Big Dwarf are not text book cool and they’re not destined for the front cover of the NME, but if Bowie circa Station To Station, Pink Floyd’s mid-70s Harvest period (Dark Side Of The Moon / Wish You Were Here), the kraut stylings of Neu, Gong and indeed Steve Hillage’s solo work (that gliss guitar, in particular) alongside a smattering of free festival Orb-like electronica, ’80s artistic pop, Talk Talk and the darker elements of the opiated drones and vocals of Spacemen 3, The Darkside and Spectrum topped off with a slightly E-cstatic driven ’90s feel akin to Happy Mondays, Terry Bicker’s Levitation and Primal Scream circa Screamadelica appeal you’ll find a lot to enjoy. These are only merely reference points as this is an act that don’t benefit from musical era shoe horning. Instead of wearing influences on sleeves Big Dwarf delicately combine sustained acid guitar breaks, funky movements and a space-rock atmosphere into a field of their own.
Towards Abstraction, which includes an ongoing collaboration with the beautiful Alison O’Donnell of ‘70s acid-folk legends Mellow Candle and mixing, electronics and engineering from Stephen Mallinder of ’80s synth protagonists Cabaret Voltaire furthers the druggy imagination displayed on their fast becoming rare debut EP.
Pre-order BIG DWARF’s towards abstraction… album on CD and receive it hot off the press for low price of £5 (plus P&P and taxes where applicable)!
* Limited to pre-orders only! * The band will show their appreciation with signed dedications to the purchaser on the inside sleeve! If you would like the dedications to a name other than that on the invoice please notify us in the comments section of your order.
Formed following the tragic circumstances that led to the end of awesome garage band Thee Vicars, the remaining members hooked up with players from MFC Chicken for this new band. Now Groovie Records have the pleasure to present you here 2 authentic beat-garage songs to put you dancing all night long. More than ever do they try and replicate the thrill of those primal garage recordings right from the beginning ushered in by bands like The Wailers or The Stones.
Like the proverbial prodigal son, The Higher State return to State Records after an absence of almost six years (the group gave the label its inaugural release – the now long-out-of-print ‘And In Time’ 7”) and they're back with a vengeance!! These two new sides burn with an intensity that’s so often absent from today's spineless rehashes, offering a cavalcade of cluster and stomp straight outta the West Coast, circa ’66.
The Higher State’s purist ’60s punk obsessed lineage reaches right back to the early ’90s when as members of The Mystreated Marty and Mole toured all over the world, released five albums and recorded sessions for BBC Radio 1. Eight years into their latter day career as The Higher State alongside a relatively steady roster of players – including garage teen legend Paul Messis on bass and the superb guitarist and harmony vocalist Dan Shaw – the band continue to impress with their dynamic songwriting and edge. Call it garage-punk, call it folk-rock, call it psychedelic, call it what you want; stuff it into the nearest and most convenient pigeonhole you can find; box it, label it, file it away, but first… LISTEN.
Whilst fads come and go The Higher State stick with their key inspiration of mid-60s West Coast folk-rock, garage-punk and the golden greats Love, The Byrds and The 13th Floor Elevators. If they weren’t so bloody good you could call it a pastiche or homage to a bygone era, but their songs are their own, their musical quirks distinct to themselves. Anyway, all high-falluting indie bands and artists today reference something. Nothing’s new. It’s just that so much that gets regurgitated in the face of fashion just ain’t that good.
Although ‘Potentially (Everyone Is Your Enemy)’s’ title may sound more like a Crass song, it’s actually reminiscent of the California sound circa Surrealistic Pillow where fuzz, jangle and melody live in perfect harmony. ‘All Ties That Bind’ opens with a ringing guitar line right from the Stones’ ‘Last Time’ before the song moves into a spiritual cautionary tale of not playing it by the rules whilst the musical passages throw in both post-surf guitar parts and jangly folk-rock joy… and it’s all over in little more than a minute and a half.
As psychedelia looks set to be the biggest thing this summer let The Higher State wash over you. These ain’t no new young white hopes or pretenders, it’s the real deal. As the minions move onto something new I assure you the State will continue to develop and further their take on the genre. If a fan of old, you know them. If getting “turned on” for the first time you need them.
