MP3: Django Django - Storm
It’s probably the most fun you can ever have saying a band name, but Django Django’s 'Storm' doesn’t sound much like a real storm at all, it’s way too tropical to be anything like a tempest. This is a song that’s much more at home in a natural climate of humidity and thermal currents, there isn’t one spec of rain on its horizon – there are no grey clouds – only blue skies, brown dirt, and golden/green snake skin harmonies. There is a lot going on with Django Django’s music, and there is even more to love, but this time, right now, it’s the tribal Californian beach drums bouncing like they’re using all their strength to pound sunshine into animal skins that makes my feet move so much - they sound so tap-tappa-tap-tappa. Jungle-surf music for the kids.Django Django (still fun to say!) are having a party in order to launch their new single, 'All Them Witches' - Plugs will also be on the bill so it should be a great show - check here for the when and where.
MP3: Kurran And The Wolfnotes - Your Four Limbs (Demo)We’re walking in straight lines because it’s the only way to move around out here. The roads won’t let you curve or deviate into softer lines and crossing the street is like a big game of traffic-roulette. The young men and women on scooters like to do it their way, they like danger and look for the challenge with keen eyes. I suppose we could have taken the Metro there, it would have only taken us 10 minutes, but where is the power in that? Where is the fun in standing underground, with the dirt and the dirty? No, we’re doing this on horse power, putting one foot in front of the other, and besides, there’s more to see when striding down these hills to the old city. Back home they told us, you must see everything, and we are.Our destination is The Colosseum, but our eyes keep touching the warm green trees overhead, they kind of look plastic in this heat, but they’re not – they’re very, very real. Across the street they provide shade to a small café that has all these half drunk coffee cups, thick with sunshine, sitting on tables outside, and they look like they belong here - like they’re part of a movie set, or theme park. We stop to run our fingers and lips through a haggard sandstone fountain and the buildings are perfect graffiti dreams, all twisted words in steam-blues, sun-yellows and royal-purples.
The Colosseum is smaller than I imagined. It’s still humongous, just smaller than it was inside my brain. They never said it would be like this though, they forgot to mention how your breath stops as you pass under each stone archway, or how your heart flutters like a busted tin drum when you stare out across where the arena floor once stood covered in sand and blood. Actually, thinking about it - in this light, and if you tilt your head slightly, you can still see their silhouettes duking it out. Feet stepping. Fingers wandering. All eyes Rome-ing.My brief trip to Rome gave me the perfect opportunity to spend time with my iPod and I got to know Kurran And The Wolfnotes music just a little bit better than I did before - I recommend you do the same.
Kill it Kid release their debut single next week, 'Send Me An Angel Down', and it's a bit of a beauty. It's soulful, painful (in a good way!), and albeit way, way, waaaaaay more bluesy, ebbs wonderfully wry into that sort of Anthony and The Johnsons' blue-bar-smoke sound. However, there are differences - lots of them. Kill it Kid don't really smoke here - no, no, no! They melt - like chocolate, or syrup - it's too sugary to be that crass or hard, which without a doubt is mostly down to the seriously warm, heart dancing strings and Chris Turpin's distinct, and smouldering vocals.
'Send Me An Angel Down' is available Monday 18 May via One Little Indian.
MP3: Yuksek - Extraball (Burns Remix) [via NME] My cousin had this neighbour once, I think Junior was his name. He had this birthday party a few years back, and invited everyone to get totally drunk on cocktails, the kind that come in over sized neon-coloured glasses with plastic decorations clinging to the lip. Anyway, he got sooooooo drunk as the night went on, boy was he really knocking them back hard; firetruck reds, baby blues, jungle greens and buttercup yellows, all gone in just a few short hours. It’s no wonder he started to feel sick. He turned such a weird colour, you could see it in his face, all the shades of all the drinks he’d drunk – we thought it was cool at the time. He eventually had to go to the bathroom, wobbly-legged and weaving through the people on the dance floor, bumping and shoving, and doing that half-falling-half-walking sort of thing that drunk people do when they try to move in a straight line. When he finally came out his face was still that weird colour, but this 6 minute remix of a Yuksek song was playing, and he just started dancing, I mean really going for it. He started to wave his hands in the air like he was trying to catch the "clap-thump-clap" coming from the speakers, and every time the vocals jumped into a robot noise he’d be jumping from foot-to-foot like the dance floor was on fire. He stopped as soon as the song was over and was sick all over his shiny black Chelsea boots – we thought it was cool at the time.
Burns' debut album will be out later this year, with the single 'Turbo' preceding it in July.
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Photo credit: probably the coolest looking skateboards anywhere in the universe over at Geekologie.
MP3: Life In Film - SorryA husky sort of stadium-pop that's full of sparkles - not like the stars at night though, it has more impact than that, more kick, more boom - it's probably more like the way nitroglycerin shimmers; oily and soluble - there are explosions here. After several listens it's very clear that it's the dry laxed vocal of Samuel Fry that leaps out of the fray and draws my ear the most. It's almost croaky, broken, and is definitely worn, but it sounds so peaceful and perfect amidst all those plinky-plink guitar strings and thunder-crash cymbal beats. 'Sorry' is Life In Film's debut single, which you can purchase on limited 7" vinyl from Rough Trade, or if you'd prefer, you can swap your email address with the band for it and check tour dates while you're there.It starts on the ground, anchored and rooted, but then everything becomes so very hazy. Eyes begin to ache and close, and things start to swirl and dance, it's no longer just a single man and his guitar, it's all patterns, purples, planets, and puppets. But all the while there is a voice, a constant, a truth, like the one right in the back of you're own brain, but this one is external, fragile and lilting like a flower. The voice is Conor J. O'Brien and he has that rare and special gift of being able to enthrall with both lyric and sound.Villagers will be offering their support to the Akron Family at their Glasgow show on May 22 - it should be one hell of a gig! Check details at the VillagerSpace, and also grab a copy of their delicious EP, 'Hollow Kind' via Road Records.***************************************Photo source: I forget, I'm sorry.
