I was stopped in the street by a homeless guy at lunchtime. There's nothing too unusual about that - there are plenty in the park near ANBAD Towers. The park seems to serve as a kind of Tramp Créche, and usually, they potter around happily, drinking Frosty Jack's cider and worrying the middle classes. Anyway, this particular unsteady guy asked me for money. In fact, what he specifically said was, "Excuse me mate, have you got any spare change? I need eleven pence." Eleven pence? Specifically eleven? Why?

This was an unusual tactic, and nearly threw me from my usual tactic of gruffly mumbling, "no," whilst feeling slightly empty inside and walking on, but I held firm and screwed him out of his 11p. Such left-field thinking from our nation's homeless folk means that surely a new super breed of tramp has arisen, and any time now, will be the taking over. I, for one, welcome our our bearded, surprisingly sportswear-beclothed and befuddled masters.

So while we wait for the Trampocalypse, how about a little light music? Today's New Band isn't really a band - he's a solo artiste - but I'm not changing the name of the website for just anybody, you know. E. K. Wimmer is a songwriter who is recording music solo after a seven year absence, which I think is a long enough time to re-classify him as 'New'.

His songs linger in that space between simple and complex. At their barest, the songs' sparseness is enveloping, mournful and close. Simply Call My Name starts as a lovely, intimate voice 'n' guitar song which then explodes unexpectedly. A burst of loud, shocking noise could, in other circumstances, have been a cheap trick, but here it actually underlines the lovely lyrical lament.

The Closer We Get is the sound of a hurt man sidling up to you and spilling his story, in a tearfully masculine way. Gentle and harsh; raw and slick; distant and cloying - E.K. Wimmer's songs manage to occupy both sides of the same coin.

'Emotion' is a dirty word in rock because of the ridiculous posturing and exaggeration of the Emo idiots (Emorons?), but here it is, laid out before you. And not a straightened asymmetrical fringe in sight, which is why you might fancy a listen to E.K. Wimmer right here.

Labels: simple sounds, slightly mournful, wistful

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I'm still persevering with my Spanish class, much to the surprise of, well, me, mainly. I think it's because it was paid for up front and I'm too tight to drop out. Anyway, any progress that was being made courtesy of my guapa Argentinian teacher was dashed last night when it was revealed to us that in Spain they have two verbs for "to be".

This mind-boggling Ta-Da! Surprise! threw me, as the decision of whether you use Estar or Ser - the offending verbs - hinges on some sort of arbitrary psychological hunch of whatever situation is being described. And all the while, my well-meaning teacher was making personal guarantees that Spanish is actually a very easy language.

Simplicity is comforting. This alone can explain the popularity of say, Paris Hilton. You know exactly what you're going to get - and in her case it's teeth-grindingly annoying vacuousness. It gives people a nice simple starting point for whatever they want to do or feel next.

Music is the same. There's a reason that DJs at wedding discos the world over always play the same crappy songs ad nauseum. You won't find Uncle Tony frugging to Aphex Twin's Canticle Drawl after a few too many sherries anywhere.

Today's New Band are super simple - a straight down the line, groin thrusting, cymbal smashing rock band. It's a combination that produces duff bands with unerring regularity. I am Austin though, have got it right, right, right. Stripper sounds as sleazy and grimy as you'd expect. It's about strippers, having a good time, and then writing a song that describes it all. What more do you want for it? Contextual analysis?

I Am Austin are all hair, hormones and songs about lust. This Air Is Acid, which I hope is a song regaling the pungency of a particularly toxic fart, lurches at you drunkenly, scrabbling for balance and not finding it. It's a big, bruising song that always threatens to explode violently. Similarly, Zombie Town rages and clanks dementedly.

I Am Austin are in that happy, early, just-enjoying-the-feeling-of-making-this loud-noise phase, with the added pleasure of creating great, mental songs along the way. And none of the band members are called Austin, either. I like that. You'll like them too - listen here!

Labels: chunky, sex, strippers

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I once found myself chatting to a man in a pub who worked in a Hi-Fi shop. He was the kind of guy you'd expect to find working in a Hi-Fi shop - gawky, not quite fully aware of other people's personal space, that kind of thing. But he was nice, even if he was one of those audiophiles who obsess about sound quality over what's actually being listened to in the first place. I got the feeling he listened to a lot of Bruce Springsteen. But I digress.

