Oxford band Fixers had this great song debuted on Zane Lowe's show last week. Touted by NME as "a cartoon Animal Collective", the sounds of the band scream to be remixed, having been given the once-over by the D/R/U/G/S, Memory Tapes and Chad Valley amongst others so far - they're pretty new to the scene and already making friends, which is nice.
Strangely named 'Swimmhaus Johannesburg' is a crazed mix of synth that sounds straight out of the amazing 1992 game for SNES Top Gear, late 90s piano-led house music, a beat that couldn't be more solid if it tried, and the strange euphoric atmosphere of a dark sweaty hotel nightclub - the kind of place where the music seems to come from another world.
Fixers' latest offering is nothing but otherworldly. It's as if aliens looked at the music of pop culture over the last 20-something years and put this all together in a mixing pot. Starting which a distorted guitar Black Betty against a backdrop of tumbling tropical toms, that classic rave piano chord struck on the offbeat comes in, coupled with a drawn out virtuoso synth sound that reverberates in your skull. Soon we are at the chorus, where the vocals though slightly thin lead the song forward accompanied by a host of 'aaah's in the background, and a boiling kettle schizoid synth sound gathers energy as it rises up towards the next break. All the while a disco bassline crunches deeply behind the madness.
There's a lot going on in the song, all coming to a head when the chorus jumps out of the verse to raise you up out of your seats and off the ground it seems. It's very ADHD, jumping from a Duran Duran-style breakdown one minute to a ravey comedown the next; heavily layered, energetic and progressively electro-rock-disco enough to be more than just a quirk, it's not exactly something that you can listen to without an aural doubletake.
Being a fan of Bombay Bicycle Club, I was pretty excited to see them at Glastonbury for a second time (I saw them at the John Peel Stage in 2010). They're a lovely bunch of lads who play indie alternativia fronted by the charismatically humble Jack Steadman, whose heartfelt lyrics about (mainly) girls, love, and romance leave a long note of resonance wherever they are heard. I'm even more excited at the prospect of a new album in the wake of first single 'Shuffle'.
Sounds like someone in the band's been listening to Wild Beasts' first album Limbo, Panto - or perhaps it's just the honky-tonk piano and the occasional falsetto from Steadman that makes me think this. Either way, this song marks a definite move away from the guitar-band indie dancefloor killer anthems of the first album I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose ('Always Like This' and 'Evening/Morning') and the revivalist Brit-folk acoustic softness of second album Flaws, and a transition into perhaps something more experimental.
Released on 23rd June, 'Shuffle' sounds like neither of the above. Although the piano adds an almost timeless quality to the song, as pianos do, it might turn off some fans who were there for the twiddly guitar bits and chunky bass riffs that defined them as a band before 2010 - but that's inevitable. The most recognisable quality in 'Shuffle' is actually the beat, those skiffly yet precise and distinctively "indie" drums provided by drummer Suren de Saram are second cousins of those found in the hit 'Always Like This'; first cousins of the drums that accompany the lovely 'Ivy & Gold'.
Overall it's a song with enough going on to warrant it being a single, but understated enough to allow it to wash over your ears instead of infect them with repetitive strains and refrains. There's a wonderfully gentle breakdown that comes after the halfway point, demonstrating BBC's skill with and execution of effortless changes in pace and dynamic. I'm hoping it's a taster of what will be come next - a new album and another change in sound for the band whose loyal following will be happy with the result.
• New album A Different Kind Of Fix out 29th August
• Check out their official site
• Their Myspace for more music
• And their SoundCloud
• Also, follow them on Twitter
Morphing organically from previous electronica project, Worredaboutsatan, the Leeds duo who now steer the fate of current undead-themed Ghosting Season. But is their first EP under this new moniker, 'Far End Of The Graveyard', halfway between this world and the next, one foot in heaven and one on the earth - is it in limbo?
Super dance make-a-stand here-I-am darkly anti-anthemic dirge title-track 'Far End Of The Graveyard' busts on the scene first and is a fantastic opener. This really brings to the forefront Gavin Miller's and Tom Ragsdale's talents in creating an atmosphere by slowly introducing you to different sounds and themes, both geniuses in patience and certainly not exposing you to everything all at once. The intricate weave of perfect jigsaw sounds comes to a head around two-thirds of the way through this one when a simple brutally modulated two-note synth bridge disturbs the drums so much that they disappear for half a bar each time it repeats itself. Wonderful stuff, something I've written about before here (also the post-post-modern video is on the past post too).
Second track 'Exercise Us' opens with a hugely desertificated slow symphony of strings and horns, like a dark Lawrence of Arabia on ketamine. It's chilled pseudo-dubstep with an auxilliary beat that sounds like the beat played to the music inside the pyramid of Mario 64's Shifting Sand Land, and for this the soundscape is automatically tied to sand, pyramids, and spirits guiding you through it all (that's Zelda - sorry).
However this is far from soundtrack music, and would do just as well in a misty club at 3:00 in the morning with 12,000 units down you, dancing as if your legs don't exist - i.e. swaying. There's a wonderful breakdown in this song, displaying some attitudinal wobble and providing some bassy breathing space as the strings come back to take centre stage before we are back into the groove.
