There was a girl who I met at art college. Her name was Laura, and she managed to be both swaggeringly masculine (her haircut, her demeanour, her clothes) and sweetly feminine (big coy brown eyes, cute cheekbones and pink lips) all at once. One of the things that I remember the most is that she told me that her favourite band of all time - of all time - was The Charlatans.

The Charlatans are a strange lot. They're one of those bands that nearly attained greatness, but never quite got there. From their baggy roots, through their middle (and best) stage as 60's-ish rockers, to the soul-y rock that they make now, they've always nearly been the best, but not quite. I can't imagine anyone ever placing them as their favourite band, and yet I knew someone who told me that they were.

This just goes to demonstrate again that taste is subjective, and is one of the main reasons I love writing about new bands. I genuinely hope that not all of bands on ANBAD are liked by you ANBAD readers, but I do hope that the ones that you do like make a real connection.

So with that in mind, maybe you'll like Today's New Band, Ghetto Mullet, and maybe you won't. But we hope you'll listen to them all the same, so that you can find out.

When they're not conjuring up images of business-at-the-front-party-at-the-back hairdos, Ghetto Mullet make similarly business-at-the-front-party-at-the-back instrumental hip-hop. It's a sound that you'll know almost straight away whether you 'get' it or not - you could either find it to be the kind of music that is perfect for a certain mood, or you could find that no mood you ever have will fit. Who knows.

Ghetto Mullet are great music to listen to as you concentrate on something else. That is meant as a compliment. To my ears, Rampant Thought is complicatedly twitchy and involving, yet nicely disassociated from the need for direct, concentrated thought. Arriving in Obscurity exists in a fug of scratches, radio fuzz and tape hiss, and similarly Feel It, probably Ghetto Mullet's most arresting song, thunders along with samples of radio bleeps, and what might be the sound of someone thumping a dustbin.

Today's Lesson: Just 'cos you don't like the sound of it doesn't mean someone else doesn't love it. A bit like Morris Dancing, only less humiliating, and with fewer bells, sticks and hankies. Ghetto Mullet: possible Morris Dancers for the 21st Century! Listen here!

Labels: all over the shop, loopy, sleepy

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I slept really well last night. REALLY well. One of those deep sleeps where it feels like your body is slowly sinking, forever, into a pile of goose feathers and dreams are about marshmallows, bunny rabbits and cotton wool. Hence I woke feeling as relaxed as George Michael behind the wheel of his Range Rover.

I don't know if my mind just took pity on me, or the deep slumber meant that it wasn't awake quick enough to being inflicting annoyance on me again, but instead of having the usual dreadful novelty pop hit stuck on repeat in my brain, I awoke with Saint Etienne's I Was Born On Christmas Day lodged defiantly between my ears.

This kind of good fortune only happens once in a while, so I greedily capitalised on it by watching the video over and over again on Youtube, just to cement it in place. It's a lovely song, without irony or pretence, and is coyly romantic and twee, without plunging into cloyingness. Tim Burgess from The Charlatans is in it too, which just about knocks it into 'perfect pop song' territory.

Today's New Band is a bit of a stark contrast to St. Etienne. Kaisonia, not to be confused with ANBAD alumni Kaiton, makes spacey, drifting music that, as a quick glance at their Myspace page might infer, is particularly intergalactic. If I was being glib (and I am) I'd say that Kaisonia is a bit like the Orb, but more... now.

In fact, if you are stuck in a slight sugar-rush pop buzz at the moment and need to shift your attention before you listen to the same song 15 times in a row (see footnote), Kaisonia might be your first port of call. Their music might well be the audio equivalent of a hot bath and a foot massage.

It's difficult, and possibly pointless, when reviewing bands like this (see also: Boards of Canada and their ilk), to isolate individual track and comment on them. This sort of lilting, ethereal music doesn't fit into, and isn't restrained by, a traditional short-song format. It's more satisfying to take the string of songs as a whole, and judge the experience as you go along. In this context, Kaisonia are fabulously weird, dream-like and rigidly loose, if you see what I mean.

You'd be daft (and infinitely less 'chilled, maaaan') if you didn't dip your toe into Kaisonia's pool. So do so, here. Oh, and judging by their website, that pool might be a molten sulphur lake on Venus. Just so you know.

N.B. Prior to the writing of this post, Joe listened to I Was Born On Christmas Day 15 times in a row. Yikes.

Labels: drifting, loopy, sleepy

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The brain consumes 20% of the oxygen a human breathes. At least that's what Wikipedia says, so you may as well invent your own fact and the chances of it being true are about the same. Anyway - the point is that brains are bewilderingly impressive, and do remarkable things. Issac Newton's brain, for example, spewed out the three laws of motion and the theory of Universal Gravitation while he was dozing under a tree. Or something.