I asked him what songs they play to test the quality of new CD players, amps and speakers. He said that for quite a while now, they'd used Angel by Massive Attack, by virtue of its ridiculously heavy bassline, which, Hi-Fi geek speaking, separates the Separates from the Separates.

As much as I love Mezzanine, the album that opens ominously with Angel, I'm not sure if I'd want to take it out of context as an enjoyable bit of dubby music and make it into an everyday quasi-scientific experiment. Music is enjoyment for its own sake, isn't it?

Speaking of enjoyment, music and experimentalism, here's Today's New Band, The Furbelows. "I'm a fun-loving, heat-seeking pleasure machine," they howl excitedly on Pleasure Machine, a song that's so much fun and so good, I was almost positive it was a cover, but if it is, I can't find any traces of the original anywhere.

This can only mean it's all theirs and this is a good thing. Pleasure Machine rips up the carpet, stomps its Cuban heeled feet into the floorboards and before you know it, has created a clammy, uninhibited party. It's as simple, attractive and as much fun as a Playboy Playmate, and twice as pleasant to listen to.

After a start like that - and I assume that The Furbelows will start their gigs with it, not to mention every single public engagement forthwith; weddings, funerals and doctors appointments included - it's not too surprising, or unfair, that none of their other songs match it for bombast, at least.

That's not to say they're no good, though - What Whiskey Is For is nearly the kind of song that Spiritualized would write if they had a sense of humour. But, if you want a blast of pure, eccentric, in-capital-letters-FUN, you could do no better than clicking here and putting Pleasure Machine on loop.

Labels: deranged, Lounge Act, unsigned

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Here's a horrible truth: the rock 'n' roll world is overwhelmingly unfair. Unfairer even than real life, where bad stuff happens randomly to whoever, whenever. In Rock 'n' Roll World, the odds are actually stacked against you if your band is one or any of the following:

1. New
2. Inventive
3. Good

This is a bit of a problem. Surely all of those things are what everyone actually wants to hear? And weren't bands like, duh, The Beatles all of those things and a bit of a success? Well, yes and yes. BUT - here's the trump card: Scouting For Girls. Not only are they a band utterly devoid of imagination, talent or likability, but they are also hugely successful.

They have sold over half a million copies of their execrable debut album. I have been clinging onto a vain hope that this figure is so inflated because an eccentric millionaire, driven crazy by the gut-wrenching inanity of the omnipresent She's So Lovely, has been buying every copy available to prevent the general public from ever having to listen to it. But I think this might not be the case.

What is so galling about Scouting For Girls' success is that, at heart, they are a simple Indie band that plays simple Indie tunes - much like the wonderful Popguns did in the late 80's. But guess which band sold a bazillion copies of their album, and which one sold half a dozen?

Celebrate the good bands, while you can, is the moral of this story. One of these good bands is Today's New Band. Weird Gear have taken the soundtrack from a low budget early-80's sci-fi TV show and made it into music that is both enjoyable and danceable. This alone is some achievement, especially if you've ever sat through an early-80's BBC sci-fi show.

While the title of Hamm Ond Cheese is almost too pun-tastic for words, it bubbles enthusiastically along, pulsing forwards with all the electro lo-fi nerdishness you'd expect of a band that have excitedly drawn up, in mind-boggling detail, a list of every single piece of electronic gubbins they used to create the sounds.

This is all part of Weird Gear's charm - electro-instrumental nerds are still outsiders in the four-square guitar-drums-bass-singer world of Rock 'n' Indie. Songs like Moulange, synth-o-tronic and sweeping, are so out of place with music today that they travel full circle and become vital in their opposition to the norm. Cobble together a Dalek out of toilet rolls and papier maché and travel back in time with Weird Gear here!

Labels: human-computer hybrid, PUNS, synth-o-tronic

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The clocks going back a single measly hour confused me almost completely this weekend. On the night itself, I woke up repeatedly, churning over the bowel-loosening possibility that I might be waking up a WHOLE HOUR earlier or later than I thought. This, apparently, is of great importance to my subconscious self, much to my sleepy frustration.