So when 'Washed Ashore' surfaces it's a welcome break. What you notice about Ghosting Season is their subtle intensity; after the first two tracks you are kind of reeling from their sound. Totally not in a bad way, but it's in their progressive build-ups that you suddenly find yourself miles away from the start of the song - the elements are still there, but so much more has risen out of the speakers that you almost find yourself looking down on the idea of a song whilst you float above it all watching its original concepts swirl around.
Thus 'Washed Ashore' - with its ambience, swooping synths, and gentle wave-crashing imitations - comes perfectly positioned; after the brooding storm of 'Far End Of The Graveyard', the lost-at-sea hallucinations of 'Excercise Us', it's nice to be washed ashore with 'Washed Ashore'.
Then we travel inland for 'Dead Man's Switch' - to some dark place, who knows where. It's a hearty chunk of progressive trance house, once again showing the skill and effort put into their songs. Sounding much more like electronica than its counterpart 'Far End Of The Graveyard', the distorted sounds bubble up after a moment of silence - this is the dead man's switch being activated (yeah I just learned what this was too). Though strangely more than any other song there's some kind of hope in there, a totally major theme running throughout the duration of the track, meaning you end on a high. Albeit a strange high, as the claps that erupt in the second half of the track add a witch house quality to it, though we all know this is far more progressive electro house with a dark twist than anything inherently dark. For me, anything that takes the focus from clinical dance music with a conceited euphoria is on the light side, ironically.
So are we in limbo? No. We've been taken on a wonderful journey filled with highs and lows, astonishing attention to detail in creating atmospheric soundscapes that you can positively get lost in, and a wholly deep, organic sound that is a joy to listen to. We're in heaven.
I was going to go see these guys at Glastonbury, they were playing after Crystal Fighters at the West Oxylers stage in the Dance Field but for some reason or another I missed it.
This was on the Sunday when the sun was positively beating down on the festival, so to hear the funky Duran Duran meets Robert Smith at Club Tropicana rhythms of Egyptian Hip Hop song 'Moon Crooner' would've been perfect; the mud would've turned to sand before our very eyes, I'm sure:
The colours and weird haircuts of the video suggest that the 80s revivalist sentiment running through the music runs deeper. It sounds a little like Black Kids (remember them? "You are the girl...") with that funky bassline, which adds to the picnic-in-the-park synth popping in. There are also slices of Late Of The Pier in there, too, with that almost DIY, new-pop sound. The real phenomenon, though, is how singer Alex Hewett gets away sounding so much like Robert Smith. Surely there's some legality in sounding exactly like something else?
But then again, we can see it as one big homage. Their influences are "new wave/prog/pop circa 1979-1984", explaining the sound entirely. It's a fun sound, one I'm not sure for how long it'll stay interesting, but one that is piquing a lot of people's curiosity at the moment. Here's an interview with BBC Introducing... from early 2010 as EHH were about to embark on their first UK tour - all members at just 17 years old.
What's next from the Manc pop foursome? Who knows.
I've just heard the house duo sensation 2 Bears on Radio 1 chatting to Pete Tong. I was going to see them at Glastonbury, but got inevitably sidetracked by I don't know what.
Made up of Raf Rundell (aka Greco-Roman Soundsystem) and Joe Goddard (one part of Hot Chip), they're set to be pretty big this year. Their shared enthusiasm for house music, discovered whilst sharing DJ booths on various club nights, led to plans for collaboration - and eventually it happened. Thus 2 Bears was born. Have a listen to their wonderful union in the form of their new EP (released 20th June).
From the very beginning of the moody, tribal house vibrations of 'Take A Look Around', softened with pop vocals, gradually becoming full of energy thanks to a disco lifted hi-hat, to the beat-heavy bass minimalism erupting in 'Banger', beautiful in its repetition as much as in its progression, with new sounds being added in every part - a new bassline, erratic snare, or the strange electro euphoria of its breakdown; the Bear Hug EP is something special.
Sped-up twisted Hot Chip-esque sounds at the beginning of the eponymous 'Bear Hug' give way to a strangely nonchalant-aggressive spoken word vocal, expressing and espousing the virtues of having a bear hug: "We've brought you all a gift for maximum dancefloor uplift, it's called a bear hug" Halfway through Joe Goddard's distinctive voice comes in to provide a wonderfully gentle few bars of singing before the "bear hug" refrain comes back in. Catchy, unusual, a tad frightening, but what a thing it would've been to hear this song at one of their sets at The Hub in Shangri-La last week. Oh well.
The epic dance flavours of 'In My Brain Is Like A Computer' explode throughout the 5 minutes this song plays and it's my personal favourite. I love everything about it, from the incessant clapping and cowbelling at the beginning, to then the dulled euphoria tones of the aggressive piano chords (could be a giant keyboard, in reference to the song's title) and the "oohh... aahhh" vocal sample, bringing a softness to such a hard sound. Just before the halfway mark the song drops entirely, bringing everything together with some monstrously relentless wobbly bass. The last 2 minutes of the song, following another flay-you-alive kind of breakdown, are frantically calling you up to dance. Near-perfection in terms of unique house music.