Meanwhile, us mere mortals, incapable of generating ideas that shape entire societies for hundreds of years, are left with all that brain power punching and flailing in a million different directions at once, only occasionally revealing hitherto unknown abilities. Unfortunately, my special brain-skill appears to be playing crap songs on loop in my head for hours on end. The nadir of this anti-Zen skill consisted of a whole weekend wandering around Barcelona humming, out loud, the chorus from Eddie Murphy and Rick James' half-hellish, half-genius 80's hit 'My Girl Wants to Party All The Time', confirming locals' suspicions that all tourists are idiots.

While I was in France recently, this idiotic superpower kicked in again, but this time - bliss! - it finally picked a good song, Little Patton by ex-New Band of The Day, The Seedy Seeds, and I spent a whole two weeks happily whistling to myself. Perhaps my relentless pursuit of new bands is specifically so that I can push all the crappy old songs out of my head with good new ones. If so, then Today's New Band is another step in the right direction.

They're That's The Spirit, they're from Canada, and they write songs that are gentle, melodic, mind-massages. Moreover, the songs are fitting for the time of year - when summer is drifting lazily into autumn, and a feeling of mild hopelessness prevails. Always Coming Back is chiming, bright and understated, and Every City has a strange yearning feeling written large; its clanging guitar sounds the pen, and your woozy mind the A4 sheet of notepaper.

That's The Spirit's songs are the ones you'd want to listen to on a drizzly day, as you doze cozily inside, watching the outside world disappear in grey watery nothingness. Listen to their songs here, and drift slowly into a womb-like comfortable slumber.

Labels: Blame Canada, sleepy, wandering minds

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The weekend already! It's been a weird week on A New Band A Day. Coherency is low on the ANBAD agenda at the best of times, but this week we've been all over the shop like Amy Winehouse on DisneyLand Paris's new ride, Journey to the Centre of Crack Mountain.

We've romped between super lo-fi tinkling with Magpied and the sleepy bleeps of oMMM, via the rollicking insanity of the Velvet Orchestra and the jaunty jangles of Buen Chico. So in some ways, Today's New Band, The Joy Formidable, is a bit like the conclusion at the end of a high-school essay, albeit an essay that begins, "What is a New Band? The dictionary definition of a New Band is...".

That is to say, The Joy Formidable are tinkling, sleepy, rollicking and jangly all at once. This is a Very Good Thing, and can be plainly heard for yourself on their track Cradle, a driving pounder of a song, which, with its "Woo-woo-woo" male/female vocals, sounds, frankly, a bit like what My Bloody Valentine would sound like without quite so many layers of fuzz. Austere punches its way forward bluntly but delicately, leaving you sure of their intent - to RAWK, but in a measured way, slightly reminiscent of Yeah Yeah Yeahs in 'noise' mode.

I usually wouldn't compare bands to others - it's mainly unhelpful - but look, I've just done it twice. Maybe it's because The Joy Formidable are really good, maybe it's because I'm feeling lazy. I hope it's the former. Even more thrillingly, all their songs are FREE! to download at their MySpace page, and their's even a remix by old friend of ANBAD, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs! What more could you ask for, really? Listen to their great stuff NOW, here!

Labels: not-quite-NOISE, sleepy, unsigned

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What would the sound of sleep be like? Silence? A deeeep humming noise? Your parents' voices chanting "blood....blood...blood" over and over again? Something similar to the noise when you load a game into a ZX Spectrum? We may never know.

Or perhaps we will - because Today's New Band, oMMM, produces songs that are apparently "spaced out bedcore...a bedtime pop experiment!" Don't let that fool you, though - this music isn’t like Side Two of The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld. Instead, oMMM is a musical trip, a treat of inventive bleeping and what could be hesitantly described as 'soundscapes'. In songs like CATWALKTVKAYAKARMX, the sound drifts - but not aimlessly. oMMM are taking us on a bit of a journey - but a nice one, with a break for a cream tea somewhere along the line.

SZWOMMMRMX could be described as residing somewhere between Boards of Canada, the ubiquitous Aphex Twin and Four Tet if we were being particularly lazy. Which we are. It's a particularly lovely, deliberately dream-like skittle through spacey sounds.

oMMM's music is calming yet attention-grabbing, a brilliant musical representation of the relaxation and insanity that both tumble from sleep. The music is good for your ears, and the calmness good for your mind. Listen NOW at oMMM's Myspace page!

And if you found that all a bit too serious, here's the best/most ridiculous song about a £1.50 portion of chicken and chips performed in a grime style ever. Thanks to Scatman Jamie for pointing out the brilliance of 'Junior Spesh'

***BLOGGER'S BROKEN AGAIN - NO IMAGES TODAY***

Labels: bleeps, sleepy, ZX 48K Spectrum

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