Mixtape: April 2014

Hello you,

As in previous months, it gives us great pleasure to curate a mixtape with the majority of artists and tracks featured on the blog in April 2014...

Cheerleader - Perfect Vision

Picture a released balloon soaring up into a perfect, cloudless sky. What colour do you imagine it to be? If it's red, you've passed. Ten points for you.
Now picture more summery goings-on. Slo-mo water fights, legs hanging out of convertibles, you know the sort of thing. Now click the link below.

Bernard + Edith - Spell On U

A glitchy groove sits glaring at you from the back of the room as the track title is looped in incantation.

Flip side of recent hammer-swing single 'Poppy' from these Mancunian blues-tronica witch-doctors.

Trampolene - Alcohol Kiss (video)

Trampolene release a new video for explosive single 'Alcohol Kiss'.
Before you line up the tequila on the bar, why not read our track review of 'Alcohol Kiss' from last month?

The Boy I Used To Be - Friday Morning

Tambourine-shaking, hazy morning sunshine, shuffling-psych, lo-fi fuzz from Portsmouth's Edward Perry.

Whilst Perry gazes at his shoes with fingertips poised at the laptop keyboard, we gaze at the dancing shadows of Clint Boon, Beck and Mark 'Eels' Everett being cast on the Mancunian cellar-club wall.

Promising debut.

Glass Ankle - One Of Them

Starting out with a little guitar riff, Ankle maestro Greg Jackson trills out his semi-falsetto spinning a tale of lust in the bakery aisle and pulls off some lovely, easy-sounding pop.

The track builds into a full-on indie-shuffler and suggests Jackson is a card-carrying Nineties muso.
Seriously 'One Of Them' would not sound out of place as an album track on Blur's 'Parklife'. There's Verve and, indeed, verve abound here too.
Finally, congrats must go out for the couplet rhyming 'Hovis' and 'pelvis'.

You - In Halves

Suppose David Lynch dreams of an ex-lover's spectre appearing in a moonlit graveyard.
Here comes the soundtrack. Distant, breathy vocals over minor keys and eerie, airy synths float white and silver above the ground. Brr. There's a suitably unsettling, kooky video that accompanies this track too...

Stillwave - Modes Of Transport

An Interpol with extra crunch produce a tantalising four-minute punch.

New-wave executed knowingly by this Dutch trio laying more disconsolate rails ahead for the Joy Division Midnight Express...

Free Swim - Meal For One

A quite remarkable commentary of modern life, box sets and Ian McShane.

Maui - Fine Kind Of Idle

Cartwheeling, piquant pop with a just-been-slapped grin on its face.

With fuzzy-funk bass that just doesn't give up and pleasing quantities of guitar-based sunshine jangle these surf-psych wunderkinds would settle very nicely into your summer holiday playlist.

Maui are Harry, Sam, Charlie and Mark from darkest London and according to Harry Maui, they just wanna have fun. Well, why not indeed!

Polymath - La Unión De Roku & Demipenteract

Astounding math-rockmanship from this trio of Brighton wizards.

Pulses of asymmetry ripple, jingle, phase, pop and jive towards you leaving you lost counting beats with numbers that probably don't exist.

If you feel the need to listen again, search for some live footage via their FB page. It's all the more impressive when you see actual humans creating the waves of sound...

The New Hellfire Club - WeAreNotWhatWeAre

Northampton psych outfit, The NHC, impressed us last month with 'Brahma Kamal' and now they are sharing their new tripped-out video for the upcoming single 'WeAreNotWhatWeAre'...

Movie - Ads

A neat slice of twisting, bounce-along, Eighties FM-flavoured rock-art supplied with fresh, candid observations from new indie-funking-abouts, Movie.

Three London art-school buddies fronted by Korean, Theo Spark, follow on from their Franz-a-like, schlock-horror-pop tickler single, 'Mr Fist' released last month...

Pool - Harm

German indie-funksters, Pool, who count three in their team, peddle their hi-hat-troubling, disco-bass sound while Alex Kapranos and friends stand at the back of the room and nod approvingly in time...

Echo Trails - Hazy Horizons

This London/Cambridge collective lays a varnish of gypsy-folk over a Doors-y halluci-rock.
Baltic viola, imagined flamenco handclaps and footstamps, fronted by the purposeful female lead of Dimitra Tzanakaki who, probably with a wild look in her eye, swoons and sails her vocal over the hypnotic, swirling accompaniment...

Kongos - I'm Only Joking

Thumping, riding alt-glam brothers with hair and guitars flapping wildly in the wind.

They have Greek roots and there's a Eastern Mediterranean vibe that really makes this single stand out. Also apparent is

Yellow Ostrich - Cosmos (album)

Alex Schaff has been reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos since the last 2012 release by NYC alt-rockers, Yellow Ostrich. 

Evidently he has been appreciating the big-scheme of things and where he fits into this little Universe of ours. In contrast to previous albums, this seems to have helped settle the played-out themes and moods and that perhaps he's now a narrator looking into his own state and his relationship with others.

The other full-time half of the Ostrich, Michael Tapper, spent a month on the Pacific Ocean sleeping under the same stars that Schaff was dreaming about. 

The experience of space around you when felt with and without loneliness threads through this album...

Tilly Dalglish - Painted Faces

From a cathedral chorus emerges Tilly's gentle, charming mandolin and her breathy, sweet voice, like that of Vashti Bunyan, sings a crushing ballad.

Dalglish picks up

The Amazing Snakeheads - Here It Comes Again

A bad trip powered by knuckleduster hands and 800 brake horsepower bass.
The Glaswegian scuzz-rock shamans deliver on their promises on debut album 'Amphetamine Ballads'.

More quality from the pedigree stables of the eminent Domino records.
Single and debut album out 14 April 2014. Performing in a venue near you April and May.

10Tigers - Owned

The drums push the vox along. The guitar chases the bass. A band in motion clamouring for air.

It is lo-fi in its literal sense but that seems deliberate and increases the immediacy.

There's a song and a message right here too. The rests in the vocal line letting the music

Waste - Blow

Exactly three minutes of exacting balls-out rock, sounding more Rancho De La Luna than Stevenage.

Waste sound like a gang. Phased, grunge guitar from Max and Josh's pile-driver bass coolly hang back as Jak Melvin's tale of lust swaggers off after that girl towards the door.

These guys have studied their genre hard,

The Derevolutions - Now You Know My Name

Tick-tock, head-tock, clockwork pop ridden by a cutesy-pie indie chanteuse.
Brass and whistling tends not to enamour the indie-crowd but this technicolour, dancefloor filler will undoubtedly bring them

Billionaire - Tammy Paints Pictures/Trustees

Billionaire is the creation of London Whitechapel's John Sterry. The very English observations "condemning the idolisation of the rich and famous" sit comfortably over some quite gentlemanly, minimal accompaniment.

You may have heard Sterry before, fronting indie-popsters Gaoler's Daughter. Now on his own, he says he imposed "strict limitations" on himself, restricting the sound he could create. 'Tammy...' with the

Marmozets - Why Do You Hate Me?

Sinew-tearing, visceral and confrontational but this isn't another teen-punk sensation.
Two sets of siblings (3 x MacIntyres and 2 x Bottomleys) have been recording and playing live as Marmozets since 2011 and this single really cuts through.
With howl-growling lyrical insight, an all-knowing guitar complement, stop-start time changes and a hard-ass work ethic,