If my mind boggled so pathetically at the prospect of gaining an extra hour in bed, imagine what turning back the clock 20 years or so might do. Bands manage to do this all of the time, endlessly recycling, rejuvenating and scrabbling for new scraps of interest to find new sounds and new directions, without spending all night thrashing around with worry. Perhaps it's another sign that I would have been a hopeless rock star.

Conversely, Today's New Band, Cut Cut Copy, have all the signs of making a very good rock band. It's hard to tell whether Heart For You is an of-the-moment rock song, with its angular, choppy guitars and urgent drumbeat, or a song which shows a band deliberately not courting Cool. Cut Cut Shape find themselves looking back to when big echoey guitars were de rigeur and even bigger, croony vocals weren't something to be embarrassed about. Swirling and cavernous, but without any bloat or pretence, Heart For You is a neat calling card for their sound.

There's something incredibly satisfying about the manner in how whichever Cut Cut Shaper it is that delivers the vocals (it might be one or more from: Tom, Joe, Jake, Josh or George - which sounds a bit like the line-up from a crime-solving gang in an Enid Blyton book). It's a voice that's heartfelt, unconcerned with artifice and not at all worried about trying to force an awful faux-Estuary Accent down our throats like The Kooks, Scouting For Girls et al. Crossing The Line is a good song made better as the vocals' directness engages with you, lapel-grabbing and alive.

There's something indefinable about Cut Cut Shape that, I dunno, sounds old and yet new. A hopeless description, yes, but that's about as fully formed an opinion as I feel capable of. This is hopefully due to their unusually dynamic and powerful sound, and not my unreasonable confusion that has arisen since the clocks went back, but who can know for sure? Well, you can, young 'un, by visiting their Myspace page, right here.

Labels: confusion, nostalgia, Pick 'n' Mix

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I've got to the age where all of your friends start to get married. At the weekend, I'm going to my third one this year. There was supposed to be a fourth, but the bride and groom-to-be got stroppy and split up. Once my initial disappointment at the vanished possibility of a free bar subsided, I was actually quietly pleased. Three weddings in one year is exhausting enough. God knows what it's like for the bride and groom themselves (and that sentence, I've just realised, works both as a rhetorical musing and a statement).

From what I've seen this year, weddings are usually 10% for the couple's benefit and 90% for everyone else's. You might want to get married whilst wingwalking on a biplane over the Grand Canyon, dressed as Paul and Barry Chuckle, but the hard-earned familial clout of Auntie Mabel and Granny Ethel's desire for a church wedding with meringue dresses will usually win out.

It makes me wonder if this same dilemma is broached by bands. Sure, most bands at the start just 'play what we like playing, so if anyone else likes it, that's a bonus,' and most of them trot out that banality to the NME with ever-impressive gusto. But some bands must arrive at a point where they start playing to the gallery, or else there would be no explanation for Coldplay's transformation from mildly-interesting indie band to world-straddling MOR, AOR behemoth.

I think Today's New Band, Dada Yakuza, are an example of a band that does both. It has to be for the crowd - music this brilliantly mental can only be designed with a roomful of heaving, sweaty bodies in mind. BUT - their music is so un-selfconscious in its slavish devotion to just getting on the dancefloor that it's not worried about what other people think.

Perhaps they've managed to straddle the divide. Perhaps they don't even think about it in the first place. Perhaps I'm just trying to read too much into their fabulously BANGIN' CHOONZ.

With the latter thought in mind, it would be unfair to delve any further into their music, other than to say, it's wonderfully messy, loud, ridiculous and stupid, in all the best kind of ways. Dada Yakuza are noisy, hard, carefree and intent on having a good time, and if you can find a better way to end the week then don't click here. But I bet you can't.

Labels: CHOOOON, loopy, ROBOTS

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Here’s a question: if you were given the chance to do anything, what would you do? Up sticks and travel the Dreaded Student Trail of Thailand – Vietnam – Australia, which is surely so well-worn that there must be a metre-deep groove trodden all the way from Bangkok – Sydney? Maybe you’d copy Paris Hilton and buy every terrible handbag, dress and tiny dog available and then thrust your way onto MTV, ensuring that your bank balance and feelings of self-worth are forever at opposite ends of the scale.

