Presenting…Qurious

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Breaking the rules is where things get interesting with pop music. Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Take Me Out’ actrually slows down for the main part of the song. Sonic Youth releasing ‘The Diamond Sea’ the twenty minute closing track as the single off Washing Machine. Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’

Here -and this is a single- it’s not only the fact that it’s the first single but it’s the track itself. ‘Rubies’ the track fades in to an ambient opening, before the vocals come in on a completely different song. And two minutes twenty two seconds in it stops and goes in a different take before coming back to the main theme. But like the aforementioned song, though it sounds nothing like them, it’s a great pop tune. And although I get a number of submissions in my inbox every day, I suddenly realise I’m playing this for the fourth time in a row…It reminds me of Brian Eno in parts, Boards Of Canada in others, and Dubstar vocalist Sarah Blackwood in others. The tags for the Soundcloud read ‘Drone’ ‘Hip-Hop’ ‘Shoegaze’ and ‘Electronic.’ Very accurate.

According to the press release ‘Stickfigure Recordings is proud to release the first single from Qurious’s new full length “Void Vanishing”. The first single is entitled “Rubies”…Qurious is the surprising collaboration between a hip-hip producer/sample collagist (Mike Netland) and a vocal texturist/muli-instumentalist (Catherine Quesenberry). Since winter 2009, the pair has taken up casting a sonic net over the patrons of the Atlanta and Athens music scenes.’

Stream and download it here. I have heard no other tracks by this act -BUT: even if they never produced anything like this again, this would still be of note, IMHO.

Forthcoming from Mogwai

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When the day that Thatcher dies comes, there is going to be one hell of a party in Scotland (and hopefully no state funeral in England). Mogwai’s most recent album Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will contained the track ‘George Square Thatcher Death Party’ and now the entire album has been remixed by a fine troupe of remixers.

Mogwai are, of course, no strangers to remixing having done it both for other people (including Manic Street Preachers and Bloc Party) and releasing the Kicking A Dead Pig album, back in 1998, which was remixes of their debut Young Team.

The tracklisting is as follows:

George Square Thatcher Death Party (Justin K Broadrick Reshape)
Rano Pano (Klad Hest – Mogwai is My Dick RMX)
White Noise (EVP Mix by Cyclob)
How To Be A Werewolf (Xander Harris Remix)
Letters To The Metro (Zombi Remix)
Mexican Grand Prix (Reworked by RM Hubbert)
Rano Pano (Tim Hecker Remix)
San Pedro (The Soft Moon Remix)
Too Raging To Cheers (Umberto Remix)
La Mort Blanche (Robert Hampson Remix)

Like the generous folk they are, simply by signing up to the mailing list, you can get the opening track, the aforementioned ‘George Square Thatcher Death Party’ remixed by Justin K Broadrick for free. You’ll be glad you did so, but if you are too mean to do so, you can (for now) download it with this stream of the track:

Album Review: Princess Chelsea

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Princess Chelsea -‘Lil’ Golden Book.’ (Lil’ Chief Records/Cargo)

Y’know how sometimes it’s those innocent kids’ things in films that can actually be so subtly but ultimately deliciously sinister? Think a jack-in-the-box, clowns, deserted theme parks (hello, Scooby Doo) -or indeed, children themselves? (Think The Omen, The Shining, The Sixth Sense.)

So it is with this debut album by New Zealand’s Chelsea Nikkel. This album actually may rate up there with being one of the very few albums ever to contain the first song written by an artist -in this case, one she wrote as a teenager, ‘Monkey Eats Bananas.’ There’s a childlike -as opposed to childish-approach to the music, and the simplicity of the music is subtly unsettling.