Potentially (Everyone Is Your Enemy)
THE HIGHER STATE
Potentially (Everyone Is Your Enemy) / All Ties That Bind
Attic Lights were one of the biggest surprise hits of 2008 after debut album Friday Night Lights appeared on Island Records to rapturous applause. The Guardian described it as “Chiming 12-string perfection”, the NME claimed how Attic Lights “comes on like The Eagles lassoing Fountains Of Wayne to The Beach Boys” and Artrocker classified Friday Night Lights as “one of the finest guitar pop albums this year.” The Fly called it “spellbinding” whilst Uncut noted how it was “truly infectious”. Q could barely contain themselves when mentioning the “sumptuous harmonies”. Tastemakers Mojo exclaimed, “These lads really knock together a perfect tune.” Further high praise followed. The future looked bright until Attic Lights received a similarly sunny into rainy forecast as Montrose Avenue had a number of years before – that is: being highly touted and then dropped.
If the major label success was not to continue a slightly modified Attic Lights signed with Elefant records in 2012 and released the Say You Love Me EP. The four songs lovingly melded indie pop with everyone from Big Star to sunshine pop ’60s legends Harper’s Bizzare and The Cyrkle. “Since our previous single in 2009 we've changed labels, lost one guitarist, gained another, written countless new songs and recorded our second album,” states vocalist and guitarist Kev Sherry matter-of-factly. “I guess, if anything else has changed, as songwriters we feel we've got better at our craft and that we have come in to our own a little bit more and shaken off our early influences to develop a more unique sound.”
On Super De Luxe (produced by Teenage Fanclub’s Francis Macdonald) the band take the cleanest pop to even higher levels whilst adding new flavours along the way. Named after the very same jukebox brand that guitarist Tim Davidson has at home, the album itself serves up short, sharp doses of pop nirvana akin to a dream 45 collection. “We were all massive fans of Weezer and The Lemonheads growing up so that has really driven our desire for catchy melodies mixed with loud guitars,” says Kevin of things that have inspired this new outing. “The Beach Boys and Beatles/Paul McCartney are of course key but we have also recently been listening to a lot of classic soul, Motown and disco, which you can hear in tracks like ‘Future Bound’ and ‘Stay Before You Leave’ while there's also a touch of anthemic rock thanks to some Bruce Springsteen and Death Cab For Cutie.” ‘Say You Love Me’ (the album’s opening track) really is solid proof of the band’s perfect pop sensibilities; reminiscent of Camera Obscura yet more wide-eyed and innocent with a ’50s bobbysox feel about it, ‘Mona Lisa’ has an unforgettable chorus in the same school as The Cars and Red Kross and ‘Don’t You’ has something of an early ’90s buzzsaw guitar stylistic and the kind of soaring to-die-for harmonies that may well draw Teenage Fanclub and Fountains Of Wayne comparisons. “Orbison” , the aptly named tribute to Roy Orbison, has a classy foot to the floor mid-70s powerpop vibe, somewhere between a burning Elvis Costello and a red hot Raspberries, pushing the euphoria up to unknown levels. Album closer ‘Gabrielle’ is majestic, proving the Scottish band’s ability to sound tremendously contemporary and also show their love for circa 1970 Paul McCartney. It’s as if Elliott Smith is still with us.
It’s been four years since Attic Lights breakthrough yet they still maintain that very same timeless Scottish pop sensibility in an era of One Dimension, synth pop and so on. “The musical landscape is such a vast canvas these days and in general people seem to be listening to ever wider types of music,” says Kevin. “I don't think it's the same as 10 years ago when you would find exclusive little musical tribes. Nowadays the kinda thing we do sits alongside everything else...” But clearly chiming guitars will always have a place whatever the weather, won’t they? Even in cloudy Glasgow. “It’s a strange thing that coming from such a grey, rainy country so many bands are drawn towards sunshine harmony indie rock. I don't really know why it's so popular in Scotland,” laughs Kevin, “other than maybe it's the best escape from the appalling weather. And obviously we all are influenced by our local heroes so bands like Teenage Fanclub and Belle & Sebastian showed that there is an area of music there worth exploring.”
From big label money to hip Spanish indie pop mecca Attic Lights are certainly continuing to explore the possibilities of sunshine driven chiming pop and in doing so it almost sounds as if they could appeal to that whole landscape: the 10-year-old girls that follow today’s sanitized pop, daytime Radio 2 listeners and of course the gently beard stroking fans of Big Star. A light shineth!
