'Asylum', Not Squares' debut single, opens with a punch right in your ears delivered by a fist full of drums. Then, before you've had a chance to clear the stars orbiting your head, you're placed in the middle of dance floor and instructed to do one thing and one thing only: dance fucker!
Filthy bass, frenetic drums and angular guitar riffs propel this thrash disco beast out of the blocks at a pace that doesn't let up until its four and a half minutes have expired and you're finding yourself short of breath, the only respite being a breakdown of anthemic chanting and four to the floor kick drum.
Asylum gets a digital release on The Richter Collective on March 1st.
Not Squares - Asylum from Bright Stem on Vimeo.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Monday, 25 January 2010
Pavement Announce Best of Tracklisting
That tracklisting for Pavement's new retrospective 'Quarantine the Past' is in. The album, which is released by Domino on 8th March, features a generous twenty three tracks with pretty much all you'd expect present and correct.
Pavement - 'Quarantine the Past (The Best of Pavement)'
1. 'Gold Soundz'
2. 'Frontwards'
3. 'Mellow Jazz Docent'
4. 'Stereo'
5. 'In The Mouth A Desert'
6. 'Two States'
7. 'Cut Your Hair'
8. 'Shady Lane / J vs. S'
9. 'Here'
10. 'Unfair'
11. 'Grounded'
12. 'Summer Babe (Winter Version)'
13. 'Range Life'
14. 'Date w/ IKEA'
15. 'Debris Slide'
16. 'Shoot The Singer (1 Sick Verse)'
17. 'Spit On A Stranger'
18. 'Heaven Is A Truck'
19. 'Trigger Cut / Wounded-Kite At :17'
20. 'Embassy Row'
21. 'Box Elder'
22. 'Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence'
23. 'Fight This Generation'
Pavement - 'Quarantine the Past (The Best of Pavement)'
1. 'Gold Soundz'
2. 'Frontwards'
3. 'Mellow Jazz Docent'
4. 'Stereo'
5. 'In The Mouth A Desert'
6. 'Two States'
7. 'Cut Your Hair'
8. 'Shady Lane / J vs. S'
9. 'Here'
10. 'Unfair'
11. 'Grounded'
12. 'Summer Babe (Winter Version)'
13. 'Range Life'
14. 'Date w/ IKEA'
15. 'Debris Slide'
16. 'Shoot The Singer (1 Sick Verse)'
17. 'Spit On A Stranger'
18. 'Heaven Is A Truck'
19. 'Trigger Cut / Wounded-Kite At :17'
20. 'Embassy Row'
21. 'Box Elder'
22. 'Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence'
23. 'Fight This Generation'
Sunday, 24 January 2010
How To Get Ahead In The Music Industry - A&R Edition
Is this what the inner-sanctum of the music industry is really like? Yes and no.
Brilliant slice of juvenile pisstaking here from Louis Gaston of The Streetlife DJs - check the comments section below for a few comments from popular DJs.
But just remember - it's on spec, yeah? And if you get offended there's probably something wrong with the way you do 'business'...
Friday, 22 January 2010
Where's My Tie?
I'm sure you've probably seen all of these around London and the rest of the UK, but if not, check out this Holy Moly article, and this website, where you can *ahem* amend David Cameron's totally fucking nausiating poster campaign.
It made me laugh, mainly because it makes an insincere moron look even more stupid. Simple really.
Make yours here.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
The Gorillaz Are Back - Check Out This Cool Little Widget
The Gorillaz return after a long hiatus this March with their new album, and as is increasingly the norm these days, there is a pretty slick social media campaign going on to promote it.
I love this sort of shit - I love it when bands and labels actually make an effort to do something interesting, something different with an album release. Maybe I'm just a major label shill, but I'd rather have some big and brassy campaign like this, with plenty of interesting twists and turns, than another fucking email saying that some dreadful dance-rock outfit is playing at The Slug and Lettuce, who have been signed by some fart-sniffing bedroom indie label. But I digress...
Here's the tracklist for y'all:
Plastic Beach (2010)
1. Orchestral Intro (featuring Sinfonia ViVA)
2. Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach (feat. Snoop Dogg and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
3. White Flag (feat. Kano, Bashy and The National Orchestra For Arabic Music)
4. Rhinestone Eyes
5. Stylo (feat. Bobby Womack and Mos Def)
6. Superfast Jellyfish (feat. Gruff Rhys and De La Soul)
7. Empire Ants (feat. Little Dragon)
8. Glitter Freeze (feat. Mark E Smith)
9. Some Kind Of Nature (feat. Lou Reed)
10. On Melancholy Hill
11. Broken
12. Sweepstakes (feat. Mos Def & Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
13. Plastic Beach (feat. Mick Jones & Paul Simonon)
14. To Binge (feat. Little Dragon)
15. Cloud Of Unknowing (feat. Bobby Womack and Sinfonia ViVA)
16. Pirate Jet
You can follow Murdoc on Twitter here.
And you can pick up a neat little Gorillaz widget here. No doubt it's going to have a host of neat little features popping up on it over the next month, including the eagerly-awaited video for the single 'Stylo', and a few podcasts.
Enjoy!
Not so Smashing Pumpkins
The Smashing Pumpkins have released the second song, 'Widow Wake My Mind', from the 44 track album Teargarden By Kaleidyscope. News of a new Pumpkins release is fast becoming more nerve-wracking than playing Russian roulette in the middle of a particularly bad acid trip.
