MP3: Johnny Foreigner - Champagne Girls I have known

Sparingly chaotic, grim-Midlands inspired indie/fresh-sunnyside-rock recorded in New York.* It’s just as reckless as it is massive and malleable. Indie-pop music with exuberance: words fall vertically and then level off with horizontal direction. Guitars go intra-dimensational (sic): or maybe there is just a lot of them repeated often. Either way: an awesome live band? They’d better be. Because if so they’ll set Britain alight.** Exciting.

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(*: Maybe at this point I’d have added the following two paragraphs. After thinking twice I’ll probably remove them.)

That divine creator built a planet-wide-metropolis that probably follows all the old rules, extending all the way round and back again, spread thinly. A population breathing a little too slowly, thinking a little too much about the big questions gets too lethargic without distraction.Resultant intra-city conflict forces the Divine Creator to push and pull all of the city, it’s staircases, benches, bricks and lakes into one great skyscraper.

Resulting vertigo begins the dramatic rush to colonise the lower levels (1454-1456) … few venture higher… Johnny Foreigner represent the sort of pioneer that isn’t an introverted nor god-fearing: but a climber brimming with colourful imagination, someone who just enjoys the climb, doesn’t care to look up nor down, but just swings on the ropes (sometimes for days), and looks where his eyes tell him, not where his brains thinks he’ll find images that please. Infinite energy can take you far, but you don’t appreciate this: (that’s why 173 seconds of songs is nice)

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**JF are currently on a rather large tour of the U.K.***

myspace.com/johnnyforeigner

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***: Have fun guys: You deserve it.

Tags: Johnny 5 Is Alive, Not London, not-folk-music by Mike Smith
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MP3: Holland Buffalo - Optimistic
(Place, 4:19mins, 128 kbps)

And eyeing the cosmos… the stars the same each night… and I am the cosmos… and all the stars pay them no mind.

The Harvey Girls, a couple of American musicians, play with texture, fire, and pop music. I’ve loved their work in the past. They’ve recently been making music with label buddy Feedle. Whereas The Harvey Girls are all big smiles and bear hugs, Feedle takes the scenic route without telling anyone, music that doesn’t look you in the eye until final scene - even then you might not realise. But this Sheffield, UK based musician still throbs with a passion, and has an electronic simplicity and distance.

Together, it gets a little more complicated. Feedle provides depth, noise and a landscape of infinite, technicolour possibility to “Optimistic”. The Harvey Girls encourage the song along and they watch it grow. The Harvey Girls tell you to be small, find someone and live, Feedle says be intricate and appreciative. Together they sing a song of optimistism and minute cosmic drift.

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Hear even more including “Electricity” at myspace.com/hollandbuffalo

You can support the artist and download the whole 4 track EP @ Amie Street. Amie Street offers a new model of buying music. Tracks start at a really low price and as they become popular and recommended by members, they increase in price, but stay under 98 cents. Holland Buffalo’s EP will currently set you back less about $1.

Tags: Johnny 5 Is Alive, Not London, not-folk-music by Mike Smith
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MP3: The Rollercoaster Project - What Happened

Anthemaic drone digs amongst the diamonds, snow and leaves and finds some soil. For a moment metallic drills of synths driven by a rising tide of electricity give way to all those working to get down on their hands and knees and dig - it’s the most comfortable way - and in a panic it seems like the fastest. There cold hands find the soil, and the Rollercoaster Projects finds a voice. And they celebrate.

I’ve been really enjoying (digging?) The Rollercoaster Project’s electronica for years, Dreamboat Records recently featured this new track ‘What Happened’ on their 2008 sampler.

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There are plans for a 2008 Rollercoaster Project release, and on the strength of this, and on the back of other similar U.K electro-drone sounds/projects new in 2008 (Fuck buttons, and Banjo or Freakout) Rollercoaster Project might just be the most accessible and grandest of them all. But they all sounded pretty damned fucked up and shaken this way and that and smoothed out.

