>Das Filth, Investments in Nostalgia and Real Estate

>
These days, everyone’s trying to experience something that no-one else in their peer group has. Backpacking along the gap-year trail though Thailand isn’t enough any more – if you haven’t spent a month harvesting Mangosteens in a remote Vietnamese hamlet, Giles, Ollie and Cassie won’t give you the time of day back in the student’s union.

Here’s the rub: what do these world-weary travellers do after they connected with real people? I’d gamble that the safety of a nice job in the familys’ real estate business was selected during another day of explosive diarrhoea in Laos. These daring interludes are controlled, rationed and carefully defined – undertaken mainly as an investment in nostalgia.

Hats off to the hardy souls who genuinely put everything on hold and lurch head-first into the music world, where filthy toilets, disease and, like, mind-expansion are also the norm. So are Glaswegians Das Filth doing it for traditional rock thrills or as something to boast about when they’re estate agents in three years’ time?

Songs of such blustering belligerence like Pictures In Transit would suggest that they don’t have one eye on the housing market. In fact, both eyes are firmly focused on creating thrilling noise – this song is the grubby thumbprint of a band who are throwing common sense aside: the clattering good-time sound of a bunch of friends who just don’t care.

Das Filth – Pictures In Transit

Pylons, thrashy and grandstanding, has a chorus of real sing/mosh-along beauty; surprising and mutating – from threatening grind into a cluster of splashy hi-hats, demented guitar and FUN.

Crunchy noise is their friend, gnarly riffs are their weapon, and the rest of the world is their target. Das Filth are for real. Maaaan.

>Today’s New Band – The Woo!Worths

>Art Brut have an ace new album out, Art Brut vs Satan. Making a connection between this and Friday’s new band would probably have been the smart thing to do, but then careful analysis of the facts has never been part of ANBAD’s ethos.

Art Brut‘s singer, Eddie Argos, has long been wide-eyed and fascinated with rock music’s bedroom/DIY underbelly. ” Why is everyone trying to sound like U2?” he asks. “Slap dash for no cash/Those are the records I like/When something doesn’t sound quite right.”

It’s difficult to disagree with his logic. I’d prefer to live in a world of crackling songs made in a garden shed then listen to another super-slick Keane dirge too.

Today’s New Band don’t sound super-lo-fi, but they are in spirit, and that’s what counts. The Woo!Worths aren’t all sheen and no grit, but they manage to dip into Brian Eno’s Big Box of Smooth Smooth Sounds and pull out the interesting bits for their own use.

So from a lo-fi point of view, Konichiwa is a rock homebrew of tight 80’s sounds – synths, bright jangling guitars and vocoders. And it works, despite itself, lovable and knowing enough to pinch your attention.

Songs like Idle Hands that squelch and shimmer like a Pet Shop Boys remix, and Bug House Loco is the most fun I’ve had with my trousers on for ages. Depressingly, it’s also the most fun I’ve had with my trousers off too.

When I was at University, I worked at a Woolworth’s shop for about three months. It wasn’t the most pleasant experience; by which I mean it was mind-sappingly dreadful, and my will to live vanished the moment I stepped through the door. The Woo!Worths are what you’d assume working in a shop full of sweets, CDs and toys would be like – a load of carefree fun. And now they’ll never know the truth. Listen here!

>Today’s New Band – Something Like Fire PLUS! Philosophy!

What do you call glasses with no glass in them? This quasi-philosophical query popped into my life yesterday, as I was wandering strolling down Oxford Road in Manchester. Lost in my own pompous sense of raffish manliness, donning a new, grown-up coat, I pondered on how devilishly suave I was looking, in a 1930’s gumshoe kind of way. Usefully, a student interrupted before my head inflated and I floated off into the flight path of passing planes.

