Errors, ‘Salut France’ hear here
Frances: They’ve considerably polished their sound. Seem to have homogenised themselves a bit. To the extent that they remind me a bit of Hot Chip.
Kick: They?ve always been a bit soundtracky, but in a good way.
Frances: They need something - dare I say a gimmick? Something, some kind of hook.
Chris: The drum sound is a little disappointing. I seem to be obsessed with drum sounds today. I quite like where they’re going with this. It’s train ride music.
Kick: And there’s nothing to hold on to.

Outputmessage, ‘Sommeil’ hear here
Frances: Where’s this from?
Chris: What is it with all this happy shopper cheap drum sounds?
Kick: NY-bassed kraftwerk obsessive, apparently.
Frances: Oh, yawn. They’re all obsessed with Kraftwerk over there
Kick: Maybe ’cause they admire anyone who cultivates the ability to be rude and impassive in any given situation.
Frances: Possibly.
Kick: I bet Kraftwerk are rude.
Frances: They are exceedingly rude. There’s this famous Lester Bangs interview with them where they are rude.
Kick: If you’re reading this, Kraftwerk, would it kill you to say please and thank you?

Field Music, ‘A House Is Not A Home’ hear here
Kick: Their PR keeps bugging me to listen to them.
Frances: OK, so I quite like Field Music. Seeing as it’s them tho, they might change rhythm in a minute. I hope so. It’s basically a lot like XTC.
Kick: It’s based on Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.
Frances: Is it? How so?
Kick: Says here.
Frances: Oh, obviously is, then… It’s all about arrangements, this band. And weird middle bits. Twiddly strings?
Kick: I think most of Beethoven’s symphonies originally had lyrics about moving house and suchlike but they got lost when an insolent cur knocked his bag into a ditch. He did not hear it because he was deaf.
Frances: Symphonies don’t have lyrics. Duh.
Kick: Beethoven did not know symphonies did not have lyrics. Because, as previously noted, he was deaf.

Clinic, ‘If I Could Read Your Mind’ hear here
Kick: I can’t believe how instantly judgemental I am these days. I go from liking to something to not to back again within the space of individual notes.
Frances: I know, it’s horrible. But kind of inevitable.
Kick: This sounds like Clinic. Clinic fans will dig this. If you like this, why not try… Clinic!

Indigo Moss, ‘Start Over Again’ hear here
Kick: We were listening to this before - it’s slightly mystifying Americana made by people from South London.
Frances: South London is like the bible belt of London. So it’s not that surprising it produces hillbilly music.
Chris: I was born and raised in South London. I still have the scars.
Frances: There are loads of born again Christians there, right?
Chris: Not as far as I remember.
Frances: THERE ARE. Anyway, you don’t have to be from Arkansas to make hillbilly music.
Kick: Yeah, but surely they should be channeling their love for something that’s alien to them through themselves therefore creating a hybrid -
Frances: No, they should just be good. And interesting. And they weren’t really, were they?
Chris: Not really. Sadface.

Posted by kicking_k on Friday, February 23rd, 2007
(No Comments)

‘people’ of brighton!

am momentarily ab/using my position to make you aware of something my actual friends are doing which might be fun… i just didn’t want this HOT DATE to pass you by.

ok, let’s bang it like a telegram - STOP - this thursday night - STOP - faux-prog-gallic-dance-alleged-genius JOAKIM fleshes out his live sound with his backing band THE ECTOPLASMICS, and - STOP - as if that wasn’t enough reason to teleport yr carcass there - STOP - support arrives like insane cavalry in the (hot/dirty) geekbeat-rockin’ shape of HAWNAY TROOF.

ACTUAL FACTS:
WHERE? ENGINE ROOMS
WHEN? THURS 22 FEB (10-2)
HOW MUCH? ?6/5
WHY? HIGH ON LIVE

i’ll be there, wearing clothes. come say hello.

Posted by kicking_k on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
(No Comments)

Regina Spektor - Fidelity (Sire) hear here
Everett: Regina. Isn’t she like the acceptable face of the new folk weird?
Louis: Not so folksy, really: it’s indie kookiness. She stamps on the floor when she plays, and things.
Everett: Oh blimey, she’s got a hic-cup-up-up-uping motif? This is far too polite for me.
Kick: Yeah, it’s mature. Extra mature… Singer-songwriters grow up faster than regular people.
Everett: can you like this and still be a goth?
Louis: If I didn’t know how she looked i’d imagine she looked exactly like Lisa Loeb.
Kick: Maybe, but you wouldn’t play it in yr hearse.

