SnC 147 – Wed 10 Dec 2008

Podcast: Play in new window

A really interesting selection of music again this week, quite a bit from the UK plus tracks from Nashville, New York, California and Denmark. There are a couple of rather quirky tracks that you should look forward to.Really cold, even in the barn, as I put the show together, but probably not as cold as it is out on the Dunwich marshes by the Suffolk coast where these semi-wild ponies keep the vegetation down and where Dartmoor ponies are being used to regenerate the landscape after years of commercial forestry. Once, Twice, Again! – Dartz! (Teeside, UK) From the sampler album from Deep Elm "Bonfire of Trust"."In the last few years the northeast corner of England has produced a cluster of post-punk bands with a penchant for spiky riffs and melodic vocals. The Futureheads and Maximo Park have garnered the most critical attention, but Dartz! are now making waves of their own.Once, Twice, Again! reminds us that, first and foremost, the band is here to make you move. Still, pigeonholing DARTZ! as anything other than an extremely intelligent, complex and exciting band would be doing them an injustice. Off-kilter riffs and catchy choruses rip a melodic groove into your brain while intersecting instrumental passages are compelling enough to keep the hipsters zigging and the punkers zagging.20 Dec Academy 2 Newcastle UK.www.myspace.com/dartswww.wearedartz.com/Dartz! "Once, Twice, Again!" (mp3) from "Deep Elm Sampler No. 8 "Bonfire of Trust"" (Deep Elm) Buy at Deep Elm Records Buy at Rhapsody
Enough of you – The Sugar Dames (Nashville TN, USA)Nashville, Tennessee has long been a city revered for it’s music, but if you should ever wander into the outskirts of the city you might encounter the unique and wonderful sounds of a seductive duo known as The Sugar Dames. Amongst lonely antebellum homes, farm relics and rolling hills the Dames have been hiding away–hard at work on their first project. Jenn Palmer and Christina Elen are hardly your typical musicians.Having both been solo acts for 5 years and have been a group for the past two years, The Sugar Dames deliver music that is a hybrid of the past and present, an all encompassing style. "We’re influenced by anything and everything from the alternative genres to the classics, from Debussy and Tom Waits to old black gospel and Etta James." says Palmer.You can get the album Sirens of the broken heart from iTunes.www.myspace.com/thesugardamesTammy is Lez – Esiotrot (UK)From their excellent album Seven ApplesCat, Matt, Adey and Duncan formed Esiotrot in the late 80’s when they got together to play Tortoise covers backwards. Soon Thomas Stimson joined on vibes, and they went on to perform a series of incendiary live shows, which so inspired Roald Dahl that he was moved to name his latest book after them. After the recording of their now legendary debut album "Schmesiotrot" they recruited brass section Thom punton and John Edom, to record some overdubs and play some shows, and they ended up never leaving. After releasing an EP on unpopular records, and playing a radio session for Hugh Stephens, Esiotrot went on to record their great lost album, 7 apples, which is now due to see the light of day as a series of split seven inches.Esiotrot’s first EP sold out, but now available to download on itunes and napster (under Esio Trot rather than Esiotrot, if you wonder why you can’t find it!).15 Dec (Monday) they are playing the Get Wanted night at 333 Mother Bar on Old Street, EC1 in London along with Komla, The Yakataks and Ryco Saints. www.myspace.com/getwantedwww.myspace.com/esiotrotschmesiotrotF for Fake – ray On (London, UK)frank okolo (hum)matt donovan (drum)shane gilliver (strum)My thanks to Jessie for spotting the band and organising the contact.www.myspace.com/rayonmusicwww.rayonmusic.comSlow Guns – The Homosexuals (New York, USA)The Homosexuals are often credited as godfathers of the D.I.Y. movement, Bruno Wizard with guitarist Anton Heyman, bassist Jim Welton and a cast of revolving collaborators accumulated a treasure trove of other-worldly art-punk in the late 70s and early 80s, shunning the sniffs of big-label bloodhounds, only sporadically performing, and self-pressing tiny quantities of their own records only to disband completely by ’83. Serious Business Records proudly presents Love Guns?, the first piece of new vinyl issued by The Homosexuals since the early eighties. The band’s first ever US tour recently concluded with mesmerizing original writer / vocalist / auteur Bruno Wizard fronting a young band of tough-as-nails New Yorkers. The three songs that comprise the heart of the Love