Loud And Quiet

You may remember XAM, the solo project of Hookworms bassist Matthew Benn. In between his work with the Leeds band he recorded an EP, ‘Tone Systems’, back in 2014. Well, XAM are now XAM Duo as he’s joined forces with Christopher Duffin from Deadwall. After playing a bunch of solo shows Benn wanted to develop the experience, and the sound.

The pair didn’t mess about, either. Half of their very first session together at Leeds’ Suburban Home Studio makes it onto their debut album, which is coming out on Sonic Cathedral on 4 November.

Visual artist Anna Peaker has created this dreamy, immersive video for a new track from it, ‘I Extend My Arms’. It’s six minutes of psychedelic electronica, awash with propulsive mechanical drumbeats and Krautrock synths.

Helpfully, they go into some detail about the track, and the video, below.

Christopher Duffin: “We got the song together for a show we did at Wharf Chambers. It was our third show and the first one that totally clicked, the others had been cool and exploratory, but this one made sense, and the song instantly felt right in the rehearsal before and at the show. We played it again at the Virginia Wing EP launch – I think we recorded it after that show. The edit is the bit that kicks in after I’ve done all my noodling on the saxophone and organ for 20 minutes, so on the full-length version it feels like it has a sense of arrival and real purpose – but I love how positive and joyous it sounds as a piece by itself.”

Matthew Benn: “It’s named ‘I Extend My Arms’ after a piece of art I saw in the Tate in Liverpool the weekend after we had recorded the song. We asked Anna Peaker to do the video after admiring some live visuals she had created for Leeds artists Mia La Metta and Joanne. She had previously done some record sleeve artwork for Hookworms as well. For this video she decided to mix her usual minimal, hypnotic graphics with video synthesis, using footage shot at one of our shows and at her home as the basis. I like the idea that her video synthesis was improvised in much the same way as our audio synthesis.”

Live, they like to improvise, so no two of these forthcoming shows will be the same.

Leeds, Brudenell Social Club (with Michael Rother) – 27 September
Leeds, Belgrave Music Hall (with Anna Meredith) – 1 November
Leeds, Wharf Chambers (with The Early Years) – 24
Manchester, Aatma (with The Early Years) – 25
Newcastle, Cumberland Arms (with The Early Years) – 26

The first taste of new music from Doran Edwards since his 2012 debut album ‘Choreography’.

It’s been a minute since Weird Dreams put out some n ew music. 2012, in fact. Doran Edwards is back with ‘The Ladder’, a song which sees him take a stride away from the shoegaze-y vibe of his debut album ‘Choreography’. The production on ‘The Ladder’ is particularly impressive, all downbeat Animal Collective-style whirring synths.

Here are some words from Weird Dreams about the track:

“It’s been a long and short four years. Weird Dreams never stopped for me, it just became private. The songwriting was a near constant. There’s more music to share soon, but starting with ‘The Ladder’ now feels right, as it was the first song of real difference, and remained unfinished for a few years while I obsessed over an image that I began to pursue as sound on the last Weird Dreams song before this one (‘House of Secrets’) – the reflections of water on a swimming pool ceiling at night. For reasons that are still unclear, this imagined image of light and water moved me in a desperate time, distracting from what felt like the rest of the world falling away.”

That explains the new imagery he’s released with the song. Listen to it here:

If you like it, he’s announced a new show, too. Weird Dreams presents Luxury Alone on at The Waiting Room, London on 7 March.

The London trio release the first new music since their second album ‘Rispah’.

If you’ve listened to the first episode of Midnight Chats you’ll have heard what an enlightening struggle it’s been to get to the point where The Invisible are releasing new music.

The London band’s second album ‘Rispah’ was delayed and then informed by the death of frontman Dave Okumu’s mother. Shortly after it’s release, Okumu suffered a serious electric shock on stage in Nigeria which curtailed the promotion of the album pretty much for the rest of the campaign.

Since then the trio – completed by Tom Herbert and Leo Taylor – have been involved with other projects. Dave has been producing albums for Jessie Ware and Rosie Lowe, Tom continues to record and tour with Polar Bear and Leo performs with the likes of Hot Chip and Adele (he drummed on ‘Skyfall’ and on ’25’).

But, they’re back together, and there’s a new album coming this year, and here’s the first track.

The former Woods and Babies songwriter debuts his first new track and video from a brand new solo album soon to arrive on Dead Oceans.

You may recognise the voice of Kevin Morby, formally the bass player of Woods and singer with The Babies. In the last couple of years he’s branched out to release a pair of solo albums on the Woodist label, 2013’s ‘Harlem River’ and 2014’s ‘Still Life’.

He’s now started to work with Dean Oceans (Dirty Projectors, Tallest Man Alive), who’ll release his new album ‘Singing Saw’ on 15 April.

First to come from that new LP is ‘I Have Been to the Mountain’. You can hear the track and watch the video for it below.

The clip, directed by Phillip Lopez, features dancer Nathan Mitchell who is reborn after death, and cavorts around a hospital. Morby came to work with Lopez after he used one of the US singer’s songs (‘Harlem River’) in his extraordinarily titled short film Fred Astaire with a stomach full of Corn Chips and Valium a few years back. He got in touch and the pair set about collaborating on this surreal and funny video.

