All 48 entries tagged Indie

The Feel Good Transformer (21st Nov)

An all female tracklist (to oppose the full-on man-fest that was last week), quite a good one as well. Seriously check out Duffy, she’s amazing…

I also think I’ve actually got the volume levels right for a change as well.
Note the casual removal of the random mid hour newscast as well. Bonus.

Radio shows down until further notice

• Feist – I Feel It All
• Ladyfuzz – Hold Up
• Camera Obscura – If Looks Could Kill
• Nancy Sinatra – Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time
• Duffy – Rockferry [Website]
• Gemma Hayes – Hanging Around
• Rilo Kiley – Portions For Foxes
• Metric – Combat Baby
• Regina Spektor – Better
• Goldfrapp – Strict Machine
• The Long Blondes – Giddy Stratospheres
• The Concretes – You Can’t Hurry Love [Download]
• PJ Harvey – This Is Love
• The Pipettes – Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me

This Wednesday (tomorrow) might be a bit more ramshackle as I had a job interview today, therefore less time to prepare, that’s my excuse in advance anyway.

: 27 Nov 2007 20:24 |  Tags: Audio Indie Music Podcast Radio |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Feel Good Transformer (14th Nov)

A bit strange in the panning on this one. Only realised it halfway through I think. Damn students messing with the studio mixing desk…

I also didn’t realise how funny saying “Spoon the underdog” without a pause actually sounds, but now I do.

Radio shows down until further notice

• The Go! Team – The Wrath of Mikey
• Blitzen Trapper – Wild Mountain Nation
• Brakes – Jackson
• Example – I Don’t Want To
• LCD Soundsystem – Watch The Tapes
• Vampire Weekend – Boston [Website]
• Cut Copy – So Haunted
• The Young Knives – Terra Firma
• Motocade – Bomb Squad
• Throw Me The Statue – Lolita [Download] [MySpace]
• Phoenix – Second To None
• Voxtrot – Fast Asleep
• The Futureheads – Broke Up The Time
• The Hives – Tick Tick Boom
• Okkervil River – Unless It’s Kicks

Next one coming up shortly…

: 26 Nov 2007 08:00 |  Tags: Audio Indie Music Podcast Radio |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Feel Good Transformer (7th Nov)

Not everything went great, but the tunes at least are good.
Feels weird without a co-host but I hope my voice doesn’t put you off too much :P

Enjoy…

Radio shows down until further notice

Tracklist:

• White Denim – ShakeShakeShake
• Justice – DVNO
• Eels – Flyswatter
• Kate Nash – Foundations
• Kylie – Love Is The Drug
• Idlewild – When I Argue I See Shapes
• Cut Off Your Hands – Still Fond [MySpace]
• Kanye West – Homecoming
• Spoon – The Underdog [Download] [Website]
• Arctic Monkeys – Teddy Picker
• The Charlatans – Love Is The Key
• Brendan Benson – Good To Me
• Jens Lekman – Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig
• Maximo Park – Our Velocity
• Field Music – You’re Not Supposed To
• Patrick Wolf – Get Lost

Same time next Wednesday!

: 11 Nov 2007 13:35 |  Tags: Audio Indie Music Podcast Radio |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Rock Lobster is back!

It could possibly promise to be shambolic, it could be amazing, the only way to find out is to tune into RaW (http://radio.warwick.ac.uk) at 11am Wednesday (tomorrow) for the Feel Good Transformer show (feat. the Rock Lobster obviously).

... or you could wait, and I’ll probably upload it later.

: 06 Nov 2007 21:33 |  Tags: Indie Music Radio |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Umbrella

Here’s me and my band doing an ‘amazing’ cover of Rihanna at the Hope & Anchor in Islington.

You’ll love it…

EDIT: I Guess I’m Floating has a slightly different cover up right here by Tegan and Sara. Theirs doesn’t have a solo though… :P

: 11 Oct 2007 23:19 |  Tags: Afterburner Indie Live Music Rock Video |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Judder Judder Bam!

