Coming Down In Sacred Bones' Church

I picked up This World Is Not Enough, the "solo" album from Iceage's Elias Bender Rønnenfelt under the moniker Marching Church, last month. It is a strange brooding beast - with slight echoes of Rønnenfelt's "day" band, but with far more contemplative, cantankerous and quietly chaotic measures floating through its veins. Sacred Bones has released something that is even further out in the fringes in the form of Coming Down: Sessions in April 12 (out through Sacred Bones), a haunting improv lurch from eye-scratching purification and soul fires to a coalescing caterwaul of cathartic free jazz emulsions (which featured members of Lower and Puce Mary among others). The slow drag-the-lake in harrowing monochrome flaying of the emotional mind. I absolutely love this. News that they are recording a new album is fantastic news. Dive into these immensely murky waters now - they play at London's Birthdays on Monday.

Avant Garde Blood Sports

Good mate Paul - yes, he who co-founded this "illustrious" blog - turned me onto this little release from Sheffield trio Blood Sport. Their six-track LP Life In Units is equal parts precise math instrumentation, weird errant pop, scrawled intricacies, sci-fi malapropisms and spastic rhythms - suitably skewed stuff. Even the cover art is an amalgam of the artwork of David Hockney and Francis Bacon - when heady worlds from either end of the spectrum collide, it bears strange fruit. Yet Life In Units is incredibly beguiling, and when a track like '20202016 VIP' hits its stride, you will find yourself rocking back and forth, hunched in a standing foetal position, ready to be taken up by a higher being. It's only music, sure, but when Blood Sport understand the seduction of the sonic slipstream, they wield almighty power.

You can buy Life In Units on 12" vinyl here. Blood Sport are playing at Birthdays in London on February 8 with Tera Melos - and are also supporting Mike Watt in their hometown in April. Then the penny drops. Kindred spirits there. You should get along if you are in the area - or even if you aren't - TM are sweet dudes, and I think Blood Sport will defy their name and have a pint with you rather than make you bite the kerb. But that's just hearsay on my part - they could still stomp the shit out of you. Only one way to find out...

Learn How To Always Love Mission Of Burma

 

I mentioned yesterday about the venue Birthdays in Dalston, London, the Vice-sponsored basement that is merely an alleyway that doesn’t promote good musical experiences but does promote bullshit hipsterisms. Word on the street is that Vice is about to pull the pin on their support of the place, and it couldn’t happen fast enough in my opinion. I went to the Mission of Burma show there in December, and whilst the performance was good, it was more memorable for all the wrong reasons – and great comedian Stewart Lee incessantly yelling out “Just play the hits!” (and he kinda had a point…) Of course the trio were promoting new record Unsound, which is fair – but Fire Records had the right idea, bringing together some of their “hits” in a two-disc compilation Learn How: The Essential Mission of Burma. And goddamn, if this isn’t one of the best comps I’ve heard in a while. A precursor to the band reissuing all of their output – ALL OF IT – it does everything a “Best Of” should do, and reminds you just how underappreciated these fuckers are. Their reformation in 2002 has lasted, brought about some incredible albums, and cemented their status as an incendiary punk rock band that should have been shoulder to shoulder with Wire in this lil dude’s opinion.

Anyway, the gig was still memorable – they played a few of my faves, I saw a sweaty Lee in the flesh, and caught up, drank and smoked too many cigarettes with some dear friends. And listening to Learn How, I mingle those memories with my childhood ones, and that’s all you can really wish for.

 

You can get Learn How here.

Mission of Burma – Dirt
Mission of Burma – That’s When I Reach For My Revolver
Mission of Burma – That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate

Don't Call The Curtain On This Team Of Ghosts

 

I enjoy a little M83 – 'Midnight City' is pretty rad, and their Before The Dawn Heals Us LP of 2005 was at one point in my life a high-rotation chillout album. But after the screw around that was their closing slot on 2012’s Laneway Festival in Brisbane (which wasn’t entirely their fault, but after a day of rain, ridiculously priced midstrength drinks and reviewing an entire festival ON MY OWN, my patience left the grounds hours earlier) I've cooled right off the French band. So when I saw that Team Ghost’s frontman was Nicholas Fromageau, once one half of M83, I was book/cover dubious.

Lucky I pay attention to well-worn clichés though – I dived straight into the Parisian quintet’s new EP Curtains and haven’t yet resurfaced, preferring to remain submerged in the glassy darkness. Fromageau describes the title track as trying to sound like Thurston Moore jamming with Peter Hook, with electronics filling in the blanks. It makes for a dissonant track and the perfect introduction into the squalling futuristic hell that Team Ghost champion. A good song that tips into serrated greatness halfway through, it’ll leave you salivating. Great stuff.

 

Curtains is out later this month through wSphere, with their debut LP Rituals following suit in March. Can’t wait. Don’t expect them down on Australian shores anytime soon – but they are playing in London – Birthdays to be exact (and a lead-in to my next post…) – in April, you lucky sods.

