It's not for fear of getting all but absolutely swept away by Blue Hawaii that we're back extolling the virtues of the Montréal-based duo comprising Agor Cowan and Raphaelle Standell-Preston, for to paraphrase Mykki Blanco everything they touch turns to motherfuckin' gold. And live, whether that aptly be at Club Motherfucker's 10th anniversary celebrations or at last weekend's The Great Escape , is when they really come into their own: they cut loose and positively lacerate the itself sublime Untogether LP of earlier on in the year, only to recompose it [...]
The VPME The Urban music festival has much to recommend it. Access to proper loos for example, a comfy bed at the end of the night and the reassurance that in the event of the heavens opening the terrain underfoot will not suddenly be transformed into a foetid, agglutinative quagmire. The Great Escape is arguably the urban festival by which all others are judged, and after what turned out to be a shorter than anticipated first visit, we can see why. The Great Escape's reputation is well deserved, it's a festival that's welcoming, extremely well organised [...]
"It's better when it's short! I mean, we can have a nice, long conversation but I like it when the pieces are relatively short. Unless it's supposed to be an in-depth piece centred around a certain idea – the way in which the writer looks at the world, or something. Then maybe it's interesting." So spake Alex "Agor" Cowan of Blue Hawaii now some weeks ago at the somewhat insalubrious end of Holloway Road and although this won't be the so-called "snapshot kinda: 'Blue Hawaii come from Montréal, and their favourite game is billiards, and they love drinking [...]
Saturday begins not so much where Friday left off, as in the excrement of the day's overindulgence as talk of hangovers, hangups, comedowns and all other manner of ill ensures the day can be acutely equated to a more conventional festival malarkey. And Blue Hawaii transpire to be a refreshing tonic to all that inanity, Raphaelle Standell-Preston and Alex "Agor" Cowan putting in an accelerant set on next to no sleep. It begins with perfect respite provided by a gloopy Follow drenched in dark, and the duo sound as though they've come to terms with their live performance [...]
It's Friday, it's day two of this year's The Great Escape, and I'm mercifully awoken by the patting of a vexed train conductor as we trundle back into Brighton. Up, if not yet at 'em I'm stirred further by strummed susurrations of jarring guitar and bracing billows of jangle. The seaside's alive with the sound of music, but when heard so early it's not all entirely pleasurable. Lawrence Arabia is just that though, and although he may be named James Milne and in fact hails from New Zealand as opposed to the dunes of southwestern [...]
The littoral British retreat that is Brighton may be better renowned for saccharine tat and chish and fips still swimming in gristle and grime than it may be for musics and the manic frenzy their festivals so often entail, although the city becomes a bloody hive of hype for the one weekend of the year. That is this, and this is the 2013 edition of The Great Escape . So let the buzz begin! Away from the unrelenting bustle of the capital – a restive kind of agitation capable of bludgeoning even the irrepressibly ebullient [...]
The post Gallery: The Great Escape, Brighton, May 18th 2013. appeared first on Dots & Dashes .
I Think I Like Your Girlfriend More Than You by bentcousin! Our Song of the Day can be heard beneath or over on the left sidebar throughout AMBY. Enjoy! Band Links: Interview // Facebook // Twitter // SoundCloud // Alicia Atout
News this week that one of my old haunts is set to feel the merciless punch of the wrecking ball - The Cobbler's Thumb, in Brighton, is finally to be demolished after years of structural neglect. The old girl will be knocked down before she falls down, though for a while in the early noughties, it seemed likely it would be the other way around. It became one of those pubs where everyone knew your name (or at the very least, alcohol-fuddled, tried to remember it) and a place in its heyday that always felt welcoming and snug. [...]
The post Gallery: The Great Escape, Brighton, May 16th 2013. appeared first on Dots & Dashes .
The New Union: The song is a love story about failed relationships. We filmed this video in the middle of nowhere at 5am in the morning and it was the best experience ever! We got to spend the whole day with some owls, what more could you ask for. *** Interview // Facebook // Twitter // SoundCloud // Alicia Atout
The VPME The Great Escape 2013 Those nice people at Hype Machine asked us to pick our five MUST see acts at this year's Great Escape Festival… You can see our choices here But here they are in ever so slightly more depth 1. Findlay Every time we've seen Natalie Findlay and her band they just seem to get better and better. [...]
Directors Jeb Hardwick, Trewin Howard and Thom Novi were faced with a monumental task when creating a video for Phoria 's "Red." How does one create a visual worthy of such a magnificently beautiful song? With incredible vocals, pristine piano arrangements and perfectly placed spoken-word samples, these six minutes are only deserving of the best. Well, long story short, they did. The sentiment and emotion that oozes out of the audio version of "Red" is tastefully translated into a captivating collection of moving pictures. Watch it above. STREAM: Phoria - "Red"
Keston Cobblers Club 's new single out today (13 May) is for 'Beam', and it's got a pretty kitschy video too. Watch it below. The band go on a headline tour of England in September; the Manchester and London dates have sold out, but the other dates have tickets on sale, all the dates are listed below under the video. Click here to view the embedded video. Monday 23rd September 2013 - Nottingham Rescue Rooms Tuesday 24th September 2013 [...]
London's Chapel Club have a short tour of the UK scheduled for early June. Tickets are on sale now. The band's second album 'Good Together' is out on the first day of the tour, the 3rd of June. Monday 3rd June 2013 - Birmingham Temple Tuesday 4th June 2013 - Glasgow Art School Wednesday 5th June 2013 - Leeds Cockpit 2 Thursday 6th June 2013 - Brighton Haunt Tuesday 11th June 2013 - [...]
Doctor by BAYY! Our Song of the Day can be heard beneath or over on the left sidebar throughout AMBY. Enjoy! Band Links: Interview // Getting Cozy With // Facebook // Twitter // SoundCloud // BandCamp // Alicia Atout
I was first introduced to Cosmo Sheldrake when I caught a video of him playing live in a pig sty . Yes, you heard me correctly - a pig sty. Cosmo is part of a new generation of one-man shows with his expertise as a master looper, vocalist, beatboxer and multi instrumentalist (I can barely recognize half the instruments that make up his live arsenal). He regularly performs on his loop station, banjo, keyboards, double bass, drums, didgeridoo, penny whistle, sousaphone and more. Growing up playing piano from the age of 4, Cosmo has taken massive strides towards crafting [...]
It's a tough call. But I don't care if Best Ever ’s bonkers twiddle-rock still splits my face in half on every listen. Or indeed that Gallop is probably the most exuberant song about aging that I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing, makes humanity’s debilitating fear of ever-encroaching time sound like something to celebrate. Because the best thing about Everything Touching is still the way that it ends . Murmurations, the song that closes [...]
I'm going to attempt to write this without sounding like a slightly crazed fan, but Cosmo Sheldrake is nothing short of a genius. If you've ever seen any of his videos , I think you'll agree it's pretty hard not to be taken in by his performance as he loops and beat-boxes to create the most wonderful sounds, as if it were as natural to him as remembering to breathe. His new track The Fly borrows verses from the famous Blake poem, and it works incredibly well. Stream below:
If you’ve been following these dispatches from rock’n’roll limbo over the past few years (ahahahahahaahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH A…cough) you might remember a post from the back end of 2011 which concerned itself, in a roundabout way, with Love Among The Mannequins ’ debut full-length Radial Images . The post purported to be a record review, but really, it was just a series of flippant encyclopaedia entries that I cobbled together for want of something clever to write. For Radial Images was (and is) a record that went out of [...]
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Doldrums - "Holographic Sandcastles"
