MP3: The Zetland Players - Jacks Zoo
Music for dancing on grass to. A song for a Friday morning round about 11:40. It’s upbeat folk but most folk makes me feel upbeat whether or not it’s got subject matter like bats, rats and humdrum finery - but it makes your eyes open a little more than usual. Its musical/ancestral heritage in the 1940s, but this is fresh! BEWARE: Do not feed the hovering Double Bass.
http://www.myspace.com/thezetlandplayers
More mp3’s @ The Hype Machine
MP3: Windmill - Ashmatic
Matthew Thomas Dillon, Windmill, has crafted pop songs with grand proportions and grand gestures - like Michael Stipe and Wayne Coyne lifting their bands up by the scruff of there necks and demanding huge sounds that work just as well in the rain as in the Sun. Songs that are sung down to the floor when the sun is out, or upwards when the sky begins to fall, always bringing to mind expansive landscapes and wide open spaces. But as Dillon suggests, don’t judge this by the positive response it has received everywhere, nor on the above comparisons that occurred to me the moment I heard this record. But it deserved of all the recommendations, the instrumentation is huge and responsive, and voice pushes the album right towards the Mercury Music Prize. One of the best artists of the year.
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Recommended if you like: Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, all the above.
Myspace: /windmillband
More: Hype Machine / Elbo.ws
Buy album from: Melodic Records
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Photo by Rupert Noble
MP3: The Welcome Committee - The Way You Look
“The Welcome Committee are with arms wide walking. They want you to feel welcome. They are those people at stations with signs. They hug, they do not shake hands.”
This guy/ these guys/ these guys and girls are sat in your living room, they probably your friends: you can’t quite remember how they got there, but you don’t remember much these days. They seem pretty content and your dog isn’t barking at them, and the cat seems pretty happy so you let them continue playing their melodramatic popular song. They recycle melodies in-order to avoid singing the same song twice- they always keep things fresh and new, new hardening or flinching.
“The Way You Look” is a sparky pop song, about ligers, waterfalls and climbing everest. Folky? Maybe. It sounds complicated, but it’s not: It’s pleasing, maybe because he’s singing using words I understand and appreciate. Apparently Elvis is in Liverpool. Or maybe Jamie (Mister The Welcome Committee) is just making a point? Point made, motion passed, sit back now.
myspace.com/therealwelcomecommittee
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The streaming of tracks is not working. Our technical team is investigating. Someone is going to get fired.
Tune up your musical life with a British musical pit-stop…
Blogs all around the world are writing about British music, and offering up loads of mp3s. So to sum up:
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Fluxblog: Charlotte Hatherly: “The verses are grey and turbulent, and the chorus splits into a strange, sideways harmony that nearly trips over a low, mumbling male vocal“. It sure sounds more promising than the news of Ash not releasing any more albums…
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Good Weather For Airstrikes: The Moths: GWFAS are summering in London Town, and introduce indie-pop “a triple threat of near-flawless British guitar-pop gems… a shining example of how unbridled optimism, youthful exuberance and clever lyricism can converge to create one of the best tracks of the year.” Appearing on a podcast near you soon.
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funfunfun: Slow Club: Good friends of mine Slow Club were seen by Mr FFF and they seemed to enjoy the Slow Club as much as I do “As soon as they started playing it all fell into place, the venue, the tea, the cake, the milkshake all seemed to be encompassed in their sweet harmonies and cute and kooky lyrics”.
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Said The Gramophone: Caz Mechanic: Sean discusses “If I see a bear” with the usual panache “A song like a secret casually disclosed; a “So there!” murmured so quiet that the pride is lost.”
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Aurgasm: Sol Seppy: English, but plying her musical trade/ telling her stories in the States. “Goldfrapp-ish electro-pop tendencies, fuzzy electronic beats and gorgeous vocals”
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Do you know about an mp3 blog that writes about British music? Email me.
MP3: Emmy The Great - Papertrails
Out of the five Glastonbury recommendations I’ve offered you thus far, Emmy offers the sweetest performance of the lot. She’s playing everyday throughout the festival and her live performance will no doubt silence the unwashed hordes at Glasto. In the mud. The beautiful Emmy creates beautiful and simple stories of dreams, moves, birds, sewing needles and a ball of string.
