Oran Mor - May 10th 2010
Johnny Flynn is crafting songs well beyond what you'd usually find capable for a man of such a young age. With his band The Sussex Wit, Flynn & Co became one of only a small handful of British acts to sign to the Legendary Alt Country label Lost Highway in 2008, the label home of Johnny Cash, Ryan Adams, Morrissey, and Elvis Costello. A Larum debuted Flynn's multi-instrumental English Folk Rock sensibilities. With his latest release, EP Sweet William, The title track, 'Sweet William' narrates the wanderings and adventures of William: his various rites-of-passage, his growth from boy to man, a tale that really reaches back to the story-telling roots of the kind of centuries-old folk culture that this new wave of traditionally inspired nu-folk is entirely indebted to. 'Sweet William' is a display of the direction that Flynn sees himself moving in: an exploration into the deep roots of the culture that he and his folksy piers, Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling, Peggy Sue, Mariner's Children etc, have so brilliantly brought into the limelight of late.
www.johnny-flynn.com
www.myspace.com/johnnyflynn
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Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh - May 2nd 2010.
Die Stadt Muzikanten is Woodpigeon's third full-length album and follow up to the internationally acclaimed Treasury Library Canada. Produced by Arran Fisher, the fifteen tracks on Die Stadt Muzikanten move and contort like a film soundtrack. Lush, grand moments complement Mark's signature cinematic pretty-pretty-pop sound. Woodpigeon's chamber-folk concoctions of banjo, glockenspiel, choir and Mark Hamilton's diffident vocals make for thoughtful melodious moments and joyous rock-outs. Combining the mystical comic-book fantasies of Mark's lyrics with the sparkling music of the band, comparisons to Sufjan Stevens and his delightful ilk aren't far wrong, setting Woodpigeon up to be the next great Canadian breakout band.
"**** It's bloody marvelous." -SUNDAY TIMES
"**** An inspiring meditation on exile and return." -THE GUARDIAN
"**** Seductive." -MOJO
"**** Melodic and affecting." -Q .
www.myspace.com/woodpigeon
Support comes from Portland's Laura Gibson. Laura's album Beasts Of SeasonsDivided into ‘Communion’ and ‘Funeral’ songs, an introspective nature nevertheless reigns throughout. Gibson’s voice takes centre-stage, and a remarkable instrument it is too: set against keening cellos, piano and plaintive acoustic guitar, it’s commanding and furtive all at once, without ever coming off showy. Listening to these studied tales of matters corporeal – where the changing of season is felt in the bones and mortality is an ever-present concern – is akin to a soft, persuasive whisper in the ear upon stirring. Indeed, it’s incredible how otherworldly this LP feels at times, a mournful blend of tried and tested instruments led by a captivating vocal presence.
www.myspace.com/lauragibson
Tickets are available online from Ticketweb
Classic Grand - May 8th 2010
Band Of Skulls debut Baby Darling Doll Face Honey offers a taste of their driving guitar force, heartbreaking duets, and sun-kissed, wall of sound harmonies.
The gritty English trio Band of Skulls craft bluesy and ballsy slabs of atmospheric indie rock that echo the work of contemporaries like the Kills, Duke Spirit, and the Black Keys.
Tickets are available now from Ticketweb
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Thee Oh See's
Nice N Sleazy - June 3rd 2010
John Dwyer (of Coachwhips, Pink and Brown, Landed, Yikes, Burmese, The Hospitals, Sword & Sandals, Superpit, The Drums, The Trawgs, Zeigenbock Kopf and Dig That Body Up It’s Alive!) is in Thee Oh Sees and he seems to be making this band the most serious project. He’s done everything from noise, to death metal, to punk, and now this.
Thee Oh Sees are no doubt the lightest of his excursions, but it also shows what may be his very essence. It’s obvious that he loves music and wants to experience it all, touch every aspect, and give it all a go.
www.myspace.com/ohsees
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Fools Gold
Captain's Rest - April 28th 2010
Bass Player Luke Top and guitarist Lewis Pesacov were longtime friends with a shared loved for world music when they started fronting informal African-inspired dance sessions two years ago at Los Angeles clubs such as the famed Spaceland and The Echo. The sound caught on, and soon musicians from across the city were clamoring to sit in with the ever expanding ensembles.
With a current roster of 10 to 12 musicians on any given night - including current and former members of band's such as Foreign Born, The Fall, We Are Scientists, Glasser, Cass McComb's Band and even the Argentinean pop star, Erica Garcia (who'se been nomiated for Grammy's and won Rolling Stone Latin America best female singer three years in a row!) - Fool's Gold plays a distinctive hybrid of dance sounds from West Africa, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.
www.myspace.com/foolsgold
Tickets available online now from Ticketweb
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Midnight Juggernauts
Sneaky Pete's - May 6th 2010
Following the release of their highly acclaimed debut album, Dystopia, Midnight Juggernauts shift the focus to album number two with the release of their new single 'This New Technology'.