It’s funny how sometimes a song sounds like another. It’s come up again recently, the rather fine new single from The Cribs, ‘Men’s Needs’, sounds curiously like Placebo’s ‘Black Eyed’ but with a squiggly guitar riff over the top… and slightly less campness. It’s not an altogether unfair comparison either. The Cribs have a wonderful new album full of sparky little pop indie nuggets, rather like Placebo themselves. Plus they’ve chosen to produce their new album with Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand, rather than in a bucket.

Indie pop aceness.

Endearing goth pop silliness… and the drummer was taught by the same geography teacher as me!

The Cribs – ‘Men’s Needs’

Placebo – ‘Black Eyed’

: 05 Jun 2007 18:12 |  Tags: Alternative Audio Holly Cruise Indie Music Placebo Rock |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cut Off Your Hands + more @ Kings Arms, Auckland – 1st June

The Kings Arms is a strange little place, opposite a swingers club just out of the city centre, it’s scummy but cosy, rough but friendly, and has a garden out the back with remarkable acoustics. There were eight bands on in the night, and either by divine providence or too much poker we (that’s me, Ellie, Matt and Sam, for future reference) unfortunately missed the first three bands. I would’ve been quite interested to see what Ladybird were like in a live context, but still we had five bands to go and as we entered Phony Bone were taking to the stage…

Phony Bone peddle indie in the obscurest sense of the word, at times they were going for Brakes’ warbling vocals mixed with humour and country, other times going for Pavement’s pure leftfield-ness and occasional is-it-a-tune? isn’t-it-in-tune? dynamics and for a song-and-a-half hitting Snow Patrol squarely on the chin. So to be fair, it was a bit of a mess, an occasionally entertaining mess (introducing one of numbers with with “this song is about our really low self-esteem, please like it” was a nice touch), but a mess none-the-less. Matt seemed severely disappointed that the bassist was intent on only playing two (maybe two-and-a-half) notes per song. Babydoll on their MySpace pretty much sums them up, which you might find enjoyable.

[Phony Bone MySpace]

By the end of the set, I’d eloped to the back of the room with Matt to challenge two Kiwis to a game of pool on the obligatory slanted table. It was such a shocking game that White Birds and Lemons had already set up outside on the ‘other’ stage and were a few songs mid-set by the time we’d polished them off and followed Sam and Ellie to the garden area. It was a damn shame because they were damn good. Their MySpace declares ‘Blues/Folk Rock/Experimental’ but live they came across more like early-Muse, when Matt Bellamy had more of a Jeff Buckley/Thom Yorke complex and wasn’t concentrating on trying to be bigger than space itself. Starry Eyes streaming from their MySpace does follow this template rather well with a more bluesy, Jimi Hendrix central riff before taking a left turn through heavier territory. Live they were somehow tighter, a louder, overall more thrilling sound playing a better counterpart to the quieter moments. It’s hard to believe that lead singer Scott Frantz was capable of pulling everything off, but there he was, note perfect and then rocking out with the rest of them. A pleasant surprise indeed.

No mp3’s as of yet, their first mini-album should be out soon, and you can hear three tracks over at their MySpace.

[White Birds And Lemons MySpace]

We sort of unwittingly stayed outside for The Whipping Cats set, the breath of fresh air feeling a bit better than the dank indoors. Still from what we could hear, between the occasional heavy shouting, they stirred up some harmonica-blurting, old-school-blues and I’m sorry for not paying more attention. Then again, I’d be lying if I said we weren’t actually waiting for Motocade to set up outside and grab some good spots when the time came. That time did soon come, each band only given half-an-hour to entertain with a pit stop barely breaking a minute was allowed before the next band started playing. As it were, Motocade began to a half empty floor, but by the end of the second song, everyone was there, bouncing along like the week before, under a scarily full moon directly in the centre of the sky. It helped that the set was a fairly trimmed down version of the one we’d witnessed earlier, the two new songs still going down well and everyone well and truly buzzing. I can’t say much more than that, other than Matt’s obsession with getting a good view of the drummer. I didn’t want to ask why…

[The Whipping Cats MySpace]

[Motocade MySpace]

And before we knew it, it was time for the final band, Cut Off Your Hands! We scooted around to the front of the indoor stage while the band, replete in black polo neck jumpers and tight black jeans (we discussed this, and decided it’s the not the most fitting costume choice for the band), got their shit together and then… just… exploded.