DM3 are preparing for some dates at the end of May and into June. These will take place in their hometown Perth and also Italy France and Spain. To coincide with these dates they have released a limited edition live CD of their Roskilde Festival (Denmark) 1994 appearance. They will be selling the new CD at shows otherwise you can get a copy via Citadel Mailorder. At $10.00 + p&h a copy it's a bargain.
Tour Dates
Australia:
May 30th: Northbridge (Mustang Bar)
May 31st: Perth (Devilles Pad)
June 1st: Fremantle (Clancy's Fish Pub)
June 2nd: Fremantle (Newport Hotel)
Italy:
June 5th: Torino (Maglio Cocktail Bar)
June 6th: Rivoli (Maison Musique)
June 7th: Cesena (Sidro Live Club)
June 8th: Trento (Ciclamino Beat Festival)
June 9th: Verbania (La Loggia Del Leopardo)
June 10th: Milano (Cantu - 1 e 35 Circa)
June 11th: Condove (Tromp Cafe)
France:
June 13th: Paris (Le Gibus - with Guitar Wolf)
Spain:
June 15th: Andoain (Andoaingo Rock Jaialdia Festival)
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Here’s your chance to win the new Telstar Sound Drone LP as well as test press, their debut 7” and TSD t-shirts. All you have to do is answer the following question: What year did Telstar Sound Drone play at the Roskilde Festival? Send your answer to badafro (@) badafro.dk to enter the competition. Deadline is June 1st.
1st prize: Telstar Sound Drone LP, LP test press (3 copies made), Mirror Pieces 7” and t-shirt
2nd prize: Telstar Sound Drone LP, Mirror Pieces 7” and t-shirt
The Telstar Sound Drone will release their debut album on Bad Afro June 3rd. The album is called Comedown and will be released as LP (first 500 copies includes a free CD of the entire album) and download. Expect feedback-ridden psychedelic rock as well as slow heavy psych.
The Telstar Sound Drone line-up is: Sean Jardenbæk (Vocals, Guitar), Mads Saaby (Guitar) and Hans Beck (Drums).
Guest musicians on Comedown: Hobbitten (Guitar/Spids Nøgenhat), Christian Norup (Bass/x-Highway Child) and Kåre Joensen (Bass/Baby Woodrose)
Bad Afro Records
Fensmarkgade 36, st th
2200 Copenhagen N
Denmark
Although Big Star were together for less than four years and had little commercial success, the influence of their three original albums – #1 Record, Radio City, and Third – continues to grow. Big Star bucked all the musical trends of the ’70s. In an era of glam and prog rock they wrote catchy, radio-friendly power-pop tunes that remain influential today. Artists as diverse as Primal Scream, R.E.M., The Bangles, The Posies, Teenage Fanclub, Jeff Buckley, and Wilco have spoken about the Big Star legacy.
In the decade since the original version of this book was published, Big Star have made a belated fourth album, In Space, and released an acclaimed four-disc retrospective, Keep An Eye On The Sky. The band have also lost two original members, an influential producer, and the photographer of their iconic logo. But interest in the group is as high as ever in the 21st century, with new bands such as Yo La Tengo and Hot Chip – and even pop superstar Katy Perry – carrying the flame.
Now fully updated, and drawing on firsthand interviews with the band, family members, friends, and the major players at Ardent Records, this is the definitive history of rock’s forgotten band.
Rob Jovanovic is the author of numerous books on such diverse subjects as Pavement and Kate Bush, Beck and George Michael, R.E.M. and The Kinks. His books have been published in ten countries and in nine different languages. He is also a contributor to magazines including Mojo and Uncut. He lives just outside Nottingham with his wife and two young children.
The Big Star movie Nothing Can Hurt Me is screening this summer and the accompanying soundtrack featuring alternate mixes is available on Omnivore. Jawbone's superb book will arrive at just the right time when the music of Alex, Jody, Andy and Chris will once again ring out.
The Big Star movie Nothing Can Hurt Me is screening this summer and the accompanying soundtrack featuring alternate mixes is available on Omnivore. Jawbone's superb book will arrive at just the right time when the music of Alec, Jody, Andy and Chris will once again ring out.
This June sees the release of the stomping debut ep 'Made To Measure' from Melbourne pop-group 'The Solicitors'.
Made up of laconic guitars, off-kilter arrangements, jumbo hooks and sagacious lyrics, The Solicitors sound is akin to great bastions of the New-Wave scene from yesteryear. Influences ranging from XTC, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads and The Knack.
Their first recording on Popboomerang (the Stiff Records of Australia) 'Made To Measure' pulls no punches, 5 tracks of good old-fashioned rock 'n roll to dance and drink and make out to.