Both of those things pale into comparison to announcing that you’re going to build a rocket car that travels at over 1000 MPH. This is an impressively crazy idea, and, I’m truly proud to say, is a crazy British idea. While other nations are trying to travel to Mars or find out ways of making clean energy, we’re bragging about how we’re going to sling a trembling man along a Utah salt flat faster than a bullet.

All of these are ultimately futile activities (especially the 1000 MPH car one – I’m wondering what applications that it might have in the ‘real world’ other than making 15 year old Physics Club nerds weak at the knees) but that’s the point. The fun things in life are the ones that, in the grand scheme of things, are pretty pointless.

If all that is true, then Today’s New Band, Amnésie, are as pointless as it gets, because the music is brilliantly daft, noisy and direct. Once again France proves to be the originator of more throwaway, inventive, fabulously danceable music, and Attention Petit Lapin is a glistening example of this. It follows the rules and it doesn’t follow the rules. It builds and releases, but sometimes it doesn’t build and release. It draws sounds from any recent decade you care to mention, and then squeezes it into whatever shape it wants.

Amnésie must have a soft spot for rabbits - Lapin Numero Un is also jumpy, jokey fun. It’s the sound of him stretching his muscles and creating a brilliant song without much effort, as are the rest of his songs. I dunno how they keep doing it in France, but they do and they are.

If this has made anything explicitly clear (and it probably hasn't) it's that it doesn’t matter if your ambition is to write songs about rabbits or just going very fast in a straight line - but do listen to Amnésie here!

Labels: animal themed, French, stupidly bangin'

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I got eyed up by two strippers yesterday, as I was walking through Chinatown. I say 'eyed up' - what I mean is that they broke off from their cigarette break out side the strip club, performed that glance-at-your-face-then-shoes-then-face-again routine and carried on talking about thongs or lubricant or whatever it is strippers chat about.

I suppose the reaction to their casting an eye over me was fairly non-descript - there were no deep, longing sighs or anything, but I like to think that the conversation was then all about how truly dreamy it would be if someone like me would lustily tuck ten pound notes into their garters instead of sleazy businessmen.

Walking away, not sure if I felt elated or mildly underwhelmed, it occurred to me that they may well have been chatting about Quantum String Theory, for all I knew. Perhaps they were the kind of strippers from the movies that are only doing it to pay their university fees, and actually have very incisive views on Foucault's Post-Structuralist ideals. People aren't who you might assume them to be.

Take Today's New Band, Hot Like Curry. They say that they 'can't play their own instruments' (not strictly true) and are 'a gimmick' (possibly strictly true). They have one song, Pigeon. "You're so seedy - we love it really," they squeal. It's a great, pocket-sized, buzzsaw song that's worthy of two minutes of anyone's time, and then another two minutes. Hot Like Curry have only been in existence for about as long as it's taken me to type this, which frankly, is reason enough to feature them on ANBAD.

Hot Like Curry sound like a roomful of teenage girls having a ton o' fun with the twin powers of guitars and yelping, but who knows, they could be an offshoot from a Women's Institute music project, or teenage boys with very high voices. It could have been those two strippers. Who cares, it's about as new and fun as any song you'll hear for, like, ages - so listen to it here!

Labels: satisfyingly short, strippers, yelping

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I'm jealous of Today's New Band. They're from San Francisco. I spent a month in San Francisco a couple of years ago and I'd happily give my eye teeth to go back to there RIGHT NOW. San Francisco is one of those cities where all of the things you've heard, and all of the things you haven't heard about it are true, and very visible. I was repeatedly told that it was 'very European', but it wasn't in the slightest.

It wasn't even American. It was its own, eye-rattlingly strange, determinedly varied world, packed full of crazies, stoners and professional 'characters'. I loved it, and walked around, mouth open at the shining brilliance of EVERYTHING I gawped at. It was all I could do from chaining myself to something very large so that I couldn't be deported when my visa expired.

Tartufi are Today's New Band. They were the band whose songs were playing in my addled mind while I was stumbling through Haight, Chinatown or the Mission, except I didn't know it yet. Much like you'd hope from a San Franciscan band, their music is a strange mix of prog sensibilities and indie lo-fi practice. I'm aware that that sounds like a match-up specifically invented by someone who is out to spoil your fun, but it fits nicely, and Tartufi sound ace.