It’s a concept album of a sort -a suburban fairy-tale in which Ms. NIkkel presents herself as a character called Princess Chelsea (whose front cover work bares a resemblance -possibly intentional -to Disney’s Snow White) offering considerations on society. ‘The Cigarette Duet’ didn’t make much sense to these ears outside the album, but here is reveals itself as a duet about a couple’s different approaches to addiction, sung in the style of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. ‘Overseas’ in which the ingrained New Zealand upbringing of travelling abroad reveals that it’s better to travel than to arrive. ‘Goodnight Little Robot Child,’ meanwhile, is a lullaby sung to a laptop.

Unquestionably one of the most unusual and original albums you are likely to hear this year.

****

Lil’ Golden Book is relesed on Lil’ Chief Records on October 8.

The return of…The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

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Ah, the curse of the second album. TPOBPAT’s debut album and early singles and EPs were pretty damn awesome. Then last year’s Belong album wasn’t up to the standards of the debut and it got quite a kicking (OK it wasn’t as good, but it wasn’t the turkey that a lot of the reviews suggested).

Anyway, to coincide with a European tour over the next month or so, the band are releasing a new single, which couples two of their favourite songs ‘Jeremy’ by The Magnetic Fields and ‘My Life Is Wrong’ by East River Pipe on the b-side.

‘Jeremy’ has been made available to stream, it’s out as a download next week on PIAS and then as a 7″ on October 29.

They play Glasgow Oran Mor on October 14, Manchester Ruby Lounge on October 15 and London Dingwalls on October 16.

Presenting…Whatever Gets You Through The Night

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This was in my inbox this evening when I came home. It’s an album called Whatever Gets You through The Night, and it comes out on November 5 on Biphonic Records (home to Swimmer One and Seafieldroad).

Sixteen tracks in total, this was a live show that took place at the Arches in Glasgow back in June of this year.. This is the accompanying album – 16 brand new songs inspired by the hours between midnight and 4am, by a cross section of Scottish musicians.

And when I say cross-section, it’s Ricky Ross (of Deacon Blue) on the same album as Wounded Knee, Errors on the same album as Rachel Sermanni, Eugene Kelly as Meursault. Lots of 17 Seconds favourites, Swimmer One and Emma Pollock were the first acts I ever interviewed for the blog, over five years ago. There’s a feature over at The Skinny which explains how it came together.

Stream it below, you can also download the Swimmer One track for free.

Presenting…Stumbleine

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I’m in a very privileged position as author of this blog that I get sent a lot of music, quite often ahead of release.

One of the finest things to drop onto the matt at 17 Seconds Towers in a long while is the forthcoming debut album from Bristol producer Stumbleine, who also records as one third of dubsteppers Swarms. There’s a glorious mixture of dubstep, hypnagogic pop and chillout here – the RIYL of the Cocteau Twins, Burial and Neon Indian is right on the money.

The debut album is called Spiderwebbed and it’s rather ace, and it hits the shops on November 19.

In the meantime, there are a number of tracks that you can stream and download for free that give you an idea of how good this album is. ‘The Beat My Heart Skips’ is released as a single on October 22, but you can download the single for free now.

Here’s another track from the album, entitled ‘Capulet.’

Not only that BUT Stumbleine is also responsible for a rather fine cover of Mazzy Star’s ‘Fade Into You.’ Originally on their 1993 album So Tonight That I Might See, Stumbleine’s remake pays homage to the orginal and reworks it in his own style, with vocals from Steffaloo.

The continued rise of Young Fathers

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I’ve featured Edinburgh’s Young Fathers on 17 Seconds before. Now it seems that the band’s profile is set to rise even higher with the news that they have signed to Anticon, the home of Why? and Doseone, amongst others.

Kayus Bankole, Graham Hastings, and Alloysious Massaquoi have been making music together since they were fourteen. Though they share a hometown with Stanley Odd, their music and overall sound is way different. Comparisons have been made with the Daisy AGe rappers as much as post-rockers. Previous singles include ‘Straight Back On It,’ ‘Fever’s Worse’ and ‘Automatic.’

Last year’s Tape One EP will be re-released as the band’s first release on Anticon. This track is taken from that EP…enjoy.