The 4CD "Volume 2" collection covers the the three year period between 1983 and 1985 for the Martin Newell-led, Brit Lo-fi combo, who are now being described as "D.I.Y Beatles." While the rest of the 1980's rock world had immersed itself in epic and often empty gestures, the Cleaners concentrated on neat little lo-fi pop songs of a quality and standard which, as one critic later noted: “Pop music elsewhere had pretty much forgotten.” By now, one of the band’s founder members, Lawrence Elliott had left the band. Its chief songwriter, Martin Newell, like the captain of a strange pirate ship took charge, and Cleaners from Venus went sailing… Here within this second fractured pop feast, are three remastered albums by The Cleaners ("In The Golden Autumn", "Under Wartime Conditions", and "Songs For A Fallow Land") – as well as a fourth one, containing not only the usual rarities, but also previously unreleased tracks and a few genuine treasures. The Cleaners had a back story, too. Included here are some of its fragments. Even today the chief question asked about the Cleaners from Venus is why they weren’t huge at the time. The answer to that is that Martin Newell believed that if they involved the music business in their work, the music might be spoiled. They therefore never bothered approaching a record company. For most of their existence, in fact, they didn’t even have a telephone. The Cleaners weren’t so much independent, as genuinely feral.
TO ENSURE SHIPMENT NEXT WEEK,YOU MUST PRE-ORDER BY NO LATER THAN THIS FRIDAY, MAY10.
The sophomore single on 'Market Square' is a wonderful release by Virginia based folk-rockers The Young Sinclairs, this 7" single is strictly limited to 300 copies only and each will be individually hand-numbered.
The Young Sinclairs' newest 7" offering here on Market Square Records (based outta West Sussex UK) is a double-sided jangle fest with layers of vocal harmony, bringing to the listener a strange yet familiar echoing of bands from yesteryear, groups such as The Byrds, The Who, Powder and Big Star, to name but a few. Samuel J Lunsford, creative leader of The Young Sinclairs combines his influences well and creates something solely his own, unique to himself as a songwriter and hopefully to you the listener as well.
The top-side 'Engineer Man' hits first with perfect power-pop precision, pitch-perfect harmonies and a steady driving-beat throughout, the flip hosts the melancholic 'Problems' which sends us into all too familiar terrain when someone we love, gets up and goes... The sentiment endorsed further by fantastic usage of chiming 12 string guitar and melody-lines straight outta the Brian Wilson songbook.
Be sure to grab this great 45 fast, it's a killer.
Engineer Man (Final Stereo Mix)
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Recorded at Magic Twig Studios - Feb/March 2013. RELEASED 10TH JUNE 2013.
Bronco Bullfrog issued a pile of great records across the early part of the century (that’s this one!!!), wowed small crowds in the UK and did amazingly well in Spain. Those who heard and saw ’em fell passionately in love with their “technicolour pop” sound. But it’s all a long time ago now, with their last album seeing the light of day in 2004 and a compilation appearing slightly later on the prestigious Rev-Ola label. So what happened? “Basically, we broke-up,” says bassist Louis Comfort-Wiggett. “Not split-up like Led Zeppelin, but broke-up, like love that went off the boil (only ours was a love triangle from the outset). We didn’t divvy up the books and records, so effectively left our options open for reconciliation. That reconciliation came around two years ago, and since then we’ve been hanging out and writing new material.” What makes Bronco Bullfrog so special and endearing is that both then and now they have never been, or had the slightest inkling to be, fashionable. All obsessive record collectors and pop music fanatics, the trio of Mike Poulson (vocals/guitar), Louis Comfort-Wiggett (bass/vocals) and Andy Morten (drums/vocals) avoid obvious genre mimicking or being a part of any movement. This isn’t Mark E Smith anti-fashion or deconstructionism, but it’s not wear your influences on your sleeve plagiarism either. What the Broncos do so well is to take their inspirations and aspirations and play them hard and with abandon. “ ‘Never Been To California’,” Andy explains, “was conceived in the midst of an obsession with '60s sunshine-pop acts like The Fun & Games and The Gordian Knot but came out sounding like The Jam after a 12-hour yoga marathon. Again.” Not getting it quite right is what has always made Bronco Bullfrog unique. In fact, they’re the only band that can actually sound like The Jam in full broken vowel flight AND The Bee Gees at their balladeering best in the same song.