>>Nostalgia For Infinity

Here’s something I wrote for a friend’s prototype Brighton boozin’ website. I’ve no idea if his project will ever come to fruition but I enjoyed writing and, er, researching this, so here you go – enjoy.

(For other booze-related blogging, why not check out my friend Rachel’s lackadaisical blog Victory Gin? If you do she might update it more often.)

20th Sussex CAMRA Beer & Cider Festival @ Hove Town Hall, 11th March 2010

In the main room, the kids are sat on the floor in the corner. Small groups, laughing and drinking and flirting. The beards occupy the dozen round tables in the centre of the amphitheatre, expressions hidden beneath facial hair. Clear battle lines are drawn: old versus young. The combatants are drunk with courage. Well, mostly ale. But there’s a clear hierarchy at work here: the young are more casual, more likely to be here out of curiousity or a desire to socialise, whereas the older are more serious drinkers, more serious acolytes of booze and priests of ale.

I’m at the 20th Sussex CAMRA beer fest, and a few drinks deep I’ve enough of a drunk buzz to write nonsense like the above. There’s no sense of conflict here: everyone’s just happy to be present, enjoying the wide selection of beverages on offer. But stood on the top balcony within Hove Town Hall, looking down on the drinkers and barrels arrayed below, especially with synapses doused in sweet cider, it’s hard not to let your imagination fire.

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It’s a few months now since I last wrote about London electro-pop duo Victoria & Jacob, and at long last their new single ‘With No Certainty’ has arrived. Almost: it’s out this weekend. I’ve been listening to it quite a bit over the last few months, and the pair’s dreamy melodic pop has dug its hooks into me. It helps that Victoria has one of those voices that I can’t help but fall a little bit in love with. I’m a sucker for female singers, me.

The lead track opens with layers of weird, squawking beats and gentle melodic synth lines, over which Victoria offers her vocal talents and increasingly strong lyrics: “I looked into the mirror too, to see what my body meant. I don’t know what this means“. A new trick is that a lot of the effects Jacob uses are heavily modified samples of Victoria’s voice; not a unique gimmick, but one used to great effect in this simple but warm and catchy tune. To accommodate this new method of songwriting they’ve abandoned the extraneous instruments used in earlier material, making The Postal Service an even more unavoidable comparison. It’s not that accurate, though, as the two outfits are only really similar in what they do, not how they do it.

B-side ‘There’s A War’ is a slower and altogether more minimalistic affair, again blending gentle beats with a simple melody over which Victoria’s sweet and soft vocals drift along, carrying her wistful lyrics: “There’s a war between our developments and our animal; evil doesn’t exist, we’re all natural in state”. Thematically I’m not really in agreement with what the song is pushing at but it’s good to see the duo’s subject matter extending beyond more predictable personal territory.

I’ve also been sent a third track, ‘What’s Your Face’. No idea where this one is from – maybe a second b-side on an alt 7″ – but it’s more of the same in a good way. More up-tempo than ‘There’s A War’, and utilising a really nice harmonising effect to give the choruses some extra depth, it’s a catchy tune that layers vocals on vocals. Lyrically it’s more personal in nature than either ‘With No Certainty’ or ‘There’s A War’, addressing an unnamed other person with a faintly sad sense of longing, and its choruses utilise similar tricks to the title track.

Overall the three songs demonstrate an increased confidence and maturity, both in terms of sonic experimentation and lyrical depth. It will be interesting to see where they go next.

In the meantime, they’ve been running a remix competition, and here’s my favourite of the bunch so far. It’s not the most ambitious effort in the world to my ears, leaving the song mostly intact but putting a more 90s dancey sort of spin on it (yeah, I don’t know a damned thing about dance music, I know). There have been more ambitious efforts but they didn’t really resonate with me. Actually, here, have the ZAFLON remix as well. The crescendo at the end is awesome, but I really hate that shitty breakdown about two and a half minutes in. Your mileage may vary.

Victoria & Jacob | Voga Parochia | MySpace |

Del.icio.us links for February 3rd through February 7th:

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Oooh!

Who are French For Cartridge, aside from responsible for sickly MS Paint-esque artwork? They’re art-pop duo Catherine Hontz and Henri Vaxby, a pair of European musicians who met at London’s Goldsmiths College. You might know them via the older moniker of Cartridge, a name apparently abandoned after a few line-up changes. And now to abandon the press release-harvested introduction and move on to the music itself.

This 7″ boasts two tracks, each a curious slice of pop music. A-side ‘Oooh!’ is my favourite of the two as it’s a weirder affair. It switches neurotically back and forth between stylistically distinct song parts not unlike an indie-pop Mr. Bungle, mixing oompah rhythms, delicate ride cymbal tickling, stark chords and vocal hums together in under two minutes. Vocally it’s oddball, mostly consisting of gentle wordplay. I’m not sure if there’s more to it than that but it’s a fun track.

B-side ‘Picture Negative’ is a more typical affair, a slice of guitar pop with dual vocals and a verse that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Gomez tune. I have to admit to stealing the Gomez comparison, which I read somewhere last month. I think it may have been a Norman Records mailout, so apologies to them for my plagiarism! It’s spot-on, though. The chorus is a pleasing affair with more piano and some warm synths underpinning the guitar work. It won’t blow you away, but it’s a good track.

