Loud And Quiet

For all the rap that ATP eventually got it was great while it lasted, and didn’t just provide some great nights but also brought some likeminded people together.

For example London band Spoilers. They met at the Deerhunter curated festival after the four members discovered mutual common ground with bands like Thee Oh Sees and Sonic Youth.

A couple of years down the line, they’re here and they’ve got their debut LP ready for release.

Titled ‘Anti Vibe’ it’s produced by Rory Atwell was recorded partly at home and partly at the studio boat Lightship 95.

Here they are explaining a bit more about it:

“This album is about a driving optimism, despite how dark it can sound in certain places, and riding the balance between that vibe and the anti-vibe. Lyrically it’s about honesty, being in love, anxiety and self-belief. For Spoilers to work at its best when we write, practice and play live, it has to be a release for us and the every day.

‘Anti Vibe’ is a record we’re really proud of and have been intimately involved with through the whole process. Having worked on writing and recording the LP with Rory Attwell at the controls at Lightship 95, to designing, hand numbering & folding the obi strips in the record sleeves to filming and editing our music video, stocking record shops, posting out the LPs, building our website, etc. so we’re pretty excited to get this thing out there. And relieved. Hope you dig.”

It’s out tomorrow (11 November), but for the moment, you can stream it exclusively below. Oh, and if you like it, they’re playing a launch show tonight at London’s Brewhouse. 

Is it scary? Is it panic inducing? Is it just a bit gross?

Regardless, London noise-band HMLTD have managed to create a video for their track ‘Stained’ which manages to capture the sensual battering that their notorious live shows dish out. It’s the b-side to recent track ‘Is This What You Wanted?’ This is the band who used to go by Happy Meal Ltd, until, presumably, Ronald MacDonald heard all about them.

If you’re afraid of something it probably appears in here somewhere. There are clowns, there are sticky wet guts, there’s white-suited beings wielding a dustpan and brush.

You might hate it, but you can’t argue that there’s not something to it. Jenkin Van Zyl directs the video, and the band play various UK dates between now and the end of the year, if this video doesn’t put you right off.

Be aware, it contains a lot of strobe lights.

You were probably expecting Wiley‘s ‘Godfather’ album before now. And his autobiography. Both were meant to be with us around September time. We’ve kept asking for copies to review, but the date has kept changing.

Just now he’s posted this video for ‘Holy Grime’, featuring Devlin.

We’re guessing ‘The Godfather’ will drop in the new year now… or maybe tomorrow.

Mind Over Mirrors is the ever-morphing project of Jaime Fennelly.

‘Undying Color’ is a new LP he’s just announced and it features an impressive cast of collaborators including Circuit des Yeux’s Haley Fohr, who we featured under her Jackie Lynn guise earlier this year. The ensemble of players also joining him on the record also counts fiddle player Jim Becker (Califone), Jon Mueller (Volcano Choir) and Janet Beveridge Bean (Eleventh Dream Day).

Harmonium and synthesist Fennelly sits in the centre of this.

The beginnings of this new album came when Fennelly took himself to a cabin in Red Clover Ranch, south west Wisconsin to work on material.

The first track from the Undying Project’, which comes out on Paradise of Bachelors on 17 February is ‘Restore & Slip’.

It’s rough, absorbing and hypnotic, like a rural American wilderness folk take on the explorative instrumentalism of Battles. Anyway, after a few listens we really got into it.

There’s also a trailer for the new album coming out next year.

The spectacularly named Federica Caiozzo and Giampaolo Speziale are the duo who’ve come together to create Malihini.

While they’re now based in London, they met in Rome before making the move to the UK last year. The band name itself translates to ‘newcomer’ in Hawaiian. Memphis Industries have signed them up, it’s easy to hear the appeal, the production on their debut single ‘Waiting’ is really smart, in the same way label-mates Poliça have that nailed, too.

Lyrically, they say, the song tells the story of a wrongfully-convicted prisoner on death row and their delusional lover.

They’ll play their first show at London’s The Finsbury on 25 November.

Bayonne just last week released his debut album ‘Primitives’ in the UK. It is, according to our reviewer Eugenie Johnson, a piece of work which sees the Austin producer “form deep layers of looping electronica and twinkling synths around his handcrafted beats”.

‘Living Room’ is one of the standout moments from that LP. Bayonne, otherwise known as Roger Sellers, has just shared his video for it.

The clip features Sellers painstakingly constructing the song, continually adding layers and instruments. It’s an intimate insight into his methods and ability. You can watch it below.

Bayonne has also announced a new UK show for 2017, he’ll play The Waiting Room, London on 15 February.

About a month ago, we met up with Johnny Rocket and Dean Honer from semi-fictional unit The Moonlandingz. We gave a pair of them £25 to spend on records. Johnny bought some vinyl, then got on a plane to Cambodia.

We get the sense that the band, formed out of members of Fat White Family, Eccentronic Research Council and Slowclub have been, for the past year or so, a fun, rebellious, raucous night-time experiment for its occupants. However, there was news recently that they’ve signed to Transgressive Records, and that there’s a proper new album in the pipeline, so maybe it’s all about to get a bit more serious.

The first sign of that is the announcement of a new EP – out now – called ‘Black Hanz’. Take a listen to the first track from it below. It was recorded at Sean Lennon’s home, who is of course has a very very very famous friend, called Mark Ronson.

They’ve also announced a new live date at London’s Courtyard Theatre on 7 December.

Back in the spring we featured Manchester collective Levelz on the cover of the magazine. We discovered that they weren’t so much as a band, but more of a cultural meeting point – a 14-strong group of MCs, DJs and musicians gathering together and writing prolifically in an old cotton mill in North West Manchester.

Since then, after a bunch of chaotic summer festival spots, they’ve kept a steady stream of new stuff coming, including recent track ‘Drug Dealer’ which now has an excellent new video.

The track itself is taken from the ‘LVL 11 mixtape’.

The group haven’t been messing about. They only put out the video for ‘Slow Down’, another track from the mixtape, a couple of weeks ago.

Noga Erez is the latest signing to Berlin-based label City Slang. She’s from Tel Aviv, and while her homeland is central to her music, this video for ‘Dance While You Shoot’ was filmed in Kiev.

It’s a cinematic short, where the colour pink represents evils of the world, particularly oppression. It takes comparisons to MIA further than the music, although MIA could have definitely done with ‘Dance While You Shoot’ on this year’s ‘AIM’.

Of her track,Noga Erez says: “You can’t live without the government that ensures your basic needs, but at the same time takes your money, keeps you in the dark about the real, important matters that affect your life directly, while drowning you in manipulative media, ignorance and bureaucracy.”

She plays the following European dates this month

NOV. 23           LONDON, UK               XOYO +
NOV. 24           LONDON, UK               Paper Dress Vintage
NOV. 29           BERLIN, DE                  Beat Geeks Party @ Monarch
NOV. 30           BERLIN, DE                  Lido +
DEC. 2             PARIS, FR                      Élysée Montmartre #

+ Supporting Roosevelt
# Supporting Crystal Castles