London-based, Italian musician Alessio Natalizia first made music as Banjo Or Freakout before becoming one half of techno duo WALLS. Having recently become a father, his forthcoming album, ‘Good Luck’ (out Oct 27th on the Diagonal label), is his second as Not Waving, and mostly influenced by all the things you have to start thinking about when you become a parent. These seem to usually start with how screwed up the world is.
‘Me Me Me’ is no exception and is accompanied by this pretty brilliant video featuring two kids dressed as skeletons, wrecking their own birthday party and spelling out an obscenity in silver balloons. Still, if you will decorate you’re kids’ party with balloons that clearly spell ‘fuck you’, can you really blame them for acting up? No, you can’t!
For all the fun of ‘Me Me Me’, Natalizia’s point (that we live in a self-obsessed culture) stands. It’s a killer electronic punk trunk, though, that’s over just as you’re locking into it. Similarly, just are you’re starting to think that the kids are pretty cute in their costumes, there’s a shot of one of them riding across a field on a mini motorbike. Imagine seeing that coming towards you in the local park. Terrifying.
Hannah Peels third album ‘Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia’ (out today, 22 September) is an ambitious piece of work.
It follows the story of Mary, an elderly stargazer from a Yorkshire mining town who sets off on a journey into outer space. The electronic composer does this with a collection of experimental songs which team electronica with the sounds of old British brass bands.
As Guia Cortassa wrote in her review of the album for Loud And Quiet, “Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia’ is one of the best spacecrafts ever built.”
Here, Hannah talks through each of the pieces on the album, and explains more their origins. Listen to the album, and read about it all below.
Goodbye Earth
It all started off as some fun in the studio really. I would don my glasses, whip out a Casio keyboard, play these tango or polka beats and dance like a wild space lady… but from there, Mary Casio was born. Ironically no Casios have made it onto the record.
The sound began after improvising two layers of Juno 60’s. Each was muted against the other but when I accidentally unmuted the tracks they magically worked together and so this became the first track created for an unknown then album.
This album in the end was created firstly on analogue electronics and then scored to try and find the most subtle blend between the two sonically different worlds. Something that wasn’t purely electronic or purely just brass band. Trying to find a path into a world unknown. We found a way by recording the band live and keeping all the noises of the room – a squeak of a foot or the page turn of a score and with barely any reverb in the mixing (something brass band recordings have a lot of) – added to the ‘breathing’ quality of the vintage synths and their nuances. Mixing the record manually too with the channel faders in the studio also added to the excitement and felt like lift off!
Juno 60 synths arpeggiating up into the atmosphere, sounds of planet earth marking the departure as full colliery brass band and timpani enter at the climax as the rocket launches… Wave goodbye to the terraced houses marked black by the years of coal mining, the cobbled streets and broken satellite dishes, the corner shop and the local Spray & Paint Car Garage.
Sunrise Through the Dusty Nebula
This is my favourite track to perform live. The unassuming soft beginning of the muted brass and mellow synths don’t give way to what is to come.
Imagine waking up in space alone and for the first time ever in your life, looking back through a small hazy window at the horizon of Earth and seeing the crest of the sun start to rise. As the sub bass of the Moogs kick in and the brass swells into an almighty power that booms deep inside your chest and makes your innards sob – that feeling of something being incredibly huge but also making you feel so very small hits you in places that I had never experienced before and never thought might be possible with this collision of two very different musical worlds.
Deep Space Cluster
A homage in the title to my favourite all time krautrock band Cluster. It started as a purely electronic track but as the album started to piece together I had to give those parts away to the brass band. The gliding Moog seemed to fit well with a sliding trombone.
Nearly each part played in the piece is the same as all the other parts. The same notes either sped up or slowed down, jumping octaves or reversed.
I thought the tuba players might kill me when they got this music… they repeat the same line throughout. Pulsing their breath solidly like a slow home made engine trying to navigate around a giant meteor storm.
Andromeda M31
Halfway into the record, I imagined that Mary started to hear noise on the airwaves like lost voices from earth through the dark matter and this is her last contact with hearing something from home. The voice sounds like it could Russian or English and maybe something not human at all.
Back on Earth, “I found an old Virgo star sign birthday card in a drawer. Inside is a little record with a pin as it’s a needle. You place the pin on the vinyl and use your fingertip to turn the record. A man’s voice speaks telling you your character traits”
Life is on The Horizon
A broken Korg Monopoly created this track in the beginning. The unedited Apollo 15 landing on Youtube was playing in the background and somehow during that hour the most beautiful sounds came out of that volatile Monopoly that I haven’t been able to re-create since.
