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The Veils MySpace
Finn Andrews is a revelation: throughout the backcatalogue of The Veils’ material, he’s always managed to produce a variety in his vocals pretty much unmatched by their genre’s peers. From warbles to cracking of the voice to animalistic screams, there’s always been that little spice in their music to make them instantly [...]
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People just have to try to bend the barriers of genres of music, don’t they? It makes the job of any would-be music critic infinitely more difficult: you immediately can’t pigeonhole bands to be a complete snob or to express your indie cred anymore. Here, with All the Pictures, a new monster is born: [...]
Even Flowers Kill’s MySpace
You have to love a band who can reference pop (or otherwise) culture, and do it well: Graf Orlock made their entire fame on it. Coventry’s Even Flowers Kill begin, on paper, in very good books with me: with an EP titled in reference to the enigmatic Schrödinger’s Cat and a Fight [...]
Crash Repeat’s MySpace
‘Synthesiser with a predilection for arpeggiated leads seeks like-minded vocalist and overdriven guitar for good company, good fun and maybe more.’
The ungodly combination that this Lonely Hearts ad promises is the conceptual embodiment of Crash Repeat. Trebles meet bass with no room for a middle ground: this breed of electronic experimentation has no [...]
The Winter League MySpace
Instrumental and minimalist music are two genres which are somewhat of a taboo in certain circles: it’s seen by far too many to be the case that music has to be immediate; music has to be loud; music has to be fast. The Winter League pretty much serve to define the veritable [...]
Jesu website
Jesu MySpace
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He’s a Brummie and has had such ridiculous labels as ‘avant-pop’ and ‘avant-garde doom’ used to describe his music of the vintage of this album, but one thing about Justin Broadrick which cannot be in any way derided is his musical diversity: to have gone from the doom/industrial metal of Birmingham’s Godflesh [...]
From their very inception, most bands walk that most treacherous tightrope: balancing, on the one hand, their ideas and preconceptions of what they want to sound like, and on the other, the vocabulary of how to define that sound. So it is, once again, with a heavy heart that I have to whine about the [...]
Los Campesinos! MySpace
Caustic, hyperliterate, aggressive twee pop. Seriously, even the concept is wonderful: I doubt that there could be ill-executed record of this central ideal, but Los Campesinos! really have made extended metaphor in song their hallmark. Their second album of 2008 (God bless their punk-esque recording ethic) sees a happy return for their 7-piece [...]
I hate how the more prevalent local scenes develop. You have one band which does something semi-original, and then you get the emulating hoards who will follow objectivelessly: they just want the benefit of the peer validation of being part of this sprawling ‘community’ of the bands of said scene. Innovation dies off and you [...]
With the demise of Starve in Heaven, I felt that this deserved a repost.
James Summerfield’s MySpace
Birmingham seems to be at the forefront of a new wave of folk- and country-inspired music, with the likes of Sam Bentley, Friends of the Stars etc. coming to the favour of ourselves and other local media. And here, in [...]