Video Vacuum - Liars, Mind Spiders, Birthdays, Charbonneau

It's been some time since I got it on with the visuals, and I've had a few up my sleeve without acting on them. Well, this post is nothing if not to show off the new video for Liars' single 'No. 1 Against The Rush', a incredibly filmed, dark as fuck mood piece that starts solemn, gets fucking twisted, and ends in territory that will haunt my dreams. The Human Centipede 2 should have been this. Angus Andrew's facial expression says it all really. If the track is already whipping you into a frenzy for the upcoming LP WIXIW (it is for me), then this video will seal the deal.



Raging Texans Mind Spiders have just released Meltdown on Dirtnap Records, and 'Wait For Us' is off it. It portrays a guy apparently abandoned on a desolate planet, who calls out for help. Yet when it comes, the "rescuer" gets more than he bargains for... This is a slick video, much like the Liars video, and perfectly complements this killer tune.



Portland synthers Charbonneau have an 80stastic flick to correspond with their 'American Is My Favourite Language' track. Focusing on US billboards and signs, interspersed with some slow-mo spazz dancing, we have something affecting, amusing and addictive. I don't know who this band is, but this video is amazing.



Finally we have Boston act Birthdays, who threw me their 'Howolding Girls' video the other day (via Mike from Sippy Cup Everything). It has Birthdays (AKA Sam Yager) standing with a black background and various colours and images projected onto his face, the overall effect coming across as B-grade horror, glow-in-the-dark tribalism and Animal Collective eclecticism with the right amount of unease and fascination. The track itself emulates AC in its swathes of synth, yet with slightly more immediately accessible vocals... Good stuff. Birthdays is rocking with Gauntlet Hair in his hometown before winging his way to Japan for a two week jaunt - good luck dude, let us know how it goes!



NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Boston Birthday Pack a Psych Punch

So with this post I am up to date with the mega cool cassette releases Impose Magazine has pumped out the past few months. And its funny that I listened to them in non-sequential order, because in some weird way I think it makes more sense. First was the space ghost jams of Blissed Out; then the frenetic wizardry of Weekends. In some ways I think if you married these two up, or at least artificially inseminated one with the other's sperm, you would come up with a pleasant mistake such as Boston's Birthdays. Their Hawaiian Punch Wave, less than a month old, is muddy experimental electronic pop, the flourishes evident in the cymbal crash and the constant static that is more comforting than confronting. Im definitely interested in hearing more. Im glad to now have in my possession a couple of cassettes - I havent owned any since I last made my own back in 2000 - and it feels...like home.

Birthdays - Software
Birthdays - Procreating Flower Bug

Livin For The Weekends

Weekends are a band I heard about a few months ago from a friend who had been to South By South West and did a bit of a scout around. From all intents and purposes the 2 piece from Baltimore have drawn not unwarranted comparisons to the likes of Ponytail and Lightning Bolt, probably due to the fractured time signatures, guitar weird wizardry and shouty vocal interplay. Both members of the band write songs and play both instruments, which is always a plus when seeing them live Id imagine. I havent really got anything else to go on - except that they kicked off Impose Magazine's Cassette Series a couple months back - its a cracker! I like it more than the next two incarnations (although i do like both, as yesterday's post about Blissed Out and tomorrow's about Birthdays can attest), particularly title track 'Psychedelic Mice'. Reminds me of that show, 'Biker Mice From Mars', remember that? NO? WHAT??? Anyway, they also rock a mean cover of Future Islands' 'Little Dreamer' too. Their latest LP Strange Cultures (through Friends Records) came out earlier this year, and Im making it a perogative to hunt it down (the vinyl has an exclusive 7 minute version of 'Raincoat' - you should too...

Oh yeah, and its a hell of a lot of fun too.

Weekends - Psychedelic Mice
Weekends - Little Dreamer (Future Islands cover)

Imposingly Scarred By The Bliss Bombs

Blissed Out, 3 Brooklyners who love their electronica loud, psychotropic and ever so slightly abrasive whilst still summoning up dance grooves and dreamscapes, are releasing a 4-track cassette as part of Impose Magazine's Cassette Series (its the third instalment behind Weekends and Birthdays - you can attempt to hunt them all down here). The basic premise is that the chosen band decides how many tracks they want recorded and whether its to be made digitally available - and thats pretty much it. Blissed Out's contribution, entitled Second Plane after a thinly veiled tip of the hat to 9/11 (what with 9/11 just around the corner AND the belief held by the band that it was an inside job), the tracks were thrown down between tours and showcases not only the musical direction they are heading in, but also their new third member Phoebe Pritchett and what she brings to the table synth and vocal-wise. The B-sides also highlight their amazing propensity to entirely recreate a song when they remix it (or 'edit' it). Check out some of these 'edits' on their myspace page, and sample second A-track 'Scarified' below. Oh, and if you didnt catch the split that Blissed Out did with the Dum Dum Girls - too late, they're all snapped up.

Blissed Out - Scarified

NB - posts of previous Impose Magazine cassette devotees Weekends and Birthdays up in the next few days.