Young Fathers – “Deadline” from anticon. on Vimeo.

Young Fathers are on tour next week:

8 Oct Hove Old Market
9 Oct London Electric Ballroom
10 Oct Manchester Central Methodist Church
11 Oct Bristol Fleece
12 Oct Glasgow SWG3
13 Oct Oxford The Bullingdon

Album Re-issue: Nico

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Nico -‘The End.’ (Universal/Island)

There’s a long-standing view of Nico as doomed heroin(e), producing records that make Closer and Pornography seem light-hearted by comparison, and almost too difficult to listen to. The reality is that -while the records may make for a disturbing and uneasy experience -there is also a dark, tragic beauty to the records. Even if she hadn’t died in the late 1980s (as the result of a brain hemorrhage, not heroin as is sometimes incorrectly believed), these albums would still bewitched and bewilder.

Much of the sound is dominated by the harmonium, which defined the Nico sound from The Marble Index onwards (she didn’t care for the sound of her debut, Chelsea Girls). In addition, the production of John Cale and the musical contributions of Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera (then closely aligned with Roxy Music) make for an album that is far more intense than The Marble Index or Desertshore.

If ‘Janitor Of Lunacy,’ which opens Desertshore, is about The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones (once her lover), then it’s the ghost of another lover, The Doors’ Jim Morrison, which haunts this record. ‘You Forgot To Answer’ tells of her misery trying to reach Morrison by ‘phone, only to discover he had died. And her reading of The Doors’ The End’ is a million miles away from the Doors’ original. If that is now -let’s face it-coloured by its’ use in Apocalypse Now, then Nico’s version is from an as yet unmade film, sung in a decaying German hotel, where Nick Cave serenades angels* and where Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling are trying to confront their hideous shared past through S&M.**

Another shadow hanging over the album is the inclusion of ‘Das Lied Der Deutschen,’ the German National Anthem. Nico does indeed sing the ‘uber alles’ verse -but interestingly, for those who worry about Nazi associations, this was usually dedicated in concert to Andreas Baader, leader of the Red Army Faction.

As well as the original album, there’s also Peel session versions of the tracks, and performances from London’s Rainbow in 1974. Listening to these straight after may be too intence for many, but there’s no doubt that these are not mere filler.

A frightening, but utterly inspired and still strikingly original album, nearly forty years since its’ first release.

****

The End is out now on Universal/Island.

* Wings Of Desire
** The Night Porter

Presenting…Chvrches

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If the name Chvrches (and yes, it is pronounced ‘Churches’) is new to these pages, then I have featured the band members in different guises before.

The band were put together by Martin Doherty from the Twilight Sad, and Iain Cook, once of Aereogramme and now of the Unwinding Hours. The vocals come courtesy of Blue Sky Archives’ Lauren Mayberry.

On the basis of one tune -‘Lies’ -they set the blogosphere alight, leading to an excellent feature over at The Pop Cop, sadly too many were quick to sneer at the next big thing.

But this tune stands on its’ own terms:

Download it here (follow the link!)

This is another awesome tune ‘The Mother We Share’

They featured on Vic Galloway’s Radio Scotland show this evening, follow this link to listen to the session when it goes up, very very soon.

Presenting…Ty Segall

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Another one of the many submissions to appear in my inbox.

Ty Segall is one of those names that I have heard, and Drag City one of those labels I always feel I should know far more about than I actually do. ‘The Hill’ is taken from his new album, Twins, which is out next week. I love how this track starts out all 60s and summery and then goes all eighties and Mary-Chain like.

Stream the video below. This reminds me of videos you used to see on The Chart Show back in the ’80s, when once every three weeks they would show the indie top ten and the videos mostly looked like they had been made very cheaply and shot as lo-fi as possible. Wonderful!

UK Live dates in October:

November 7, The Garage, London

November 8, Deaf Institut, Manchester

November 9, Art School, Glasgow