Following on from her previous EP "His Young Heart" which has been immensly popular in my household this year, Daughter or Elena Tonra has another new set of 4 songs out called "The Wild Youth EP".
The Wild Youth songs are more heartwrenching folk songs with a productionally experimental edge which makes Daughter stand so tall above the plethora of acoustic guitar and vocal acts out there. Whilst often her voice alone is captivating enough, Elena can and does incorporate reverbed ghostly backing vocals, dark brooding synths and sometimes even beats we're more used to hearing with the likes of The XX into the mix to create a greater sense of gravity and loss.
On a lighter note, don't they look cute on that cover?
Why does nobody ever point out that Manchester City's David Silva and Justice's Xavier De Rosnay are pretty much exactly the same person. Am I the only person who sees the resemblance? Or is it some well known fact that the best player in the Premiership is just the cleaner cut alter-ego of that guy from my mate's favourite band?
There aren't a lot of feelings greater than the one you get when you accidentally happen upon some good music. Either just listening at home or, in my case on Saturday, actually seeing it live.
We were on our Shoreditch pub crawl and I had no plans or expectations to see any music. If anything I was happy sticking my money into jukeboxes just to hear Fleetwood Mac's The Chain and no, contrary to popular belief, The Mac are not "bullshit munchers".
Apparently googling "London gigs" is a tad too broad and resulted in me finding fuck all. Naturally I presumed there's nothing happening in the entire city, you know, a bit like how Turku works.
Fate, destiny and our working legs took us to our trusty "regular". The Old Blue Last. Given the title "the world's coolest pub" by NME and me.
You can believe either one you want.
The fact it's run by the people at Vice and that I'm now also owned by the people at Vice is just one big happy coincidence. This has been a place of great emotions in the past. We're talking about the place where I was briefly disowned last new year's eve by my little sister who was less than happy with my drunken shenanigans. Good times.
TOBL was jam-packed choc-a-blocked booming busy. I had to crowdsurf across the downstairs foyer. Crowdsurf up the stairs and then crowdsurf all the way to the upstairs bar. Upstairs wasn't really all that busy so by crowdsurfing I mean some unlucky guy just had to carry me across an empty dancefloor to the bar because I was really starting to enjoy being up in the air. Familiar drink in hand it was time to scout the area. All kinds of scenesters and hipsters bobbing heads in time to some ace tunes. I had arrived, now kneel before me London.
Who was this incroyable beatmaker standing before and above us on his stage playing exactly what I wanted to hear? Wielding his mighty Macbook and looping his saxophone (yeah that's right, a motherflipping saxophone) like the John Coltrane of electro, he was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Mainly because "cool kids don't play sax". Well they do now.
Some sneaky recon revealed the man to be Anenon or Bri(an) All(en) Sim(on) who's also the founder of the label Non Projects all the way from LA. Now do yourself a favour and check him out on Soundcloud
This is the very first of a whole new world. Joint posting. That means there are two people posting instead of just the measly one. The other person is a hobo eating a jacket potato, but you know I take what I can get. Me and hobo went record shopping today. Yeah. I say we but I mean I went record shopping and hobo stood there and warmed her hands against the insulating capacities of warm vinyl.
Oh yes, I perhaps forgot to mention that I'm no longer in the summery joyous land of Finland. Nay. The bright sunny shores of Brighton have once again beckoned and I, the T-Bone has answered.
Look, this is me and Ms. Jacket Potato drinking hot beverages. I think you'll find we are every bit as hot as the drinks stuck in our faces. We are like lava, baby.
I managed to find Fixers' "Here Comes 2001 So Let's All Head For The Sun" Ep which I've wanted to get my hands on for what feels like an eternity. All in fancy 10" form too. Who even does 10s anymore?
Who even buys 10s anymore?
That would be me. Because I'm fucking awesome.
Got it mainly for one song: "Crystals". I'm sure the rest of it's super too, but I just haven't been able to find it/listen to it anywhere.
I'm a bit low on the old cash front at the moment so I had to borrow a bit of money off the hobo so I could squeeze in a reduced price 7" single of Teeth's "See Spaces". Yeah, that's right. I had to borrow 40p. But can you really put a price on happiness? No regrets though because See Spaces is so fucking tight it would make Russell Brand's jeans look like Mark Wahlberg's flares in Boogie Nights.
Looks like the other person's only contribution to this post was a brief cameo in a shit webcam photo. Oh well. At least you've got me. Right?
This was just a quick bit of shopping, because there's a wedding I'm attending and as Alfred Doolittle once sang: "Get me to the church on time" but I ain't leaving here until I've got more.
Since when have lo-fi garage bands been signing to mega-labels such as Sony and Columbia? (Alright smart-arse, Columbia's owned by Sony. Whatever. Deal with it.) It's just that they're not the first acts you'd associate with the big labels.
Me here in my basement, I have no idea how record labels work. Especially not huge ones.
It would just seem that Bleeding Knees Club who sound a great deal like my faves Lovvers and whom Sony have "big plans" for wouldn't be much of a sound investment. Surely there isn't that great a market for this kind of stuff? Or maybe there is. With the success of bands such as Black Lips and Wavves who've neatly, at some level at least, crossed over into more popular territories, you might be led to believe this could be the next big thing. Those two are however still on Vice Records and Fat Possum Records respectively which aren't famed for being 'effing huge and don't have the likes of Susan Boyle on their rosters. So do the big boys feel the need to get in on the game too? Has someone up there at Sony gone: "Hey, find me a good raw punky sounding band so we can have the next alt-kids' favourite band"?
