Loud And Quiet

The last time Manchester trio The Longcut released an album, ‘Open Hearts’, it was 2009. Labour were still in government, Keisha left Sugababes and the years’s top selling album was Susan Boyle’s ‘I Dreamed A Dream’.

So there’s something brilliantly and admirably pedantic about the fact the Manchester trio haven’t made a new LP since then, not really for any other reason than wanting to ‘get it right’ for their own satisfaction.

The threesome have been working on it for seven years, reworking tracks numerous times and even scrapping two versions of the album.

There was a sign of it coming, when they stirred from their slumber late in 2017 to play a festival in Greece and a show in London. Now, they’re actually preparing to release that new LP. ‘Arrows’ will be come out via Deltasonic on 6 April 2018.

“We were going to call it ‘Monuments’ because of this process of chipping away and adding things,” says bassist Jon Fearon of what eventually became the track title of the record’s final song.

“Much of the album was born out of frustration with the whole process,” adds drummer and vocalist Stuart Ogilvie. “Like even when you know good things are happening in your life, other situations can get you down. That balance or imbalance is felt by everyone so hopefully people can hear this journey and relate.”

Ahead of that, The Longcut have just shared this new track ‘Deathmask’ – a six-minute slab of thumping, hypnotic electronic rock music.

If you’re memory needs a freshner, here’s The Longcut’s video for their 2004 track ‘Transition’.

ShitKid is Åsa Söderqvist, and it’s fair to call her prolific given that she’s put out four collections of music in two years. The Swedish DIY artist sometimes writes and records music in her bedroom and rehearsal space. Other times, it’s in her car.

Anyway, after the release of her debut LP ‘Fish’ last summer, there’s already a new EP ready to go. ‘This Is It’ – nothing, we think, to do with Michael Jackson – will be coming out digitally and on limited edition vinyl via PNKSLM Recordings on 19 January.

Ahead of that, she’s shared this new song ‘Yoouuu’. It might be a two minutes in length, but it feels like the story of a long goodbye.

Before 2017 escapes you, if you’re looking for a discovery which may have slipped under the radar from the past 12 months check out BAMBOO’s second album ‘The Dragon Flies Away’ released in May via Upset The Rhythm.

It’s the new project from Rachel Horwood (Trash Kit, Halo Halo) and Nick Carlisle (Peepholes, Don’t Argue).

One of the best tracks from the release ‘Always Running’ now has a video. Visually it’s inspired by Noh theatre, a form of classical Japanese musical drama pioneered in the 14th century and still performed today.

Here, Rachel also explains a bit more about the song’s message, too:

“It was written about a friend who is always putting obstacles in front of themselves and who finds comfort in never succeeding at anything, because maybe to them that is somehow a safer or more comfortable option. So It’s trying to encourage that person to shed off those self-imposed barriers, and I suppose we all often go through times where we are our own worst enemy and hold ourselves back, which is also a theme within the album too. Trying to overcome our own fears etc…”

More info about BAMBOO.

Those asterisks in the headline aren’t a typo, that’s actually the name of the band – ********.

They’re a duo of Glasgow-based kitchen worker Ailie Ormston and her bandmate Ω (again, not a typo), who is half of the partnership Edinburgh Leisure.

And on 26 January 2018 they’re going to re-release their first (and final) album ‘The Drink’ via Weird World. Previously they’d stuck it on YouTube, so this’ll be the first time it’s available physically.

I’d say take a listen to ‘Kinderpunsch’ (below) to get an idea of what the project is all about, but we’ve heard the rest of the album and it swings from one unconventional exploration to the next. This one, it’s safe to say, is the only track that sounds like Suggs in a parallel universe, where Madness flopped, he didn’t become a millionaire and so spends his days staring into puddles and generally traipsing around with a Bag For Life.

This all seems to be going on at Christmas, and feels relentlessly bleak, but also pretty funny. The real Suggs wishes he wrote a line like “Club me with your Clubcard.”

Anna von Hausswolff’s music is grand, but her explanations are simple. So we’ll follow suit, and keep it brief.

The Gothenburg-based songwriter has just announced details of a new album, ‘Dead Magic’, coming out on City Slang on 2 March 2018.

‘The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra’ is the first track shared from it.

