Distracted Youth On The Bridge

Last year London's Sauna Youth brought out an excellent LP in the form of Distractions. Well, I am making assumptions - I still haven't gotten around to buying it yet. But their launch in Hackney last year was bloody great, as is this cut from it, 'The Bridge', which is being released as a clear 7" on the Upset The Rhythm label next week before they tour Europe. They are at their most sinewy, sharp-edged limits here, the sweat flying off frets and fringes, both erratic and meticulous, cantankerous and giddily polite. The double-edged punk that the four-piece always traverse is a hard one to pull off - think here of Metz with a Wedding Present hangover, or The Clean fed piecemeal into a shorting blender. Straddling the punk rock extremes - they are the bridge.



Buy The Bridge here. See below their tour dates, kicking off in Brighton with Soft Walls:


27th January – Brighton, UK – Sticky Mike’s w/ Soft Walls, The Glugg

28th January – Rennes, France – Bar’Hic

29th January – Bordeaux, France – TBC

30th January – San Sebastian, Spain – Lurrazpiko Festa

31st January – Madrid, Spain – Wurlitzer Ballroom

1st February – Zaragoza, Spain – La Lata de Bombillas

2nd February – Barcelona, Spain – Heliogabal

3rd February – Toulouse, France – Le Rabelin

4th February – Antwerp, Belgium – Music City

5th February – Leiden, Holland – CAB03

6th February – Amsterdam, Holland – Pacific Parc

7th February – Rotterdam, Holland – TBC

13th February – London, UK – The Forge “The Bridge” 7” release party

Happy Metz Year (Erased)

Welcome to 2016. For a lot of people, it would have started with out-of-sync clatter and deafening noise, erratic out of focus images, coffee and acid reflux. Which is pretty much Metz' new film clip for 'Eraser'. The song will be out on 7" through Three One G Records (on mint green vinyl here) after they finish a delectable run of US shows - see below the video. Every show is with Bully and one special guest, while every show will be killer, I would literally kill to be at the Brooklyn/Big Ups gig. Now, where did I leave my brain...

Jan 9 – Boston, MA – The Sinclair *

Jan 11 – Washington, DC – Rock & Roll Hotel *

Jan 12 – Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church *

Jan 13 – New York City, NY – Bowery Ballroom #

Jan 14 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg ^

Jan 16 – Chicago, IL – Metro !

All shows with Bully

* w/ So Pitted

# w/ Palm (band)

^ w/ BIG UPS

! w/ Slow Mass

Rotting Pits

Sub Pop are making some major plays in the past eighteen months that have me reinvigorated in their utmost relevance as a label. I have always held faith of course, but with their signing of Mogwai and excellent new records from Deaf Wish, Metz, Pissed Jeans and Sleater-Kinney, their cache is bolstered. Add to this incoming desiccated salvo Neo from Seattle nihilists So Pitted. The name threw me, so when I heard 'Rot In Hell' I was punched in the face with the raw racket blasting forth. The trio manage to spew bile in tetanus-coated fury with a sense of banal diffidence that is almost offensive if it wasn't so dead-eyed brilliant. The band play out as if Pop. 1280 were electrocuted on-stage and zapped back into a parallel corduroy-and-flannel 90s cesspit, thankfully landing on and killing Green Jelly and taking their place. The orange-and-black cover art for the album (not due out until Feb next year) is stark and arresting - the colour coordination reminding me of SM band Cobwebbs, with a similar sense of gutter noise melding with slack-jawed indifference. Pre-order Neo (in white vinyl) here.

Video Vacuum - METZ, This Will Destroy You, Johnny Telafone, Food Court, The Ocean Party, The Body & Thou

I'm trying to mark 120 assignments on my holiday, so here is a six-pack of A/V viscera to take my mind off it - come, sit down, take a load off, enjoy.

METZ is back! The Toronto noiseniks have a new record on the way, imaginatively titled ii, and are cooking up a special treat in the form of 'Acetate'. A pancake artiste puts his special spin on things, throwing dice, marijuana, pine cones and a glowing anal egg to create a incredibly tasty dish, with added product placement (I definitely want that MAD ripoff tee).