Mourning's Wake, the title of which fulfils A New Band A Day's Weekly Pun Quotient in one fell swoop, clinks and clanks like the sound of a miniature xylophone falling down the stairs of a doll's house. It has that welcome Blue Monday-esque trick of not introducing vocals until at least halfway through the song, then dashes here and there like an (admittedly oxymoronic) well-rehearsed jam. Ebeneezer You Are Rotten further demonstrates their impatience, flipping from noise-rock to tinkling nursery rhyme and back again without care for your nervous fragility, before soaring stratospherically, all echoey guitars squeals and mad cymbal splashes.

Tartufi sound like they'd be a great band to see play live - and if you live in the US, you might be able to find out, as they're touring RIGHT NOW! Everyone else should visit their Myspace page and experience the audio equivalent of jumping in seven directions at once.

Labels: all over the shop, creative overload, tinkling

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Human bands are history! A bold proclamation, true, but look at the facts in this video of robo-band The Trons. At the very least, The Trons demonstrate that even crudely-cobbled together bits of old hoovers and Meccano can make better music than The Kooks. Final proof then, that when computers take over the planet and they become our MERCILESS ROBOT OVERLORDS, things won't be so bad after all.

The Trons aren't today's new band, because whilst they are better than the majority of the lumpen nonsense-mongers that call themselves bands, robots just don't count. When a robot is aware enough to find that comment discriminatory, I'll alter my stance, but not before.

Today's New Band are actually Alasalakalaska. No, I haven't managed to say it out loud correctly yet either, and no, they're not from professional moron Sarah Palin's home state. It's a complicated name which might make them virtually impossible to ever be found via Google, but maybe that's what they want.

Actually, it's supposed to be read 'Alas, Alak, Alaska,' which, whilst being much more coherent is actually a bit less fun to type. On that basis alone, I'll stick with the long, incoherent spelling for now.

Alasalakalaska are a strange, pleasant combo of rigid beats, flautists, wobbly vocals and catchy tunes. Crystal Power Attack, woozy, dreamy and echoing, left me feeling slightly drunk and happily confused as it wove its way to a clinking, jolting end.

In Finick While Clicking It's..., they are confident enough to bolt a lovely, looping quasi-chorus to a lovely, looping song, not worrying too much about traditional composition or structure. It sounds almost entirely new - it may as well have been written by a music-producing computer programme that hasn't quite been finished yet. Perhaps today's new band is The Trons after all.

This all means that today, I have learnt two things:

1. Perhaps The Kooks should lock their instruments in a room with some old washing machines and grandfather clocks, and maybe they'll release a half-decent album;
2. Alasalakalaska are wonderful, lilting and overwhelmingly unusual, all of which are reasons enough to listen to their songs here!

Labels: human-computer hybrid, pronounciation confusion, ROBOTS

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Life is constantly full of surprises, which is what makes the whole 'being alive' thing so much fun. Here are just two surprise discoveries I have made in the last few days:

1. That Schindler's List actually has funny bits. Not just ones that make you smile wryly, and then get back to sobbing uncontrollably, either; but big, guffaw-inducing parts. Not many, granted, but they are there, if look (or drink) hard enough.
2. Dogs look like deflated dog-shaped balloons if you turn them upside down.

The nicest surprise of all though was to find out that old A.N.B.A.D. favourites Heartbeeps have teamed up with Laura Wolf and spawned a whole new muso-being. Even more happily, both of their respective traits of loopy pop and twinkly lo-fi seem to have melded perfectly into a whole new pop/lo-fi (po-fi?) BEAST.

Warm to the lupine howls of Internet Forever, and find yourself involuntarily thrusting towards the saccharine-sweet buzzy drone of Break Bones. It's like discovering an old unlabelled TDK C90 and finding a whistling, two-tone indie pop classic amongst the static. 3D nearly reaches Jesus and Mary Chain heights of ear-bothering fuzz and crunch, furnishing itself with a chorus that is both sturdy and chirpy.