We Are The Physics - Fear Of Words (One) hear here
Louis: I heard this lot sound like Pantera.
Kick: What, the shampoo?
Everett: From Glasgow. ‘Mutant science punk rock quartet’, spikey and full of jagged little chords. Influenced by A Flock Of Seagulls. Wankers.
Kick: ‘Purposeful’.
Louis: This is fun.
Everett: Do Pantera sound this speed-freaky?
Kick: I quite like this. Vocals are like a sudoku square.
Louis: It’s like a Devo who only just discovered electricity. By walking on a carpet with plastic-soled shoes. They are upset by this realisation.
Kick: ‘Insistent’. It’s got that FFWD prog rock thing happening. Like if they’re proggy fast enough no one will notice.
Louis: This is kind of how you’d like The Horrors to sound, although of course they don’t
Everett: Better than stretchmarks

The Pierces - Sticks And Stones (Lizard King) hear here
Everett: Debut single from Alabama-born New Yorkers sisters who’ve travelled with gypsies. Cute Emily the Goth-style illo of two girls on the sleeve.
Kick: It’s got a bit of the homemade fairground thing happening. Seems a bit photogenic and streamlined for alleged gypsy fellow-travellers?
Louis: It’s the theme tune to a TV show about witches, except the witches turn out to be friendly. This show is popular amongst young girls looking for strong female role models. Everett also is a fan, and tapes every episode.
Kick: a bit obviously romantic, a bit too cosy and well-worn.
Everett: Yeah, like Ben Stiller playing a vampire? I hate friendly witches.

Au Revoir Simone - Fallen Snow (Moshi Moshi) hear here
Everett: Moody looking Brooklyn girls, a trio bearing candles and long legs.
Kick: I like these guys. They’re like librarians in a seventies film.
Louis: It’s music for walking round New York in the snow.
Kick: And I like that they use organs instead of guitars. Makes it less organic-sounding. Like an old car, or a lens flare.
Everett: If you’ve got snow and NYC you certainly wouldn’t want this anodyne piece of crap.
Kick: I think they have their own version of New York which wd probably look like a woodprint in an old book.
Louis: They have quite limited voices, but the whole thing is pretty effective I think.

bonus content: spooky/cute video!

Television Personalities - My Dark Places Remixes (Domino)
Everett: Depressed indie poets are given a series of odd treatments from Ratatat, Battles, Black Dice etc?
Kick: Seems like a really perverse idea, and sounds pretty, um, left-of-centre, too? It’s big on atmosphere. And dissonance stretched thin. Gauzy.
Everett: Blimey! Makes me wish for the days when good music was popular and popular music was good. This is mental. Childish voices and mashed up beats.
Kick: It is pretty nighmarish…
Louis: A horrible confusion of glitchy electronica and off-key druggy shouting and no actual ideas whatsoever.
Everett: Yeah, well you’ve just described 99 per cent of popular music.
Louis: I always think, when I listen to a remix, what sort of club would play this? And the answer in this case, is “No club whatsoever”.
Kick: Wow. Imagine this in a club.
Everett: I’d dance!
Kick: It wd actually be so intense. Like the ground’s pitching hither, and indeed, thither.
Louis: No one’s even trying. I’m going to turn this off now. It’s rubbish
Kick: I was semi-enjoying it. Like messing with a loose tooth.

Posted by kicking_k on Saturday, February 17th, 2007
(No Comments)

I’ve been dreaming of all-girl psych-noise-magic
collectives for years, but I don’t think I ever quite
envisaged the Brighton/London group Leopard Leg.

(more…)

Posted by on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007
(No Comments)

i’ve been listening to what i guess we’d politely term ‘disperate’ stuff recently - modernist classical um/argh (Ligeti, Boulez, Varese) for the most part ’cause it fills my room like traffic noise - which synchs invisibly with the ongoing cognitive dissonance of writing my play. plus, it was my club last week, so i spent the lead-up scouting for kind-of-dance-musics (DAT Politics, Omnikrom, Ill Ease). it is little wonder, then, that my escapism has come in the form of… something more…

TWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

(did you see the single exclamation mark there? = restraint).

anyway, receipt of ARS’ (oh dear) The Bird Of Music wasn’t the first time i’d heard them, but was the first time i’d heard them (stay with me). ok, maybe i’m spending too, too much time alone, obsessing over a vast implacable personal project, commuting a couple hours most weekdays, not socializing in any meaningful way, missing stuff - but as result, my cynicism (only ever persona) was breached with the first synthetic twinkle this record deigned to sprinkle in my general direction.

for me, at least (there are madd haterz in the Plan B Editorial Suite) they manage to go beyond ‘traditional’ (a byword for awful pointlessness) to ‘classic’ - much in the manner of The Organ or Bobby Conn, perhaps.

anyway. that’s what i’ve been listening to on train platforms, empty offices and early hours bedrooms - when i’m requiring a comfort blanket of dainty arrangements, pretty voices tapering to achey high notes, modest climaxes and thin, brittle melodies; careful, serious words: “If you feel compelled towards me / Then it’s just gravity / How can it not be fate? / When we were made this way..?”

aww, sweetness… have a happy valentines, everyone.

Posted by kicking_k on Wednesday, February 14th, 2007
(2 Comments)

ooh. i’m in a new band and it’s called STALKER.

STALKER have their first show this wednesday (feb 7th) at the hope in Brighton, supporting the truly awesome ACK ACK ACK. it snuck up on us kinda quick and we haven’t quite worked our shit out yet, but that’s the beauty of it.

Posted by Andrew Clare on Monday, February 5th, 2007
(1 Comment)

sorry i have not posted here in a very long time. but i am back. from now on everything is going to be all right, i promise. i’ll never leave you again. everything will be fine. i am here now, i am back. everything is going to be fine.

Posted by Andrew Clare on Monday, February 5th, 2007
(No Comments)