4/04/2009
Marina and the Diamonds - Mowgli
A new Queen has risen! Born alongside Micachu*, Marina was fed golden grubs, taught tiger stalking, and learnt how to control the rainforest with her eyes and voice. With roars that ride the canopies, she chases the outsiders out. A big big shanty that they sung on the tall-ship that got lost up the River Congo for years and years back in the bad old days. All turns to madness; madness and whistling and cuckoo!
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* Dan at Said The Gramophone said everything I wanted to say about Micachu & The Shapes. Lips (mp3) is awesome too.
[Photo credit]
2/04/2009
MP3: Bark Cat Bark - Iceland
Iceland slides from its continental shelf, and goes looking for a place to sleep undisturbed, leaving a huge flat plateau centimeters below sea level. They didn’t get very far with the little coal they had left.* Having waltzed 400 miles south, Iceland is slightly warmer. If only it could go a little further—Iceland would fit nicely into the Bay of Biscay. Stars of The Lid are for galaxical measurement and minute concentration; Bark Cat Bark is the tide’s breath & the moon’s tricks. Both are important, both are quiet. [via]
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Icelandic musician Sin Fang Bous is also really good.
The new subtitle of this blog is “Really good things that Europe sings.” You can follow my quest for really good things elsewhere: On Twitter & on The Mike Review.
* (We’ve been using coal for 6,000 years, screwed everything up in last 150, should probably stop now. In a few hundred millennia the coal might come back; we won’t! Yay us!)
27/03/2009
500-seconds of astonishment good. Ex-NME/tabloid darlings The Horrors are born again, proving that a really bad track record can be forgotten by one marathon performance, one huge jump across the sand-pit. With help from Portishead’s Geoff Barrow on the production desk, we witness a distant and heavenly acid-thunderstorm of dark prog spreading across European motorways. Swimming through the rain, The Horrors have locked up the old garage-rock, prefer to search for fields oil and set them alight.
“After all, what a miracle has happened here. A formerly self-obsessed, hype-loving indie band have devalued their media image and released something marvellous.” The Guardian
Amen. The Horrors have parachuted out just before the crash. What a bleak and beautiful sight. “Sea Within A Sea” Mp3 at Play It As It Lays.
An NBGL original | Photo credit
25/02/2009
Bat for Lashes lets loose, reaching deeper with second album Two Suns, introducing alter-ego Pearl. They swim through rivers of fantasy, dry off in the locks of golden boughs, warm up beside sparks of electronica and flames of dazed trip-hop.
Debut Fur and Gold had whistling winds, howls, circus tricks, mist and lake mirrors; Khan played a chanteuse of druid-rock in possession of a dark energy. Two Suns burns all that energy, alchemizing Björk, Kate Bush, and Tolkien.
As Two Suns begins, with Khan marches armies to the beat of a Song of Solomon, across desert and heath, til the dawn.
Republished from The Morning News | Photo credit
11/01/2009
I’ve been playing with a Buddha Machine all day—it’s a little battery powered box that drones at you. Afterwards, Ghost Hunter (mp3) sounds fantastic.
It’s minimal, human, and hidden away in that cave; every sound outside hums of progress, a planet breathing. Wind & rain fresh beats pump life, noises that interest, and enthrall like every story should, sharpening the senses.
An NBGL original | Photo credit
7/12/2008
Recently there has been much more listening and reading than thinking. The more I listened and the more I thought, the bigger that Meursault (mp3) become. Words come easy when you have something big to share. Salt Part 1 is arms stretched to 20 feet up, or two leagues below, reaching for bright and promising new worlds, More parts Beirut than Kraftwerk–Highland genesis, French dreams, European oils.
An NGBL original | Photo credit
6/08/2008
Is this what dubstep did to Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys’ legacy? Dragged the summer out so that it lasts seven seasons? All the plants will die! Lofi-pop from that seventh season. (mp3)
11/05/2008
People Of Water have forced Afrobeat to go all desert-storm, with instrumental precision. An assault of funk and drum, buzzing lo-fi twirls, and a hi-quality power. “Vale of Aching Hearts” (mp3) is a luxury. The sandstorm churned up behind it betrays kilowatts of energy and a solar rhythm that leaves me gasping for water.
An NBGL original | Photo credit misplaced
2/05/2008
Psych-jam sessions get a little more decadent, dark and off-kilter.
It’s a spiralling descent of funk and cool, all delivered in a grainy slow motion on the warmest beach by the coldest sea.
Quiet Village are genre-bending animals feeding on salt and crab.
Exotica delivered from Italian beaches.
(mp3)
An NBGL original | Photo credit misplaced
1/02/2008
Forget the showers! Don’t cower! The spring is coming. Expect it!
“Hide and Seek” (mp3) delivers big sounds and samples through a soaking shower of lost, organic and journeying flightless birds.
An NBGL original | Photo credit