Thus concludes the 5 recommendations for Glasto. Read them all here. And if you aren’t lucky enough to be going:
1. Go into the garden.
2. Turn on hose (feel free to disregard hosepipe ban: victimless crime)
3. Create muddy garden.
4. Assemble 4 soundsystems in different parts of the garden all playing different genres.
5. Collapse into the mud after exhaustion of the inability to find neccessary extension cords to complete step 4.
6. Realise that the ticket cost may have been worth the money.
7. Contemplate pole-vaulting the super fence.
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Also:
Take Your Medicine Podcast #18 is out now. It’s another way I try to tell people about great new music, in the format of a 30 minute show available as an mp3. If you haven’t already, go and give it a try.
NBGL now has an advert. It deflects all the costs related to this site and the podcast, and keep the blog and podcast free and up its feet.
MP3: Mad Dog McCrea - Am I Drinking Enough?
Introducing Devon’s finest folk-rock band sure to get your feet stamping at Glasto this year. Mad Dog McRea have been touring the country for more than a decade. They still don’t sound antiquated, nor dusty, as “Am I Drinking Enough” testifies. It seems the cider and whiskey they drink just fuels the fire burning in their bellies to entertain an audience as much as possible, dancing all round the staging really in tune with those dancing below them.
It’s stylish in the prop-er way, the accents, the fiddle and the growling frontman magics an atmosphere of sheer delight. But it’s ultimately the passion that me; even in a semi-concious state this was obvious. By their final song at a recent headlining performance at a festival, (an extended version of ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor’) I was more than just a convert, I felt like part of the flock.
You can buy their album, which I’ve had on repeat for the last week pretty much solid, from the band, from CDbaby (U.S + UK), or from Amazon.co.uk.
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Mad Dog McRea are scheduled to play the 22nd + 23rd at Glastonbury. And the weather? It will certainly rain, with revellers ensured of a mud bath. The Glastonbury coverage on Nothing But Green Lights continues tomorrow. Read all the NBGL coverage here.
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MP3: Rose Kemp - Fire in The Garden
“Fire in the garden” is stark and obvious, Rose Kemp holds nothing back and it all comes across as honest. It has a very precise and laboured definition, Rose seems like an artist who cares for her artistry so much, to the point of self-indulgence? No, in this particular tune there is nothing you can grab hold of, no gaps to glimpse through, just repetition. But when you stop looking for her, and just look up maybe you’ll understand.
But then the song stops, Rose has moved on. “Violence” demonstrates the upper reaches of Kemp’s ability, but it all returns me to one point: The Mars Volta. She misspells them under the disappointedly obligatory “influences” section; it’s certainly a casual influence, but it tells you of Rose Kemp’s power, and the movements where you feel she is lifting you above songs, lyrics and guitar up to that rarely reachable moment. Rose Kemp is signed to One Little Indian in the U.K, the home of Bjork and has an album out now.
http://www.myspace.com/rosekemp
At Glastonbury:
Fri June 22nd: 2.30pm Bandstand stage (solo)
Sat June 23rd: 2.00pm Bandstand stage (Jeremy Smoking Jacket)
Sun June 24th: 6.00pm BBC Introducing Rose Kemp + band
MP3: Fridge - Eyelids
Recommended if you like: Post-rock and instrumental jam.
Welcome to the throbbing and gristly world of instrumental rock where everything is created in a very particular fashion. Fridge, comprised of Kieran Hebden (of Four-Tet electronica fame), Adem Ilhan and a chap called Sam Jeffers on the drums: old school friends, now superstars of British indie, folk and electro. They are releasing their first album in over 5 years.
Fridge squelch through a 2:47 jam that reveals maturity of their musical awareness, whilst maintaining the personality that could only develop in teenage years. It has innocence and power in equal measure, like an immature gas giant trying to out manoeuvre a black hole that has absolutely no forgiveness. But of course, this track only gives you a brief introduction to uncomplicated Fridge, a first glimpse, the experimental, grandiose and complicated world of Fridge is not to be put in a box and sealed with generic constraint, our three heroes of this musical world have many skills, rocking it instrumentally is but one of them. Just don’t call them folk-tronica. This track is taken from Fridge’s album “The Sun” which is released on June 19th. Here the full range @
http://www.myspace.com/fridgemusic
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NBGL Glasto coverage:
Four-Tet play:
Click here to read all of the Nothing But Green Lights Glasto preview coverage (whether or not you are lucky enough to have tickets, you might still enjoy it).
"An instrumental and psychedelic revving up and tuning up".. until... "the throb begins. The journey, landscape and this band’s raw energy rolls out along deserted roads with enormous speed and engulfs all." [22nd April: more] | [Photo credit]