Seriously, I’ve been electrocuted by a microphone before, but if there ever was a sane way to describe what singer Nick was doing during the opening song, I’m sure electricity would have something to do with it. As the rhythm section dominated pretty much everything sonically (despite the drummer breaking his sticks), Nick lost the microphone, found the microphone, jumped off the stage, rolled back on the stage via the crowd, lost the microphone again, twitched about on the floor for a bit, found the microphone again and generally went absolutely nuts for every driving beat and strum. By the second song he’d left the stage completely and climbed onto the top of the bar (goodness knows how) leaving a drunken idiot to take his mic to the stage, before he himself jumped off after shattering a glass bottle in front of us. It was insane, but at the same time completely brilliant (although saying that, Sam was still shaking bits of glass off as we left the place :S)

Everything you hear in the mp3’s below does relatively little to describe the intensity of everything else. Still Fond turned everyone not on stage into a twitching throng and other favourites You And I and Expectations just destroyed any preconceptions you might make about them. If you’re looking for a reference point, imagine the Futureheads with aforementioned electric shock to the rear and a good dose of Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist’s (he of The Hives) staring intensity, and you might get close to this old performance. Then times that by ten in every way possible. This was live and loud and very very good.

The new Blue on Blue EP should be available soon in the UK as well as here. With Bernard Butler on production duties, it’s a relatively clean affair, but it shifts the punk leanings of the live show towards a more ear-friendly indie club floor-filler pop tune of the times. I’ve ripped the lead track from their MySpace, and you can also hear Oh Girl over there right now. Like right now… click!

Cut Off Your Hands – Still Fond (MySpace rip)
Cut Off Your Hands – Expectations
Cut Off Your Hands – Let’s Go

[Cut Off Your Hands MySpace]

A small request to anyone who was there… do you have any photos? I’d love to have been able to take some but I was busy bouncing around. And as you may have seen from my Motocade ‘live’ photo previously, it was a bit shit. More live reviews to come that I can make it to before I leave, hopefully it’s The Coshercot Honeys next…

: 05 Jun 2007 09:00 |  Tags: Cut Off Your Hands Indie Live Motocade Music New Zealand Phony Bone Rock Whipping Cats White Birds And Lemons |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

So So Modern – Friendly Fires EP

So I said I’d bring something to dance along to for the next NZ installment, and so here are So So Modern. Returning home after a brief sojourn all around the world (including recently London, you capital dwellers), they’ve also recently released a new medium length EP in Friendly Fires. I was introduced to them by the track Skeleton Dance off the recent Real Groove magazine compilation I mentioned in my original post (along with Motocade, I might add). It opened the proceedings with a relatively big, fast, and squelchy bang. Something like the Klaxons by way of One Armed Scissor and then even further back to the ZX Spectrum. But I’d hate to be described in that way, but an even worse description could be to say the vocals are ‘shouty’ (but not annoying), the synths are ‘rubbery’ (or ‘pliable’ or ‘bendy’) and the style is very ‘new rave’. So I’ll let you play the song and disagree completely.

I’d very much like to see them live before I leave NZ, but it might not long before they’ll be back to touring the world (or taking it over) again if their evolution from their early EP material continues any further. From the promise of just bouncing around the room like an idiot, to the colour-coded tracksuits, to the random acts (handing out pinatas, full crowd hugs and starting the gig with a band posing to be them), I’m sure it’d be a gig to be remembered when I come back home.

Coming back to the EP, it does feel very fresh, even in spite of the current contemporaries that could be pointed out. It starts out with an instrumental that doesn’t do much to build excitement (similar to that of a Spectrum loading up) but following Synthgasm the rest of the six tracks each pummel with alternately fierce rhythms, barbershop shout-singing and the rewiring of your head with electronic melody lines. It’s a blinding ride, and The Love Code is a equally blinding finish to a great CD.