You can listen to both tunes on their MySpace page – see link below. (I feel a bit funny offering sample tracks from seven inches, especially when I only really recommend one of them!)

French For Cartridge website | Their MySpace page

Roads, Bridges & Ruins

San Francisco’s Nothington are one of those bands that have managed to pass me by for years, and then one day I idly check them out on MySpace and am blown away. I picked up their 2007 full-length debut All In last August-ish and it immediately leapt into regular rotation. Happily, it was then only a few months until the release of the follow-up Roads, Bridges and Ruins. I’m kind of glad I failed to notice them for so long; the wait would have been infuriating.

So anyway, Nothington play Southern Rock-tinged punk; melodic hardcore with hard-drinkin’, soulful sing-along lyrics. Main vocalist Jay Northington (ex-Tsunami Bomb, along with drummer Gabriel Lindeman) has a gloriously gruff, throaty voice akin to Chad Price in Drag The River mode (two asides here: Nothington are more Hot Water Music than they are Drag The River; and when Jay scales back the sandpaper he almost reminds me of Milo Aukerman, which is kinda funny considering Chad Price’s career). Jay is complemented by harmonies from the more nasal chords of Chris Mutalich (ex-Enemy You, who I’ve not heard). Thumping drums, warm bass, scruffy but tight rhythm guitar, and intermittent clean lead round out the sound. Happily the lead fades in and out and isn’t permanently the centre of attention, the vocals and melodies are the focus here.

The Tsunami Bomb lineage is sometimes evident in elements of the songwriting, which is little surprise considering the lead singer, one guitar and the drums derive from that band, but even if you didn’t get into the pop-punk stylings of that band you should give Nothington a go. They’re a fully distinct band, a much louder and rawer affair, and their hearts are on their sleeves.

Download ‘The Ocean’ and ‘If You Say So’ as .m4a files (convert ‘em if you don’t like the format)

Nothington on MySpace | BYO Records Nothington page

(Brighton folks – they’re playing the Albert on Feb 24th!)

Del.icio.us links for September 20th through September 27th:

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Del.icio.us links for July 13th through July 26th:

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My mighty, meaty-in-the-metaphoric-sense review of ATP: The Fans Strike Back ’09 is now up at The Dreaded Press – direct link here. I think I made editor Paul Raven a leeetle jealous by getting to go…

I’m going to shamelessly bump my blog’s appearance in search rankings and list every band I cover in the review: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, HEALTH, M83, Devo, Fuck Buttons, Young Marble Giants, Grizzly Bear, Harvey Milk, Beirut, Errors, Sleepy Suns, Marnie Stern, Spiritualized, Bad Guys, Future Of The Left, Parts & Labor, the Mae Shi, the  Jesus Lizard, and This Will Destroy You.

If you only want the gist of it, I had a reeeally good time. And we got a seagull drunk on cider.

Hailing from London, fulangchangandi (that’s pronounced “foo-lang-chang-and-eye”, and is the name of a Frida Kahlo painting) are one of those bands you wish came along more often… and at the same time find difficult to write about. Why? Well, because they’re inventive and thus resist lazy comparisons.

It’s fortunate – for me, fc&i, and anyone who’s reading this with a piqued curiosity – that over the last few years I’ve finally started getting shoegaze, post-rock and noise-rock. For some reason most of it never really clicked for me before, but there’s now been enough confluence of coincidence and recommendation that things have fallen into place for me. I’m still pretty fuzzy on a bunch of the big names – Slint, Shellac, MBV et al -  that fc&i name as influences, but on the strength of what they’ve done with this inspirational fodder I need to pick up my retroactive pace.

So, sonically the band play music that straddles shoegaze and post-rock territory. Their songs and riffs loop lethargically and dreamily, heavy on the distorted chords/clean picking juxtaposition, with prevalent bass lines and minimalist drums. Minimal is a good byword, actually – while the vocals are kept to a minimum here these guys aren’t chasing the textural build-up of post-rockers like This Will Destroy You or the rockier instrumental take of And So I Watch You From Afar. It’s impressionistic, almost, as each element of their songs emerges clearly but is integral to the greater whole. Excuse the slightly pretentious metaphor, readers…

The first track on the EP features jangly, dischordant guitar front-and-centre, with sporadic Enablers-esque spoken word vocals over the top. Lyrically these aren’t exactly on a par with the San Francisco cult favourites, but they’re a nice touch and work well. Next up is ‘Godolphin’, probably my favourite of the three, which is a sort of mournful victory march with great tremolo guitar picking and some soaring melodies that builds to a close awash with noise. Rounding out the trio comes the seven and a half-minute epic ‘Emergency’, a song of several parts, crescendoes and decrescendoes alike, slightly varying its central hooks throughout to great overall effect.

All in all this is a very cool first EP and I’m looking forward to seeing what fulangchangandi do next. Two of the three songs on this EP are up on their MySpace page, so go have a listen.

DEFIANCE, OHIO
+ Madeline + Jakal + Kelly Kemp

Cowley Club, Brighton, 28th May 2009

It’s a while since I’ve been down to the Cowley Club – not since last time I tried to see Defiance, Ohio, in fact, on which occasion Brighton’s only radical social club was so packed they’d instituted a one-in one-out policy. This time around I persuaded everyone to arrive early, a plan which worked well enough that we polished off several bottles of delicious organic cider before the night’s music kicked off.

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