So as we may have told you several times we worked on the latest Joe Bloggers gig which was a bag of fun and a great success. To celebrate the fun we had I put together a quick 8tracks mix with some of the songs we played in between the fantastic bands on the lineup. we will get a full review up soon for those who missed but in the mean time have a spin through this fellah and stay tuned for then next one (headlined by 14th).
Just to persuade you to take this mix and play it to the whole world, basking in the love of your friends and their ears, here is the opening track as an easy to digest soundcloud.
James Vincent Mcmorrow first graced the pages of this blog in November 2010. I remember it because I opened up an e-mail with his press release at 3am, a bit drunk and completely frazzled from a week of trying to write some awful essay. Inside the e-mail, sent by the fantastic Lou who runs his PR at Partisan, was a stream of the track If I Had A Boat, amongst others. In my slightly delirious state I stuck it on repeat and opened up the blog to write something about it. It’s not often that I blog something as soon as I hear it, there is a constant list of tracks that have been waiting patiently for their turn on the site, but it was the least I could do to let James queue jump. Needless to say the post was suitably scrappy and was only saved by the fact that the music was just so good.
Last week, I got the chance to go see the man play live in Bristol, just up the road. Queue a team roadtrip, some last minute calls to old west country friends and the buzz of pushing through crowds with a plastic cup of lager clutched in hand.
As Mr. Mcmorrow graced the stage the crowd (which ranged from knitted jumper clad students to beaming, nuclear families) swelled into an uproar of woops, cheers, yells, affectionate heckles and camera flashes. I cant remember the last time I was part of a crowd so keen to actually have a conversation with someone on stage. One guy did manage to get James’ attention and even persuaded him to play a song which was either called Moscow, Bosco or Roscoe. Throughout the set the mixture of collective captivation and euphoria became pretty bizarre, no one dared speak during the music and anyone who did was roundly hushed. But between songs no one could contain themselves, if a song happened to step up a notch or the drum pattern changed all hell broke loose.
It really is testament to the song writing and charisma of JVM that he can charm thousands of people into such a state of nonsensical joy. Songs such as We Don’t eat, Higher Love and, the personal favourite, If I Had A Boat were really special and probably had the most profound effect on the audience. The entire set was over far too quickly, I didn’t check my watch once throughout the whole thing which is a rarity. I was no doubt just as driven to distraction as the other thousand people, each of us in our own world. A phenomenal rendition of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game was the real game changer which played over again in my head long after we stumbled out into to Bristol night.
We were expecting great things and they came by the bucket load.
Gudmund Østgard has, as Scandivanian electronica outfit Autoband, released to my vision an island of air, an island of fresh cold air that soothes my heart. His air, his air that moves, that is provoked by 10 songs of sound, his air drifts and settles in and around my body, it gets behind my eyes and it eases the strain. Sometimes I haven’t the words for music that really affects me – it’s a symptom of being a human with only fingers and head to express complex things within. I will get vague. This music is like a drift, a constant movement across the sky, Gudmund has here recorded some of the most convincing structures.
Skip through the album below!
Three songs called Tijuana, Tree, and Rabarbrapai – they all move and start like the witnesses would to a speech, trying to utter how they saw all the splash, all the whirls, the tide rebound, but didn’t see the glacier break off into the water, disturbing, the songs whirl around and dilate, my eyes from the train, onto the fjord. The fuzzing of a witness’ voice, falling away from commotion, repeating, circulating voice of unaccompanied synthetic noise, peace-ing together. Replication in parts, always fading to a place of still. It’s peace of mind, of water unsettled, yet settling.
Sunbeam and Illusion Remix are touching and beautiful – both featuring vocal of Gudmund’s younger sister, the latter song being a reaction to her own released music – recommended and available here. These two songs are touching. The beautiful endearing movements of Gudmund’s sister fill the grooves of Autoband’s magnificently crafted stanzas; layered-sounding stanzas that instrument the female noise well. Staggering stuff!
Rails, Cloud, Ona and Siesta are quality, showing off an artist with innovational technique for combining, manufacturing and manipulating percussion noises. Each one has its own 3D formation, each one brings volume of imagination-stimulants.
But maybe loads of songs do; what probably distinctively attracts me about Autoband and his debut album is that he creates atmospheres and rooms with integrity. In these rooms and atmospheres, he puts wooden dolls with mature and composed looking faces, he makes sensible-sized windows through which he paints beautiful and original places. In my view, few computer-artists on the block are capable of composure and consistency whilst are also able to stagger, to let the listener stumble around his own head until he’s in another place all together.
With my dear beloved in a warm room, burrowed from dark nights and cold air with many layers of curtain and duvet, somewhere unimaginably habitable, the home of all homes, warmed with loving facial expressions and subtle movements, I needed the loo. Being productive and the boy I am, I took my needing the loo as an opportunity to convey to my excellent girlfriend the true wisdom of music that I have accumulated from two years of writing about songs on the internet. So I fetch the music player and with a moment of thought, plant this one on; a number by Dingus Khan. I leave the room, satisfied that all boxes are about to be ticked whilst my companion is left sitting bemused, looking at the speakers, the glinting-eyed rhythm of guitar riff opening out in nonchalant fashion.
My return to the room opens to silence of a song just finished playing and having left a slightly quickened heart-beat atmosphere for all the intimacy. I might have thought through my song-choice before unsettling my girlfriend like this. The absence of Knifey Spooney by Dingus Khan that ensues after Knifey Spooney by Dingus Khan finishes leaves one with a sense of longing, heightened dreadfully by the resultant silence in all its inadequacy. Gone are the spurting wailed and sometimes whispered lyrics of spoons, zebra-crossings and knives, gone are the casual whistles and wild shouts alight like adrenaline-fuelled tentfires, gone are the flying sparks of a most endearing voice, ricocheting off guitars in a way that frenzies the senses yet establishes eye-contact with natural ease. The absence of Knifey Spooney by Dingus Khan that ensues after listening to it is too unbearable, you have to listen to it again. So we did!
I could write out the stilts of background information of DK, but they write about themselves with impressive concision and that’s a great attribute to have. Introducing Dingus Khan;
Hailing from the estuaries of East Anglia, Dingus Khan have been playing gigs around this area, and sometimes in the capital city of the U.K for sometime now.
They consist of not one, but two drummers, to keep your heart beating. Three (ladies…please) bass players to keep your foot tapping. A singer, with a guitar to melt young girls hearts, and moisten their under-crackers. And an electric ukulele demon, just to keep you on your toes.
Let Dingus Khan play their Rock and Roll music my boy, and let them play it hard and fast. Then slow and steady. Then Hard and Fast.
What you must know is that this song comes out as their debut single on March 5th on Label Fandango. You can pre-buy it here. Keep in their touch on Facebook, they have loads of other really good songs. If you live in London area, then seeing this band play live will be one of the best things you ever do on a whim, seriously.