There are plenty of students on that particular road, and this one thrust a flyer into my hand, as is the students’ want. It advertised a jumble sale of vintage* clothing. As I involuntarily thanked her, I noticed that she was wearing the kind glasses that your grandmother may have rejected as they’d make her look too ancient. The glasses contained no lenses, and were serving solely as a fashion item.

*dead people’s

Removing an object’s function and leaving it as a useless, purchasable, purely decorative item has its rock equivalent – Scouting For Girls (who we’ve discussed before). Surely it’s more difficult to write vapid music than something that sounds different, at the very least.

Perhaps Today’s New Band, Something Like Fire, have thought about similar issues, because their songs seep different influences with abandon. Mr Shadow sounds like a loud punk song that has had the original fuzz stripped away and a light, tight composition put in its place. It scrapes the 2 1/2 minute mark and yet still flirts with as many original ideas as it can.

While New World Wonder is a more straightforward rock song, it still skitters along, skewed slightly, but importantly, at an angle to normality. White Noise isn’t that at all, but is the most calming and engaging lift music ever, clicking and clucking for its own amusement.

Something Like Fire cut a path of their own idiosyncratic making. Their songs are defiantly obtuse enough to be interesting, and tuneful enough to be enjoyable. A good balance? Put it this way – if more bands aimed for the same traits maybe the world (OK, just the pop charts) would be a better place. Listen here!

>Today’s New Band – Miracle and The Soul Interpreter PLUS! Beer Heaven! Beer Hell!

>The National Winter Ales Festival rolled into town yesterday, and, being the troopers we are, your brave A New Band A Day correspondents did our duty and duly attended. If you want to see what the Internet looked like in 1997, go to the festival’s website here. Stepping into the Coliseum Of Ales, and being presented with a bewildering number of beers, ciders and perrys, we cast off the shackles of decent behaviour and got well and truly stuck in.

The beauty, and indeed, horror, of a beer festival, is that the words “So many beers, so little time” buzz urgently like a neon light in your head. Everyone at a beer festival knows that the temptation to try this, that, and the other will ultimately end in disaster, and yet plough on regardless. And lo, that is exactly what happened to us too.

So today my poor head is being nursed in a perhaps-too-touchy-feely, caring way by Today’s New Band, Miracle and The Soul Interpreter. Their songs linger between the shimmer of house music and the grind of R&B, and a step removed from either.

Whatafuckingfailure is a jazzy piano loop, aching vocals and a sense of emotional doom. It’s pared back and lean, leaving plenty of room for the lightly downbeat gloom.

Doideeboid is buzzy, hummy and similarly sparse; its clicking drums occasionally interrupted with punchy bursts from a gospel choir. Sleazy and slick, this is the song that man you shouldn’t be tempted by would whisper in your ear, as one hand rests on the small of your back.

That Miracle and The Soul Interpreter are bold/daft enough to pull off a cover of the Steve Miller Band‘s Abracadabra by turning it into a funky, dancefloor creeper is confirmation of their talent. They sound slick and confident. Get seduced, here!

>Today’s New Band – We Fly Ships PLUS! Hatred!

>NB: Since publishing this post, Julian and I have conversed via email. Julian’s actually a good guy whose frustration with the music industry’s reluctance to give bands time to develop got the better of him, and I was just the person he vented his spleen to on the spur of the moment.

I don’t blame him for his frustration – I share it – so happily, him and I have the same basic ideas and views on music, and all is well. However, the core points of the post remain important, so I’m keeping it up, though with this caveat.

————————–

Excitingly, I got my first hate e-mail the other day. It was from a man called Julian Deane, who apparently runs a company called Raygun Music Management. He manages a few decent bands. Julian said that ‘most of the bands on ANBAD are shite’ and that ‘any idiot can post a Myspace address every day‘.

Hate mail is rewarding in so many ways – it means that something I’ve done has riled someone enough to actually spend time letting me know how they feel. Hate mail has as much impact as the praising emails that I get, in that it further confirmed that ANBAD is on the right track – by aiming not to please all of the people all of the time.