So, a happy and disorientating end to a happy and disorientating week on A New Band A Day. Perfect. Listen to the dream-buzz of Internet Forever, and wait for the weekend's loving embrace.

Labels: confusion, drifting, fuzzbox frenzy

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Williams Syndrome is a brain disorder. Those who have it often display likable symptoms - extraordinary love for music, unusual communication skills and a general happiness, whilst lacking in common sense and predictability. Today's New Band, Oreaganomics, personify all these things, playing fast, loose and carelessly with all the noise they've just realised is at their disposal.

So then Happy Plate is a fairground organ gone bad, wild, disordered and drifting in and out of coherency; the happy-sinister music you'd expect to be playing when the Joker appeared in the 1960's TV version of Batman. It's a hip-hop skip through a dream where everything is in terrifyingly bright Technicolour, until the buzzy lo-fi guitar ending that's as welcome as it is unexpected. Iceberg shuffles insistently, tramping a rough beat over and over, obliterating and then re-discovering itself again.

Leaping sideways just when you don't expect it, I Feel Fine is as washed-out as Fabio's jeans, albeit with less tightly defined buns and much more substance. It swishes back and forth like a lazy wave humping a beach, sparse and loose.

Oreaganomics give you an idea of what today's music would sound like if all records were still pressed onto wax cylinder. Spasmodic, restless and inventive, they burst with eclectic frenzy, over and over again. Great. Let Oreaganomics melt your mind here!

Labels: deranged, not-quite-NOISE, Pick 'n' Mix

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We started yesterday with a quotation, and that shaped up pretty well, so here's another one: "The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability." That one was from Edgar Allen Poe, and it makes us think our writing has some associated respectability when really, it doesn't. In all honesty, we still haven't totally figured out what he's trying to say. But anyway, - PUNS! - we can't get enough of 'em at A New Band A Day.

So, inevitably, it's Another Day, Another World-Class Pun. Today's New Band is - wait for it - Awesome Wells. His music is soft, strong and long, like Andrex toilet paper, except you wouldn't want to wipe any part of your body on this - it's too good.

The Highs and Lows of... is an eight-minute long magnus opus, that starts with chanting rounds, clapping, brass and a military drumbeat and then decides that, having started with such a rich and varied sound palette, everything else may as well be thrown into the pot as well. Strings, glockenspiels, accordions and samples of big bands then all make a fleeting appearance. On paper, this sounds like a recipe for overblown, rock-star-experimenting-with -new-solo-material- type disaster, but Awesome Wells clearly has a deft touch and all the sounds are massaged gently into something that is not only coherent, but hypnotically soothing.

After that, how many people would then have the audacity to cover the Theme From Twin Peaks? To anyone who has spent hours drawn in my David Lynch's masterpiece of TV weirdness, the song has such strongly defined emotions stitched to it that this too seems like a bold step too far, but Awesome Wells gets away with it in style. Removing it almost completely from its' origins and yet retaining every haunting nuance is some achievement in itself, but to then pull it away even further into new, fascinating places, as the five-minute weird-out at the end does is evidence of a special talent.

If you combined mid-90's Tortoise with the entire BBC Sound Effects Library, you may come close to approximating Awesome Wells' sound. But you wouldn't come anywhere near to his precise, caring control - the sounds ebb, flow and weave together to the point where any lingering doubts are assuaged by the gleefulness of the sonic journey you've just taken. Make yourself feel underwhelmed by your comparative lack of talent here!

Labels: actual brilliance, instruMENTAL, Pick 'n' Mix

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"Simplicity," said Leonardo da Vinci, "is the ultimate sophistication." This is a man who invented the helicopter 400 years before it was technically possibly to construct one, so perhaps we should pay heed.

Simplicity is what makes things like the wheel, as well as other more prosaic activities like picking your nose and eating jars of Marshmallow Fluff, so brilliant. Today's New Band, Mirror! Mirror! are super-simple in many ways. They just want to have the proverbial Good Time, All The Time.

Song Wolfgang Bang has all these things in its favour:

1. Wonderful, A-Grade, pun-tastic title;
2. A great disco-tastic beat that drives the song along like a joyrider who's just popped on his Bonkers! CD (mixed by Hixxy, natch)
3. More Cowbell!
4. It is lyrically WISE - "On the subject of vegetables, do you get your five-a-day? Do you rubber up? Protect yourself from AIDS?" - these are lessons we could all learn from.

