PEOPLE OF WATER
MP3: VALE OF ACHING HEARTS

People Of Water have forced Afrobeat to go all desert-storm, with instrumental precision: an assault of funk and drum, staged on a huge battlefield. (Afrobeat: Flavour of the month down at HipsterVille’s trendy milk-bar.)

With its lo-fi rounded corners and hi-quality instrumentalism, ‘Vale of Aching Hearts’ is far too rich to not be taxed as luxury goods. Seen through fat binoculars, it wouldn’t seem that fast, but the sandstorm churned up behind it betrays kilowatts of energy and a solar rhythm that leaves me gasping for water.

Go and buy the EP (out 12th May) & hear more: especially ‘Constant Spring’ & ‘Golden Age of Ruin’ . Because People of Water might just be your new favourite band.

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GIGSLIST: nothingbutgreenlights.net/gigslist: a list of gigs being played by bands reviewed here in the last year, updated daily.

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What do the inhabitants of HipsterVille look like? The Morning News shares a spotters guide.

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There is a new Jonquil track over at My Old Kentucky Blog

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[Photo credit: Bullish1974 & Phil Gyford & Wade from O.K.]

Tags: Not London, UK Music by Mike Smith
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BLEEDING HEART NARRATIVE
MP3: Braids And A Necklace

Lightly pawing its way past a busker playing a cheap violin. Everything is probably blurry when you are only one foot tall, especially in this heat. In all of Braids and A Necklace’s initial subtlety and diminutive stature, there is a great big heart that pumps and grows, driving string-led atmospherics that drone, and build; brick by brick, until a pile of rubble becomes a smart wall, and a doorway. You are welcome to walk through, you have 7 minutes to decide.

Bleeding Heart Narrative’s album is superb. It’s available to anyone in the world through Tarturaga Records.

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A weekly round-up of people talking British music isn’t good enough. So instead I’ll do it every time I write a new post.

20 Jazz Funk Greats spoke about Queen of Swords in a rather incredible post: “an excerpt from their 15 minute long pandemonium of horror, gargantuan doom music that intoxicates the puny souls of your 20jazzfunkgreats kids and sends them spinning into the limbo of the damned.”

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Big Stereo shares Sportsday Megaphone’s “Young Lust”: “the perfect song heading into summer for anyone looking to score their first love. Total flashback for anyone else. Something perfect and timeless about this one”

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Four Tet is releasing a new track, showcased here as part of a mix. He has done “techno with an afrobeat/krautrock sensibility” … “These are tracks that make you think of Berlin – Dakar – Detroit - but they could only have been made in London.”

Mp3: Four Tet Mix:

1. Four Tet - Ringer | 2. Liquid Liquid - Bell Head (Harvey edit) | 3. Avus - Tear | 4. Burial - Raver | 5. Sam Clarence - Sextant daktari | 6. Wookie - Manchu 2 | 7. Autechre - Play neu! | 8. Matt John - Olga dancekowski |9. Kraftwerk - Ruckzuck | 10. Plastikman - Helikopter | 11. Siobhan Donaghy - Carl Craig remix | 12: The Field - Action

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[photo credit: Hybridotus & Cormacphelan]

Tags: UK Music by Mike Smith
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It Hugs Back
MP3: Other Cars Go

A powerful, stylishly American, night-time imagination of pop; dreaming the same scene every night. Colours are more vibrant, scenery is more specific, and the pace is faster the more tired you are. It’s long, but like in a dream-world there’s exhilaration before exhaustion. Even gliding through clouds of feedback and distortion, above predictable seas, is familiar in a dream: not the least bit startling.

It Hugs Back are now part of the revamped, but still super & hi-quality, 4AD label. Album this summer, very excited.

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The proposed weekly round-up did not materialise on Sunday, I spent a few hours looking for and finding really good new music instead.

Basically, last week Coldplay & Portishead overtook all of the internet, few stood a chance. Also NME magazine decided to work a little bit harder on editorial & planned a revamp. More new bands, and more user interaction! Sounds like the Internet to me. And with the website reaching 30 times as many people as their magazine, this may be their last stand.

“This refresh work will further enhance NME’s credibility” … “The first issue showcasing the new design runs alongside a partnership between indie band Coldplay and NME”. Refresh. Coldplay. Partnership. Credibility.

[photo credit: good day]

Tags: UK Music by Mike Smith
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QUIET VILLAGE
MP3: Circus of Horror

Psychy-jam sessions get a bit more direction, and get a little more decadent; a dark 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. Samplists, in the most stretched out sense of the word, Quiet Village, might just be the genre-bending stars of summer nights occasionally revealing something incredible.

This is what Quiet Village do, with exquisite… timing and choice. What a way to start May: Exotica born in London, via a few Italian beaches, forgotten towns but most importantly, despite this blogs Anglocentricism, not music that these guys want to be known for it’s origin. Just don’t call it Retro, and it’s more than Italo-disco, as they say in the interview embedded below.

The album is on iTunes now, and in the shops on 12th May | quietvillage-silentmovie.com

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Lots of people have been writing about Quiet Village, it’s just that good. They have been saying the following:

Be transported away to another place and time, from India to a secluded island beach (1), sundown surf tunes, and what sounds like soundtracks to Italian and French movies from the 60s and 70s. (2) Images of muscle cars and moustaches soon fade and the listener is cast into a spooky, swirling, and exotic haze. (3) Half of Quiet Village, Martin is an ex-film editor and music aficionado. (4) We hear their music, and other music of the past resonating in the perfection of their pastel coloured compositions, echoes of memories always palpitating warm, arranged with love-begotten precision. (5) Plays out like a blissful and surreal waking dream. (6)

(1) Off the Radar | (2) Music For Robots | (3) Friction NYC | (4) Analog Giant | (5) 20 Jazz Funk Greats | (6) Gorilla Vs Bear

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An 8 minute interview with the band: worth your time.

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Photo credit: BurnBlue.

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Yay or nay?

Tags: UK Music by Mike Smith
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