>>Nostalgia For Infinity

I first heard Michigan three-piece Victor! Fix the Sun just a few weeks ago by way of 2007′s Retractable Claws, and this album actually came out late last year, but the two records have impressed me enough that I wanted to write a little about the newest one.

If Retractable Claws was reminiscent of Fugazi’s stop-start, experimental post-hardcore noodling, Person, Place or Thing extends its influences to the likes of ex-labelmates La Dispute (were they less histrionic) and Minus the Bear (were they more into screamo and shoegaze). The six songs on this latest release cherry-pick the best elements of post-hardcore to produce something uniquely V!FTS’s own. Taut drums, guitars and bass shift comfortably between carefully structured math-rock rhythms and frenetic screamo thrashing with an occasional foray into the minimalist ambience of the This Will Destroy You / Explosions in the Sky schools of post-rock. In places they even remind me of Brighton’s own Projections – a short-lived indie/post-rock project from Blood Red Shoes’s Steve Ansell – with lengthy, looping, ‘gazey riffs married to yelping vocals.

Opener ‘My Friend the Guru’ ably demonstrates the band’s strong grasp of dynamics as elements of the song shift into the fore and back again, with enough diversity enclosed within to feel like this is actually several distinct pieces seamlessly fused together. But it’s second track ‘We Come From the Northwoods’ that’s my favourite track here, a small epic at over seven minutes in length – half the tunes here are over six minutes long – with some precise guitar lead and tight as fuck drumming in its latter half that has me particularly captivated. Despite the clichéd nature of the repeated line “we’re never going home” the song has an intensity that resonates.

Despite a somewhat daft and, dare I use the hated term, pretentious moniker, Victor! Fix the Sun are an impressive band that seem to be particularly driven to experiment and innovate. Person, Place or Thing is an excellent record, even for those tired of the dozens of mediocre or merely competent post-hardcore bands out there, and I eagerly await whatever the band do next. I just hope they retain the raw passion exhibited here alongside their obvious musical and songwriting chops.

Myspace | Facebook | Friction Records

Del.icio.us links for June 14th through June 25th:

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Hmm.

April 2010:

And sometime in 2009:

Hmm. HMM.

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Time Fcuk, aka Time Cufk, aka Time Kucf, aka etcetera, is a Flash game that originally came out last September on Newgrounds. It’s creators are Edmund McMillen (author – also behind indie titles like Super Meat Boy, Gish and many more), William Good (programmer – has worked on a number of other games I’m not familiar with) and Justin Karpal (behind the game’s excellent music, which is cyclic and triumphal and claustrophobic all at once) so it’s something that the indie gaming scene probably picked up on really quickly. My loss circa 2009, I guess!

It’s free to play and is well worth half an hour or more of your time. The basic gist in terms of mechanics are that it’s a dimension-switching platformer – levels have between two and four planes that you can flick between – where the user must puzzle their way out of each room. The controls are limited to left, right, jump, pick up (blocks) and switch dimension. The game starts out simple and gets fiendish quickly with gravity alteration, objects that can be moved between dimensions if in contact with the player avatar, traps and the inevitability of death if the player switches into a dimension where an object shares the same area as they do. The mechanics are dead simple and it’s easy to pick the game up but beating some of the puzzles are challenging – though rarely frustrating, except where stupid player mistakes are concerned.

I’ve already mentioned the music and the same positive things can be said of the game’s limited sound effects. It’s the visual style that’s really eye-catching though. The player’s avatar is a simple silhouette, albeit one which gradually alters as they progress through the storyline (more on that in a minute), and each dimensional plane uses a unique colour to differentiate it from the last. Most objects appear as simple, easily recognisable silhouettes – and objects about to appear in the next plane switch appear fainter so you know what’s coming. The right hand side of the screen, though, is taken up by two things. Firstly there’s a small map of the network of rooms – it’s a rectangle. The route is, essentially, cyclic. Below that there’s a screen with a sinister talking head which shares text messages with you, purporting to be you from a few rooms ahead, or sometimes a few rooms behind.

This is where the game excels. The writing is genuinely funny and faintly paranoid; there’s a palpable sense of mystery as you progress further and… something starts growing on your head. Is it talking to you? What is it? And why the hell did you climb into this box in the firest place? The story, such as it is, never intrudes into the core gameplay except in benign ways, and players can ignore it if they wish, though it’d be their loss as it’s half the demented charm of the game.

Play Time Fcuk yourself to experience it firsthand; suffice to say that it’s delightful.

In a post-Hot Water Music world it’s good to know there are bands keeping the dream of blood, sweat and beer alive. Hailing from Atlanta, Campaign play punchy, gruff melodic post-hardcore ala. “the Gainesville sound” that descended from, er, Sunderland’s Leatherface.

The Hot Water Music comparison is probably one that’s been made in almost every review of this band but it’s perfectly apt. Gunmoll, Small Brown Bike, Billy Reese Peters and other vintage No Idea Records outfits are also good reference points. With It Likes to Party Campaign aren’t pushing this established sub-genre in any new directions but they’ve got their own identity and the EP’s title is spot-on. What you have here are five fast-paced, explosively dynamic punk rock anthems played with passion and panache.

