MP3: Sleeping States - Call Me

Last year I wrote about Mr Mark “Sleeping States’ ” release on The Caspian Label’s 7″ series. Back then I tried to describe “Tremoring psch-folk laying down for a moment, taking a brief pause, after some frantic energy exertion, perhaps awaking after a long nights sleep.” This is much more impatient, but it is crafted with the same recognisable, signature grain. The original is fast and direct: this is much more sideways looking and impromptu.

This track is half of a 7″ to be released by Felt Tip Records. The other half is by Fanfarlo: it’s sprite and chirpy, with this London 6-piece slipping and sliding their way up to a bigger sound without falling flat on their faces and losing all momentum.

MP3: Fanfarlo - Harold T Wilkins

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Upcoming tour dates featuring Fanfarlo AND Sleeping States

29th Feb Brighton @ Hope
1st March Bristol @ Louisiana
2nd March Nottingham @ Bodega

Fanfarlo are playing SXSW - go check them out.

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Said the Gramophone, one of my favourite mp3 blogs, are gradually announced the winners of their video competion: readers were encouraged to make . Check out the awesome runners up #1 and #2: Winners are announced on Monday.

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I didn’t win the NME award I’m afraid: I’m so sorry to let you all down, let’s hope we can all pick ourselves up and get on with our lives. In much more important news: cute hedgehog really enjoying fruit on youtube.

Tags: Folk, Johnny 5 Is Alive, London, Not London by Mike Smith
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Mr Jeremy Warmsley (and the mysterious Fay Buzzard) has created a web-tv show featuring live performances by a lot of cutting-edge British indie-pop-stars. You can watch the show on youtube, but here’s an mp3-flavoured-taster before diving into the main course: some deliciously lo-fi mp3s I’ve been sent to share with you.

LAURA GROVES (myspace)
MP3: I wish I (live)

Rather serene but suitably frayed folk music from the quick-sung Laura Groves, likely borned from the same stock as Ms Joanna Newsom, minus the harp. NME have recently bunched some of the musicians that have played this show “Anti-LDN” trying to hint at the anti-folk-prototypes that so many of these bands have been lumped in with.

But music like this hardly spends it time being anti-anything. Laura and the regularly featured Emmy the Great below are both positive without any sort of twee-abandon of rationality: they sing of failings, and sometimes loss but it opens your eyes, and you don’t turn away: perfect for television I guess, and ideally suited to this sort of production: embracing honest and soulful songwriting. Well done Jeremy. You win. As for Anti-LDN - I don’t see it catching on: I bet these artists love London a little too much to rise up against it.

EMMY THE GREAT (myspace)
MP3: 24 (live)

JEREMY WARMSLEY (feat. Emmy the Great) (myspace.com)
MP3: The Boat Song

http://youtube.com/welcometoourtvshow

Tags: Folk, Johnny 5 Is Alive, London by Mike Smith
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A lot of new British bands are given plane tickets dumped in the Texas Desert and then forced to play South-By-South-West (SXSW) in Austin to pay for their journey home and simultaneously try to show-off some of the best new music Britain has to offer… here’s a run down of my picks for the agenda-setting festival.

BEARSUIT

MP3: Steven Fucking Speilberg: Speeding South-Eastern indie-pop gets revved up screeching from motorway to dirt-road to railway-track looking for the line that takes them to the sea, smiling throughout knowingthey are crazy.

CAPITOL K

MP3: Drum St Song: A Tropical outlook on grey-skies - endless possibilities and endless interesting noises all try to fit together and get along. Everything.

THE IRONWEED PROJECT:

MP3: Down To My Grave: Upbeat, sideways looking Delta-Blues from Manchester. Oh Yes. Absolutely. Worth your time.

THE INDELICATES

MP3: Julia, we don’t live in the 60s: Hard-working, and honest, driving a wedge between Morrissey and Art Brut’s Eddie Argos, digging out the gold and discarding the burnt relationships and isolation found within.

