When music meets art meets literature meets a clip of a 1930s silent movie version of a 14th century poem, to be frank, I'd usually call the police or hide in a cupboard until the whole thing had gone away. But this time, after hearing the music part of this cultural convergence, I'm positively salivating for the rest. So, Baptists & Bootleggers ( FB page , Website ) are a new not-for-profit label from Manchester who've asked a bunch of musicians, visual artists, and writers to give a soundtrack to and interpretation of an eight minute clip [...]
Is it cold out? Do the nights still feel long and dark? Are you troubled by a sense of foreboding? I missed this very fine album when it was released last year, and only really decided to hunt it down after the Quietus made it their #4 record of 2011. Bobby Krlic's extraordinarily atmospheric record weaves together droning, rumbling strings, rattling percussion and the occasional haunting piece of choral singing ('The Fall', for example). There's also lots of silence, the space in which the sounds happen. The name, and the general feel and look of the [...]
Atleta, a duo from Barcelona, are witness to the fact that kraut-psyche is being reanimated worldwide. Ok, such grand statements make my skin itch and muscles twitch, but there's definitely a network of sorts rediscovering and supplementing this sound. Perhaps we should settle on a kind of proto-movement and leave it there? Yes, I think that's best. Verdad is a relatively short, but being chocked full of loops, electronics and guitars modulated in a spaced out fashion it's sweet and perfectly formed. Gilded and bejeweled synth harmonies greet us on opener 'Eres el [...]
Snot, booze, PRESENTS, snot, booze, snot, booze, hacking cough, booze - pretty sums up Xmas for both of us. Still, happy new year to all and sundry. Here's some tunes that might just lift that early January doom. Mike Watt has joined up with Yuko Araki and Hirotaka Shimizu to put music to 63 Richard Meltzer spoken word pieces - or spiels, as Watt calls 'em, making the project spielgusher . The album's out 17th January from Clenched Wrench , you can read more about it here , and you should buy it because Watt [...]
There's an awful lot of Christmas tunes out there this year beyond the usual gubbins of Carey, Como, et al. Some deserve to sit lonely and ignored in the further reaches of the interweb, like some cyber version of Eat Me dates, but some have piqued our Yuletide cravings and misgivings. Hence we've given over the second instalment of Sack of Streams to some big baubled tunes. Santa's perspective on the season he gives so much to is often ignored amongst the cacophony of pissed up jeers and board game family disputes. The Narrows have taken his viewpoint [...]
Enjoying Xmas too much already? Yeah right. What about the xmas we don't get to hear about, the real xmas? The family arguments, devastating loneliness, and the sheer futility of it all? Thank the meaningless universe, then, for Gruff Rhys, who is clearly counting the days until Winterval is over. Gruff's new EP rounds off a great year, and he's clearly not fussed about missing out on a Both Bars On top ten slot for Hotel Shampoo . 'Post Apocalypse Christmas' is exactly the Cormac-McCarthy-sings-xmas song it sounds like, rhyming "concrete bunker, post [...]
It seems that the real cool kids on the blog don't do end of year lists. Well we like them and hope that those miserable sods slip in their paper shoes and find other people's dirty hankies in their bobble hats. Those artists who will be sobbing into their pillows tonight because they didn't quite make it onto our list include blistering aural adventures by: Wooden Shjips, Cave, Dead Skeletons, Eat Lights Become Lights, The Field, Moon Duo, Blanck Mass, Hills, Benjamin Shaw (sorry, Jamie), Gruff Rhys, Dels, White Denim, King Creosote & John Hopkins (robbed!), and Mike [...]
In a vain, desperate and over-ambitious attempt to keep up with the oodles of music we get sent and peruse over various wires, we give you Sack of Streams. The idea is four or five tracks with pithy and un-read descriptions for your aural please, whenever we get chance. Some of the first of these will be tunes from ancient times like October 2011, but if we catch up with our mail sack we might just hit that pop pulse…at which point we'll give up. Undoubtedly this will be a frustratingly irregular and quite possibly short-lived [...]
There's probably nothing that divides and angers music lovers more than a list. So on the day the BBC announces the long list of its 'Sounds of 2012' it seems the music twitterati are already up in arms about who's in and out. What better way then to quell the collective fever than to get a load of blogs to produce a list of what they consider should be 'big' in 2012? It was nice to be asked, but given our USP and general tardiness we're still slightly bemused why we were solicited to contribute to [...]
Watching Hammer House's horror output now is not the same as it used to be. When I first encountered them back in the 70s they were genuinely scary. I distinctly remember watching one of the TV series and being shocked shitless by a werewolf behind some curtains. Today, viewing occurs with wry smile on your face (although Quatermass and the Pit still disturbs). And this sense of the sardonic is very much apparent with Dead Skeletons's Dead Magick – death, horror and the supernatural are encountered with tongue firmly ensconced in cheek. At least [...]