The flugal horn captures the solo line with a sincere melancholy as both the synth and it duet together. It felt like the first time a calling for home and Yorkshire might be pulling on Mary’s heart and that the deep loneliness of being up there alone had finally caught up with her.
Archid Orange Dwarf
That 60’s era of synthesisers being born into the industry and manipulated by musicians to create sounds to reflect their acid trips or emulating the space travel boom and hype. Hypnotic melodies and rhythms to let your mind wander were all part of that scene so here I tried it with a brass band.
This piece was fun trying to find ways to let the brass take over the electronic parts I had written. I remember thinking ‘there is no way this can be possibly matched live’ but with sore red lips and tight diaphragms, they have managed it.
Planet of Passed Souls
My Grandad, was a pianist and conductor in Northern Ireland for all of his working life. He only recorded one song and the sample at the end of this piece is it. I don’t have an actual copy so ripped it off Youtube. Nearly 100 years old now, this song was recorded in Manchester Cathedral. He was 13 at the time and one of the first choirboys to make a record. It’s a Handel piece called ‘Angels Ever Bright and Fair’ and seemed like a fitting piece to include on this planet that Mary finds.
I imagined her stepping out onto a planet to feel an Earth-like weather storm. She starts to hear voices she recognises and the longer she stands there, she realises that familiar sounds in her memory are eerily drawn out of her mind and carried into the wind and rain lashing around her.
Once this piece was written I couldn’t continue the journey. Something inside me wanted to stop. So we never find out if Mary reaches Cassiopeia or not. Maybe she imagined it all, or maybe this journey was her final breath passing into another realm of life…? I’ve left that for you to decide.
London’s nightlife is dwindling, or so the common perception goes. Joshua Idehen, Shanaz Dorsett and Tom Leaper would know whether it is or not. The three friends, who make up Benin City, have been part of it for the past decade – both as ravers, bar workers and musicians. Their forthcoming album, set to come in 2018, is an ode to the capital’s nocturnal scene.
Before that though, they’ve shared a new track and some news. News, first. The trio have signed a deal with Moshi Moshi (Wesley Gonzalez, Girl Ray, Anna Meredith). The label will release the follow-up to their debut project ‘Fires in the Park’.
Secondly, a new song, the grimey, dark, throbbing, pre-dancefloor tune ‘Take Me There’.
Here’s some words about it from the band:
“We always felt the album should start with something about that giddy anticipation when walking into a club for the first time – that feeling as you walk through the double door and bass fills your knees and everything is potential and everyone is interesting and dry ice and strobes are in the air.”
It’s been a while since Hannes Ferm – aka HOLY – released any new music. Two and a half years to be exact since the release of his home-recorded debut album ‘Stabs’.
HOLY spent almost all of last year working on new material at a studio in the Swedish capital, and will release a new album in 2018.
Today, the Swedish musician, originally from Umeå, now based in Stockholm, has just shared a new track that fans of the more accessible end of psych will enjoy. Think Tame Impala, Flaming Lips, Pond.
This is ‘premonition / ◯ / it shines through’ – out digitally from tomorrow (22 September), and out on 7″ vinyl on 3 November via PNKSLM Recordings.
HOLY also has a handful of UK shows coming up – starting next week:
Manchester, Soup Kitchen w/ Luxury Death, Beach Skulls, Denim & Leather – 28 September London, Old Blue Last w/ Holiday Ghosts, Miss World, Beachtape, Lucern Raze – 29 Birmingham, Hare & Hounds w/ Black Mekon, Swampmeat, Terror Watts, Lucern Raze – 30
Douglas Dare is best known for the two albums he’s released on the excellent Erased Tapes label.
Outside of music he’s also passionate about drag, and more, specifically his current alter ego Ruby Waxwork. And Ruby has just made her first appearance on camera, in the video for Norwegian London-based artist EERA’s – Anna Lena Bruland – latest track ‘I Wanna Dance’.
It couldn’t be more appropriate. In the city’s dawn light, Ruby dances her way around east London’s deserted streets, only a few night buses and pigeons for company. Presumably it was either a very late night, or an early start.
It provides a glamorous counterpoint, to the noir-rock shades of EERA’s infectious songwriting.