Don't Mind If I Do doesn't mind at all, and crashes out at you, before grabbing you by the ears and shaking you until you submit to Mirror! Mirror!'s uncompromising, uncomplicated regime of Dance! Dance! Until You Submit!

Mirror! Mirror! are simple souls who use complex music and befuddled lyrics to do simple things. Mirror! Mirror!: da Vinci's favourite band. Probably. Listen here!

Labels: have a good time all the time, PUNS, simple sounds

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I've got a headache today. That's why all the following sentences are short and childlike, to match my mindset and attention span. It was there when I woke up as a kernel of a headache - a suggestion of a headache, if you like - and has slowly bloomed into the thumping, head-in-vice throbber that is located between the eyes at the moment. How unfair. This aggression will not stand, brain.

Fortunately, one of music's most compelling traits is the ability to, y'know, make you feel stuff. Feelings come from the brain, and my brain is what is hurting now. Perhaps one can affect the other. This, I fear, is classically flawed male logic, but I'm willing to put it to the test.

Popping out of the silver foil and emerging as Today's New Band is Mi-Kuhmi, who may or may not be minor Klingon character in Star Trek. I don't usually quote what bands have to say about themselves, but Mi-Kuhmi's description of the songs as, "tiny desperate songs which talk about sadness, love, nature, future, past, happiness, bubbles, knifes, chairs, everything or just nothing," is quite lovely.

The songs themselves are like glimpses of other songs, sound-ideas and noises that Mi-Kuhmi likes and wants to keep a record of, lest they disappear forever. In that respect they're very human, and very touching. They're also very short, very unusual and very non-melodic but with titles like Kohi, Eki and Toupie, you could probably guess that.

They're not songs. They're not supposed to be. It's aspirin to be taken aurally, twice a day, with meals - get your dispensation here.

Labels: human-computer hybrid, my brain hurts, satisfyingly short

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How do you like to end your week? In a rush of activity, clearing your desk/mind before the weekend? Or do you choose to take it easy on yourself from lunchtime onwards? Those Friday afternoons are a great bit of reflection time, and whilst a nostalgic glance backwards is a pleasant indulgence at the best of times, on a Friday, when winding down is the name of the game, it seems to fit that much better.

If you can identify with that, then Today's New Band might be just right for you, for now. I suppose in some ways, the fun of listening to The Complete Adventurer's songs like How Much Does a Polar Bear Weigh is nearly 50% nostalgia. Not that they sound old-fashioned - it's just that, as a band, their ethos seems to have rushed in from another time. It might be the Pavement-y nature of the half-spoken lyrics, or the enjoyment derived from the knowledge that a guitar can make big, bowel-loosening crunchy noises, and not just the tight jangle that is de riguer, but whatever it is they're doing, it seems worlds away from the norm.

The Complete Adventurer are pleasingly different because they have had the audacity to look a bit beyond Blondie and U2 when deciding their influences. The Meat And The Milk That Raised It, is, like its title suggests, pretty feral, the expansive guitars and thrashing drums battling with shouty vocals for attention, and yet attaining just the right balance.

If that description makes The Complete Adventurer sound like some awful thrash or two-bit punk band, I apologise. They aren't. They're strangely controlled, engaging and dynamic, but coupled with the need for shouty insanity. This is a good thing, right? Right. Listen to them here!

Labels: 80's/90's, yelping, your local band

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I started a Spanish class yesterday. I already knew a bit of Spanish, or so I thought. This is what I learnt:

1. That the word for 'handcuffs' in Spanish is the same as the word for 'wife'
2. The word to describe a cute child is the same as 'monkey'
   
3. That I knew how to ask whether a hotel has a room for two people, for three nights, (preferably with a bathroom), but was stumped when I had to explain what my age and name is.

This minor idiotic trait of my brain - to forget the basics and cling onto the less useful - is actually probably shared by many of you reading this. You want to listen to something new, flighty and inventive that might be either great or awful, not just to plump for the safe dirge of the new Oasis album. This is the musical equivalent of my brain's linguistic forgetfulness.

