.jpg) |
|
Breadchasers Time to Stop Album (Off Cut Records) Available online |
For my money, The Specials’ Ghost Town is the best song ever written. Recorded in 1981 about the decline of Coventry under the Tory government, it just breaks my heart. Fast forward thirty years and they’re at it again, cutting funds and dividing communities for their own ends. So it’s a blessed relief that Nottingham has The Breadchasers; this six-piece ska punk band might just be here to save us all.
Time Ticks By sounds like breezy acoustic pop, then the sax and drums kick in and you’re dancing round the room, possessed by the spirit of Madness. Biggest Gangsta is as infectious as the cough with which it begins. Hold ‘em Hard is part RDF, part Ethiopians, perfect for a mellow summer’s evening. Saving The World is a belter; the anti-fascist, anti-homophobe lyrics sung with passion in a proper Nottingham accent.
All For One echoes the sentiment, but with a heavier bass and sax - D’Artagnan would approve. The Chase (with it’s Cossack shouts of “Hey!”) is a guaranteed dancefloor calorie-burner. No One Believes is as political as it gets, and the reason I draw the comparison with The Specials - not because it’s a cracking ska tune, but because of the sentiment behind it. Move over, God Save The Queen - this should be the new National Anthem. Revolution must be on its way. Piers Edminson.
Breadchasers MySpace
 |
|
Crushing Blows Crushing Blows EP (Self-released) Available online |
This local indie-rock duo have been gigging around and about since New Year’s Eve 2009 and have finally produced their first release. The EP might be a dying format these days, but this is a perfect example of the Extended Play: to give the public just a taster of what the band are all about - mostly melodic guitars and falsetto vocals - and leave them intrigued.
This self-titled effort opens with the fantastic Nightworker, a track that features a skittering, synth-led backing track that smashes into view on the back of a majestic guitar riff. Either by accident or design, the vocals are mixed low, becoming another instrument instead of the focal point, and it gives the odd structure and instrumental scope real room to breathe. It’s so good, in fact, that it rather overshadows what follows.
Don’t Sweat For Me is altogether heavier with a pair of sinister keyboards duelling in the speakers, whilst Liberate Yourself resembles contemporary indie rock with a throbbing synth undertone and soaring falsetto chorus. Closer Tie Them Down And Get The Answers is a more curious affair, with its constantly shape-shifting series of countermelodies and bizarre, game-changing interlude belying what the mere tag ‘indie’ implies. Definitely a band to keep an eye on. Gareth Hughes
Crushing Blows website
.jpg) |
|
Hhymn In The Depths LP (Denizen Recordings) Available online |
Folk rock is one of the many genres to have benefited from cross-pollination over the Atlantic and back, and In the Depths displays elements of both the American and British ends of the spectrum. Fleet Foxes-type pastoral melodies sit side-by-side with nods to sixties British new folk collectives such as Fairport Convention, whilst the band manage to retain a truly Midlands aesthetic throughout. Opener These Hands flutters over a ¾ rhythm, the requisite acoustic guitars and harmonies augmented by trumpet and the tinkling of a glockenspiel.
Vocalist Ed Bannard’s effortless delivery is accentuated on the delicately finger-picked Not Before I Go, while the yearning Papertrail is made more haunting still by the inclusion of a melodica. Single Girl of Mine comes complete with a poignant lyric and rousing chorus, and is the first track featured in a trio of videos filmed at Forest Fields’ First Love studios. The driving pace of highlight Behind the Sun does little to offset one of the album’s more moving moments, and it’s clear why the band have garnered plaudits from the likes of BBC 6 Music’s Tom Robinson amongst others.
A haunting collection of folk rock songs with its influences at once on-the-sleeve and indefinable, In the Depths is a confident and proficient debut that has clearly benefitted from its lengthy gestation. Tom Quickfall
 |
|
Karizma 10/10 Mixtape (The Elementz Productions) Available online |
What can you do in 17 minutes, 35 seconds? Walk to the local offy for some milk, do the washing-up after a hardcore Sunday dinner, or - in the case of Karizma’s first solo mixtape - get an unflinching injection of grime in your ear canals.