Following up her self-titled EP last year, EERA is due to release her debut album ‘Reflection of Youth’ via Big Dada on 3 November. She plays Rough Trade in Nottingham on 7 November, and Rough trade East in London on the 9th. And, just announced, she’ll be supporting Ghostpoet on his forthcoming UK tour, which calls at the following places:
Liverpool, Invisible Wind Factory – 25 October Newcastle, Riverside – 26 Glasgow, Broadcast – 28 Sheffield, Plug – 29 Leeds, Brudenell Social Club – 30 Birmingham, Mama Rouxs – 31 Cambridge, Junction – 2 November Oxford, Academy 2 – 3 Dover, The Booking Hall – 4 Leicester, Academy 3 – 6 Nottingham, Rescue Rooms – 7 Brighton, Concorde 2 – 8 London, Printworks – 10 Manchester, Academy 2 – 11 Norwich, Arts Centre – 12 Portsmouth, Wedgewood Rooms – 13 Bristol, Marble Factory – 14
This year, Australia’s King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are aiming to release a quintet of new LPs in just 12 months. Like KG&LW, Palm Honey are a psych-pop band. They borrow from a similar sonic palette, but really the comparisons end there. Except, the Reading foursome’s latest track (divided into two parts), does something of a Gizzard, in that it ambitiously collects what’re probably three songs into one – albeit split – piece of work. Maybe they’re the chapters: starving, hysterical, naked.
Anyway, the title of the track is an ode to Allen Ginberg’s poem Howl. It’s the follow-up to their recently released track ‘Hot Simian Weather’, which came accompanied with a grotesque video.
There’s no doubt ‘Starving Hysterical Naked, Part 1&2’ is their most sprawling work to date. All together just shy of 10 minutes.
‘Starving Hysterical Naked’ comes out via Untitled Recs on 29 September. Pre-order the 7″.
Some shows Palm Honey have coming up:
London, The Waiting Room – 20 September Southampton, Heartbreakers – 30 Reading, Rising Sun Arts Centre – 6 October
About six weeks ago (1 August) Haley Fohr announced she was switching her attention back away from her alter ego Jackie Lynn to release a new Circuit des Yeux album this autumn.
She made the announcment along with a great new track called ‘Paper Bag’, with a video directed by Meg Remy from U.S. Girls.
Her fifth LP, ‘Reaching for Indigo’, will be coming out on 20 October via Drag City.
Circuit des Yeux just shared another track from it, the sprawling, ‘Black Fly’. Listen to it below.
Almost a decade on since the departure of The Long Blondes – one of the more interesting and progressive bands from the mid 2000s indie-rock boom period that produced oceanic depths of garbage – the group’s primary songwriter, Dorian Cox, has just put out his debut solo 7″.
He’s been working away in various bands over the years, exploring bedsit electronica, cosmic disco and Young Marble Giants-inspired lullaby post-punk, but this is the first work under his own name.
The A-side, ‘Elvis’, is a clear nod to Suicide, the vocals becoming engulfed in a fog of echo, over the top of a primitive Casio beat. The B-side is ‘Priscilla’ by Sylvia, a collaboration between Cox and the punk poet, Elise Hadgraft. The chugging, still sleaze-ridden beat, drives away underneath a hazy cloud of atmospheres but Hadgraft’s vocals cut through the fuzz to recall a looping lyric that most will not have heard since the days of scuffed knees and school blazers.
There’s a refreshing primitiveness to both the tracks. The rough, lo-fi production leads to a blurry, wonky and almost crude sensibility, like stumbling down a gritty, darkly-lit, back alley as the sounds of a late night disco can be heard pounding distantly in the background.
In an ideal world, The Rhythm Method would be sharing their new video ‘Something For The Weekend’ on a baking hot June Friday afternoon. The sun shining, two days off imminent, a couple of tolerably vile mango and passionfruit ciders chilling in the fridge. But, hey, there’s something about the fact that the London duo are sharing their summery new song as the season nudges into autumn on a windy Wednesday that makes it all intriguingly out of place.
That kind of sums up the The Rhythm Method, though. Friends and touring companions with the likes of Shame and HMLTD the duo sound nothing like those bands. Joey Bradbury and Rowan Martin’s brand of Baxter Dury, Pet Shop Boys and The Streets style (Mike Skinner’s previously produced one of their tracks) of idiosyncratic pop is all served up with a heavy dash of knowing humour.
For example, the best bit in this new video for ‘Something For The Weekend’ (featuring Zoee) is either when Joey kicks a football around then falls over, or when Rowan emerges through a gold curtain in a barber shop to play a guitar solo.
The Rhythm Method head out on tour with Shame in October, and play a headline show at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club on 25 October.
‘Something for the Weekend’ is out now on Moshi Moshi.
