| la-pom@web.de | 56 posts
Chancellorpink is one-man band Ray McLaughlin, who also handles production, marketing & putting the cat out at night! He’s been recording under the moniker for four years and self-released an album every year since. Sadly, having become disillusioned by the whole industry, he’s calling it a day, but not before putting out a [...]
März 17, 2010
This San Francisco baroque-pop group’s second album is a homecoming of sorts, as it finds the Morning Benders embracing a more coastal, kaleidoscopic California sound. It also finds them embracing the cavernous experiments of Grizzly Bear, whose Chris Taylor shares a co-production credit. His studio presence is all over Big Echo. From warped music-hall strings to hymn-like, soft-focus [...]
März 17, 2010
Fang Island describe their aesthetic as “everyone high-fiving everyone,” and on their wildly infectious second album, the Brooklyn rockers take manic musicianship and shoutalong choruses to another level– even with only a couple of verses and choruses. Fang Island is fractured like any post-punk record while also speaking the language of classic rock, [...]
März 17, 2010
Noise-makers and pedal-lovers Ceremony from Fredericksburg, Virginia, are releasing a new album on Killer Pimp, hopefully in April. I was waiting for an email from Safranin Sound about this, but apparently the band got a new label now and so I totally missed the release of a single earlier this year. This is great news indeed, especially [...]
März 10, 2010
Forget the cartoon characters. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s animated misfits have always been mainly interesting as a concept, and on much of the third Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach, it feels like Albarn and co. are ditching the idea of writing pop songs a cartoon band might front anyway. The one-time Blur frontman [...]
März 10, 2010
For a band known for switching gears from track to track and album to album, Sisterworld is the most thoroughly Liars-sounding record so far. It has the rhythmic insistence of Drum’s Not Dead, the sleepwalking chants of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, and the straightforward songwriting of Liars, often sounding [...]
März 8, 2010
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have risen to fame in the past year, and deservedly so. I’ve been watching them ever since they landed on my doorstep in snowy Iceland in 2008 and I helped arrange a one-off gig for a crowd of measly 30 or so people. I remember one reporter not bothering [...]
Februar 27, 2010
I guess there are two ways a shoegaze band can go these days. Mix it up with electronica as the likes of M83, Perfect Blue, Ulrich Schnauss etc have done to great effect or party like it’s 1988 encompassing the sounds of the era and the scene that celebrated itself. Whirl, on the evidence of these [...]
Februar 24, 2010
The full-length follow-up to Ys is no less ambitious, but this 3xLP set also has some of the most inviting and accessible songs of Newsom’s career. While songs here evoke moments of Ys and Milk-Eyed and Newsom’s harp is still the dominant musical focus, it’s striking how much Have One [...]
Februar 24, 2010
The German producer Hendrik Weber’s follow-up to This Bliss is big and dense with the kind of detail that rewards close attention. Weber is unlike most minimal techno producers in that he doesn’t look to locate one groove and ride it for the course of a track. His songs open up, unfurl, and regularly change [...]
Februar 17, 2010
Today seems to be the day long lost videos resurface! This one is by The Trudy for their single Oh! from a few years back which they claim they found down the back of the sofa. The band headline our free show at Rota next month which we co-host with Oddbox Records. Details here. My Space [...]
Februar 17, 2010
Local Natives have a familiar sound– rustic vocals, harmonies, clattering percussion– but songwriting skill and youthful energy mark their striking debut. Advance singles “Airplanes” and “Sun Hands” recalled elements of Dodos or the Fleet Foxes, but the best comparison perhaps is that they’re sort of a West Coast Grizzly Bear– right down to naming an [...]
Februar 8, 2010
Odd Box Records teams up with Indie-MP3 for a free afternoon of indiepop at RoTa in Notting Hill. Playing the afternoon are: The Trudy The Wednesday Club The Sequins The Gresham Flyers It starts at 4pm. Finishes by 8pm. And it’s free to get in. Guest DJ – Rocker from Dandelion Radio. ___________________________________________________ More info on the bands: The Trudy – http://www.myspace.com/thetrudy London based indiepop band [...]
Februar 8, 2010
Ever since Hot Chip started as indie kids seemingly dabbling in classic soul and modern R&B, they’ve been underestimated. Delivering lines about “20-inch rims” and “Yo La Tengo” in a proper English accent, as they did on their 2005 debut, can have that effect. Yet on their two subsequent records– 2006’s The Warning and 2008’s [...]
März 26, 2010