Still heavy but in a mellowed ambient sense, we have 'New Topia', another cut from Texan titans This Will Destroy You's Another Language album of last year. The psychedelic animations combine well, bleeding into each other to make this a mind melter of infinite value.

Melbourne's premiere underground crooner Johnny Telafone has smashed it out of the park with his dour 'Inferno', a lurking lounge number that wouldn't be too out of place with Dean Stockwell lip-syncing this into a lightbulb. As it stands, you have washed out apocalyptic fare swimming across a sheet while Liam "Snowy Nasdaq" Halliwell (The Ocean Party) cracks out a stellar guitar solo on an unplugged guitar. I know a lot of people don't get Telafone, but for everyone's sake, try. This is the real deal.

Speaking of The Ocean Party, they also have a new video out - 'Floodlights', one of the best tracks on their brilliant fourth album Soft Focus. Seeing Snowy wandering around the countryside is bemusing enough - seeing the others take Venetian splits as they wander the Melbourne streets heightens the laconic meander.

Up to Sydney and down by the river with Food Court. It's typical rollicking fare from the four-piece, the kind of marching forth frivolity that comes from getting daggy down on the water, faffing about on boats you have no idea about, with nothing to do and no place to be. It's a perfect ramshackle jam into the sun.


But we can't always have sunshine and lollipops - and that's where The Body & Thou comes in. Their grainy B&W video for 'Beyond the Realms of Dream, That Fleeting Shade Under the Corpus of Vanity' plays out like a VHS serial killer video diary. Combine this with the bands' typically annihilating industrial noise, and you have a feverish nightmare that just won't quit.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Moore Heavy Light Moving From Chelsea

Much of the excitement over Chelsea Light Moving, Thurston Moore's new project (or at least one of many) has already died down some. Thurston played here late last year, the same time I was throwing a Sonic Masala night (Go Violets, Do The Robot, Tiny Migrants - great lineup) so I didn't see the confusion of many as Thurston, who was booked as a solo show, came on stage and proceeded to play predominantly new tracks off Chelsea Light Moving. Not that most people should have complained that hard - he is one of modern rock's geniuses, and the new record isn't all that far removed from latter Sonic Youth meanderings anyway. It cannot be avoided - the guitar, the dissonance, the laconic drawl. Shit, the man still looks the same he did in the late 80s! And it's a call to arms - a fuck you to the direction that most "edgy" rock acts take in the 21st century. And there are moments when it is clear that this quartet has the potential to become a fully formed band, such as when 'Empires Of Time' collapses heavily into a morass of chugging sludge - the sense of communal abandon feel real, and is something that has been missing in much of SY's latter releases, for better or worse...

That said, BECAUSE it's a Thurston Moore project, Chelsea Light Moving comes slightly as a letdown. The production values are a little too slick, taking away the punch from some of these tracks. That said, if it was another band you would find gravel deeply embedded in the skin underneath your jaw. Maybe it'd be the same last year, if the debut self-titled album from Metz actually had Ian Mackaye in it - sure it's good, but we've heard better from the original well-spring...

Nevertheless, Chelsea Light Moving has its moments, and it's great to see Thurston freaking out more. This band will get tighter, dirtier, louder - and then we could have an atonal masterpiece. Grab it here through Matador Records.

Chelsea Light Moving - Alighted
Chelsea Light Moving - Empires Of Time

And to prove how great this can be...

Negative Creeps

We here at Sonic Masala do love our noise. The bigger the better. Although I like mine with some sort of meaning behind it - something that is wielded by the band, not the other way around. So a lone article in Spinner Canada had my interest incredibly piqued. It claims that one of their own (from Ottawa no less!) are the wielders of so much noise and power that they compare to My Bloody Valentine back in the 90s - and its all sheer will of force, no stacks of amps and effects pedals in sight!

We Are Busy Bodies is responsible for bringing Metz to the populace (home of other noiseniks such as DD/MM/YYYY and Japanther), having just completed a trilogy of 7"s which would be well worth your time seeking out. Metz bring back the noise, 90s sludge style - there is a definite amount of Seattle slime oozing out of the speakers infused with some of the 00s aesthetics we have come to love. Definitely one to watch...

Metz - Negative Space