All entries for June 2006

Voxtrot

Since this is my first proper post on a music blog, I guess it's a little fitting that I start with a band who were brought to my attention by another music blog (Another Form of Relief), and that it's probably the most talked about "unknown" (ish) band on music blogs for the past six months or so. That band is Voxtrot.

Fronted by Ramesh Srivastava, Voxtrot are a five piece from Austin, Texas, with a sound not unreminiscent of bands such as The Strokes and The Smiths, in some kind of bastard love–child hybrid that brings out such a wonderful flowing, emotive sound that you can't bear but love it and listen swaying from side to side whilst your head is bopping. Their first official EP, Raised By Wolves, is a tour-de-force of beautiful music, from the fast-paced, Strokes-esque title track through the quite wonderful The Start of Something right through to Wrecking Force, which doesn't disappoint from the title.

At the start of April, Voxtrot released their second EP (again through their own record label, Cult Hero), Mothers, Daughters, Sisters and Wives, with more of the same kind of thing but with a more refined sound that allows for them to be enjoyable to everyone. The title track is once again a wonderful beginning, with beautiful lyrics once again dominating your album. Whereas the first EP had the monster The Start of Something, with Ramesh singing "Come by and see my I'm a love letter away / I'd break your name before I'd say 'I really love you loved you' / Now I don't care if you saw / I watched every inch of film flash across your roman features / And I loved it, loved it." with emotive bliss that lends for further listening, Mothers, Daughters, Sisters and Wives sees the versatility of Ramesh work in clever lines into most of the tracks, up to the epic finale of Soft and Warm: "Everyone loves a man, who lets the hardest people build him up and cut him down to a lovable size".

Any tag as "The next big thing" or "Destined for greatness" doesn't really do justice to Voxtrot at the moment. They're already huge in certain circles and with an accessible sound that allows many to enjoy, it's almost certain that they will go from strength to strength.

Tour Dates

US–only folks, sorry, a number are free or All–Ages though.

• 30th June – Brooklyn, NY – Prospect Park
• 4th July – Brooklyn, NY – OfficeOps Rooftop
• 27th July – Cincinnati, OH – Alchemize
• 28th July – Chicago, IL – Metro [Pitchfork pre–party]

Samples

All samples courtesy of Voxtrot.net

• Mothers, Daughters, Sisters and Wives
• The Start of Something
• Heaven [Talking Heads Cover]

A number of Voxtrot's live recordings and covers are available here

Buy

• Buy "Raised By Wolves" from Amazon
• Buy "Mothers, Daughters, Sisters and Wives" from Amazon

Voxtrot's first UK single, "Mothers, Daughters, Sisters and Wives", is out on June 12th.

Links

• Ramesh Srivastava's blog
• MySpace

Mathew Mannion : 30 Jun 2006 09:51 |  Tags: Indie Music Pop Voxtrot |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Meet the Contributors: Mat Mannion

Helloes!

Name: Mat Mannion
Number one in UK when I was born: George Michael – Careless Whisper
First album bought: East 17 – SAD: The Best Of. Bad. It's SAD for a reason…
First gig attended: Ozzfest 2002. Woop woop woop
Favourite album: Hmm… At the moment, Hot Chip – The Warning. For all time, Radiohead – Kid A
Favourite song: Radiohead – Paranoid Android
Favourite gig: Bloc Party at the NME awards last year as pretty ace
Favourite band: Radiohead
Favourite genre: Indietronica/Pop Rock
The band you like but are embarassed about/feel is a little out of place in your collection: Evanescence is probably the most out of place.
Number of CDs bought since 1st January 2006: Around 45. No wonder I'm skint…
What musical event would you most like to see happen: That time where the Arctic Monkeys told David Bowie to move out of the way, except David Bowie would turn into Jareth from Labyrinth and kick their asses with some crazy crystal thing
Musical hero: David Bowie. Legend.
Music's biggest enemy/ies in my opinion are: 13 year old girls. Stop it! Stop it!

And there we go. That wasn't so bad, was it?

Four tracks I love for your pleasure

Radiohead - 'Like Spinning Plates' [link expired] [Buy from Amazon]
Hot Chip - 'The Beach Party' [link expired] [Buy from Amazon]
Voxtrot - 'The Start Of Something' [link expired] [Buy from Amazon]
David Bowie - 'The Laughing Gnome' [link expried] [Buy from Amazon]

Mathew Mannion : 29 Jun 2006 13:01 |  Tags: Blog Contributors David Bowie Hot Chip Mat Mannion Music Radiohead Voxtrot |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

á la discotheque

What is á la discotheque?

á la discotheque is a new blog with a difference to the standard blogs that you'll see on Warwick Blogs – the aim is to provide a blog that's useful to music lovers in order to find new music and for regular music fans to be able to browse and sample music.

In each of our entries about bands, we'll be providing a number of sample MP3s that you can either stream directly from the blog (Coming soon!) or download directly for two weeks for sampling purposes. Along with these there'll be links to buy from Amazon and if you like the music, then buy it!

Is this legal?

There's been a lot of discussion on the Internet about whether MP3 blogs are legal. We believe that á la discotheque is legal, or at least from a common sense perspective legal because we only provide low quality MP3s (128k) and they are deleted after a two week sampling period. We also provide buy links to Amazon that should hopefully allow artists that we showcase to sell more music.

Also, since we will tend to focus on less well known artists, we believe that this blog and others like it are of huge benefit to bands, just as MySpace allows bands to showcase their music, so do we.

What kind of things will I see on here?

Hopefully you'll see a wide range of music to suit a wide range of tastes, hopefully with palatable solutions to everyone's love and need for music! We'll be covering classic albums as well as new bands and older less known bands who have faded from existence. We'll also try and put a few "mix tapes" together with a common theme, such as Summer or The World Cup. (Although football songs are, understandably, banned.)

Can I contribute?

Well, maybe is the answer we're coming to here. In order to post on the blog, you must have a University of Warwick account, else you won't be able to log in and post. It's also good if you already have knowledge of music, and we want to keep the quality high so maybe we'll have to vet you as well… all the current contributors have been extensively vetted and the crap removed.

_Mostly.

I'm a band / I'm exec at BandSoc / I'm a small independent label and I want to put my music on here

Yes! Please, please, please, please, please send us music! We're happy to listen to everything that we get sent and if we like it, we'll definitely showcase it. We'll be a bit more lenient to Warwick bands or local acts near Coventry (i.e. if you're doing gigs locally and you've got some music, send it to us and we'll see what we can do.)

For more details, click the "Contact me" button underneath the title at the top.

So how will I know when you post?

If you use Firefox or another browser that allows you to aggregate, you can go to The blog and click on the icon  in the address bar to add. You can also syndicate it via RSS by getting the feed here, or if you use Warwick Blogs you can add the blog to your favourites by clicking the Heart icon  in the utility bar.

Mathew Mannion : 28 Jun 2006 10:52 |  Tags: Introduction Music |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem