English artists’ Xmas thinks

The Drones by Fat White Family for that special night

FWF short Euro tour in Feb

Greeting of visual artist and writer David Shrigley

Dear Jonnie,

I have listened to your new album many-many times, but I can’t write about it too much words, just this: perfect. (Dear reader, please click the play button below, and listen to fine Scotch electro-pop music. Owing to its mood I call it Trip Pop.) Recently I edited a playlist from new releases, and wanted to play one of your new songs, which can arouse the listeners’ curiosity. The task was no easy one, however this is a good album. (BBC6 also played songs from it.) And there are lots of added useful thing. Birnam Wood, the Hangman’s Tree and the little sculptures of characters of Beatrix Potter’s animal tales have come to my knowledge. And I have decided to read my first Shakespeare. Thanks indirectly to your new album. But I can’t enthuse over it. But there is your first album Master of None, happy happy joy joy.

Cheers,

szabo

ps: There’s an interlude, a woman leaves a message on your answering machine. She talks about a hedgehog, starts in English after switchs over to German and finally to Dutch – at least for my ears. I don’t understand. What’s the matter with that hedgehog?

Jonnie Common – Trapped in Amber, album on Song, By Toad Records (Scotland)

Mr. Gaymer from Dartford, UK, teachs English at an university in Beijing, but after school he plays Misfits influenced blues trash as GUIGUISUISUI together  with his some co-characters. He is 138, of course.

All the backing beats are composed on a Nintendo Gameboy or from found 8-bit games. Mixed and co-produced by luminary Beijing producer/sonic journeyman extraordinaire, Yan Haisong (P.K.14, Dear Eloise). Debut 7″ on Genjing Recods (PROC)

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Liam Hayes aka Plush has made various pop albums with minimal and maximal orchestration from the mid-90s. His progressive bubblegum rock and roll album is coming soon on Fat Possum (US)

Hey you, ugly bastard! Have you any know about David Shrigley? Nichevo. He’s a drunken British who living in Scotland and makes all kinds of stupid artistic trash like drawings, sculptures, poems, installations, animations, and made videos for Blur and Johnny King Billy, or who the fuck. And of course why not he also makes records. For example there was a split with Thee Oh Sees, and such musicians made music for his words, and sang his silly songs as Deerhoof, Tv On The Radio, R Stevie Moore, David Byrne, Scout Niblett, Trans AM, Dirty Projectors, Max Tundra, Franz Ferdinand, Alig Fodder and more similar dumb assholes. These were released on the album Worried Noodles.

His brand new horrible, but awful album has been made with Malcolm Middleton from the luckily disbanded Arab Strap. I’m fucking happy to listen to this shit. You will suck it totally.

Next item of his illustrated toilet paper collections
Weak Messages Create Bad Situations were released recently.

Anyway, Shrigley is illegitimate godson of Rod Stewart, and honorary president of Artists with Mental Handicap Movement.

SUDAKISTAN, Stockholm based latino punks

7″ on PNKSLM (UK/SWE)

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PINK SECTION was a short-lived synth-punk band with Dadaist aesthetic by 4 students of San Francisco Art Institute in 1979/80. This first-time retrospective LP collects the band’s rare 1979 single, the self-titled EP, unreleased demos, and live materials

Carol and Judy went on to form the Inflatable Boy Clams after Pink Section split. The bass and sax player Matt makes mechanical music and sound installations nowadays.

“It’s noisy, with keyboards, you wouldn’t like it”

Wild Grass by Gentle Friendly

from the album ” K A U A ‘  I   O’O  A ‘A” on Fat Cat (UK)

Gentle Friendly started when David took some scrapped drums and guitars out of a skip in East-London. Cleaned the instruments and invited Daniel to “come and mess with the stuff” while he played his broken Casio MT-40. Eventually the guitars stayed out of use.

29 years old British poet, playwright and rapper Kate Tempest‘s second Speedy Wunderground single is a duet with Londoner fellow Loyle Carner. In the Guts his acid jazzy sound blends with Kate’s hard, electronic beats. This is a special release because the label’s strict order of recordings: recording in the dark with smoke and lazers, need to use Swarmatron (a hand-built analogue synthesiser), recording time is one day, finish before midnight, no lunch break, mixing on the next day.

I can’t refrain to doing list Tempest’s main influences: Virginia Woolf, MF Doom, Samuel Beckett, John Coltrane, James Joyce, Roots Manuva, William Blake, Wu-Tang Clan, Milan Kundera, GZA, Knut Hamson, Mos Def, Yeats, Nina Simone, Carson McCullers, The Knife, Kafka, Scroobius Pip, and Confucius… Her first solo album „Everybody Down” was made together with the producer Dan Carey (Franz Ferdinand, Bat For Lashes, TOY, Django Django, Emiliana Torrini, The Kills, Kylie Minogue, Tame Impala, founder of Speedy Wunderground). It was released this year on Big Dada Records. „Alternative hip-hop” trio Sound of Rum was her previous project. It had a jazzy taste thanks to the drums and guitar.

