Bullybones - I Feel Sorry For You - ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Is the time right to bring back gutsy two-minute terrace-anthems of a Brit-rock persuasion, previously heard a good few years ago when The Enemy, The Courteeners and the like stormed the scene? On the evidence of I Feel Sorry For You, it could well be. A neat little riff here, a few shouts there, drum-fills all over the place and some Kaiser Chiefs-style 'wooooaahhh's for good measure suggests they'll get compared to all and sundry, not that it matters too much - I Feel Sorry For You is an incendiary spit in the eye and a promising debut from the Ryde-based outfit.
Summer Heart - Sleep - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Not a band per se but Sweden's songwriting protege David Alexander crooning sweetly with the sunshine in his heart, the top down on his sports-car and chilling out with the summer in his hair. Sadly, October makes most people crave old Joy Division albums or warm honeyed tones of a folkie, rather than Scandinavian twee-pop. Sleep is certainly a likeable enough ditty - there's woozy chillwave overtones aplenty and a radio-hugging chorus to contend with, plus it's a classic 3 minutes 20 seconds in length. Perfect hit material in another world but not in this.
Slow Down Molasses - Summer Sun - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Passable psychedelia from Canada outfit who have probably owned at least one record by 13th Floor Elevators, Tame Impala, Sonic Youth or The Byrds, seeing as Summer Sun is largely comprised of bits of the aforementioned jangle-meisters. Summer Sun isn't so much sung as hollered through an effects pedal but it's an engaging romp nonetheless. They sound like a band who'd own an audience pretty quickly with their blazed trail of chemically-enhanced rock and roll.
Mogwai - Teenage Exorcists - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
Within five seconds of this leading EP track sparking into life, you can already hear a different, more bullish sound than that found on their hit 2014 album Rave Tapes. Gawd bless 'em, Mogwai have coerced their creative juices into writing a song - y'know, verse, chorus, LOUD bit, verse, chrous etc etc. It's possibly their most memorable tune for a while - Rave Tapes was more mood-music than out-and-out radio tracks - and it sees the band elevate their sound by a few levels, both in quality and in decibels.
Black Swan Lane - Lonely - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
BSL's dark, introspective charms haven't quite convinced the British record-buying public yet, although a modest following keeps the flame burning. Lonely sounds exactly as you'd imagine Lonely to sound like - sad-face, downbeat and dark with some smart guitar riffs and the usual angelic vocals from Jack Sobel. The band's previous USP was having Mark Burgess of revered powergloomers The Chameleons - on here there isn't one, although Lonely is an admittedly pleasant-enough six minutes to drift along too.
My Autumn Empire - Andrew - ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
The name of this act might suggest a bunch of Screamo metalheads bawling about life being shit for six minutes whilst bringing down your eardrums in the process with a wall of head-melting guitars being chimed in unison but no, My Autumn Empire is Staffordshire's answer to Real Estate aka Benjamin Holton. Thus, we get soft mild-mannered jingle-jangle that recalls some of Stephen Duffy's pastoral-pop with his Lilac Time. Trust me kids, it's rather good. Andrew follows on from where singles like Blue Coat have left off - wild-eyed guitar-pop that sounds like it's been around for years yet is as fresh as a daisy. His website contains lots of regularly-posted elegiac and pastoral tunes which prompts one to pin a 'one to watch' badge on his creative lapels.
Lone - Restless City (Heads High Remix) - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
Recently uploaded onto Soundcloud, this seriously fidgety floor-filler is ridiculously simple with it's hyped-up Master At Work-style tribal-house rhythm that has a bit of the Blawan about it. This is a typical R&S reworking - five earnest minutes of straight-edged earth-shattering drums, a little piano motif that sounds like a stuck jazz record, some sweeping synths and all in the capable hands of Heads High. Lone can do little wrong at the moment and this is perhaps his best effort for some time - not that recent album Reality Testing had much to moan about (it's recommended) - but the sheer rapture this remix exudes is worthy of your time.
Paula Temple - Ful - ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Another R&S mainstay these days and one of the labels most coveted acts. With Aphex Twin grabbing all the headlines at the moment for his admittedly special Syro album, it's a sin that Temple's not-dissimilar oeuvre gets overlooked by the standard music-press. Fairly insistent, hard-hitting and hypnotic, this is more the Temple Of Doom than the Temple Of Love. An eerie hookline permeates the first few minutes of this clattering percussive anthem, before the track opens out around halfway through for what sounds like the end of days - a truly sinister piece of electronica from a name associated with quality. Ful is from a whole EP of this stuff out in October including the ear-bleeding megalith, Deathvox.
Lakker - Mountain Divide - ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Holy moly - there must be something in the Irish water at the moment - Dublin's Lakker have constructed something of a relentless horror-techno epic here and no mistake. For the first few minutes, it all sounds like a choir have been forced to sing next to a jet-engine, before things supposedly calm down for the final half. Are you kidding? - messrs Smith and McDonnell had other ideas when putting this together. Far from being a catchy little clubbing number, this is pummelling headspace fodder, made for the apocalypse or some other cheerful life-changing event. I like Lakker a lot. They hurt.
ASAP Rocky and Juicy J - Multiply - ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Back to harsh reality and another wealthy rapper bemoaning his lot with loads of f, b and n-words littered over some slack-trousered head-nodding grind that sports little to stir the soul. Unless hoes, weed, cheese, fucking is where your life is at. About halfway through, the beat slows down, a high-pitched hook-line gets thrown in, fingers waggle in faces, money gets counted and I decide to put the kettle on, check for post and take a dump. I might write a rap about it. It would be a far more gritty experience than Multiply. Gah.