THE WHIP:

MP3: Trash: Irrepressible electro pummelings. Oh America we spoil you. The Rapture may have started in America and the rapture may well be the end of America. But until that moment we just whisper in your ear: (dance and throw off your feet).

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Some of the bands I’ve written about before are attending:

EMMY THE GREAT (previously)

MP3: Emmy The Great - Easter Parade.

I WAS A CUB SCOUT (previously)

MP3: I Was A Cub Scout - Pink Sqaures

JOHNNY FOREIGNER (previously)

MP3: Johnny Foreigner - Champagne Girls I have known

NOAH AND THE WHALE (previously)
See SXSW for mp3

MAGIC ARM (previously)

MP3: Magic Arm - Move Out

Mr Magic Arm plays Cool As Folk @ Sheffield University on Tuesday: 26/02 and he is not to be missed. I’ll be there, say hi.

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Photo credit: TychoMoon

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I would continue to ask you to vote for me in the NME award (nominated: Best Music Blog) but as they’ve failed to send me an invitation to the awards ceremony, I’ll have to do a Speilberg and boycott. So call you local congressman/ tribal elder etc and get it sorted.

Tags: Folk, Johnny 5 Is Alive, not-folk-music by Mike Smith
12 Comments »

MP3: Held By Hands - Trading on Past Treasures

“the weather
is as good as it could have been
and we rowed
to the centre of the river…

traced our fingers through
the surface of the water”

These sort of songs just have to be over 5 minutes long. Unsettled grey-skies of whispered lyrics and quietly plucked strings send us away from the dusk with ever increasing energy, with spaced-out predictions of what the night will bring. There’s no inevitable crescendo, it’s far too unknowable to make such a guess: it could become dawn at any moment.

Held By Hands could do anything they like. And they do: electric-guitar feedback shreds the stars and moon and scatters a light: causing everyone to sing… “MY GOD WE WERE INNOCENT. MY GOD IT WAS IT WAS SUCH A GOOD TIME“. This isn’t the music I live for, it’s music that exemplifies a perfect time, and it is done with passion, soul, eagerness and a disconnected lofi-shape that is too infectious to not get excited about.

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myspace.com/heldbyhands

Next gig:
10 Mar 2008 // Leeds: Brudenell Social Club // Held By Hands + Casiotone For The Painfully Alone + Gossamer Albatross.

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Photo credit: Noeluap + Jjjohn.

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I am continually amazed by the sort of music that emerges out of our fair isles. Much much more music is gasping for inclusion over the next week or so.

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Also:

VBS.tv: The interview with Graham Coxon over at Vice Magazine’s website (which is really a TV channel) is intelligent and revealing: he discusses work ethic, art vs music and speaks with an honest and undulled enthusiasm.

BigArtMob.com: Is attempt to log the location and preserve all sorts of street art across the world, but mostly in the U.K. They are roping in various bands and other well-travelled urban dwellers to get the ball rolling, and use mobile phones to send pictures of the art. Channel 4 are sponsoring the initiative as part of a Big Art Project they have planned for the summer.

Tags: Best of NBGL, Folk, Johnny 5 Is Alive by Mike Smith
2 Comments »

MP3: The Accidental - Illuminated Red

“If I leave… just before… the empire falls… we might find the occasion…. to dance upon those city walls”

Part-Tunng and part-Fence-Collective members: all sorts of well fitting, well oiled and manufactured parts contribute a little part of their musical heart to a greater good. Part-bear? Part-Solider? No. It’s subtle and soulful, not brutal and dark-brown. The strings give this folk song life and vibrancy. Don’t think they’ll be cheering at the side of the confetti parade though: just glad to see everyone’s smiling again.

‘Illuminated Red’ is off of their debut album There Were Wolves, which is out in April.

http://www.myspace.com/theaccidental

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Posts here have been thin on the ground of late due to exams but posting will return to two or three times a week for the considerable future.

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Photo credit: pincharrata

Tags: Folk, Johnny 5 Is Alive by Mike Smith
3 Comments »