Audio Antihero is two years old. The label, 'specialists in commercial suicide', have released an amazing series of EPs over the last two years, bookended by Benjamin Shaw's new album ( reviewed here ) and of course by the Nosferatu D2 album that started everything . And now Jamie Halliday is throwing a party, pretty much everyone associated with the label is playing or DJing, and YOU'RE INVITED. So for absolutely nothing you'll get to hear (deep breath) sets from Broken Shoulder, Jack Hayter , Benjamin Shaw (+ band!), and Fighting Kites; and DJ [...]
Benjamin Shaw's first album came out yesterday, on Audio Antihero Records. This is a very good thing as far as we're concerned. We knew he had it in him after last year's ' I Got The Pox, The Pox Is What I Got ', and this release makes good on the promise of that EP. Shaw works between the most apparently natural sounds – guitar, piano, voice, stepping uncertainly from one moment to the next – and a reservoir of fuzzy found sound and dissonant grumbling; sometimes this wash of noise takes over, and [...]
I hang my head in shame once again. Up until recently my knowledge of Yann Tiersen amounted to the soundtrack of Amelie and some collaborative efforts with Neil Hannon. After a few weeks of listening to the multifarious splendour of Skyline I now realise this is a terrible state of affairs. If you find yourself similarly deficient then, to put it in current and common parlance, "get on it". Skyline is a sumptuous mix of the cinematic, the post-rock, the psychedelic, the oceanic, the chic and the pop. It's seemingly composed [...]
If this album had been released in the mid-90s it's highly likely that Axel Willner aka The Field would've become a major dance superstar. In a time when Orbital and Underworld garnered mainstream success – the former's 'Satan (Live)' got to number 3 in the charts in 1996 – the evident connoisseurship of Looping State of Mind would've stimulated bodies, strained sinews and scrambled emotions the world over. As it's 2011 and this sort of tech-housey dance music is now, for the most part, an 'underground' concern (again), this album will not get the audience it deserves. [...]
That shape you think you just saw out of the corner of your eye? That strange dark shimmer at the edge of your vision? That barely glimpsed movement you hope was your imagination playing games with you? Happy Hallowe'en. Merry Samhain. Stay Sane. Goblin - L'Alba Dei Morti Viventi The Damned - Nasty Faith No More - Surprise! You're Dead! Nadja - You Write Your Name in My Head The Neff:
Many are the bands that use short opening tracks to albums and name them 'Introduction' or the like. And many are the times I find myself searching for the point of these little ditties and, as a result, skipping past in order to get to the main attraction. Warm Digits opt for this strategy with 'Warm Welcome', but succeed where many have failed: this little amuse-bouche, with its clattering drums and affectionate electronics gladdens the pallet for what it is to come (hmm, not sure about food metaphors for music…) This is an album in a Kraut-Nouveau style [...]
Many are the bands that use short opening tracks to albums and name them 'Introduction' or the like. And many are the times I find myself searching for the point of these little ditties and, as a result, skipping past in order to get to the main attraction. Warm Digits opt for this strategy with 'Warm Welcome', but succeed where many have failed: this little amuse-bouche, with its clattering drums and affectionate electronics gladdens the pallet for what it is to come (hmm, not sure about food metaphors for music…) This is an album in a Kraut-Nouveau style [...]
Given that our last two posts contained bits of music that could be broadly described as 'songs', today we return to the outer reaches of music-world via Bristolian Ekoplekz and his collection of tracks composed almost entirely of echoes, resonances, burblings and bubblings. The summary affect of these reverberations and gurglings is best described as immersive – the equivalent of having your skull sonically engineered into a deep sea submersible and sunk deep beneath the surface into barely known aquatic worlds. As you float through and survey this watery landscape, alien 'things' swim in and out of view, [...]
Even a little old blog likes ours gets lots of mail and equally rare as us believing the buzz , on the odd occasion a band email will drop into the inbox that makes you listen up. So… Take the wistful lightness of St. Etienne and the chic of Stereolab, mix with the electronic kaleidoscopic processing of Gyratory System and emulsify with a dash of Raymond Scott's abstracted commercial futurism and you're almost ready to understand Peopleodian. What's more, their debut EP 'It Woke The Moon!' - out on October 25 th on their [...]
It should be blindingly obvious by now, but Both Bars On is not a buzz blog. In fact our carefully crafted brand (I enjoyed typing that) is one that defines itself against such outlets. The reasons for this are numerous, but include: not having the time to hype the latest set of Brooklyn beards or bedroom nob twiddlers - we have jobs and this is a hobby; being too bloody cynical about just about everything (not limited to music) and hence we can't get excited by bands that amount to an email address and a Bandcamp site with one half-arsed [...]
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James Blake – Live Album
Childish Gambino - "Heartbeat" (Official Music Video)
Gang Colours – Fancy Restaurant
Circo Voador anuncia shows de The Kooks, Foster The People, Friendly Fires, Gogol Bordello e mais