An epic journey through time and the afterlife, ‘This New Technology’ refuses to travel along the straight and narrow. Instead the track moves through 70s pop to Morricone soundscapes, dark driving toms to lush washed out jams, lo-fi to hi-fi, progrock to krautrock, Eno to ecstasy, the Roses to Rafferty...it's pop but not as you know it. Produced by Midnight Juggernauts, the track was recorded at Melbourne’s Sing Sing Studios by Christopher Moore (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Liars) and mixed by Andy Baldwin. We're expecting Midnight Juggernauts to drop their Sophomore album later this year.
myspace.com/midnightjuggernauts
Tickets are on sale now from Ticketweb
In addition to evoking grand hyperboles from every blog under the sun, HEALTH's album inspired several other musicians to match the band's creativity. They reimagined, recut, and remixed, and the result was HEALTH//DISCO. Featuring remixes from Crystal Castles, Acid Girls, CFCF, Pink Skull, Thrust Lab, Narctrax, and more, these tracks take HEALTH's ethereal chanting, screeching noise, and gauzy atmosphere and forcefully apply them to the dance floor. Fast Forward to their (proper) Second Album Get Color to find exactly what a sophomore release should be: a deepening of and expansion upon the promise laid out by the band’s first record. Though, the frenetic impulses from two years back have been carefully tempered, the percussive backbone more sharply honed and the ear-bleeding textures more cleverly implemented.
For fans of Ex Models, No Age, and Mika Miko.
www.myspace.com/healthmusic
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Pantha Du Prince
Oran Mor - August 13th 2010
Sneaky Pete's - August 14th 2010
Though he lacks the crossover name recognition of producers like the Field, Burial, and Lindstrøm, Germany's Hendrik Weber is one of the leading figures in modern techno. As Pantha du Prince, he has up until now released two albums of meticulous, minimal-inspired house music. The last, 2007's This Bliss, found the rare balance between ambient sweep and dancefloor bounce, and it's only grown in stature since its release. On his latest release, Black noise is a frequency known to humans as silence. It exists on the spectral level heard by animals, the kind of sound that prefix natural disasters - an earthly organic mutation of sonics. It is this intangibility and awe that Pantha Du Prince shoots for on his Rough Trade debut record of the same name. For an album that is already being touted with potential to cross over into the indie mainstream, it admirably doesn’t pander to its new audience. It’s resolutely itself and much the better for it.
www.myspace.com/panthaduprince
Buy tickets for Glasgow here and Edinburgh here
STAG AND DAGGER
VARIOUS VENUES - GLASGOW MAY 22ND 2010
As you know we have a very limited number of £12 early bird tickets on sale but as of Monday tickets will go up to £16.50. This will be your last chance to get your early bird tickets so if you don't do it this weekend, you'll lose out.
If you need any more of an incentive to buy your ticket early then we have another handful of acts to announce. Titus Andronicus, Jessca Hoop, and Erland And The Carnival.. These acts join the already announced acts: The Antlers, Chapel Club, Divorce, Esben And The Witch, Frankie And The Heartstrings, Joker, Kid Adrift, Male Bonding, My Latest Novel, A Place To Bury Strangers, Sparrow And The Workshop, Unwinding Hours, We Were Promised Jetpacks, and Wild Beasts plus many more still to be announced!
buy your tickets here
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Titus Andronicus
www.myspace.com/titusandronicus
XL will release Titus Andronicus' sophomore long player, The Monitor, in March 2010. Fascinating, overblown, downright baffling… sometimes concept albums are all these things, and sometimes, they are not. It is rare, though, they’re such terrific fun as the second set from Titus Andronicus, which squares up against colossal odds (societal reverberations of conflicts long passed; song length averaging six minutes; spoken-word interludes) and overcomes them with ease. I’d go as far as to label the quintet nonchalant, were it not for the negativity that word implies; from the opening notes of their blistering debut album The Airing of Grievances through the dying strains of The Monitor’s final track, it is clear that being in a band is the most important thing in the world for Titus Andronicus, everything they touch ablaze with righteous indignation.
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Jesca Hoop
www.myspace.com/jescahoop
Filtering vintage Tori Amos through the more sideways sensibility of Joanna Newsom, Jesca Hoops’s second album arrives fully formed on these shores (her previous British release was a limited EP).
Hoops’s touchstones may be at the more preternatural reaches of alt folk but she applies a grounding, off-kilter poppiness to these dusky, foresty-sounding songs, which range from classy psych folk on the title track to murder ballad Tulip with its smudged, filthy bass line, and the tightly sprung acoustic duet, Murder Of Birds, featuring an absurdly sweet, trickling guitar line and a barely audible Guy Garvey.
Hoops’s protean vocals shift from a whisper to a howl in the flick of an eyelid while a shocking sense of drama lurks deep within her deceptively pretty arrangements.
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Erland And The Carnival
www.erlandandthecarnival.com
Simon Tong formerly of The Verve and The Good, The Bad & The Queen, and David Nock, Paul McCartney’s right-hand man in avant garde side-project The Fireman. Two men used to playing out of the limelight then, and that’s how it stays in Erland And The Carnival, as the main focus is singer and guitarist Erland Cooper.
If all that, plus the references to Davey Graham and Bert Jansch get you thinking that EATC are going to be folk with a capital F, then you’ll be surprised by their debut, which has a fair amount of pop thrown into the mix. There is a strong folk flavour – the dark swirling waltz that is ‘Tramps And Hawkers’ for instance, or the increasing intensity of opener ‘Love Is A Killing Game’. Lyrically, the album is enriched with the imagery of the folk world, mainly because it’s largely made up of adaptations and updated versions of traditional songs.