mellow end of the psych rock spectrum, where the lyrics are whispered into your ear and the organ and bass surf into the sun together, rather than compete to batter your head in the hardest.

Close your eyes for the next five minutes and just forget about everything.

Band photo by Ilaria Magliocchetti Lombi

You’ve noticed how miserable everyone’s been recently, right? Over night Father John Misty posted a new track called ‘Holy Hell’ that at first appears to pile on the despondency that 2016 has beaten us all into. As with all of FJM’s songs though, things aren’t quite what they seem, and by the end of this sparse, slow song the singer’s message is clear – we don’t have to let the misery of recent political events kill us all.

We all know the score. When a band are plotting a return they’ll generally put something out first that’s instantly easy on the ear. Something that’ll maybe get played by radio, something that grabs the attention.

Not Happyness. The London trio have been working on new material for the last couple of years following the release of their 2014 debut ‘Weird Little Birthday’. Moshi Moshi reissued that album, and this time round, they’ll properly release Happyness’ second album in spring.

‘Falling Down’ is the first taste of that new music – not a short, sharp pop song, but a five-minute-long track that doesn’t have any vocals for its first half. Of course, that’s what makes it most attention-grabbing of all.

They play Yala! at Bermondsey Social Club on 25 November, and have also just announced a show at The Dome, London on 28 April 2017.

If you’ve been keeping tabs on London artist Gaika, who recently signed up with Warp Records and released an EP called ‘Spaghetto’ this month, then you’ll have already heard ALYUSHA. The pair co-wrote and collaborated on ‘The Deal’, a song she lends her vocal to. Back in the summer she released her second single ‘Paradise’ with Linden Jay (producer with Lion Babe, Rejjie Snow) and toured with Submotion Orchestra.

Self-produced, ALYUSHA will released her latest track ‘Moshi Moshi’ on her own label, Tsuru. Half Japanese, half British she only played her first solo show back in the spring, but if you’re into it, she’s playing London’s XOYO on Tuesday 29 November.

There’s a lot of smartly produced electronic pop music out there, but Sylvan Esso‘s take on that over the past couple of years has just felt a bit more imaginative than the majority of it.

‘Kick Jump Twist’ – following ‘Radio’ put out a short while ago – is their new track, featuring 8-bit bleeps, Amelia’s Róisín Murphy-esque vocal and some hypnotic layering of melodies. The final minute in particular will sound incredible in a club with a massive sound-system.

In 2014, Made of Oak’s Nick Sanborn and Mountain Man’s Amelia Meath got together and made one of the most underrated, unashamedly accessible, cliché-free pop records of that year, and there will be more new stuff in 2017.