Kate Tempest Euro Tour Nov-Dec. Vienna: 1 Dec

On Clapton Pound at dawn

The pond was calm
the sky was new
your voice was soft your lies were true.
You were me and I was you
and I was going blind with you.

You told me I reminded you
of Venus when I smiled at you,
or angels that go flying through
the paintings in the quietest rooms
of galleries. Renaissance girls,
all soft curves and floating curls.
We sat there and the light shone through
the leaves and we admired the view.

I loved you.
I had died for you
that night,
I’d closed my eyes
and through the gaps
I’d sought your silhouette.
I’d given up my mind for you.
We did what all our kind would do.

You sat beside me, finding new
ways to look away.
You kissed me. It was lighter fuel.
It burnt the night away.
And when I took my eyes off you
I saw that it was day.

More Speedy Wunderground’s recordings

Meatbodies. Is Chud Ubovich’s „fast & loud” garage rock band. He is touring guitarist of Mikal Cronin, and bassist of Fuzz. Is a Ty Segall band. He plays drums and bass on some tracks on Meatbodies’ first album

on In The Red Rec

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Live digital album of British psychedelic rock band The Oscillation

The English Burning Alms duo plays noise rock. I think Fugazi, Helmet, Sonic Youth and black metal; others mentioned e.g. Glenn Branca and Swans as influence.

debut album „In Sequence” on Smalltown America Records (Northern-Ireland, UK)

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Elzo Durt is Belgian graphic artist who made many cover arts for such bands as Thee Oh Sees, Magnetix, Jack of Heart, PyPy and many more. On the occasion of his Parisian exhibition, Born Bad Records have released a single with really various artists: Cheveu, Pierre & Bastien and Violence Conjugale

Elzo is co-founder of Teenage Menopause Records

The new songs of Purling Hiss come to Dinosaur Jr to my mind, but this Philadelphian trio is better. I can’t endure J. Masics’ mewing.

„Weirdon” album on Drag City (US)

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Thank God, less experiment and more music by Dan Melchior and Walker Russel (Pheromoans).  „Kraut-influenced space rock.” Maybe, I don’t know.

7″ by Kill Shaman Records (US)

Dan Melchior on RNR666

Speedy Wunderground is a very special little label in London. It was formed in early 2013 by the producer Dan Carey. He worked together with Franz Ferdinand, Bat For Lashes, TOY, Django Django, Emiliana Torrini, The Kills, Kylie Minogue, Tame Impala among others.
The Speedy Wunderground works under strict rules: Dan will produce all releases. All records will be recorded at Dan’s studio. Recording of all records will be done in one day and finish before midnight. Mixing will be done the day following the recording, also in one day only. There will be no lunch break during these days. The core of each song will be a live take recorded in the dark with smoke and lazers and somewhere on each record the Swarmatron (a hand-built analogue synthesiser) will make an appearance. The recordings will appear in limited runs of 250 7”s.

Natalie Bang Bang is a Riot Grrrl. She said it. And made mention of Serge Gainsbourg, David Bowie, Madonna, A$AP Rocky and David Byrne as her top musicians. And picked Loser by Beck as her national anthem. But nevertheless she is just a teen spice girl in soft Madonna style. Maybe this post punk disco track is her first really good song

7″ will be released on 3rd Nov by Speedy Wunderground

The founder of notorious British alternative punk band Country Teasers (which was somewhere between The Fall and Fat White Family), Ben Waller says about the beginning of his musical carrier: “I envied the guys in the school band. They didn’t invite me to join, so I formed my own band. I wanted to play the Cure’s guitar melodies, so that’s how I learnt, playing along. I learnt by ear. I had learnt piano to Grade 3, which I failed; I learnt sax for a year or two at school too. Fucking hated it. But I could play the solo at the end of Pink Floyd’s ‘Two Suns in the Sunset’, the tragic climax of The Final Cut.” * His next cut under his pseudonym The Rebel

„KROT” LP on Monofonus Press (US). It is just like the Country Teasers with minimal orchestration and experimental country songs. It was recorded in Texas. On the label’s site you can listen to the whole album for a limited time!

Free download: Country Teasers          The Rebel

* The cited interview

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The promised „more grown up, well polished” new album by the acid beach boys Growlers. “There are some happy songs, some love songs, some creepy shit. There’s everything. We got funky.”

„Chinese Fountain” LP, CD, digital on Everloving (US), Fat Cat (EU) and Smack Face Records (Aus)