Here’s Kevin Morby talking about the track:

“I Have Been To The Mountain’ is a song for those struck down by the hands of evil – senseless killings which have always overwhelmed our planet, but especially recently. It’s dedicated to and inspired by the death of Eric Garner.”

Watch it here:

Natasha Khan reveals a new track ‘I Do’ along with a date… 1 July.

Here’s a brand new song from Bat For Lashes.

The track’s called ‘I Do’. Along with it Natasha Khan has also posted a cryptic ‘save the date’ card (below) for a wedding taking place on 1 July, which one can only assume will be the release date of a new album.

It’s the first new music to emerge since the release of her 2012 album ‘The Haunted Man’.

In September Natasha Khan will headline one of the nights at End Of The Road festival in Dorset.

Founding member of Albany’s Self Defense Family Hans Leibold returns with a new project and cassette release on Sheffield’s Tye Die Tapes.

Back in 2010, Hans Leibold left the band he’d founded 7 years before, Self Defense Family (formerly known as End of a Year). The US/UK post-punk band went on to release their well-received debut album ‘You Are Beneath Me’ on Deathwish Inc. as well as four other albums.

After he left the band Hans headed to Seattle, visited other places, before winding back up in Albany, NY where he reunited with Self Defense Family’s Andrew Duggan. It was there they started their Overnight Drive podcast, and Hans also started recording demos that will now be released under this new moniker Bare Mattress.

The album is called ‘Don’t Complain/Don’t Explain’ and you can stream the six tracks on it here:

‘Free Yard’ is the first single which will be released on cassette with a digital download by Tye Die Tapes of Sheffield, UK worldwide on Friday 26 February.

Derwin Panda unveils a new song, album and label – all inspired by two ear-opening trips to Japan.

To some ears, Gold Panda has been away a little while.

It’s true – it’s been three years since the release of ‘Half Of Where You Live’ in 2013. But he has been on the road – everywhere from Asia to Africa in fact.

He’s also found time to sign a new deal with City Slang, who’ll put out his new album, ‘Good Luck And Do Your Best’, on 27 May.

Recorded in his native Chelmsford, Essex, but conceived during two trips to Japan in spring and autumn, it all came together over the last 18 months. He was traveling around the country with photographer Laura Lewis (see her shot above).

“Halfway through the first trip we bought rail tickets and rode across the country and went to Hiroshima,” Gold Panda (or Derwin) explains. “One afternoon we had taken a taxi, and as we got out the Japanese taxi driver’s parting words to us as we left were, ‘good luck and do your best.’”

Once he’s got his new album down, Derwin went to long-term friend and collaborator Luke Abbott who mixed it in his studio.

Here’s the new track with a new video, ‘Time Eater’. It’s a good ‘un.

Here’s the tracklist and the artwork for the new album.

1. Metal Bird
2. In My Car
3. Chiba Nights
4. Pink And Green
5. Song For A Dead Friend
6. I Am Real Punk
7. Autumn Fall
8. Halyards
9. Time Eater
10. Unthank
11. Your Good Times Are Just Beginning

Derwin’s already on the bill for Field Day in London in June, but ahead of that he’ll play Tufnell Park Dome on 29 May.

Hear a brand new song from 18-year-old New Zealander Eddie Johnston – another jewel from his forthcoming debut album ‘I’ll Forget 17’.

It’s been widely noted that Eddie Johnston, aka Lontalius, has already achieved success at an early age. He’s still only 18. It was something the New Zealander was keen to laugh off in our feature interview in the current issue of Loud And Quiet.

“I want to make great music no matter what my age is. I am a bit too jaded for someone my age anyway”

Starting off in his mid-teens recording covers of the likes of Drake, Beyoncé and Pharrell and sticking them online, his debut album of original material is ready to go, and it’s out next month.

There’s a handful of tracks from it already out there. ‘Glow’, ‘Kick In The Head’ and ‘All I Wanna Say’ all show different sides of an artist who name-checks Perfume Genius and MF Doom as influences. On an album where he makes indie songs sound like Drake singles or lost Postal Service demos, ‘My Dreams Are Dark’ is another example of is classy melodic craft. Listen to it below.

‘My Dreams Are Dark’ appears on ‘I’ll Forget 17’, the album arrives on Partisan Records on 25 March.

Hear an extract from the American musician’s ambitious reconstruction of the Polish composer’s most famous work.

If you haven’t heard, Colin Stetson’s latest project is reliably ambitious.

The forthcoming album is called ‘SORROW: A Re-Imagining Of Gorecki’s Third Symphony’, and that’s a fairly straight forward explanation of what this beautiful album is – a reinterpretation of one of the world’s best-selling pieces of contemporary classical music.

The American saxophonist, of course, gives the whole thing his own varnish by layering on different genres and instruments while remaining faithful to the original score. Around 12 musicians performed on the album including Icelandic cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir, Stetson’s sister Megan as mezzo-soprano soloist and Rebecca Foon, co-founder of Esmerine. It’s out on 8 April.

Below you can listen to an extract from the third of the three ‘movements’ which made up the original piece by the Polish composer. Stetson has this to say about it:

“In the third and final movement this is the final refrain. A peaceful lament and an immaculate beauty, I have reveled in it for years and still find its gravity inescapable. By his explanation Gorecki’s Third Symphony is an evocation of the ties between mother and child.”

Colin returns to London on 16 March to perform a solo show at the Convergence festival, where he’ll be joined by Laura Cannell.