These guys are fecking ace. Rocking it BCHC style. Somehow I’ve always missed them when they’ve played live here which is a bummer. Their latest EP (EP 2013) is being given away for free from their Bandcamp. Do yerself a favour & go grab it from here.
After a pretty slow year for Bristol hardcore releases last year this year’s shaping up quite nicely.
Been gone a long time eh? Mainly cuz I’ve been away (Harlech again) & then catching up on all the writing / editing stuff that had piled up while I was away. Oh, and a little bit i’ve been going to gigs.
Shit me WOLF X DOWN were on the money last night. First proper HC gig of the year, either the local scene’s been hibernating or I’ve just been way out of touch for some reason. Or of course we were just really spoilt last year and one or two HC shows every quarter of the year is about normal.
To be honest though, judging by how tense the atmosphere was in the front room of the Croft last night before Murder Circuit started I’d say I wasn’t only who person who’d been waiting for this too long.
Quote of the night came from MURDER CIRCUIT - “We paid 6 quid to get over that cunting bridge, least u could do is like our fucking Facebook page”. Fair point well made, esp as the band probably only made a fiver on the night.
TRUE VALIANCE did a bit like this only a bit harder & more for real. Fucking A:
WOLF X DOWN did a bit like this, seriously prowled & owned the place:
Good night. Don’t wanna wait so long for my next HC show ever again please.
Their sound, while hard to pigeonhole, has been described as “an effervescent keyboard-driven indie sheen that mixes poppiness with an almost Beefheartian quirkiness submerged neatly beneath the tunes”.
Bristol band, love this, their new single. Been around for aaages but never very productive. Till this single I never really got them but this is an “upped their game” type game changer thing.
Probably gunna be a bit too namby pamby for you but that’s ok, we cannae all like everything right?
Heyyyy everyones, check out the new EP by Svalbard, it’s ace in an “alternative hardcore” kind of way.
Not the easiest band in the world to pigeonhole they often seem to end up on bills with fast n furious H/C bands although that’s not exclusively their thing really.
In essence they’re your thinking (wo)mans hardcore band. “Tricky hardcore” to coin a phrase that I may have just made up.
Listen anyway, it’s clever stuff.
Not long till these guys come to Brizzle. RVIVR. Rocking it old school pop punk style. The songzoff their upcoming album, The Beauty Between, due out February 25, 2013. (Oh, that was yesterday).
They’re here start of April I think.
Gonna be another good n heavy one this. Trust me. Again. Hashtag Gnarly.
Another Bristol band worth making a note of. Dirty bluesy psychedelic (isn’t everyone these days) rock band.
The band play with a distorted banjo at times that ads to the diverse sounding garage feel. In the line up is also guitar, bass, drums and organ. The new album which is self titled has 8 tracks on it which range from ‘I’m not there’ a full blown carnage of a garage punk rock song to dance of the dead being a sombre guitar led blues piece.
This’ll be a good heavy one. Trust me on this.
Great video interview with Beak> over at Impose. Edited to really capture their wit and repore. Also, the dude on the far left, that is Matt Loveridge. We mention him a lot around here because he is also the 5th member of Foot Village on their new album dropping next month. Check out Matt screaming on the latest Foot Village single “Warlock” here.
Matt has a solo cassette, under the name Fairhorns, coming out on Deathbomb in just a few months!!
Fab interview with the BEAK> boys as they disclose such pearls of wisdom as “in america people go “woo” a lot”. They also tell us which films made them cry & why you should never trust a handyman.
Thought Forms tour poster February / March 2013.
In case it isn’t clear enough that’s 30th March for the Bristol date. It’s the album launch ting. You can grab tickets for a fiver here. Nice & cheap so you should be good to buy a vinyl or two too huh? One fer yer mate like innit.
Dinoaur Jr last night was pretty freaking A. Got a prime spot right up at the front & broke a habit of a lifetime & took a few pics. Only between songs of course. Little Barrie were pretty good too. They do what they do (dirty gnarly bluesy garage rock) seriously well. I’m minded to suggest that they know it too (coz they suggested such). Confident buggers, but deservedly so.
The one & a half hour “career spanning” set from Dinosaur Jnr was totally on the money. Out of all those mid 80’s “post no wave” bands (Swans, Butthole Surfers, Sonic Youth, Foetus, Hüsker Dü, Big Black etc) DJ were alwayz my least favourite. I spent some time getting famils with You’re Living All Over Me (1987) & Bug (1988), & have probably swung by every album since at least once, but generally speaking their music doesn’t do it for me.
Having said that, live, in a < 500 capacity venue with a wall of amps & stood right at the front, well that’s a different matter altogether. Within seconds my jeans were drenched with sweat (tidemark after went down below the knees) & the adrenaline was flowing. And it didn’t stop. Not even when Murph had to go for a piss.
Highlight of the show was definitely when Lou introduced a song as being by his & J’s first band together, a hardcore / thrash band. Talk about ears pricking up, it was “woah, here we go” & there we went, about 90 seconds of flat out hardcore a la Hüsker Dü circa 1983. I swear I haven’t come as close to stage diving since I fractured my spine in 8 places a few years ago. The night needed something like that really coz there wasn’t anything in the way of a mosh pit (most people, despite there being a good range of ages represented, were just standing watching) & I kind of felt that all it needed was one heroic effort in the form of a stage dive to get things going. Sadly the song wasn’t long enough for me to do anything about it except think “but I might not to be able to get back to the front … of course I’ll be able to get back to the front … but I might not to be able to get back to the front … of course I’ll be able to get back to the front” a couple of times before it was over. So y’all as thinks I’m made of heroic material? Y’all wrong on that score.
