WRITINGS ABOUT NEW BRITISH MUSIC,
ALL OVER THE WEB.

In Nothing But Green Lights news:

Go to nothingbutgreenlights.net/gigslist/ if you want a daily updated list of gigs being played by bands who have been featured here in the last year. Because live music is awesome. Clicking band names for a review and an mp3 so can sample and decide, or listen whilst you get your coat on.

Withered Hand {NBGL reader} gets some love at Said The Gramophone: “Scotsman, using mandolin, guitar, cello and his voice to shake all the dust from him, all the stray feelings, all the loose longings”. I’ve been thinking about Mr Hand’s music, I think I’ll write about it in May.

Largehearted Boy has collated live performances from SXSW which you can stream or download (on bittorrent), U.K acts featured include Cribs, Duke Spirit, Ed Harcourt, Frightened Rabbit and Lightspeed Champion. Also, mp3s from Portishead’s Coachella performance last week.

Death to music has a track by track preview of Johnny Foreigner’s new record: “When it comes out, you ALL must buy this perfect pop album.” [previous post & MP3…]

Radiohead have gone green, and played on Conan O’Brien, from London. In order to avoid something called Climate Change. Video at Pitchfork.

Anthropology of indie: why gig goers behave just like Papua New Guinea tribes: obviously in The Guardian.

“Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip meld social commentary with DJ beats”… they are fantastic live, and they talk to The Independent about hip-hop poets, Radiohead, and dying on stage. [mp3s at the Hype Machine]

In British culture this week: Doctors call for paler skin to come back into fashion, as British embrace global warming, and it’s warming glow (until floods, storms, crop failures and lack of snow give us something else to complain about).

Subscribe to the NBGL RSS feed, to be fed new British music three or four times week.

Next week on NBGL: a best of the month round-up featuring contributions from some special guests.

[Photo credit, ffffound & LorneThomson & Criminalintent]

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MP3: Gentle Friendly - Ride Symbols

Unannounced, but well spoken. Fully fledged, and a little… busy? Nah that’s not it. Noisy? Too simple. Crowded? Yes. Ride Symbols - by the hope of the nation Gentle Friendly -travels at great speed through waves of hands touching ceilings in packed rooms; behind it streams a bass beat that’ll shake you confident and pump you full of fury and bubbling electronic distortion. The din is indistinguishable & I can’t get enough.

myspace.com/gentlefriendly for more space-based dance-themed krautronica.

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[Picture credit: Grainspace]

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MP3: Mountain Machine - Tigers

“We’re all about the THROBBING, which is quite a clumsy word for an essential action.”

An absolute mystery. Their web presence reveals inheritance from or appreciate for The Shortwave Set, The Stooges and Sun Ra. But Mountain Machine don’t need a narrative, aura or legend that sings louder than their music.

“Tigers” is a instrumental and psychedlic revving up and tuning up of the glam machine: with the right guidance and manual you’d think anyone could do it. But suddenly all those thoughts are blown away and “Tigers” gets a bit breezy. The glockenspeil indicates it’s time to move on; that’s when the throb begins. The journey, landscape and this band’s raw energy rolls out along deserted roads with great speed and engulfs all. Very very good when heard loud.

myspace.com/mountainmachine: album out this year they say. Their song “Mountain Machine” is also worth your ears.

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[photo credit: maniya]

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I occasionally round-up British music coverage on mp3 blogs, but there’s a lot of coverage on the rest of the inter-tubes of British music away from the blogs. I’ll round-up that and everything else, every Saturday or Sunday.

20 Jazz Funk Greats: on the British appetite for indie-rock “The Libertines were the prophets of our doom…. The hysterical fashion-driven ‘getting started-getting signed-getting dropped’ churn cycle makes it difficult for new promising bands to find their own voice before they become the best thing in the history of mankind OMFG hyperspace portal jump straight into becoming last-week’s news”

PORTISHEAD are back. Here are some words the blogs are using to describe their sound. “wisp you away like Phantom of the opera then boil you over with industrial hip hop style grimy beats” … “you need to listen and listen again every song before you understand the creative process and jump behind the complexity of each one” … “far more beauty mixed into the weirdness” and “maybe i’ll just have to allow everything sink in…”

Stereogum share a Frightened Rabbit b-side and talk dazzled-in-the-headlights by all the attention lead Rabbit Scott Hutchison about the track. Opening lyric? “there’s someone on top of you fucking.”

NBGL friend Shane at The Torture Garden shares a video of Fanfarlo, playing “You Are One of the Few Outsiders Who Really Understands Us” in a kitchen.

Pitchfork.tv: One of the finest music and album review sites has opened the doors to a digital fortress of high quality live music, high quality videos and high quality band documentaries. In terms of UK music they’ve got Radiohead doing Bangers’N'Mash in the studio and Bat For Lashes in a dark forest with animals on BMX bikes.

Joshua Allen writing for The Morning News points out where The Beatles went wrong: their songs just weren’t 2:42 seconds of heaven” … and tries to economise his strict recreational time.

I’ll be listening to Bjork’s entire discography in one sitting - 6 studio albums - tonight for an article documenting my last hurrah to Student Press. Wish me luck.

[image credit: good_day & elephipelephi]

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MP3: The Shortwave Set - No Social

“ev-ery-one knows
that a dog
dressed in clothes is still a dog”

A pop-song that I listen to ten times in a row & turn up a bit louder each time is one worthy of being shared. It’s simple and so effective, recorded on a shoestring budget, yet they’ve got Dangermouse (Mr Grey Album and half of Gnarls Barkley) and Van Dyke Parks (responsible for the orchestration, arrangement and production for artists from Joanna Newsom to the Beach Boys) involved, so you know this a few thousand yards past “fluke”. Very rarely will I hear and track and share it immediately. But this song fits so perfectly; it’s just joyous. Hello Spring. Hello Summer.

myspace.com/theshortwaveset

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[photo credit]

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