Category: Music

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Music News

Pendulum to preview new material in London

Pendulum will headline the Earstorm night at London’s Matter on January 22nd it has been announced.

The band will be previewing material from their upcoming album Immersion during their DJ set and will be joined on the bill by Zane Lowe, Sinden, Herve, Sub Focus, Noisia, The Glitch Mob and more. Tickets are available from www.matterlondon.com so get in quick.

Don’t forget Pendulum are also touring the UK in May, including a date at London’s Wembley Arena:

17th – Ulster Hall, Belfast
18th – Olympia, Dublin
20th – Corn Exchange, Edinburgh
21st – Empress Ballroom, Blackpool
22nd – Dome, Doncaster
25th – Centre, Brighton
26th – Academy, Birmingham
28th – Wembley Arena, London
29th – Arena, Cardiff
30th – Pavillions, Plymouth
31st – Oasis Centre, Swindon

Categories
Music News

Grab a 10 year old Aesop Rock demo

Blockhead and Aesop Rock have put a “New Year’s Gift” up for download.

The producer and rapper who worked closely on Aesop’s Float and Labor Days album have put a 10 year old demo called Jinx Planet up for download. The beat was made in 2000 and an explanation of it, along with the download itself can be found here. Whilst you’re waiting for it to download, check out a newer Aesop Rock song:

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Music News

Mos Def to play KOKO

Mos Def will play Koko in London.

The rapper, who released The Ecstatic last year, will hit the capital on April 15th.

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Music News

Idlewild announce UK tour

Idlewild have announced details of a new UK tour.

The band will play the following dates in March with set to be announced in April.

3rd – Bristol Thekla
4th – Gloucester Guildhall
5th – Plymouth Hippo
8th – Reading Sub 89
9th – Brighton Concorde
11th – Liverpool Masque
12th – Preston 53 Degrees

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Music News

Iggy and the Stooges added to All Tomorrow’s Parties

All Tomorrow’s Parties have announced that curator and Simpsons nutjob Matt Groening have added Iggy and the Stooges to the lineup for the weekend at Butlins in Minehead on May 7th-9th 2010. Built To Spill were also added to the line up today alongside Coco Rosie, James Chance and Les Contortions, Thee Oh Sees, Juana Molina, Lightning Dust and Konono N1.

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Music News

Pendulum rip up Plan B

Pendulum‘s upbeat remix of Plan B’s ‘Stay Too Long‘ track has a video and hit the web this week. Check out the energy on this little beauty here.

Categories
Album Reviews

Elliott Smith

Our friends at Kill Rock Stars are reissuing Elliott Smith‘s Roman Candle and From a Basement on the Hill in April 2010 and they’ve also made a previously unreleased track available for free download!

Cecilia/Amanda was recorded in 1997 and features Smith’s signature melancholic lilting acoustic guitars and wistful vocals. Fuller in sound than many of his earlier works, a piano line in the background adds a more uplifting aspect to the musical side of this song and is actually quite Ben Folds.

Characteristically rather bleak on the lyrical front, Cecilia/Amanda is typical and beautiful Elliott Smith overall. As with From a Basement on the Hill, the music is all the more poignant for being unveiled post-humously.

You can listen and download here.

Winegums.

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Single Reviews

So Many Dynamos

An introduction to So Many Dynamos’ jaunty indie-rock with electronic undertones, ‘New Bones’ is a disconcerting yet highly addictive track. It pulsates with a rather regular beat yet the band create a seemingly patternless variety of bleeps, jarring riffs and random notes which are layered on top of the pulsating foundations.

The other constant in the song are the hypnotic vocals that you automatically feel yourself humming away to and spiral round in your head endlessly even after the song has finished. This is a band that’ll almost certainly be a brilliant live act so it’s just as well they’re heading over to the UK soon.

The band tour the UK on the following dates:

February
18th – Glasgow, UK @ Captain’s Rest
19th – Middlesborough, UK @ Uncle Albert’s
20th – Nottingham, UK @ Stealth vs Rescue
21st – Leicester, UK @ The Firebug
22nd – Birmingham, UK @ The Flapper
23rd – London, UK @ Buffalo Bar
25th – Brighton, UK @ Jam
26th – Oxford, UK @ Bullingdon
27th – Southampton, UK @ Joiners

Winegums.

Categories
Single Reviews

Musee Mecanique

Another in a seemingly endless string of new and unique musical gems spawned amongst the hubbub of Portland, Oregon is Musee Mecanique. This, their debut single, “Like Home” will lull you gently into the beginning of 2010 with it’s subtle and elegant folk-pop.

First conceived in a museum of antique arcade machines, this quintet play sepia-tinged nostalgic melodies that you could compare to the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel or Beirut, but that’d be unfair because their magic is entirely of its own creation. Paying a glance to decadent times gone by but with their eyes firmly fixed on the future, Musee Mecanique’s multi-instrumental enchantment is one of Crossfire’s main tips for the start of the next decade.

We recently witnessed Musee Mecanique playing as a stripped down two-piece and was amazed to find that, rather than playing less instruments, Sean Ogilvie and Micah Rabwin simply play them all at once, by themselves. Their hushed and magnetic set saw Rabwin at one point playing glockenspiel with one hand, keyboard with the other and bass drum with his foot which, aside from being quite a spectacle to behold, is just a token sign of the ridiculous talent Musee Mecanique have to offer. Check them out!

Trotty P.

Categories
Album Reviews

Comanechi

Comanechi have been on the gigging circuit for a while but with singer Akiko Matsuura’s numerous other bands (Pre and more recently and famously, The Big Pink) taking the lime light, only now have they managed to throw together an album.

A Crime Of Love, put bluntly, is half an hour of utter filth. Drum kit smashed to pieces by a yelping and purring nymphomaniac, greased up with Simon Petrovitch’s distorted and syrupy guitar lines. Think Bikini Kill meets Melvins-style sludge… think Melt Banana meets Nirvana. Hell, don’t think at all, just turn it up loud and prepare to be bruised.

Sexed up to the max, dripping with scrappy and erratic sleaze, screeching and unpleasant yet somehow delicious in an under-the-counter kinda way, A Crime of Love is a carnal delight. Just don’t tell your mother, she’d be appalled.

Trotty P.