Islands - Harm’s Way

Hailing from Montreal, Islands specialise in richly textured, symphonic power pop. Arm’s Way is their second record and sees them step effortlessly out of the shadow of their rather brilliant debut ‘Return To The Sea’ to offer up a wonderfully versatile record that sounds better with each subsequent listen. Lush strings sweep in and out of guitar-led, drum-crashing harmonies on the likes of ‘Life In Jail’, whilst the fun and frisky ‘Creeper’ will defy you not to tap your foot along to its infectious groove. The protean string sections on ‘In The Rushes’ and ‘Pieces Of You’ are enough to make Owen Pallett blush, while the eccentric theatrics of ‘We Swim’ are as diverse as its five-minute duration will allow. Each track feels as eclectic and twistedly constructed as the next, exemplified perfectly in ‘J’aime Vous Voir Quitter’, with its bombastic opening riffs and gently cooing chorus giving way to frantic Latino-tinged madness and the closing “gothic symphony in three acts”, ‘Vertigo (If It’s A Crime)’. James Gracey

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

DOWNLOAD: ‘I FEEL EVIL CREEPING IN’, ‘ABOMINABLE SNOW’, ‘KIDS DON’T KNOW SHIT’.
FOR FANS OF: IMMACULATE MACHINE, ARCADE FIRE, ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI.

Zombie-Zombie (Pt. 2)

Continued from part 1

How does it translate live, how would you describe the live show?

We’re just two people, a duo, so onstage we have all the instruments next to the edge of the stage at the front. It’s like a barrier between Etienne on keyboards and me on drums. We look at each other a lot, and it’s just two people, so there’s action and reaction between him and I all the time, and I really like it because you don’t have this when you’re a full band. When you do something, you’re sometimes like, ‘Oh it’ll be fine, the bass player…’ but when you’re just two people, and there’s something wrong, it’s really bad. You really gotta do something, find something to get over it. When you’re two people, there’s only one musician who needs to follow you, so you’ve got the freedom. The structure of the songs are like there’s nothing really planned. There’s a commencement and then we play around with the theme, and even if it’s not jazz, the way we play is closer to jazz music than rock or prog rock. Sometimes the songs are three times longer than the record when we play them live.

It must be very intense for you as well as for the audience.

Yeah, and sometimes it doesn’t work too, sometimes you play and people look at you like, ‘What are these guys doing?’ [laughs] But when it works, it’s great for both, yeah.

Do you have any visuals?

Sometimes, yeah. We have a friend doing it and it’s very simple, like the movie Tron. I like it, he’s a good friend of ours, but I find it distracting to the musicians. I like it sometimes, but I think there’s enough things to see; to watch on stage when we play. I don’t want to be the band playing in front of the images, do you know what I mean?

Do you think it takes the focus away from the music a bit?

Yeah. Sometimes it’s good to do that, but just once in a while.

You mentioned movie soundtracks and John Carpenter, and you mentioned jazz and prog rock as well. There’s a big Krautrock feel coming through – are you big fans of Neu! and Kraftwerk and people like that?

Yeah, of course.

Especially in the drumming.

Yeah, Jaki Liebezeit, Can’s drummer, is one of my favourites. I really like to do a very simple thing and stick to it. Then it becomes very hypnotic if you play the same thing for a long time and there’s no changes. It’s more powerful when you play simple things than doing really complex rhythms.

A lot of drummers that people hold up as being incredible drummers are very flashy, but there’s such an intensity to really metronomic drumming.

There’s great drummers who do really crazy shit and stuff, but myself, I know I’m good at sticking to a rhythm and being like a human drum machine. It’s fun.

It works in with the analogue electronic equipment as well.

Yeah, even when you use a drum machine like an 808, a really old drum machine, if you listen carefully to it, it’s not perfect. It’s not like a digital sample, it changes a little bit from one beat to another. This is what makes it great, I think. You can also play on it with drums. It’s not dead like I find sometimes with electronic music, digital drum machines and stuff.

And finally, is there anything else about the band that we should know about?

We just did a video for the first track called ‘Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free’. We did a remake of The Thing by John Carpenter with G.I. Joes, with stop motion. It’s pretty cool.

It certainly is - you can watch the video if you click here.

Interview by Chris Jones

A Land For Renegades is out now on Versatile Records.

www.myspace.com/therealzombiezombie

Zombie-Zombie

Parisian duo Cosmic Neman (left) and Etienne Jaumet have channelled a love for vintage synthesizers, John Carpenter soundtracks and Krautrock into something rather special on their debut album, A Land For Renegades. We cornered drumming zombie Neman to see if we could explode a few myths about the record.

Continue »

Roni Reprazents in Belfast

Drum ‘n’ bass standard-bearers Roni Size & Reprazent roll up at the Empire in Belfast this Saturday night (May 10). The show is part of a tour promoting the reworking of the seminal Bristol act’s 1997 album ‘New Forms’. Entitled ‘New Forms²’, the new album adds four new tracks to the Mercury Award-winning classic along with, as Size puts it, “the new coat of armour I have added to the original tracks.”

“I think fans of the original album always appreciated what we did with the technology of the day,” he adds. “This latest version shows what is possible now.” The live show should be one hell of a nostalgia trip for anyone who was on the case in 1997, as well as letting the rest know what they missed first time round. Tickets are priced at £14.

Caspa Codina (Pt. 2)

Your key influences all seem to hark back a couple of decades, would it be fair to say that you feel somewhat disappointed with contemporary music?

Well I listen to stuff now and it’s supposed to be this new fangled thing and yet really it seems that there’s nothing that you haven’t heard before. At the minute a lot of stuff is sounding like slightly psychedelic 1970s guitar music.

Lyrically, you seem to forage around the fringes of contemporary culture, taking unusual topics as the subject of your songs, like ‘You Will Never Feel The Same Again’, which picks up on Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream Story [The basis of Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, Eyes Wide Shut].

Yeah, the Schnitzler, it’s good just to put in these little details for people to pick up on. The idea of the party and this secret cult, I found it all interesting and thought it would make for an intriguing lyric. I’m into things like that, slightly strange, like David Lynch films. Also with a song like ‘Technology’, though I’ve never tried to upload my own head to the Internet, I do know enough of that world, have knowledge of people who are just so totally immersed in the Internet and online that I was able to write from their perspective.

Is there much overlap between the solo work you do as Caspa Codina and the full band project Spektrum?

When I come up with ideas I’m always thinking whether it would be something that works better as Caspa Codina, or Spektrum. I sometimes take ideas Lola Olafisoye, Spektrum’s lead singer, and she’ll go ‘ugggh”! [laughs] With Spektrum obviously I wasn’t the singer and yet I would write a lot of songs that were designed for me to sing. And it was from this realisation that Caspa Codina emerged.

Of course another type of balancing act regards the need to be both commercially and creatively viable. How difficult is this?

Well you’ve got to make a living. I suppose the big thing for me was doing the Lady Sovereign album [Public Warning]. I wrote most of the tracks on that with her and got a good publishing deal from it. However, she wasn’t ready for the exposure she got and though the album was set up to become massive it just never happened. Still I’d got a good deal off the hype of that and that has sorted me out financially for the last two or three years. Also Spektum do ok, we tour Europe and the track ‘Kinda New’ did well enough. Also, in the past I’ve done a little bit of work for adverts, sound design stuff and remixes. Little projects here and there which enable you to do other stuff. At the minute I’m working with an MC called Envy and things look good for her. You’ve just got to keep busy. Unless you’re fortunate enough to have a successful record you’ve got to work on a load of different projects. It’s too risky to put all your eggs in one basket.

You seem to be constantly working, restless in your approach to music making, have you already begun thinking about the next Caspa album?

A lot of the tracks on the debut were written years ago. I wrote a few tracks at the end of 2007 to finish off the album. So it would be nice to approach the writing and recording of the next album in one go. I think that would create a different sound. There are quite a few songs that didn’t work for this album that might make it onto the next one. I’m always coming up with new ideas and my ideal thing would be to be able to lock myself away in the studio for a couple of months and come out with an album. However, for the first album the diversity of sound works quite well, it introduces the listener to the whole world of Caspa Codina.

And now you’re almost ready to open that whole world to the public at large.