No. Because Sony via Columbia also own IAMSOUND Records who have the likes of Salem, Cocknbullkid and Telepathe on their roster. We just live in a time where at the end of the day everyone is ultimately owned by someone else. So even if YOU think you're your own man/woman, you're probably not. You're a corporate bitch just like me. #Proudtobeacorporatebitchsince1987
Australian Bleeding Knees Club are a lot of fun. Surf punk at its best is insanely catchy with its melodies and rampaging with its riffs. And that's pretty much what we're looking at here. Someone once told me Australia's pretty ok for surfing and stuff, so BKC's surf-punk aesthetics might actually even be authentic and not horribly contrived like, I don't know, Susan fucking Boyle.
This is my favourite picture in the history of pictures.
Back in day (end of the 1400s to be vaguely precise), when the world was going crazy with Renaissance and shit like colours and details, Finland and their church's fresco painters were keeping it real. (Here's a clue if you don't do the lingo. The bottom one's my local church and the top one, well, isn't.)
False alarm. Turns out I wasn't virally infected. I just had some mad spyware shit going on. Like a virtual renegade Daniel Craig working, like the crazy action hero superspy that he is, for penis enlargement companies all over the world. Anyway this problem should be resolved now so back to the important stuff.
Like what's been happening since I've been away?
Super stuff. Stuff you won't believe. Like I grew a moustache. You know for this "movember" thing that's happening.
It would seem that I don't have the age/genes/awesomess to grow a kick-ass moustache so I settled for the next best thing.
A shit moustache.
The kind of one that looks like I've been blowing that albino pyscho-killer from The Da Vinci Code and caught a whole load of his pubes on my upper lip. But hey, it's all for charity right? Well no not really because I didn't know how to get in on that whole charity/donation thing. I did make a little bit of money from my moustache though: From my mum, telling me to "buy a fucking razor" and to "stop blowing albino guys."
During my hiatus I also got asked to join Vice's blogger's network. You know Vice right? The Ace-est coolest magazine you get to pick up for free at your local record shop/other cool place. Yeah that one. They're starting up a Scandinavian site and are recruiting independent bloggers to be "ambassadors of VICE". What this supposedly means is that they'll send me info about various happenings and I get to write about them. Cool deal, no? So I had to think long and hard about joining VBN because what if it means compromising my style and uniqueness then I realised that I had neither of those and agreed to join their "little" network. So notice the VBN badge on the right hand side. FYI it means I'm cooler and quite possibly a much better person than you. Rock and roll, baby. Rock and roll.
I might post some actual music soon. Or maybe I'll start AndygoesdowntoChinatown up again as a fashion blog. Who knows. All I know is I'm part of VBN. Suck it bitches.
To end this post with a bang here's Vibelung's remix of StrangerS' Beneath the City.
I don't know who Vibelung is and I don't know who StrangerS are but someone sent me this hoping I'd listen to it and I did. Disco dancing time. Four to the floor and all that lark. Laterz.
(Be warned this is not chillwave or witchhouse or glitchhop or dronestep or anything that's in fashion. Just good old house music)
Right so the blog is going on hold for a while because my computer's been subjected to an evil malicious viral infection.
Apparently I've been sending out emails about sex supplement offers to everyone I know. Now this would't normally be too out of the ordinary as I do have a pretty lucrative Viagra side-business going on, but these emails were shameless even for me. Plus the spelling was terrible.
So now I've taken my loyal laptop of about 15 years over to my whizz(kid??) of a grandad's computer clinic. Seriously my grandad is like the Bill Gates of computers. Just without all the money and orgys.
He's so good at computers it's getting embarrasing telling him my computer got another virus because I was on the internet searching for dodgy copies of russian animal excrement porn again.
In fact my grandad is so good at computers that I don't even need to tell him that. He'll just fucking know, and give me these long hard disapproving stares. And then use his knowledge to blackmail me for whatever the hell he wants. Generally not money or orgys though.
Anyway, once my fujitsu-badboy is back in business we can all go back to the amazing fun that is: AndygoesdowntoChinatown.
Said The Whale are next in line of the plethora of Canadian talent waiting for the chance to make your ears happy. The Vancouver 5-piece just won the esteemed Juno prize for "Best New Group of the Year" at this year's Canadian music awards.
Actually, I don't know if it's esteemed at all. I'm just guessing. Maybe it's the musical equivalent of me lining up all my awesome Warhammer miniatures for a huge "fantasy world tea party" ie. not really that interesting for anyone who's not involved in it.
(Me) - "Would you like more rooibos, Mr. Space Ork?"
(Mr. Space Ork) - "Whatever, bitch"
Let's hope this isn't the case. For all our sakes.
Anyway Said The Whale sound a lot better than anything my legion of High Elves could ever muster up.
Their brand of upbeat hook-laden folk should/could/would bring a smile to even the most downtrodden face and to prove it, here's "Lines" (mp3) off their brand new EP "New Brighton".
Even if smiling isn't your thing, just look at that cover art above. Nudity, happy playing children and huge sunbather sized colourful letters! Come on people, what's not to like?