Anyone with any interest in the band will be well aware of the massive limitations of Zeitgeist, and the first release from Teargarden... 'Song For A Sun' is absolutely diabolical, something akin to Phil Collins attempting to rip off Led Zeppelin. So what of the new song? Well, the good news is its not terrible, but on the other hand, the best thing you could say for it is that sounds like a very mediocre B-side from the Gish era. ‘Widow Wake My Mind’ is faintly psychedelic, with a decent approximation of the SP knack for a triumphant solo. The piano break in the bridge and lyric about “crawling into my heart” are a bit cringe-worthy, and the track is undeniably lightweight, but overall it’s not bad- and almost certainly better than anything from Zeitgeist.
Musicians like Billy Corgan inspire a particular kind of hero-worship among their fan base, the longer the career; the more this effect is amplified. When a band has such an excellent catalogue of albums stretching over the length of time the Pumpkins do, the albums become more than great pieces of art, they become soundtracks to the fans formative years. They become a trusted friend- always on hand to celebrate the highs and sympathise with the lows. So when the inevitable decline happens, to the long-time fan it feels like more than a band releasing a bad record; it feels like a slap in the face to the band’s legacy, to the fan’s very memories. No-one expects artists to go on making wonderful music forever, but when things do start to go downhill, the clamour for them to bow out gracefully becomes intense.
The plan for Teargarden By Kaleidyscope is to release every one of the 44 songs online for free as it is written, with a physcial boxset to buy when all the tracks have been released, so its seems obvious that Billy Corgan is not willing to fade into the night anytime soon. And, being honest, we shouldn’t really expect him to, its entirely unfair to want someone to just stop make making music because it doesn’t live up to an existing fanbase’s expectations, but the frustration at one member (Corgan) putting out shonky material under the Pumpkins banner with none of the other original members involved is much easier to sympathise with. Having used Zwan and his own name to release music in the past (both of which were considerably better than the current Pumpkins material) why has he now decided that he can justify being the sole proprietor of the Pumpkins legacy?
Sadly, this kind of ego-driven behaviour rarely works out well in a musical sense. There are countless examples of the singer of a much-loved band going on to make highly dubious musical decisions without the input of any of the band’s original members; Axl Rose’s Chinese Democracy debacle being one recent instance that springs painfully to mind. The Smashing Pumpkins haven’t yet plumbed those depths, and despite myself I can’t help but like ‘Widow Wake My Mind’ a little bit. With 42 songs from Teargarden By Kaleidyscope still to go, it may even turn out to be an excellent album, stranger things have happened. The part of me that treasures Gish, Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness however, fears that the best days of Billy Corgan, and The Smashing Pumpkins, are long gone.
Anyone with any interest in the band will be well aware of the massive limitations of Zeitgeist, and the first release from Teargarden... 'Song For A Sun' is absolutely diabolical, something akin to Phil Collins attempting to rip off Led Zeppelin. So what of the new song? Well, the good news is its not terrible, but on the other hand, the best thing you could say for it is that sounds like a very mediocre B-side from the Gish era. ‘Widow Wake My Mind’ is faintly psychedelic, with a decent approximation of the SP knack for a triumphant solo. The piano break in the bridge and lyric about “crawling into my heart” are a bit cringe-worthy, and the track is undeniably lightweight, but overall it’s not bad- and almost certainly better than anything from Zeitgeist.
Musicians like Billy Corgan inspire a particular kind of hero-worship among their fan base, the longer the career; the more this effect is amplified. When a band has such an excellent catalogue of albums stretching over the length of time the Pumpkins do, the albums become more than great pieces of art, they become soundtracks to the fans formative years. They become a trusted friend- always on hand to celebrate the highs and sympathise with the lows. So when the inevitable decline happens, to the long-time fan it feels like more than a band releasing a bad record; it feels like a slap in the face to the band’s legacy, to the fan’s very memories. No-one expects artists to go on making wonderful music forever, but when things do start to go downhill, the clamour for them to bow out gracefully becomes intense.
The plan for Teargarden By Kaleidyscope is to release every one of the 44 songs online for free as it is written, with a physcial boxset to buy when all the tracks have been released, so its seems obvious that Billy Corgan is not willing to fade into the night anytime soon. And, being honest, we shouldn’t really expect him to, its entirely unfair to want someone to just stop make making music because it doesn’t live up to an existing fanbase’s expectations, but the frustration at one member (Corgan) putting out shonky material under the Pumpkins banner with none of the other original members involved is much easier to sympathise with. Having used Zwan and his own name to release music in the past (both of which were considerably better than the current Pumpkins material) why has he now decided that he can justify being the sole proprietor of the Pumpkins legacy?
Sadly, this kind of ego-driven behaviour rarely works out well in a musical sense. There are countless examples of the singer of a much-loved band going on to make highly dubious musical decisions without the input of any of the band’s original members; Axl Rose’s Chinese Democracy debacle being one recent instance that springs painfully to mind. The Smashing Pumpkins haven’t yet plumbed those depths, and despite myself I can’t help but like ‘Widow Wake My Mind’ a little bit. With 42 songs from Teargarden By Kaleidyscope still to go, it may even turn out to be an excellent album, stranger things have happened. The part of me that treasures Gish, Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness however, fears that the best days of Billy Corgan, and The Smashing Pumpkins, are long gone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