10/10 begins with anthemic head-nodder Badboy In A Different Way. Dancehall drums, weighty bass and urgent, swirling strings provide a comfortable backdrop for Karizma’s raps before producer Kirk Spencer steps in with a massive dubstep refix. If you’ve seen Karizma live, Dead Promoter will be familiar territory, with its rootsy hook and quotable bars - “If you’re looking for a singalong ting, put Glee on”. Kids even get a lesson in rapping from Mr. Karizma on Grime Seminar and ladies are suitably attended to on Valentine Grind.
Star of the show, though, is Duppy Up the Mic, featuring Notts grime legend Wariko. “Oh my gosh, what a banger,” Karizma correctly reports. The Elementz have polished this up with their usual heavy production and mix, and Karizma has the kind of cheeky, staccato punchlines and urbane, everyman themes that have made grime-sters Skepta and JME near-household names. But where the Boy Better Know dudes have a back catalogue so huge they’re sometimes hit and miss, this six-track release is a fast-paced yet carefully considered taster of what one of Nottingham’s primo bar-spitters has to offer. Shariff Ibrahim
 |
|
Kogumaza Kogumaza LP (Low Point) Available online and at gigs |
Live, Kogumaza make for a heady encounter. Hypnotic twin guitar loops unfold and close in on themselves against austere, primal drum patterns. Their music is an aural kaleidoscope in which to immerse yourself, an unexpectedly ambient twist on the conventions of heavy psychedelic rock. The trio play completely in the moment, settled in the eye of the storm.
Kogumaza’s debut album sees them not only managing to capture this focussed intensity, but also use the studio to reveal greater depths to their music. Thanks to producer Mark Spivey’s sonic manipulations of the multi-layered performances, a hazy but precision-engineered dub attitude pervades. Chris Summerlin and Neil Johnson have been playing together for over a decade, as Kogumaza’s intricately dovetailed guitar lines bear witness. Meanwhile drummer Katharine Brown makes Mo Tucker’s mallet drum technique her own, retaining the disciplined minimalism but unafraid to break free from it when the music dictates.
Too often today’s ‘psychedelic’ bands purvey grindingly retrograde stoned jams - a lazy soundtrack to an imaginary past. Kogumaza also unashamedly set their sights on inner space, even naming their studio base ‘Way-Out Is The Way Out’. Crucially though, they have advanced far beyond most musicians with these inclinations and created a uniquely irresistible, spiralling world of sound. The result is a forward-looking, transcendent album which stands shoulder to shoulder with the finest cosmic music ever made. Nick Jonah Davis
Kogumaza website
 |
|
Luxury Stranger Commitment and Discipline LP (self-released) Available online and at gigs |
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your new favourite band. They describe themselves as post-punk/ coldwave, taking musical cues from Bowie, The Chameleons, The Cure as well as the godlike Martin L. Gore. Already with a European tour under their belts, Luxury Stranger are moving in alternative music’s high society circle, mixing with their heroes and rubbing shoulders with the greats.
It’s easy to see why: this album should push Luxury Stranger into the limelight, a position they thoroughly deserve. Korruption, already a live favourite with its “Take me, I’m yours to keep” refrain, is a perfect piece of post-punk pop, good enough to make a grown Goth cry. Making Becci Laugh - written on the loo, apparently - is a rumbling beast of a song, with Simon York’s vocals not unlike Paul Weller at his most passionate. Where You’ve Gone is a love song of sorts, a beautiful guitar line over a subdued rhythm section and the tale of a romance gone sour. A tug of the heartstrings followed by a punch to the guts, this song gets under your skin like the tattooed name of an ex-lover.
