Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business – Sandwiches
London-based Canadian artist Jenny Moore (Charismatic Megafauna, MUSARC choral collective, F*Choir) and her rabble-rousing vocal ensemble Mystic Business, have created a choral-punk album of vivid and epic scope. Today we premiere her brilliant new track ‘Sandwiches‘ replete with a bevvy of percussion, drums, gang yells, rounds, stamp-claps and hot breaths shift to choral singalongs its the sound of a sit-in at a #RESIST rally. Featuring members of Trash Kit, Deep Throat Choir, Regrouping, Dr Peabody and Bamboo.
From the get-go Jenny experienced music as something that people do together, whether it was her musician father rehearsing with his band at home, starting high-school punk bands with friends, or singing in church. ‘The act of communal singing has always felt really natural,’ she says. ‘I have a difficult relationship with the faith communities that I grew up in, but singing was a really good way to get attention as a teenager, to take up space, to take permission to be loud and funny in a community that insisted on quiet humility, especially for girls.’
Their S/T debut is due on 23rd November via Sheffield DIY label The Audacious Art Experiment.
Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard – Double Denim Hop
Following the success of Boy Azooga this year, Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard are the next cab on the rank from the Cardiff scene. Possessed of a playful take on the glam rock of the 1970s, their shows have elicited wild scenes in recent months. Splicing the classicism with an individual humour and an array of stone cold hip shaking rockin’ tunes. Having appeared on a split EP last year with Boy Azooga on cool Cardiff imprint it marked Buzzard out as a coming force, now with their moniker trebled Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard are certainly ones to watch. And their debut single proper ‘Double Denim Hop’ confirms it. An ode inspired by the confidence inspired by wearing two pieces of denim, this urgent rock’n’roll splattered track is infused with an effervescent energy that is somehow both redolent of the Sweet‘s Blockbuster and T.Rex‘s ‘Ride a White Swan’ yet isn’t a boring homage to either. Reassuringly, Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, this tune swaggers down the street with nifty guitar licks and vocal lip curls like the New York Dolls on their holidays, bursting into a super singalong chorus, far from pastiche this is utterly addictive, get up and dance now!
Desperate Journalist – Cedars
Desperate Journalist returned with a brand new seasonally autumnal single called ‘Cedars’ on Friday. Propelled along by epic percussive undercurrents, while Rob Hardy’s guitars spiral while Jo Bevan delivers her most tremendous vocal yet, and that’s saying something. Pulling at regrets of the heart with a melancholic yet life-affirming performance that trembles up and down the vocal register to capture tiny moments with evocative imagery (‘frayed jumpers’, ‘she kisses like flypaper’) that encapsulate the romance in the every day and enjoying them for what they are rather than allowing them to be consumed by anxiety. Cedars is magisterial.
“’Cedars’ is about the pervasive anxiety of the romantic that nothing will ever be enough,” confides Jo. “Small everyday moments that feel overwhelmingly beautiful in your life, when overanalysed, can be twisted into concern that perhaps that is all there is – that you’re never going to touch the stars. Or that your hope is false and you’ll never reach the indefinable glory and security you’re beating yourself up for not achieving. Maybe the bittersweetness of the little movie you live in is glorious though, and maybe you have arrived. Best worry about it some more…”
‘Cedars’ is the first track to be taken from their forthcoming third album, In Search Of The Miraculous, which is released on February 22nd 2019, and to celebrate the band support Marion at Islington Academy O2 on November 24th and a special intimate headline show at The Waiting Room, London on Tues 11th December, full dates below:
LIVE
24th November – London Islington – Academy O2 (w/ Marion)
11th December – London Stoke Newington – The Waiting Room (special underplay)
18th January – Sheffield – Record Junkee
19th January – Coventry – The Tin At The Coal Vaults
14th March – Birmingham – Hare and Hounds
15th March – Manchester – Deaf Institute
16th March – Glasgow – Broadcast
21st March – Bristol – Exchange
22nd March – Nottingham – Bodega
23rd March – Leeds – Lending Room
5th April – London Highbury – The Garage
KEYAH/BLU – Sweet
South East London artist KEYAH/BLU makes a striking debut with ‘Sweet‘ an undulating trip hop cut riven with old school beats and subtle flourishes, it’s slithered with Keyah’s sensuous vocal that runs through the experience of growth that reminds one of early Massive Attack, on this evidence she has huge potential.
KEYAH/BLU said about the release: “I wrote ‘Sweet’ one morning after sneaking out to my boyfriend’s house to spend the night with him – I got back home the next day and nobody had noticed I had even left. The song is about knowing what’s good for you whilst also indulging in things that might not be so good, and finding the balance. Light and dark. It’s inspired by human duality, ultimately. Women and men are hard and soft all at once. We fight this within us constantly, depending on the situation, leaving parts of ourselves feeling helpless while others thrive.
For the video, originally all I had was this image of 7 ninjas on a beach floating around in my head, like the 7 levels of my consciousness, and with the help of my friend Sonny Jake we were able to pull together an ironic narrative. I wanted to focus on feelings that weren’t necessarily touched upon in the song, the kidnapping has a lot of different meanings. The dark overpowering light, or vice versa, or masculine and feminine, or yes and no. It’s about the duality – but ultimately it just gives the song a nice twist that it doesn’t have on an audio-only level. I’m not a psycho girlfriend, I just wanted to show a side of me that the lyrics didn’t.”
Máni Orrason – Picture I Recall
Máni Orrason’s second album I Woke Up Waiting was released in the spring. Intense months lie behind the 20-year-old Icelandic multi-instrumentalist, who not only found a new love but also developed a new relationship with his musical work. For his new EP, a lot has happened for the young artist since, including discovering new facets in his music and working them out alongside producer Nikolai Potthoff.
‘Picture I Recall’, released on 2 November 2018 via Fries Boom Barrier/Guesstimate, and the first song on his upcoming EP, Máni Orrason questions his own self rigorously. This throbbing cut is swathed in synths and elegant production, that’s evocative catchy charm and artful vocals that are rife with self-introspection reminds one of John Grant or Perfume Genius. ‘Picture I Recall’ is about doubting one’s portrayal of self. The song asks if you can express a true identity within the different roles that you perform in life. “Baby will they know me like you did?”, he asks and discusses, whether you can be perceived the same way by a stranger and the person you feel the most comfortable with.
https://soundcloud.com/maniorrason/picture-i-recall-m
Vera Sola – The Cage
Vera Sola will release her debut album Shades on 9th November. Though a longtime member of Elvis Perkins’ band, Shades marks her first solo effort. Her stately most recent single ‘The Cage’ trots in to view with a sublime classicism and shuffling majestic vocal performance that’s both ghostly and universal. Somewhere between Joan Baez and Marissa Nadler this is seriously impressive songwriting writing that could have been released at any point in the last 50 years.
Speaking of the track and video Sola says:
“On the surface, the Cage is a retelling of the second book of Genesis. It’s sung from Eve’s perspective, till about 3/4 of the way through the song when it switches to the voice of God. Since it’s about biblical “first woman, second person” it’s by extension the story of any femme-identifying individual living in a patriarchal society. It wasn’t till I’d been singing it a while that I realized it was also a uniquely personal reckoning with my own sense of self and identity. Not just as a woman, but as a person who’s spent their life in the long shadow of who and what I came from.
The video is a collage of imagery evoked by the above. I borrowed an affectionate 6-foot boa constrictor from a friend, danced with ire in the shadows and fit my whole body into my mother’s old birdcage. (No one believed I could do it, but I won that bet.) Subtle. I know. So it goes. “