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Ah-ha! I see you there! Writing whilst I write! Sean at Said The Gramphone similtaneously contextualises The Rollercoaster Project within an utterly apocalyptic scene of Soviet Particle accelerators and questions like “PURE PROTON BEAM” CAPITALISED for emphasis. If you don’t already read Said The Gramophone, do.

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Candians droners Stars of the Lid realised one of my favourite albums of 2007 “And Their Refinement of The Decline” is fantastic on triple vinyl. It’s very different and much more minimal and stretched out than Rollercoaster Project, it weighs it at over 2 hours. Awesome & hard to comprehend.

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Photos by Adele Booysen, Tunnelbug respectivly.

Tags: Best of NBGL, Johnny 5 Is Alive, Not London, not-folk-music by Mike Smith
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A real treat for the final act of 2007 on NBGL.

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MP3: A Classic Education - Stay Son
(Bologna, 3:54 mins, 192 kbps)

A Classic Education are expansive in the ‘it just sounds big, the climax of dozens of ideas, that have travelled continents looking for a means of expression’ sort of way. It’s impassioned because you can’t make music so well formed and frankly epic without pouring you soul out in this sort of a way. A string section draws the lines and vocals flow along their course unimpeded by rigid structures. Big sounds are provoked by big ideas. “Stay Son” is all of these things, and coming to the end of the year it sounds like unstoppable progress.

MP3: A Classic Education - Victories At Night
(Bologna, 4:32mins, 192 kbps)

“Victories at night” isn’t so progressive, but more questions are asked from far-away places. For those of us who have spent 2007 tripping over the analogies and similarities of Panda Bear to “brian wilson recorded underwater” (see: almost every review) welcome to Sigur Ros recorded deep underground, only the roof has just caved in: the sky, echoes and space come together and begin to explode apart. Music shoots up, and rain falls in.

They’ve opened for the Arcade Fire and recently did some work with Mr Jeremy Warmsley. What a combination. With the aid of kind winds and favourable tides, let’s hope indie-pop done in the biggest way possible gets some success in 2008. The soundtrack to Climate Change 08? We have a very strong contender.

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Best of December soon, best of the Year just after.

More suggestions for soundtracks to global warming to listen to as you float away on top of your house in the comments section, if you please. I’ll begin.

Tags: Best of NBGL, Johnny 5 Is Alive, Not London, not-folk-music by Mike Smith
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MP3: The Wave Pictures - Now You Are Pregnant (quiet version)
(London via Sweden, 4:19mins, 160 kbps)

The indie-pop zeitgeist just got a little more grizzly and accomplished. Wave Pictures have an unassuming and modestly expressed gift of being able to string a thread through a song, wrap it all round the melodies and pull strings which make indie-rock music become tigher, engaging, visceral, yet still a little unconfined. That’s probably the reason why they’ve been playing as backing band and co-songwriters for John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, and all around the world with Herman Dune, and The Jeffrey Lewis Band. It might just be cool; but only in such a light and casual way. Sing your hearts out! No-one matters!

They are signed to Moshi Moshi and you can buy their 7″// digital download here. You can hear the excellent, not-an-xmas-song song “We Dress Like Snowmen” at their myspace.

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Talking of waves: Surfing 55ft waves in Ireland

It’s all because of high pressure from Iceland. They’re probably playing Sigur Ros and Mùm a few hundred times too loud on the west coast again…

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Drowned in Sound are big fans of The Wave Picture and they recently started contributing to the RCRD LBL professional mp3-blog style site. On their little portion of the site they’ve just posted a track by a British artist they currently have under their wing. She’s called George Pringle and will certainly be big in 08… garageband beats win you over and gives the song huge curves and intelligence, whilst the spoken word poetry about selfish introvert existence, shoegaze, techno and street figher is so - now.

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I have a lot of really good music to share with you in the run up to Christmas, so stay tuned….

Tags: Johnny 5 Is Alive, Not London, not-folk-music by Mike Smith
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