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The Freebutt today.

This news broke last Wednesday but I’ve been busy recently and so I’m only writing about it now! One of Brighton’s longest-running venues, the Freebutt, is under threat of closure as a result of a noise complaint and subsequent Environmental Health Office investigation. As I put it on Facebook:

Many of you will have seen this already, but so what, it’s important. The Freebutt is facing closure due to ONE noise complaint. They are doing everything they can to solve the noise problem, but the EHO and the neighbour are preventing them from doing so. For a venue with decades of history to be shut down for such a bullshit reason would be a travesty.

This summary is a bit unfair on the EHO – they’re helping, just somewhat slowly – and the neighbour – who presumably has a legitimate complaint, but they’re not helping get it resolved except in the sense of “if the venue closes, the problem goes away”.

The Freebutt is presently owned by a small group of local music fans and entrepreneurs. They’re put a lot of work into ensuring the venue is shipshape and this is the only noise complaint since they took ownership. Although since the redesign the giant pillar in the middle of the room is still a source of constant complaint, Brighton’s live music scene wouldn’t be the same without the ‘butt.

The Freebutt circa 1968.

You can read the full story from the Freebutt here. The Argus has an article covering Brighton Council’s statements and some tedious, reactionary reader comments. There’s a petition you can sign here and a Facebook group here. The MP for the area is Caroline Lucas (Green) and the city councillors can be contacted from here.

The venue’s owners sent out an update 24 hours after the news and campaign broke which you can read below the cut. » Read the rest of this entry «

Apparently there has been a shameful lack of press coverage in response to Calais Migrant Solidarity’s recent press release, and visiting reporters didn’t manage to coincide their visits with those of large numbers of activists. I figured I’d do what little this blog can do to help get the word out and reproduce the release below the cut – so click read more to view that. CMS maintain there own blog here and a Facebook group here. I’ve written previously about CMS and their treatment by the British press here.

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It’s not a fair comparison nor even a particularly accurate one, but the first artist that popped into my head when I first listened to i/o, the new EP from Vermont’s The Static Age, is Chris Rea. Yes, him of ‘The Road to Hell’ fame, the Middlesborough singer-songwriter who’s been churning out banal pop tunes for over three decades. I can’t think why I’m reminded of Chris Rea – I think perhaps the opening track ‘Damages’ has some of its trademarks in its crooned line “they won’t keep you safe” and synth/keys – and it faintly disturbs me that I am. Based solely on the band’s name I’d been half-expecting something Misfits-flavoured.

Well, fortunately i/o isn’t derivative old horror-punk and nor is it much like, hrrrgh, ‘Fool (If You Think It All Over)’ or ‘On The Beach’ or other tunes your dad may have listened to. Unless your dad is younger than mine and kinda hip: The Static Age play poppy, faintly dreamy post-punk that’s got a sort of proto-goth feel too it. It’s not the itchy and experimental post-punk of Wire or the progressive funk-punk of Gang of Four, but more akin to the artists branded as dream-pop – Siouxsie & the Banshees, maybe, or Cocteau Twins.

So, we have slightly gloomy synths, twinkling keys, heavily repeated vocal lines and guitar riffs with lots of chorus and delay effects. The songs are well-written and structured with a good flow to them and some pleasant melodies and hooks – particularly ‘These Days’, my favourite song on the EP, or closing track ‘Rorschach’, an understated and softly atmospheric tune – but I have to admit that overall it’s too 80s and earnest for my tastes. Still, they’ve toured or played with bands as diverse as A Place To Bury Strangers, AFI, Tiger Army and Cave In so they’ve obviously got something.

Official Site | MySpace | Flix Records

A moment of serendipity: a couple of weeks ago I swung by a show to catch Welsh punk trio Bangers and also endded up seeing Philadelphia’s Dirty Tactics. Their intense, hard and melodic hardcore punk rock and varied songwriting impressed me and I bought their new album and split 7″ with Bangers. Two days later I received an email from Flix Records asking if I’d be interested in reviewing said records. I’d not mentioned the show or the records anywhere on here; it was just a pleasant coincidence.

Anyway, Dirty Tactics are composed of ex- or current members of Finished, Restaurations, Giving Chase and Highlights, including an ex-roadie of One Man Army; a band with some punk pedigree. It Is What It Is constitutes their second full-length release, following on from ’07′s Love is Dead, Art is War.

The record opens up with a clip from an old interview with punk rock alumni The Clash: “Why do you think punk rock started in the first place?” “…it’s got nothing to do with them any more. And like, Rod Stewart gets up there and starts going on with the string orchestra… it’s not what you feel like. You’ve got to have music what you feel like. Otherwise you go barmy.” “I think their attitudes really stink anyway. There just has to be new groups and that’s what you got.” It’s a fitting excerpt for a band set on forging their own identity within the over-saturated (wonderfully over-saturated, but still) genre of melodic punk rock.

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