Yeah, well the album will be out and we’re over in Ireland in May. When we released the 12” previously we always had Irish DJs who supported us, so it’ll be good to be over. What’s exciting right now is that what I’m doing with Caspa Codina is somewhat different from what I’ve done before, it is more about me individually and it’s just a different experience. I do feel excited and feel like it’s really starting now, speaking to you.

Interview by Francis Jones

Caspa Codina by Caspa Codina released May 12

Caspa Codina website

Caspa Codina

Whispering dirty little nothings over a patchwork of ragged funk and hypnotic beats, Caspa Codina might just be the most exciting proposition you’ll receive this year.

Continue »

Boy Kill Boy - Stars And The Sea

They may have reacted angrily against the charge that they were somewhat ‘emo’, but the second long player outing from London four-piece Boy Kill Boy does little to distance them from such descriptions. Opener ‘Promises’ displays angst enough for any self-respecting rocker and is shot through with a tunefulness which is similarly evident in single ‘No Conversation’ and album highlight ‘Rosie’s On Fire’. Ultimately however there’s little to set Boy Kill Boy apart from their English contemporaries, though it’s to their credit that they manage to make an immediate impression on even the most casual of listeners. Kirstie McCrum

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

DOWNLOAD: ‘PROMISES’, ‘NO CONVERSATION’.
FOR FANS OF: THE ENEMY, ONE NIGHT ONLY, THE COURTEENERS.

The Mountain Movers - We’ve Walked In Hell And There Is Life After Death

Daniel Greene, singer and songwriter of The Mountain Movers, has the Devil on his back and there seems to be little to be done to get him off. Coupling an indie rock sensibility with the country tradition of using song to scrutinise one’s own damnation, the band imbue the songs with bar-room blues and even some mellow Seventies funk to give the album a classic, if somewhat safe, feel. The catchy pop of songs like ‘Not Quite Yet’ belie the pessimistic assuredness of the words, but the drunken swagger of ‘Leave a Light On’, with its clambering piano and slurring trumpet, sets a pleasurably apt tone for a fragile state of mind. Matt Nesbitt

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

DOWNLOAD: ‘I MET THE DEVIL ON A BUS’, ‘LEAVE A LIGHT ON’.
FOR FANS OF: DANIEL JOHNSTON, THE GOOD LIFE.

Cajun Dance Party - The Race

Cajun Dance Party’s ‘The Race’ couldn’t be any more appropriately titled. Kicking off with a big echoing surf guitar riff it manages to squeeze in everything from jangly indie to lush orchestration in four frantic minutes.

Seemingly determined to display everything they have up their sleeve and then some it ends up as something of a musical hotch potch. Perhaps it’s the folly of youth. After all when they’re not hanging out with producer Bernard Butler the band’s members are still at school hard at work studying for their A-Levels.

Then again, it’s harsh to criticise their willingness to experiment but ‘The Race’ could certainly do with is a little more scholarly discipline and a little less sonic experimentation. Stewart McCullough

Eastern Conference Champions - The Box

Singer Josh Ostrander’s vocals are a strange proposition falling somewhere between the spit and rasp of Thom Yorke and the snivel of Gollum from Lord of the Rings. They don’t so much dominate this song as slither all over it.

Backed by a military drum roll that sounds as if it was designed to soundtrack troops on their way to a far from pleasant end and with lyrics that talk of having “one foot in the gates of hell” it could all be a rather sombre affair.

Yet something strange happens halfway through ‘The Box’ and somehow the band manage to produce a startlingly uplifting chorus that’s both sing along and sinister in one unnatural alliance. Stewart McCullough

The Steers - Julia

Cardiff’s The Steers follow up last years ‘Rewind/Repeat’ with another déjà vu driven blast of Britpop past. ‘Julia’ kicks off encouragingly enough, rampant guitar and disco drums underpinning this tale of a relationship doomed. Unfortunately the familiar angsty mod pop lacks much in complexity and, though it is easy on the ear, the overcooked production and simplistic formula all seem a little contrived. B-Side ‘The Same Game’ is more distinctive and at least has a bit of menace about it, but lead singer James’ impression of Kele Okereke can grate. The Steers are clearly a capable bunch but would do well to use a little more imagination next time around.
Gerard McCann