Hello internet.

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.



marcus

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.


marcus

Norwegian Corners; Autoband, Tromsø

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!

Tijuana music video from Autoband on Vimeo.

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.

Here are the purchase links for the album:

Beatport | Juno | Spotify | iTunes

Buy a hard copy from;

Beatservice Records

Thanks,
George

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.

George

It’s been a fantastic few days. People have been on top form, distant relatives have been chatty and James Vincent Mcmorrow played 2 days ago. As usual this blog tends to breathe more either when I’m riding a wave or when I’m at the bottom of the wave getting the shit kicked out of me, so expect a bit more to come out of APFOS HQ in the next week.

To Kill A King  have been put on a pedestal by this site many times before. It’s nice when you nail your musical colours to the mast to be rewarded so well and this new series of live video sessions, entitled Ralph’s Balcony, does exactly that. It ticks all the boxes of the classic live session vid: novel location, authentic background noise, earnest conversation either side etc. Lyrically Cannibal Cutlery (which I have never heard before and cant find very much info on) really comes to life with gorgeous turn of phrase, magnified by the glorious vocals of Ralph and Bastille.

Alcohol’s a lubricant surely you can use it to slowly fuck yourself

We should really run a lyric of the month feature. Or maybe we should just post this lyric every month, I dunno but somehow this should be celebrated.

Emily And The Woods  did a session with the bafflingly awesome Watch Listen Tell a couple of weeks back and it’s pure gold. So if you are in the mood for a live session or two you will have watched a few WLTs before but I cant let anyone miss this one.

marcus

p.s. Anyone in Exeter who fancies coming to our gig this Thursday, send an e-mail to seedpocket@gmail.com with the subject “Guest List” and I’ll get you in for half price, simples.

This is one for the your experimental drawer, your left-hand draw; those drawings you sometimes warm to;

for Little Teeth are a three piece, pieces of complex crackling kindling in a fire, thankfully still alight (through temporary break-up) – since brother Marcus brought back the band’s debut LP from his 2008/9 days at now peacefully dormant Absolutely Kosher (apfos’d in younger days). The songs are usually striking, generally fraught…and fragile…but always alert, energetic. The creativity is clear. I find the stress and pitch of the vocals sometimes saddening, like darting eyes and call of a bird choking, chasing the mirror of movement, seen. Yet the finish, the atmosphere of the pieces burning, the instruments gathered, i find the finish and the atmosphere settling, endearing and sometimes quaint.

This song is worth the entire listen, it refreshes and provokes.

Expect a new album from Little Teeth this year.

George

Peddling round the rising and glittering. This song is powerful, you don’t have to empathise with her message of lost love, of getting it together; this is the sort of song that captures you, it’s strong purely on the feet of a Swedish girl’s voice and rhythm. I haven’t the words for it now, there’s too much spinning and spindling. This song is powerful like pounding feet like peddling person around the sides of the lake, circling, a small black figure around, speeding round the contours of a rising, mounting, slanted love once there. Öberg runs away with ease, I watch her, oh Linn you have my attention.

There’s something about this song, Jump, that is more subtle than the words she says, it throws energy at me, it throws hope, throws movement. It’s not for me what she’s singing, how she’s singing it maybe more importantly. Somehow I fear she’s still in love. This song gets me thinking at the heels of her drums, her “ocean”, get’s my eyes out in the open, like buoys.

This song is both beautiful yet also energising to the point of wide eyes alert, purpose glazed with appreciation.

The best song of its kind/genre I’ve heard in the last year no doubt.

Buy it.  

George

This is an ‘every so often’ uncharacteristic post inconsistent with usual incoherent and lively atmosphere that exudes from your clickings on apfos.

I sense this is a busy time, otherwise Marcus might have had some music to talk about since my last excitement about Oxy-Yan. One of the reasons I feel at home on this blog is because each post is worth something; each word of each post build up pillars for a ceiling under which I sit looking out the name-scratched windows of a train often taken, thinking about…everything. It’s not a constant dribbling feed of sound/music/genres that got our attention for, say, 30 seconds before we realised it was cool and most definitely ‘blogable’ . the price of this is a slight intermittency to my input, but nonetheless I hope, sincere.

The fact of the matter is, I love a girl called Ella and I bought an egg-timer that looks like an egg recently and I’m really excited about both of these things.

-Break-

The Argonauts have a flair that comes through their live-recordings; enough to remind me of seeing them play in a village hall in Harwich. I love being and feeling down to earth with them and their believable stories of conversations with girls enticed by wankers and who don’t like change.

George

I can swing to and forth, from a fifth or sixth or however many months not spent, but given up in the cradle of coils, kept in form, kept in shape like the hammocks of brighter eyes been, in trees, in between time, sleeping, our sleeping scene. The current, the routes beneath our feet so spoilt with water of the lake of thought, today, now, a current circling the island in the middle, always north, shining so bright that it rose above the attempt of eyes. Our eyes darting while the currents circle. The current tries to wash up on the security of a hidden destination, always north.

Oxy-Yan‘s from the Netherlands, from Amsterdam. This song is great.

George

Plaitum – Temptress

Plaitum – Geisha (IntotheNorthSea remix)

This boy and this girl, Plaitum, they could turn up loud, turn up wanted, fashionably late in the middle of some room of decaying faces immersed in yellow light. Decay like growth, time-telling tales of all that makes one queazy with future thoughts, what the fuck is the future thinking that makes us roll and roll and roll like polished wheels for the exhibition of nobodies. This boy and this girl play into my momentary madness, they excite me hugely. They get better with each song as well, a sort of progressive process towards I don’t know what but it’s conceptually huge. The sprite of excitable  listeners bouncing under their belt are wondering why these  star correlations aren’t more famous, correlations uncoiling in the  spider-web. This is good rhythm.
Good rhythm I tell you!

Go and follow their exponential rise before it happens.

Thanks, George