Guns? EP are "Slow Guns," a full-scale 70-s styled, hook-laden, anti-establishment punk anthem, "3AM (Pink Pony)," a sweet, slow building slice of bedroom pop, and "Don"t Touch My Hair," a future-world mutant-disco dance-floor banger.The Love Guns? EP is being initially released as a hand numbered 300-piece 10" vinyl pressing. Bruno Wizard has hand written a story across the entirety of the 300 pieces, with a unique sentence, a fragment or a few words appearing on each copy. Fans can compare their unique inscriptions, upload photos, and slowly piece together the entire story at www.thehomosexualsloveguns.com. This pressing is extremely limited so interested parties should order their copies NOW. http://seriousbusinessrecords.com/releases/show/45-Love-Guns-He’s in the Jailhouse now – Madame Pamita (California, USA)"In the spirit of bounteous munificence, Madame Pamita presents the most tantilizing, most mesmerizing, most edifying experience of augury and prognostication the world has ever known. This mystic seer and musical prodigy does nothing less than spiritually transform those who witness her act. The powers of the vibration of unselfconscious music coupled with the mystical science of fortune telling allow her to access the depths of the human soul and once there to tranfigure it with the power of divine light."She travelled to Long Island, New York to make 13 wax cylinder recordings. Enter into the curious and sublime world of Madame Pamita’s Parlor of Wonders, an old-time medicine show filled with mysticism, music and melodrama: an entrancing array of spectacles both quaint and queer!Madame Pamita plays songs written both by herself and by those who have moved on to the great beyond – rural blues, old time, jug band and proto-jazz numbers about romance and revenge and mirth and mayhem.www.madamepamita.com/Låter fra Selsø – Selsølåter (Denmark)
Selsølåter "Totur fra Selsø" (mp3)(GO’ Danish Folk Music) Buy at Rhapsody More On This AlbumChicken on a Raft – Pyrates! (Exeter, UK) directPyrates! was finally formed properly as a band during the summer of 2006, an offshoot of the pirate nights we’ve been having around Exeter for the last 3 years, there are only so many verses a group of drunk people can remember during a night out!Pyrates! are a sea shanty, folk, drinking, rock, songs of the sea type band, performing a variety of traditional, revival and alternative folk music all in our very own musical way!www.myspace.com/ukpirateswww.pyrates.co.uk/Out of it – Brad Sucks (Ottawa, Canada)Title track from the album recommended to me by equalconquest over on Jamendo.With his cheeky, disillusioned, home studio-recorded folky yet rocky songs, Brad, a 31-year-old musician from Ottawa, inevitably gets compared to Beck quite often. As much as it can be a compliment, no artist likes to be told they sound like another; but by now Brad has gotten to terms with the parallel. "It used to bother me, I took it as ‘hey you’re a crappy Beck impersonator with no ideas of your own!’ But other musicians told me they get compared to Beck all the time also. So maybe it’s the musical equivalent of ‘tastes like chicken’. On the other hand, getting compared implies getting heard. Brad started posting demos on the internet a few years ago, then released his first album, I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, at the beginning of 2007, which started getting him some attention pretty far away from home. That’s even how he got around to exotic places like Jamendo: "I started selling a bunch of albums to Europeans and got some emails suggesting I put my stuff on Jamendo. After I got enough, I finally checked it out and it looked like an interesting crowd of people. Lately I’ve been digging Professor Kliq a lot, for example."Eventually, his music circulated in ways he wouldn’t have imagined, ending up in ads for cars and condoms, or with "heroes of mine saying they like my music" and "artists doing well these days citing me as an inspiration. That feels awesome."So now would probably be a good time to take things to the next level professionally. Brad has been considering getting help with press and booking gigs. But in the meantime, he’s managing everything alone, while hoping that the new album, Out Of It, makes his music income go up (he’s also into web design). "I’d like to do a bit of touring in the new year but Ive got to figure out if it makes sense money-wise. Other than that, I’ve got a lot of music I’m working on, as well as some stories and a few other things that I’m excited to get to."www.bradsucks.net/www.jamendo.com/en/album/31187Sig tune: Happy – Jimmy Bratcherwww.jimmiebratcher.com