J is one hell of an effortless & brilliant guitararist. Apart from his hands & fingers (and feet on pedals) he barely moved all night, not changing his facial expression nor unlike Murph & Lou (or me) sweating a drop. Incredible. Here’s his sizeable pedal board:
In short, an awesome night and although it was gutting to be missing Anthroprophh for it & although I ended up proper broken (thighs got a particularly good work out - I do an awful lot of two footed jumping / bouncing at gigs these days (Big Jeff, he contagious dontcha know), & great tho it is for strengthening the bones it’s also but fucking knackering.
About as close as i get to a spur of the moment gig. I knew about this gig but forgot about till, at 5.05 (ish), The Jelas tweeted that they were playing that night. Hugely coincidentally I’d just been talking about them earlier in the day so I decided fate had properly decreed, in the way that she often does, that I should pop along even though I already had a ticket for a 6pm screening of Chinatown @wshed & was intending to go straight home after it.
As you can no doubt imagine I fecking love multi genre lineups & this was about as multi genre a lineup as you can get. Multi genre & Bristol to the core.
Contrary to the set list The Jelas kicked things off with their wonderfully staccato, stoppy starty, edgy, clangorous, beautiful mess of a distorted pop sound during which all members participate in some sort of shouting at some juncture during most of the songs, probably around 60% or so of it way off mic. Have liked them for a while & probably missed them on at least 3 occasions last year so good to finally catch em. They released the single below last year, Red Dot, and golly was it a corker.
Dagger Brothers next. They were, like, two guys singing / dancing weirdly over a backing track. It was hard to remove the smile from my face for the first couple of songs then the joke wore a tiny bit thin. Fair play to them tho, they seemed to entertain folks well.
Next, my first trip upstairs at the Stag & Hounds for Guncleaner who was fecking A. Well on the money, electronic music honed in the style of the great Pete Swanson, it involved a geezer who dabbled in extracting noises & beats from circuit boards which messed with your brain with the repeated beats & noises so you think you shouldn’t be able to dance to but you do, so much so that you dance your fecking socks off in the end. Wanna see him again. Soon. You can get a free download of his stuff here. Do, it’s rad.
Brain suitably, beautifully fried it was back downstairs for the trio Bad Guys who brought some serious riffs & heavy rocking to the bill. Loud, grindy metalcore, totally, beautifully out of nowhere & perfectly spot on, just what the night needed. Lots of head banging & bouncing on the spot.
Went home then & missed Ladyscraper. Soz chaps. I was fucked & I hadn’t had any tea, So I came home to a big bowl of frozen peas & banana / peanut butter on toast. I don’t know why either. What can i say, that’s veganzzz for ya eh?
Anthroprophh - Precession.
Another of Bristols finest doing the driving psychedelic cum krautrock thing; heavy, motorik beats, clanging industrialised guitars and surging drones. This is off their recently released album, also called Anthroprophh & released by the excellent Rocket Recording’s who frustratingly don’t seem to be into sending me promo for any of their releases!
They’re playing in Bristol on Sunday (see poster below - tiz an album launch ting I think) with fucking Big Naturals as their (his) backing band which is fucking cool except I’m kind of committed to going to see Dinosaur Jnr at Fiddlers. I saw the Anthroprophh / Big Naturals trio once before (when they were supporting Flipper) & it was fucking incredible. So tbh, given a straight up choice I’d pick Anthroprophh over Dinosaur Jnr but I’ve gone to quite a bit of effort to get list for both me & a mate for Dinosaur Jnr. Anyway, probably shouldn’t grumble about having to go see Dinosaur Jnr eh?
Shit me, this looks well sick. Fucking Title Fight! In Bristol! In, like, just a couple of months! With Rolo Tomassi too! Rad to the rad yo!
The lineup so far:
Not bad for starters eh? Sad thing is that it’s over three venues, two of which are my least favourite in bristol. The “fucking shithole” that is the O2 & the “no fucking stage diving or you get thrown out hellhole” that is the Thekla. Both are on my “venues to boycott list but guess I’ll pass that by for a lineup like this!
I know I almost exclusively talk about music on here but it just so happens that I also help organise Bristol’s world renowned Slapstick Festival which starts today. People literally travel here from around the world to check it out IT’S THAT GOOD. So for one post only I’m branching out into repping that over music.
The festival began mainly with the intent to showcase the comedians from the early days of cinema, most famously your Chaplins, Lloyds, Keatons & the Laurel & Hardys.
We’re 9 years old now and over that time we’ve branched out to include ALL silent / visual comedy. Hence we’ve had such guests as Terry Jones, Rob Brydon, Shappi Khorsandi, Michael Palin, Barry Cryer, Victoria Wood and many more join us over the years.
The centrepiece of each years festival is Friday nights gala. Below are some images which give you a pictorial insight into what to expect from it this year.
More info about the festival can be found on our website here, or for a full list of all our shows pick up a program from one the participating venues; Watershed, Arnolfini, Bristol Old Vic & Colston Hall. Alternatively check out this online version of the program (also downloadable).
Final shout out - the festival wouldn’t exist without Aardman whose Pete Lord & Nick Park will be kicking off the festival today conversing about Slapstick Animation at Watershed.
I'm the reviews & new music editor for Louder Than War & am always on the lookout for exciting new sounds - if you or your band is the purveyor of such hit me up. Similarly if you know of anything you think I'll be interested in get in touch too. All genres considered.
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