Is the time right to bring back gutsy two-minute terrace-anthems of a Brit-rock persuasion, previously heard a good few years ago when The Enemy, The Courteeners and the like stormed the scene? On the evidence of I Feel Sorry For You, it could well be. A neat little riff here, a few shouts there, drum-fills all over the place and some Kaiser Chiefs-style 'wooooaahhh's for good measure suggests they'll get compared to all and sundry, not that it matters too much - I Feel Sorry For You is an incendiary spit in the eye and a promising debut from the Ryde-based outfit.
Summer Heart - Sleep - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Not a band per se but Sweden's songwriting protege David Alexander crooning sweetly with the sunshine in his heart, the top down on his sports-car and chilling out with the summer in his hair. Sadly, October makes most people crave old Joy Division albums or warm honeyed tones of a folkie, rather than Scandinavian twee-pop. Sleep is certainly a likeable enough ditty - there's woozy chillwave overtones aplenty and a radio-hugging chorus to contend with, plus it's a classic 3 minutes 20 seconds in length. Perfect hit material in another world but not in this.
Slow Down Molasses - Summer Sun - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Passable psychedelia from Canada outfit who have probably owned at least one record by 13th Floor Elevators, Tame Impala, Sonic Youth or The Byrds, seeing as Summer Sun is largely comprised of bits of the aforementioned jangle-meisters. Summer Sun isn't so much sung as hollered through an effects pedal but it's an engaging romp nonetheless. They sound like a band who'd own an audience pretty quickly with their blazed trail of chemically-enhanced rock and roll.
Mogwai - Teenage Exorcists - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
Within five seconds of this leading EP track sparking into life, you can already hear a different, more bullish sound than that found on their hit 2014 album Rave Tapes. Gawd bless 'em, Mogwai have coerced their creative juices into writing a song - y'know, verse, chorus, LOUD bit, verse, chrous etc etc. It's possibly their most memorable tune for a while - Rave Tapes was more mood-music than out-and-out radio tracks - and it sees the band elevate their sound by a few levels, both in quality and in decibels.
Black Swan Lane - Lonely - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
BSL's dark, introspective charms haven't quite convinced the British record-buying public yet, although a modest following keeps the flame burning. Lonely sounds exactly as you'd imagine Lonely to sound like - sad-face, downbeat and dark with some smart guitar riffs and the usual angelic vocals from Jack Sobel. The band's previous USP was having Mark Burgess of revered powergloomers The Chameleons - on here there isn't one, although Lonely is an admittedly pleasant-enough six minutes to drift along too.
My Autumn Empire - Andrew - ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
The name of this act might suggest a bunch of Screamo metalheads bawling about life being shit for six minutes whilst bringing down your eardrums in the process with a wall of head-melting guitars being chimed in unison but no, My Autumn Empire is Staffordshire's answer to Real Estate aka Benjamin Holton. Thus, we get soft mild-mannered jingle-jangle that recalls some of Stephen Duffy's pastoral-pop with his Lilac Time. Trust me kids, it's rather good. Andrew follows on from where singles like Blue Coat have left off - wild-eyed guitar-pop that sounds like it's been around for years yet is as fresh as a daisy. His website contains lots of regularly-posted elegiac and pastoral tunes which prompts one to pin a 'one to watch' badge on his creative lapels.
Lone - Restless City (Heads High Remix) - ★★★★★★★★☆☆
Recently uploaded onto Soundcloud, this seriously fidgety floor-filler is ridiculously simple with it's hyped-up Master At Work-style tribal-house rhythm that has a bit of the Blawan about it. This is a typical R&S reworking - five earnest minutes of straight-edged earth-shattering drums, a little piano motif that sounds like a stuck jazz record, some sweeping synths and all in the capable hands of Heads High. Lone can do little wrong at the moment and this is perhaps his best effort for some time - not that recent album Reality Testing had much to moan about (it's recommended) - but the sheer rapture this remix exudes is worthy of your time.
Paula Temple - Ful - ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Another R&S mainstay these days and one of the labels most coveted acts. With Aphex Twin grabbing all the headlines at the moment for his admittedly special Syro album, it's a sin that Temple's not-dissimilar oeuvre gets overlooked by the standard music-press. Fairly insistent, hard-hitting and hypnotic, this is more the Temple Of Doom than the Temple Of Love. An eerie hookline permeates the first few minutes of this clattering percussive anthem, before the track opens out around halfway through for what sounds like the end of days - a truly sinister piece of electronica from a name associated with quality. Ful is from a whole EP of this stuff out in October including the ear-bleeding megalith, Deathvox.
Lakker - Mountain Divide - ★★★★★★★☆☆☆
Holy moly - there must be something in the Irish water at the moment - Dublin's Lakker have constructed something of a relentless horror-techno epic here and no mistake. For the first few minutes, it all sounds like a choir have been forced to sing next to a jet-engine, before things supposedly calm down for the final half. Are you kidding? - messrs Smith and McDonnell had other ideas when putting this together. Far from being a catchy little clubbing number, this is pummelling headspace fodder, made for the apocalypse or some other cheerful life-changing event. I like Lakker a lot. They hurt.
ASAP Rocky and Juicy J - Multiply - ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Back to harsh reality and another wealthy rapper bemoaning his lot with loads of f, b and n-words littered over some slack-trousered head-nodding grind that sports little to stir the soul. Unless hoes, weed, cheese, fucking is where your life is at. About halfway through, the beat slows down, a high-pitched hook-line gets thrown in, fingers waggle in faces, money gets counted and I decide to put the kettle on, check for post and take a dump. I might write a rap about it. It would be a far more gritty experience than Multiply. Gah.