I’ll happily admit that not all the bands on ANBAD are as ‘good’ as the others, but only if you define ‘good’ by, say, the likelihood that lots and lots of people will like them, which in some people’s eyes also translates into ‘potential for record sales’.

ANBAD isn’t about taking part in some sort of dick-swinging contest, desperately trying to find the next big band before anyone else. There are loads of websites doing that. We just want to find bands which sound like something we haven’t heard before. That’s the only criteria, really. If a band does go on to bigger things, just like early ANBAD alumi Dinosaur Pile-Up appears to be doing, we’re more than happy.

With all that in mind, maybe you’ll like Today’s New Band, or maybe you won’t. Hopefully, you’ll think that We Fly Ships sound like something that you haven’t entirely heard before. We Fly Ships are perfect week-ending material, half relaxing and half bangin’, just like all good weekends should be.

Sometimes they manage both of these opposing feelings in the space of one song – World in Reverse spends the first, loopy, misty minute threatening to explode, and then transforms into something big, fuzzy and enveloping. Listen to it and try to resist being groped by its tempting grooves and luxurious melody. You’ll wish that you could be listening to it a lot louder in the same way that Orbital‘s albums are never quite as earth-shattering as their live, loud counterparts.

The Bears Are Dead is, frankly, a wonderful mixture of warm synth washes, clattering drums and manic dog-barking. Yes, it’s verging on the boundaries of sanity, but that’s usually a good thing. It sounds like an early Spiritualized song remixed by Adrian Sherwood which is then remixed again by, oooh, Mr Oizo.

We Fly Ships are as warm, loving and intimidating as getting a hug off someone who’s E’d up to the eyeballs. Snuggle up to them here – maybe you’ll be enraged enough to write me a stroppy email. And then read ANBAD – The eBook and work yourself into a frenzy of righteous anger.

>Today’s New Band – Form Banal PLUS! Exciting times ahead for ANBAD!

Greetings all. Let me start by introducing myself. You may have heard that ANBAD is undergoing a few changes, and I, Jamie, am one of those changes. First and foremost, praise and thanks be to Joe, founder of and, until this very moment in time, sole contributor to A New Band a Day. Whilst Joe remains undisputable king and ruler of our much loved blog, I have been politely asked* to step in on the odd occasion that Joe goes on one of his super-massive benders which put Shane McGowan to shame (read: Spanish class).

I hope, in time, to win you over. And like your creepy ex-schoolmate’s friend requests on Facebook, I will not stop until I do. Or Joe politely asks* me to stop hacking into his website and generally ruining his life. In order to encourage our burgeoning friendship, that it may grow into something beautiful and not-at-all creepy, I bring you a gift. I bring the gift of music.

Expectations of my ability suitably lowered, let’s see who today’s new band is. Well they’re (he’s?) “Form Banal”, and they’re/he’s from Germany. They/he have/has one of the cleverest band names I’ve ever heard. In fact, it’s not so much a band name, more a subversive marketing strategy of which the KLF would be proud. It says, “fine, come listen to us, but don’t expect much. In fact, don’t expect anything.” I encourage you to approach them with the same attitude.

Christians starts with distorted synths, tight beats and just the right amount of electro swagger, and made me forget about Fischerspooner ever getting another record deal (I think that sometimes we all need a reminder that “christians are fun”). I Keep My Pussy Wet, is brilliantly simplistic, deconstructed electro. I don’t know which one of their/his songs available on their/his Myspace will be stuck in my head for the rest of the day, but guaranteed one of them will. Personally I will be whistling all of these songs on my way home in the rain, at the same time, because my spazzed out brain cannot decide which is best.

Personally, if they had called themselves Super Ace German Electro Pioneers, the Likes of Which I Have Not Heard In A Long Time, I would still not have been disappointed.
How about you decide? Yeah that’s right, you do some work for a change and click here for all your electro needs

*Beats me within an inch of my life