From Friendly Fires EP (2007):
So So Modern – Skeleton Dance
So So Modern – The Love Code
[buy]

[So So Modern Homepage] [MySpace]

: 03 Jun 2007 09:00 |  Tags: Audio Dance Electronic Indie Music New Zealand So So Modern |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Motocade Live @ Crow Bar, Auckland (24th May)

It’s not hard to describe what sort of music Motocade play. Press that little triangle above and you’ll be under no illusions about them using blank and blank no.2 as inspirations through to the inevitable blank no.3. Only I’d like to think there’s something different here. There’s a distinct lack of pretension, just an emphasis on making lots of cool melody lines intertwine between three guitars (two electric, one bass, no less) and yet somehow the songs don’t come across as sounding the same.

I dragged some friends along to the Crow Bar club in Auckland, where they were playing a free gig for all interested. After an opening act that couldn’t decide if they were Depeche Mode or Interpol before giving up and playing a danceable tune, Motocade squeezed past the crowd on the tiny dancefloor to make it to the even tinier stage (or more accurately, other floor). Eden Mulholland, the singer, didn’t look like he belonged, looking a little shorter in real life™ and a bit unassuming taking up the mic. But when he started belting out the lines to opener State and Maine, it became obvious how everything clicked into place and well… everything clicked into place. Guitars were as tight as many of the jeans in the vicinity, the basslines physically forced the people to move and there was occasionally that ubiquitous cowbell…

Most of the set comprised of recent EP Into The Fall, but they delighted us with two new tunes that everyone bounced along to, in the absence of knowing any of the words. Which is how it all sums up really, they are an entertaining band, no doubt, all of their tunes would definitely be at home next to blank or blank no.2 and especially blank no.3. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t completely original, in the same way that something like Howl Howl Gaff Gaff was just a good collection of indie rock tunes, Motocade’s Into The Fall EP is also a good, nay, pretty great, collection of indie rock tunes. If there’s anything I could possibly have against it, it would be the occasional daft lyric, but I could hold that against anyone.

So yeh, if you’re wanting one of New Zealand’s catchiest bands, start here, watch their take on Outkast’s Hey Ya from NZ television and I’ll bring along some more bands with the next post…

UPDATE: New photo, and also, hopefully I’ll be seeing them again tomorrow at the Kings Arms, along with new favs Cut Off Your Hands!, but more on that and them later!

Motocade – Bomb Squad
Motocade – Goodnight Boy
[buy Into The Fall EP]

Motocade – Psycho
[buy Motocade EP]

[Motocade MySpace]

: 30 May 2007 08:00 |  Tags: Audio Indie Live Motocade Music New Zealand Rock |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The New Zealand Scene

Writing about web page http://www.nzmusicmonth.co.nz

May 2007 was New Zealand’s Music Month, and although I did notice that there was a week of bands playing on campus in the Quad, it never seemed to catch the imagination, or even attention of a lot of people I talked to.

Maybe I was talking to the wrong people (I mean, engineers entertainment is usually in alcoholic liquid form), but maybe it wasn’t all that good? In the last fortnight or so, I set out about gathering some tracks from NZ bands in the attempt to gauge what was going on, and if there was a ‘scene’ at all…

If I asked you to name a New Zealand band, I suspect a lot of people would go ‘uh?’, I’d mention Crowded House and you’d go ‘really?’, or The Datsuns and you’d go ‘who?’, or maybe even mention some Australian bands that probably get mixed up now and again. I mean the accent’s the same, right? Wrong.

So over the next few weeks, I’m going to educate you about what I’ve found about NZ music. So…

Motocade, who I went to see last week live and who have been getting a lot of good blog hype (for good reason), one of the national music magazines, Real Groove, which conveniently had a showcase of NZ bands on its cover CD, and of course the local university band scene, of which I have also been to see a few bands and ‘obtained’ a compilation CD. If I have time, you may also get a post about some of the more the mainstream NZ music, the Australian/NZ crossover, the dub influence and a reminisce about Drum ‘n Bass clubbing in Dunedin (or maybe not).

And in answer to the question of a scene… here’s the opening couplet from Motocade’s My Friends

Let’s pretend to be part of the scene,
They can show you, what fucked really is… oh!

: 28 May 2007 10:00 |  Tags: Indie Motocade Music New Zealand Rock |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem