Can you fetch my coat because I don’t feel too great…

This week I went to see Milburn at the Guild Hall with Martin, and it was a fairly good natured, noisy affair which pretty much hit the spot (as they say).

Milburn

I’d kinda heard of Milburn before, though most of the bits and pieces I’d read about them seemed to hinge on links with the Arctic Monkeys, which must really hack the guys off. (Though to be fair, you can see a resemblance, and I think they have toured with the Monkeys, so maybe it’s not such a lazy comparison after all). They’ve got a mod-ish sort of sound, which reminded me of the new mod revival bands that flooded the pages of Record Mirror and Sounds in the days when I first started buying records. (Secret Affair anyone?)

Anyway, I think they’re pretty good, lots of powerful chords and hooks that set the sprung floor of the Guild Hall throbbing impressively.

I recommend you check them out. The website gives away small samples of current tracks but there is a fan site, here, which gives away recordings and demos and is well worth a visit.

Lipstick Lickin’

Supporting them were Leeds’ Pigeon Detectives, who were clearly a couple of steps down the food chain from Milburn, and who looked a to me a little nervous on stage still – but were all right, really.

As I think I’ve said before, though, there’s something about these sorts of gigs which makes the Guild Hall’s sound man lose all sense of perspective. I’m guessing all the various knobs and dials were up at 11 in classic Spinal Tap mode, and really the sound was so bass-y and fuzzy that it was hard to hear very much. When I looked up the Pigeon Detectives on Myspace, it was a pleasant surprise to hear what they actually sounded like … and I’ve just no idea whether they played this on the night. Whatever, it’s a good track.

(Yeah, I know how old all this makes me sound, but wtf?)

Don’t Know How to Say Goodbye

Working up a sweat .. Bringing out the worst in me…

Honestly, this finding new music malarkey is just a piece of piss sometimes!

Absentee

There I am, feeling vaguely guilty that I’ve not posted anything recently and idly shuffling through the pages of Myspace. I decide to do a search based on the Silver Jews and there we go, the first band I come upon are this lot – Absentee from London. Fantastic stuff, nice’n’noisy, lots of guitars and brass and very distinctive growly vocals.

I’m feeling lucky, so I look them up on Emusic and yep, there they are, new album “Schmotime” and I’ve downloaded it within seconds. Surely it shouldn’t be this easy? Do I miss the days of listening to Peel with a notebook to hand and then scouring the racks of Driftin’ or Backstage Pass? Not a whole lot really…

Of course, after doing a quick scour through the blogs, it turns out my not really breaking any new ground here. Absentee have been pretty much picked up on by most of the good blogs, and Schmotime has been favourably reviewed by NME.

Their website is kinda fun but their Myspace page is better, partly because it has the one track I am posting here, plus three others streaming, but also because of the regularly updated blog on there which makes I laff…

Whats up with everyone knowing how to use chopsticks???When did you all
learn???You must have all taken classes in that three months when i wore a
bucket on my head as a dare.

Something to Bang

There’s also this, a rather neat Youtube video of Absentee’s next single, We Should Never Have Children, which has been created by Babak from the band.

If I have manage to embed this correctly, it represents something of a triumph for, as anyone who read the recent Vijay Kishore post / shambles will agree with…

Things that I’m getting from you I can live without

I got an email from Richard aka Goldmundo to let me know that he’d been to see Davy Graham (about which I am very jealous) and that John Renbourne had been in the audience (yeah, jealous about that too), which reminded me that I was going to investigate and share some of the other projects he’s involved in.

The Gokarnas

One of these projects is The Gokarnas, an Indie three-piece from Lancaster, who specialise in fast and fuzzy pop songs in the well-mined-but-still-rich Stooges / Sonic Youth vein. It’s good stuff, actually, and I’m looking forward to the CD they have coming out soon. Your never too old, Richard!

There are four tracks available for streaming on their Myspace page, one of which is this rather wild, catchy number:

Mr King of the World – The Gokarnas

The Gokarnas kind of remind me of Ripchord, so I visited their Myspace page to see if there was any news, and sure enough there are a bunch of new tracks available there.

None of them are quite as good as Terrible Thing, (which still buzzes around my head regularly), but they’re pretty good and well worth downloading – chock full of ba-ba-ba-ba as ever!

If you go to their Myspace page they also have quite a regularly updated blog there including a load of photos of the sessions they have apparently being doing with Ian Broudie, and also detailing the frustration of touring duties being interrupted by A-level revision(!) Ho hum..

Lock Up Your Daughters – Ripchord

Shoot You Down – Ripchord

A Bit of an Update

Flipron

Flipron have a new album out which seems to have drawn a few decent reviews from the Great and the Good (and the Daily Telegraph). As far as I can see, only one other blog has written about this lot yet, and although Partly Porpoise was actually there first (for once), this site has coined the perfect phrase for Flipron’s sound – Goofy.

Damn, I wish I’d though of that!

According to the myspace page anyway, Flipron have some sort of limited offer thingie going on with the album:

If you wish to order it we can do no better than to direct you to our
patrons & sponsors at Tiny Dog records. The first 50 copies bought from this
website will be in limited edition, hand-made, hand-drawn slipcases signed by
the cover artist, Dylan Schoone, the musicians & producer. A number of these
have already been purchased in pre-sales but there are still some available for
the prompt purchaser. Make haste to this website http://www.tinydog.co.uk/

(It’s also available on eMusic…)

There a couple of tracks from the record available on their Myspace page. They’re both pretty good actually and are well worth listening to.

Clockwork Blues

Man Eaten by a Pie

I don’t know why I even try..

Feeling a bit of a dope today, as I realised last night that I kinda missed a trick a while ago.

Way back in June, I received one of the few comments I get on my posts from a feller called Gav at Letterbox Records, plugging a band called the Arrogants. Now I think I’ve said before that I completely welcome this sort of thing because it makes me feel like a real blogger, right at the source of the creative stream, etc. Fingers, pulses, you get the message.

So anyway, I ignored the post for about 3 months, as you do, and then suddenly found it (to the sound of a great big “Doh”, in my head). And you can see where this is going, right? The tracks are pretty good and a quick search on Hype Machine will show you that they have been extensively shared in the Blogging community. For God’s sake, man, pay attention!

The Arrogants

Anyway, the Arrogants are made up of three McFerson brothers (Jayd, Jeffrey and Jon), Billy Pena and singer Jana Heller, and seem to have been around for a good few years. They have this 23 (count’em) track CD for sale at the very tempting price of £7 from Letterbox, which also includes a DVD to go with it. Intriguingly they say the album should be treated as three quite different EPs – or was originally three different EPs, I wasn’t clear on this – one poppy, one moody, one mellow. And of course, half the fun is working out which is which. As if this wasn’t generous enough, there are at least seven tracks free to download from the Letterbox site. What a generous bunch!

I’m posting one track which must surely be from their poppy side, and another which I’m guessing comes from their moody side. I’m sure they’ll let me know if I’ve got it all wrong…

Cool shoes

Don’t Be So Cynical

Sorry, Gav…

Time Will Tell On You

(By “I’m on it”, you understood that to mean you’d hear nothing for another two weeks, right?)

(I dunno, I followed the FAQs and did what it said, but I’m buggered if I can manage to embed Vijay Kishore’s MyTube video into these pages. Someone, somewhere is probably chuckling to themselves about this… Anyway, here’s the link, it’s great.)

I have got something new to share and it’s kinda cool…

Basque Dub Foundation

Proudly proclaiming the fact that they released the first ever dub album from Spain, the Basque Dub Foundation (BDF) do indeed come originally from the Basque Country but are now base in London. It’s probably a little easy to poke fun at the idea of a roots & dub band coming out of mainland Europe, but actually it makes some sense in a Commitments sort of way (“The Irish are the Blacks of Europe”), and their attitude to roots reggae is spot on, concentrating on a live sound and are apparently able to produce their studio sound on stage with some accuracy. On top of this, BFD seem to have some sort of real pedigree amongst those that would know, and have worked with Sugar Minott and U Brown, plus a host of other names that were not familiar to me.

More importantly, it’s great Tubby-esque righteous stuff. Well worth the wait, I say. Here are two of the three tracks available from their Myspace page.

Ministerio del Dub

Judgement Time