Category Archives: Blog

BIG|BRAVE share new video ahead of UK and European Tour

26 February 2020

Photo: Samantha Marble

Following their critically acclaimed fourth album, A Gaze Among Them, which was released via Southern Lord last year, Montreal trio BIG|BRAVE prepare for an extensive UK and European tour with a new video for standout track ‘This Deafening Verity’. Taking in several dates across April and May, the tour kicks off on April 19th at Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands and includes shows at Electrowerkz in London on April 21st and at Maus Hábitos in Porto on May 2nd.

The band commented on the video:

“The video is made from re-appropriated footage from a hot dog eating competition in the USA. With the video we didn’t want to only investigate the competitive hot dog eating community but rather at all spectacles of this character. Ones where gratuitous displays of abundance are celebrated and worshiped.”

Watch it below and take a look at their live dates here.

Listen to the full performance of Oiseaux-Tempête & Friends at Le Guess Who? 2019

25 February 2020

Photo: Tim van Veen

One of the many extraordinary performances that swept us away at Le Guess Who? last year was that of French outfit Oiseaux-Tempête, playing on Friday November 8th at TivoliVredenburg’s Ronda. Two years on from their first foray into the festival, the duo of multi-instrumentalists Frédéric D. Oberland and Stéphane Pigneul returned to Utrecht with a new album under their belts, Somewhere From Invisible, and an expanded line-up featuring the musicians involved in the album, including longtime collaborators Jean-Michel Pirès (Bruit Noir), Mondkopf and G.W.Sok (The Ex), as well as special guests Jessica Moss (Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band) on electric violin and Radwan Ghazi Moumneh of Jerusalem in My Heart on buzuk and modular synths. Mighty and majestic, powerful and gripping, they stood at a crossroads of light and darkness, deftly traversing a sonic terrain that stands as a powerful testament to the range of emotion they can grasp. Drawing from their improvisational energy and disparate genres from post-rock and free-jazz to Arabic music and electronica, they find compelling beauty underneath the places of turmoil in which their music is anchored. For those unable to experience this poignant and intense performance, or eager to relive it, Le Guess Who? has unveiled the full audio recordings of the Oiseaux-Tempête & Friends’ performance at the festival, recorded and mixed by Marc Broer and Philip ten Brink. Immerse yourself in it.

Jackie Lynn shares second single off upcoming album Jacqueline

25 February 2020

Haley Fohr has brought her fictional alter ego Jackie Lynn back to life as a “lady of the road”, with the help of Cooper Crain, Rob Frye and Dan Quinlivan of Bitchin Bajas. With a new album, Jacqueline, on the way, she had already shared the first single, ‘Casino Queen’, a killer song with a disco feel. Ahead of the album release on April 10th through Drag City, Jackie Lynn is giving us another exciting preview with new single ‘Shugar Water’, featuring Ben Chasny on lead guitar. “‘Shugar Water’ was designed to bring us all together. It is a calling for us all to drink from the same cup and allow ourselves to let go” noted Fohr. “Let us seek refuge in each other’s arms. Let us get lost on the byway of comfort and celebration. We need each other every day (even if our mind does not remind us of this every day). Do not get lost in your own soul! What if we are, after all, just different versions of the same person?”

‘Shugar Water’ comes with an accompanying video by Jacob Forman, who had this say:

“I can only imagine what the tiniest bit of celebrity feels like, so when given the character of Jacqueline, it kind of allowed me to project onto her my own anxieties about what growing stardom (or just progression in life) could do to me, or anyone really. The present is purgatory and the past is grainy, ugly, and violent. Shugar Water grounds and binds us. Thinking about all these things coupled with what I would do stylistically with the video, I felt particularly inspired by Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE, Cronenberg’s VIDEODROME, and the films of Abel Ferrara.”

Listen and watch the video for ‘Shugar Water’ below.

Collectress share video for new single ‘Mauswerk’

21 February 2020

Different Geographies, the long-awaited new album from Collectress is finally nearing its release date, and they had already enticed us with two magical and beautiful singles, ‘Landing’ and ‘In the Streets, In the Fields’. The collective have now shared a third single, ‘Mauswerk’, a mesmerizing post-classical track with a pulsing Krautrock-infused groove. The track comes with an accompanying video, and they explained the inspiration behind it:

“The film for “Mauswerk” took the experimental abstract animation of Len Lye as its inspiration combined with a nod to the electro pop aesthetics of Kraftwerk. The eventual combination of grids and abstract shapes was an exploration of finding ways to visualise early digital imaging through filming geometric structures found in our local environments. The cut out shapes move as if guided by a series of algorithms, they flow to the music sometimes overlapping, echoing early modernist explorations and experimentations in colour theory.”

Watch the video below and grab the album when it’s out on March 6th through their own imprint Peeler Records.

New Sex Swing album on the way, listen to the first single ‘Valentine’s Day At The Gym’

20 February 2020

With a cast of musicians affiliated with such acts as Part Chimp, Bonnacons Of Doom, Dethscalator, Dead Neanderthals and Earth, Sex Swing are nothing short of a supergroup. Following their 2016’s self-titled debut, the British outfit have announced a new album called Type II. Set for release on May 15th through Rocket Recordings, the upcoming Type II delivers seven new tunes, with nearly forty minutes of pure fierceness, further establishing Sex Swing as a force to be reckoned with.

“In the realms of heavy amplification and monstrous riffage, one crucial ingredient can make the difference between an outfit doggedly hammering away at their chosen art and another whose graft is alchemically transformed into something of compelling fury and primal satisfaction”, notes the press release. “That ingredient is malevolence, pure and simple; the sense that something authentically vicious and debauched is going on at the root of the racket assaulting the sensibilities.”

Ahead of the album’s release,  a first preview can be heard below with ‘Valentine’s Day At The Gym’, a track described as “a tapestry of croon and warped groove that gathers momentum and power on a pathway to a particularly handsome kind of oblivion.”

In other good news, Sex Swing will share their furious and potent form of jazz, psychedelia and hypnotic drone and noise with European audiences in May and June. Their freshly announced tour includes a London show at Corsica Studios on May 30th. Check all their other stops here.

Becker & Mukai announce new album, Time Very Near, and share first single ‘The Double’

18 February 2020

Becker & Mukai is the super duo of French composer Jean-Gabriel Becker and London based Japanese multitalented and ultraprolific musician and producer Susumu Mukai. Becker is known for his extensive work on film soundtracks and producing music under several guises, and Mukai’s sonic explorations include forays in a myriad of styles, projects and collaborations, including Vanishing Twin, Floating Points, Off World and Fimber Bravo, not to mention his phenomenally brilliant alter ego Zongamin.

A match made in heaven, Becker and Mukai’s collaboration started with jams in an underground studio/den in East London nearly four years ago, as the press release explains. “Beginning as exploratory and spontaneous, these improv sessions evolved as the duo found their own blend, which came to combine Tunisian saxophones and West-African shakers with FM synthesisers and Eventide harmonizers.”

Eyes EP was their first release in 2018, followed by another EP, Auf Togo meets Becker & Mukai. Now Becker and Mukai are set to release a new album entitled Time Very Near. The good news comes paired with the ‘The Double’, the first thrilling taste of it. Take a listen below.

Time Very Near is out on April 20th