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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Oasis are in the process of releasing their new album, Dig Out Your Soul, at the moment. This is still Big News in the UK, and especially so here in Manchester, their home town. Seizing on the fact that this new-fangled 'internet' thing might be a good promotional tool, they have used a little-known website, MySpace.com, to allow YOU, the public at large, to listen to the whole album in it's entirety before it's released, you know, in shops.

So, here's the brief A New Band A Day review:

1. It's a clunker
2. Noel isn't even the best songwriter in Oasis any more.
   

I don't enjoy criticising Oasis, though it's fashionable to do so. I was 14 when they released Definitely Maybe, and it was one of those fabulous defining moments that you get now and then in your teenage years.

Oasis list The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols among their influences. Today's New Band, David Cronenberg's Wife, list the Germs, Swans and The Birthday Party in the same section. One band is producing interesting and inventive music, and the other the same old cobblers. You guess which one is which.

Runaway Pram is a swirling, organ 'n' guitar-led, echoing stomper of a song that seems to have been recorded to deliberately disorientate the listener. At times, it's so heavily soaked in reverb that I wondered if it had been accidentally remixed by Lee Perry in one of his more bloody-minded moods. It's equal parts mid 60's Psych and Garage, Goth and 96 Tears by ? and The Mysterians. Their music swirls around you, teasing and taunting you into having a good, weird, time.

David Cronenberg's Wife - blurring the line between so many genres you'll experience the pleasant feeling of been punched in the head with the contents of a Virgin Records bargain bin. Listen to them here!

Labels: confusion, deranged, nostalgia

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Just as the Emo scene attracts people who like to wear black, cut outrageously stupid fringes and look identical to one another, and the Nu-Rave scene attracts 15 year olds who want a legitimate reason to dance to Scooter, the Chiptune set attracts people who are A) Nerds and B) Musicians. This is an unusual combo - mathematically-minded musicians are hard to come by - you don't hear Thom Yorke yapping about logarithms. Actually, that's probably a bad example, but you get my point. Nevertheless, the Chiptune scene is a monster on the Tubular Interwebs, and we have lavished much praise on it's luminaries such as PixelH8 before.

Much of the enjoyment of chip music can rely heavily on nostalgic memories of late 80's video games, though occasionally people like PixelH8 transcend those boundaries. However, just because Today's New Band, MISTER BEEP, produces music which sounds like it really could be from an 80's ZX Sinclair Spectrum game (because it has, kind of), doesn't mean the music is like listening to someone on the bus play all of their polyphonic ringtones to their 'bezzie mate'.

MISTER BEEP's music sounds great, at least to my ears - the ears of someone who spent much of their youth trying to complete Switchblade and Fantasy Island Dizzy on their ZX Speccy. Like how Orbital produce music that sounds like the soundtrack to a film never produced, MISTER BEEP's sounds like the tune that would have accompanied Chase HQ 3, had it ever been made. Those of you who used to revel in the excitement of spending 10 minutes waiting for the screeching loading noise for Operation Wolf to finish will find Who's That Robot and Escape From 16-Bit Land leaving them joyously happy. Perhaps that's the point of the chiptune: nostalgia through new (old) music. Pleasure through rubber keyboards. Mmm, sexy.

Listen to his ZX-tastic tunes here!

Labels: bleeps, nostalgia, ZX 48K Spectrum

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