Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Swahili Blonde - Discover Aurora

LA's Nicole Turley's previous albums have included input from Viv Albertine, John Frusciante, Duran Duran's John Taylor and Devo's Alan Myers, which suggests a certain eclectic sense of adventure, but the Deities In Decline EP out July 21st is entirely performed by herself. Written as a song of personal inspiration for her goddaughter, it plants its flag initially in the world of early 80s processed electro-disco while wandering around picking up weeping strings, plaintive piano, occasional surging guitars and Afrobeat rhythms, eventually sounding not unlike Warpaint were they on Ze Records.

http://soundcloud.com/noisyghostpr/swahili-blonde-discover

Friday, June 12, 2015

Two White Cranes - So Much Water, So Close To Home

Roxy Brennan's spare up close and honest to a fault style made an itching, immediate impact on last year's sort of self-titled debut album proper. Since then she's been involved with what seems like endless guest appearances and sideperson recruitments - in fact she's just joined Joanna Gruesome - but a second solo album is on its way, Radisson Blue out 1st August. Its opening track is loosely inspired by a Raymond Carver short story of the same name and features a slightly scrappy fuller band backing seeming not unlike previous collaborator(s) Trust Fund to fill out a song about the power of words in fiction but beneath the surface also is about more personal longings.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Slum Of Legs - Doll Like

Not every band affecting the sort of DIY sound that sounds like a faux-mess that's going to fall apart with the slightest distraction pulls it off in a way that makes you want to listen to them more than once. Brighton post-post-feminist indie-noiseniks Slum Of Legs very much can, spending their second single, described as "a call to action... a fight for gender identity and acceptance", throwing everything from triumphant hollering chorales to wandering Velvetsy violin via twiddly messed up electronics at a wall of fuzz and pulling it off through absolute conviction and righteous defiance to an end. A full throttle live act, their next gig is with potential spirit animals, supporting the reformed Prolapse - note to any professional writers looking in, why aren't you covering the Prolapse reformation dates? - in Brighton on the 23rd.

Friday, June 05, 2015

Outblinker - Pink

When the "radio edit" is nearly five and a half minutes long you're on to something, and for once that thing is good in this case. Outblinker, made up from assorted Glaswegian noise, art-rock and DIY outfits, are presently working with Benjamin John Power of Fuck Buttons, and it's their sculpted fried electronic noise that comes to mind alongside spiralling kosmiche and the striding analogue keyboard armies of Holy Fuck. A very promising starting point.



Wednesday, June 03, 2015

Totem Terrors - Big E/Lies

Max and Rosie's second album of wiry (and sometimes Wire-y) distorto-post-punk Hard Science is out 29th June, picking up pretty much where their spare sonics left off, namely in a ditch - chanted duelling vocals, sinuous riffs that turn chaotic every so often, throbbing guttural basslines, industrial drum machine, nodding at Steve Albini, Swans, Pere Ubu and the Fall's three R's (repetition, repetition, repetition)



Tuesday, June 02, 2015

Girls Names - Reticence

Belfast's Girls Names have always been inclined towards the psychedelic and the damaged garage bands, but here they've veered towards what John Robb termed the Death To Trad Rock movement of the mid-80s, the movement that ran alongside C86 in indie circles of awkward, dirty post-post-punk noisemakers. While there's something of post-punk and pre-goth European iciness here too, it's all in the slashing, discordant guitar sounds over agitated rhythms, and it bodes very well for third album Arms Around A Vision when it's released in... October! The year's going too quickly.