This all probably makes Today's New Band, Kaiton, Spanish for "I need you to to discombobulate my goat", though the music itself isn't quite that leftfield. Tingle pulses with the electronic bleeps you'd expect to hear in the monitoring room of a nuclear power plant, all the while building into a driving, wide-open song. Field Study 24 slides slowly by like a big container boat, and making similarly oceanic, large 'n' quiet noises.

Kaiton's music is exploratory, pushing outwards, here and there, and finding new alleyways to creep down. To call electronic music 'organic' is both a cliché and disingenuous, but it kind of fits with Kaiton. Music to watch time-lapse films of plants growing to. Listen here!

Labels: embarassingly pseud review, I am calm, wandering minds

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There's a lot to be said for precision and organisation. Streamline your life for mega profit! A tidy home is a tidy mind! De-clutter your surroundings for SUPER ZEN! There's a reason that Chuck D is such a furious individual, you know - he hasn't tidied his Rumpus room for years.

Whilst the idea of Chuck D calming down purely because he's broken out the Dustbuster might be slightly* untrue, there really is as much to be said for disorganisation too. OK, so a desk chock full of papers might cause your plate of toast to fall to the floor, inevitably butter-side down; but how else would you find out whether you like the taste of floor fluff on your toast or not?

The point is that apparent chaos can have pleasant, unexpected results. Today's New Band don't seem to merely thrive on the unexpected noise that's made as they bash instruments, but have adopted it as an ethos. They're the appropriately named Munch Munch, chomping, as they do, through instruments, sounds and styles, all with fabulous disdain for convention.

The gloriously bonkers-named Endolphins is a twinkling frenzy of invention, clattering, shimmering and splashing all over the place through all of its 3 minutes - and yet there's a lovely melody that occasionally resurfaces when it feels brave enough. Wedding begins in barely-there chaos, all noise and no direction, before suddenly transforming into a super-fun fairground organ-led pop song, and then reinventing itself for a second time in the same song a few minutes later.

Gloriously deranged, Munch Munch are flailing, crazily, sticking thumbs into pies here, there and everywhere and yet managing to pull out a plum each time. Welcome back, insanity. Embrace it wholeheartedly here!

*wholeheartedly

Labels: creative overload, not-quite-NOISE, wandering minds

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Almost astonishingly, today we publish the 100th band to appear on A New Band A Day. A Centenary! A Double Golden Jubilee! This is a (very) minor achievement of sorts, considering my attention span is comparable with that of the proverbial goldfish, and the transient nature of the Tubular Interwebs. However, it's a happy occasion I suppose, even though I didn't receive a telegram from the Queen.

Like truculent teenagers though, we don't want to celebrate this too much, and would prefer to remain sulkily opposed to convention, whilst secretly longing for participation in it. Thus, Today's new band was going to be, appropriately, one that embodies ANBAD's core ethos. Then it became clear that this would mean the appearance of a band that is anxious, annoying, deliberately obtuse, and with dubious personal hygiene, it was decided to just stick a good band on, like usual.

So with none of those things in mind, here's Today's New Band, Ghost in the Water, and they're probably just about right if you're interested in, you know, having a good time, whilst reflecting on life's foibles. Hallucination is another one of those great songs that is the product of a lifetime consuming as many different types of music as possible.

It's the song you'd want on at your wedding, pleasing everyone equally. Your uncle will dig the 70's grooves, your stuck-in-the-Eighties cousin will crack his hip breakdancing to the synth squelches, and even your 16 year old Nu-Rave, ex-Emo, waiting-for-the-next-big-craze nephew will be fake-reminiscing about the Second Summer of Love in no time.

If this makes Ghost in the Water sound like one of those semi-generic French electro combos that seem to be genetically predisposed to grind out BANGIN' CHOONZ and BANGIN' CHOONZ alone, you'd only be half-right. The 4Traks remix of Cardinal Red is a weird splicing of folksy yearning, 80's poodle-rock soloing and Bambaataa keyboard stabs. Even more weirdly, it works.

It's a risky business, stirring all those discrete elements into one big melting pot, but thankfully Ghost in the Water have got away with it. Find yourself playing 'Spot the Musical Influence' here!

Labels: bleeps, boy/girl duo, CHOOOON

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