“Me, my band and Randall Dunn spent 9 days in Copenhagen recording this record. The great pipe organ you’re hearing is a 20th century instrument located in Marmor Kirken, ‘The Marble Church’, Copenhagen.”

Along with that snippet of information, she also wanted to share this short poem by Swedish writer Walter Ljungquist.

“Take the fate of a human being, a thin pathetic line that contours and encircles an infinite and unknown silence. It is in this very silence, in an only imagined and unknown centre, that legends are born. Alas! That is why there are no legends in our time. Our time is a time deprived of silence and secrets; in their absence no legends can grow.”

Anna has also announced a date at The Dome, London on 12 March next year.

At present there’s not a great deal known about the Cambridge group Nervous Conditions. What we do know is that they are new, very young and that there are eight of them who have now released a blistering live recording of a debut track called ‘Village Mentality’.

A demo version of the same song was doing the rounds last year, briefly cropping up on the Quietus Radio Hour and BBC Radio 6Music, but has since disappeared leaving nothing but a blank Soundcloud page.

Over the song’s near 9-minute mark it takes in James Chance-like blasts of atonal saxophone, droning viola, a bass line that is as seductive as it is funky as it is ominous, dry and scorched vocals with the odd Mark E Smith intonation and eruptions of guitars and drums that collide and combust to form a riotous and potent blast of chaotic yet coherent post-punk noise.

So, yeah, give it a whirl:

Nervous Conditions play The 100 Club, London supporting The Moonlandingz on December 6, and the End Of The Road Xmas Party at Kamio the same night. 

Photo by: Rowan Allen

It was just over 12 months ago we clapped ears on the proper debut single from London band Totally, ‘Falling Apart‘.

We immediately dispatched James F. Thompson and Heather McCutcheon to speak and photograph them for their first major piece of press.

In it, the DIY five-piece explained that most of their friends were in noisey garage-rock bands. Something they’re into, but singer Jade Leonard was quick to admit, that style just wasn’t her. So, they may have a punk way of going about things, but their sound owes more to Mariah and Blondie.

Anyhow, it’s been a year of change for the outfit. New jobs, new studies, a line-up tweak.

They have a new 7″ single out on 1 December via a new Australian/UK label, Wild Horse Records.

They recently shared ‘Moonlit Memory’ from it, and now this new song ‘Ghost Away’.

“The song is an anthem to modern romance and the ‘ghosting’ phenomenon,” say the band, adding, “it’s told from the point of view of a determined woman refusing to be undermined.”

Totally play The Waiting Room, London, on 13 December and London Rough Trade East on 24 January 2018.

It’s still early – maybe slightly too early – days with all the best album of the year lists. I mean, what if the N.E.R.D album out next month is genuinely astonishing? We’ll take the risk.

Anyway, one album that has deservedly been popping up regularly in those polls is Kelly Lee Owens’ self-titled debut.

There’s an extended version of that album out today (24 November). It includes this new track, ‘Spaces’. Take a listen, and if you’re still just discovering her music, have a read of Ian Roebuck’s interview with the former cancer ward nurse turned ambient dance producer from earlier this year.

It’s a strange cocktail of feelings watching the sun come up after a particularly heavy night out. A bit triumphant, a bit sobering, but mostly a practical reminder to pass on that final warm rum ‘n’ Coke and crawl into bed.

Pardans’ new track is kind of about that, but also a little bit more cryptic. Explained here:

“The song is about losing yourself to drunken nights and navigating through a fog of lost love and seductive forces. It’s about the ironic applause of the dawn as it watches you claw your way back to your den. It’s about two female gazes. One belongs to the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”

You might be thinking, ‘fine, okay, but who are Pardans?’

They’re a six-piece from Copanhagen. They describe the music they make as “a mix of intense orchestral no-rock, including tenor saxophone and viola”. Their sax-player also plays with Marching Church, the Iceage associated project. This past summer, off their own backs, Pardans toured for two weeks across Europe playing everything from a squatted Belgian mansion to a boat on the Seine to abandoned factory buildings and theatres.

They put out a mini-album, ‘Heaven, Treason, Women’, back in autumn 2016. Now, they’ve put together their debut album recorded totally live in the studio. ‘When Come The Rats’ is the first track from it.

By the way, they’re playing Eurosonic in January.