Punishment pounds along like The Cure at their Pornography best, giving way to On+On&OnandOn, a glorious sky-scraping rock-out, closing this collection of eight faultless songs delivered with, well, commitment and discipline. Piers Edminson
 |
|
Marc Reeves Perfectly Fine LP (self-released) Available online and at gigs |
Describing his music as ‘pop-folk’, Reeves has wisely avoided leaping aboard the banjo-heavy Mumford bandwagon and produced a well-written, melodic album that would probably have been filed under ‘acoustic’ in years gone by.
Although written and recorded in Nottingham, it is an album that would sound perfect sitting in a rocking chair on a Wyoming veranda; there’s a real mid-American flavour evident on the likes of Hanging Around and Games, whilst the lilting final track Future Holds is the musical equivalent of the sun setting behind the hills. It may take a little more variety on the part of Reeves to achieve mainstream success, and the one-paced nature of Prayer, Turn Your Back and The Game means the record does start to lose its focus from time to time. However, there’s certainly bundles of potential here and, as debut albums go, this is a confident and competent record from a real talent. The songwriting and vocals both belie Reeves’ tender years and it is as mature a record as you will hear from a twenty year-old in 2011.
In fact, it is such a promising debut that the album title barely does it justice. Whilst Really Quite Impressive might not be as catchy an album title, it is certainly more representative of the quality of the album than its more modest monicker. Nick Parkhouse
.jpg) |
|
Ronika Forget Yourself/Wiyoo EP (RecordShop) Available online |
As last year’s Do Or Death mixtape demonstrated, Ronika is clearly in thrall to the post-disco, pre-house dance music that came out of New York between 1981 and 1984. Those influences first emerged on last year’s debut EP (Do Or Die/Paper Scissors Stone), and they are further developed on this follow-up, which offers a pitch-perfect homage to that classic era.
Forget Yourself is the more immediate, more pop-oriented track, whose breezy, peppy strut is reminiscent of early Madonna and Tom Tom Club. It’s a tailor-made early summer jam, driven by nagging chants and teasing calls to action (“What you holding out for?/‘Cos I know you’ve got more”).
If Forget Yourself is Jellybean Benitez spinning Madonna at the Funhouse, then Wiyoo is Larry Levan remixing Gwen Guthrie for the Paradise Garage, augmented by a throbbing Giorgio Moroder bass synth that lifts the chorus into Boogie Heaven. Three remixes drag the tracks firmly into the contemporary; sassy and sultry in shades and platinum curls, with the same sort of pop-chick-in-control vibe that served the likes of GaGa and Stefani so well, it’s easy to see Ronika – who created this EP almost single-handedly – carrying her music from the underground to the mainstream, and giving the rest of us a homegrown pop princess to be proud of. Mike Atkinson
 |
|
Tokyo Green Tokyo Green LP (self-released) Available online |
Impatient for the summer? Need to leave Nottingham? Then you’re in luck, because Tokyo Green paint a colourful and exotic picture of anywhere you want to be. Stars At Dusk starts as a sultry and sensual blissed-out light audio breeze that gradually builds into an eargasm of summer sounds, like an elevator ascending to heaven. Hit Single has all of the infectious charm and inescapable pop-hooks that its name would suggest; with an undeniable free and cool spirit flowing throughout it, this would be the ideal soundtrack to that part of the film where Shaft kicks back and goes cruising with his latest honey.
The funkadelic journey continues as the bass goes for a walk on the aptly escapist Danish Retreat and the calypso holiday that is Kyoto Bluu. Things wander between the phat and the fragile as the soulful Sketch lets the record breathe and the tender serenity of The 1:08 Waltz adds a beautiful key-tinkering moment of reflection to the album. You must excuse Tokyo Green while they kiss the sky, as elements of Hendrix and blues punctuate the album with a sharp edge on tracks like Ebb N’ Flow and The Buildup, making this self-titled debut seem like not so much a cacophony of international influences as a United Nations of sound. Andrew Trendell
Hear tunes from all these reviews right now on Sound Of The Lion - and if you want your own stuff reviewed and you're from Notts. click here.
Read comments and make your own
Comments