Monday 28 October 2019
Saturday 26 October 2019
Listen! - Void Vertex - Concrete
Listen! - Life As Surface Noise - The Last Breath
Thursday 24 October 2019
Live Review - Creep Show + Kincaid feat Blancmange
Creep Show + Kincaid feat Blancmange
The Trade Club, Hebden Bridge
11 October 2019
There was something very amusing about a twenty-four year
old male telling his Dad to hurry up as the later chatted to fans outside the
bar area of the Trades Club. The young
man was Joe Arthur (aka Kincaid), his father Neil of Blancmange.
Up three flight of creaky stairs at the unassuming building
on Holme Street is a room appearing like a cross between a car workshop and a church
chapel, packed to the rafters with a sell-out crowd. There is an incredible feeling of anticipation
and excitement as cask ales walk freely with their accompanied owners of all
ages in the darkened room headed by a stage which appears to contain nothing
more than a table and a raft of cables and wires.
Joe and a Neil Arthur take to the stage, dressed head to toe
in black and momentarily seem to adjust and twiddle knobs before the opening bars
of the new Kincaid single Late For Sum, begin to hit the air. The young, fresh face on the underground club
scene has been remixing sounds for a plethora of artists of late and the
opportunity to take up a support slot to Creep Show is a well-timed move.
There’s a hard edge to the tracks which also contain
previous single Big Fat Head (with all vocals performed by a bespectacled
Neil), think somewhere between Orbital and Underworld and with a deep bass
undertone and you won’t be far wrong. Glances
to each other’s actions are commonplace as the LED lights flash on their torsos
and in the background. It’s like
Blancmange with a harder, clinical edge or, maybe it’s just the sound of
Kincaid, who really knows?
Nods of approval are abound as the Blancmange classic, Feel
Me becomes recognisable. It suits the updated
sound and seems the natural progression from Happy Families to Happy Families
Too to where it is now. Similarly, with
two more Blancmange tunes – What’s The Time? and I Smashed Your Phone - which
are also performed, working superbly well with the new arrangements and sound. Needless to say that they leave the stage to
rapturous applause which could fully justify an encore, instead father and son
look towards each other and embrace in a huge hug. It then becomes heartfelt moment for everyone
and the prospect of more collaborations is indeed exciting.
The mini album, Late For Sum is available here.
Creep Show are something of an enigma. American alternative rocker John Grant teamed
up with Wrangler who in turn comprise of Stephen Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire),
Benge (Blancmange, Fader, John Foxx) and Phil Winter (Tunng) make for an
interesting prospect and deliver nothing less than a riveting set.
Opening with the title track from their debut album Mr
Dynamite, it’s clear that this isn’t going to be any ordinary performance. Grant’s bluesy voice is a complete contrast
to the off-the-wall backing and it seems to work perfectly. Obviously, there are hints of Cabaret
Voltaire too, more so when Mallinder adds his own vocals, and the resulting set
is positively perfect. Shouts of
approval from certain quarters of the audience amuse the band and result in
reciprocated humour.
Benge stands to the right of Mallinder and provides
percussion for the evening, his fingerless leather gloves protecting his hands
which must take a pounding as his thrashes out some superb drum patterns and
Winter stand to the left of Grant almost hiding under a jacket and baseball cap
making him all but invisible though clearly busy on more of the musical
accompaniment. It will doubtless be said
again but, Creep Show look like some
modern day bastard sons of Kraftwerk, stood behind laptops and banks of
cabling, they are often still (with the exception of Benge) and clearly concentrating
on their work. Less conventional than
the German pioneers, Creep Show blend electro with weird (see Pink Squirrel or
Tokyo Metro) to a perfect end result. The
performance is phenomenal.
Vocals are shared, maybe unequally, between Grant and
Mallinder and the juxtaposition between the two adds another dimension to the performance. Grant’s vocals on the superb Safe And Sound
are nothing short of incredible through an hour long set that is faultless and
clearly one of the finest gigs many of the audience have seen in a long
time. Dancing (of sorts), foot tapping
and general bodily engagement can be seen everywhere.
Inevitably, there is an encore, just one song but, when it
becomes apparent that it is a version of Cabaret Voltaire’s Sensoria from 1984s
Micro-Phonies, the place goes wild.
Mallinder relishes every second and on its closing, the band leave the
stage to rapturous applause. Creep Show
are superb both live and on recording and, something not to be missed.
Kincaid/Blancmange photo by Terry Tyldesley. Creep Show photo by Paul Clarke.
Creep Show
Website
Twitter
Facebook
Kincaid
Soundcloud
Twitter
Facebook
Blancmange
Website
Twitter
Facebook
Published on Louder Than War 19/10/19 - here
If you enjoyed this article please follow hiapop on Twitter here, and like on Facebook here.
Creep Show
Website
Kincaid
Soundcloud
Blancmange
Website
Published on Louder Than War 19/10/19 - here
If you enjoyed this article please follow hiapop on Twitter here, and like on Facebook here.
Listen! - Kincaid - Love Of An Automaton
Soundcloud
If you enjoyed this article please follow hiapop on Twitter here, and like on Facebook here.
Watch! - Yova - Moondog
Monday 21 October 2019
Review - Deux Furieuses – My War Is Your War
Deux Furieuses – My War Is Your War (Xtra Mile Recordings)
LP / CD / DL
18 October 2019
Ferocious punk duo Deux Furieuses release their long awaited second album.
There can really be only one way to follow up a remarkable debut album and that is to repeat the feat with the second. Deux Furieuses stunned the music fraternity in 2016 with their self-released long player Tracks Of Wire and now Ros Cairney and Vas Antoniadou return where they left off, powering their way through eleven all new tracks which seem set to give them the huge recognition they deserve.
Newly signed to Xtra Mile Recordings, who also boast the likes of Frank Turner, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly and Beans On Toast within their roster, Deux Furieuses once more enlist the talents of producer Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey, Placebo, Scott Walker) and mix engineer Mark Freegard (New Model Army, Manic Street Preachers) who continue to breed a familiarity with the duo’s style and move things up a notch.
Album opener and lead track, Year Of Rage was written leading into the Votes For Women centenary and pays homage to the #MeToo movement which also features in the backing vocals. A rousing call to arms, it spits and splutters from the opening bars and shows the confident intent that the rest of the album is to display as it solidly struts and swaggers with a highly memorable chorus and high powered instrumentation, at times belying the fact that there are only two members to the group.
This new album adds an angrier, darker sound to that of Tracks Of War, the catchy choruses are still there but there’s now an edginess and almost risk taken approach. Civilians tackles the recent phenomena of fake news, political denial and lies absolving themselves from the obvious truth in a world becoming more and more focused on tabloid and social media news.
The title track is moody and emotive, almost empty with a simple percussive loop, a message and a statement, a wonderful interlude before the biting real life experience of Song For Kat which simply and brutally confronts real life experience of a friends suicide.
Deux Furieuses are exciting of that there is no doubt. Thorns kicks and roars, Let Them Burn unleashes anger at the horror of Grenfell and, Wired To Hate responds to the London Bridge knife attacks on Borough Market with a ruthless sincerity. There’s a reason that their debut album was so critically acclaimed and all those justifications are repeated with My War Is Your War. The road to success may be shorter than they think.
Published on Louder Than War 10/10/19 - here
Saturday 19 October 2019
Saturday 12 October 2019
Listen! - Simon Grab - The New Kind
Thursday 10 October 2019
Listen! - Two Meters - The Nightmare
Listen! - Assassin Of Sound - Malus Domestica (Full Fruit Sunny Day)
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