Sunday night. Catching up with my best friend, as we clutch a can of fosters and a boyfriend each, we walk downtown to Clwb Ifor Bach to see Francesqa. An ex acoustic band with bundles of potential, I am excited to finally experience them live. Tom Delonge picked them to play on Slam Dunks introducing stage earlier last year. So these guys aren’t just rising stars, their shooting through the skies of the industry.
Radiohead review
They are an important band of our time. Their eighth album, The King of Limbs has been making everyone’s patience itch recently, anxious with expectations for the unexpected. Radiohead have prevailed most ordeals, from big company campaigns to twitter torment. Wise about the consumers of their music, the band carry an admired status and reputation. They are in control of their destiny, with no commercial pressure, holding the hands of a dedicated fanbase. The wait is over and the verdicts are getting scribbled, typed and published.
Radioheads raw talent still exists and their creativity flows, producing experimentation that cleverly whispers a garden variety of their initial sound. Between each track there is contrast, mood change and individual groove, with a combo of bells, drumming, guitars, trumpets, falsetto vocals and lots of echo. "Little by Little" featuring hypnotics and psychedelics, "Codex" a spacey piano/violin/cello ballad with romantic deep throated echoes then there’s "Give up the Ghost" a natural, acoustic with an essence of folk simplicity. The album may be a disorientating production for some listeners, but really it’s just the bands sugar-coated middle finger rejecting typical album grammar. A fusion of what Radiohead’s discography stands for, humanly mechanic with pearls of soul.
Bastille track
I found this video through a facebook link and copious youtube suggestion tabs.
Its a hidden gem.
Indie and uplifting. I have been playing it on repeat today.
James Blake review
The music has a particular speed and shape consisting of fizzing, soul-tingly sounds and dubstep templates. An effect that leaves you in front of a bonfire on a freezing November evening, a shallow glow of warmth which gives you goose-bumps and shivers. Nothing alike the dubstep wobble brothers, Caspa and Rusko, (and that’s a warning, in strict comparison this would be an anaemic record of dance music for queer fairies) Blakes songs are bent and melted by technology with a different consequence. Rather than singer-songwriter simplicity, Blake has manufactured forms of Blues, Folk and gospel through a modern conveyor belt of synths, sequencers, vocoders and drum machines. The final products are stripped and isolated sounds of frigidity consisting of single bass thumps, echoing pings and single distorted synth. His Bon Iver-esque singing often conveys an emotional turmoil, a mesmerizing, rhythmic heartbreak that builds out of stark simplicity in a discordant crescendo of skittering basslines and reverberating synthetics. The occasional distorted vocals blend beyond intelligible to become part of the instrumentation.
This could all be perceived as gimmick production but his bare scrubby lyrics join perfectly with his production. James Blake’s album is one to engulf in, in a sea of cotton and smoke. In other words, to appreciate his music, it’s best to envelope yourself with comfort, imaginings and a pair of fantastic speakers.
Blake doesn’t necessarily paint a picture with his music, he holds up a shattered broken mirror for the listener to look into
Bright Eyes news
Yesterday on Conor Oberst’s birthday, The Nebraskan lo-fi band Bright Eyes, released The People’s Key. A gradual serene introduction to spring, this album covers rich and reminiscent imagery and sonic venture, a synthetic perfection perhaps. An empty sky/I fill it up with everything that’s missing from my life. In the June 2009 issue of Rolling Stone,Oberst announced that he intended to retire theBright Eyes signature "It does feel like it needs to stop at some point. I'd like to clean it up, lock the door, say goodbye”
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