>Duzheknew? And other pertinent questions – answered!

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Duzheknew? Thank you, Adam O’Reilly (for it is he) for creating the band name which writes it’s own headlines.

But past-tense befuddlement aside, Duzheknew seems to have a firm handle on what he’s doing. His songs are… well, just right. They are sharp and acidic and tart. They are focussed and have all the fat cut off. This bodes well.

It Came Out The Other Side, OK trembles with nervous ambition – a jittering, jerky song. It’s a bloodletting, an easing of tension, that shows Duzheknew to be an artist of some ability. The song shines and fades, gives and takes – and we hang on every word, eager to experience the climax.

Duzheknew – It Came Out The Other Side, OK

When it comes, it’s not the explosion anticipated, but a more economically restrained finish. After the building and building, we are buzzing too feverishly to feel let down by such teasing, and too pleased by the preceding sounds to care.

Duzheknew gingerly cribs a snippet of Talking Heads and a sliver of Pavement, but has a swivelling eye scouring everywhere else for ideas too. It’s tough to predict anyone’s path in any instance, but if Duzheknew keeps going, something interesting will happen. Perhaps he knews this already. Sorry, knows. Good stuff indeed.

>Today’s New Band – Vic Mars!

>There’s probably a point, in minimalist music, where the line between ‘minimal’ and ‘mainly silence with very occasional noise’ gets blurred, bent and fiddled with. At it’s finest, this type of music brings light to your soul and aerates your mind, if that isn’t too flowery a description (it is); at worst, its open-ended nature allows for pretentiousness of the very highest caliber. John Cale has a lot to answer for.

Still, the idea of putting very little noise into a song in an age when bands are dumbly making their songs literally as LOUD as is possible, is both refreshing and an example of going against the grain – both virtues that ANBAD loves to bits.

So welcome Today’s New Band, Vic Mars, apparently from Nagoya, and apparently from the school of less=more, which pleases me no end. Vic’s songs are a little blips of sound, from a few seconds long to just a couple of minutes, glimpses of other-worldly calmness.

Tristwch is vinyl fuzz with near-discernible sounds growing organically from it. The Fountain, lush and orchestral, is still soft and absent enough to hold your thoughts. Clouds In Your Sunglasses takes a simple, sweet sound and runs with it, over and over; as smooth and slights as In is burbling and fractured.

What is great about Vic Mars‘ music is that it lets you into the mindset of the musician in a way that say, Shake It by moron-o-pop band Metro Station doesn’t. Delicious. Listen here!

>Today’s New Band – We All Inherit The Moon

>How big a role does luck have in the formation of bands? Imagine you’re a guitarist who wants to make liltingly uncommon, unstructured non-regimented music. What are the chances of finding the the three or so band members who think like you, and aren’t determined to clank out the same old Killers/Kooks/Los Campesinos-lite that most fledgling bands prefer?

I’m no statistician, but you’d have to leave a lot of idiosyncratic adverts in a lot of guitar shops before you found the like-minded souls you needed.

This trawl for understanding band members may well have played a part in the nascent life of Today’s New Band, We All Inherit The Moon. The idea of a long, careful search to find exactly the right person for each role would ring true, mirrored in the carefully constructed, close and delicate songs.

Equally, a slow, organic musical growth spurt – the band forming slowly over time, like tinklingly melodic stalagmites – is suggested in their creeping, wandering sound. However it happened, in songs like Part I, We All Inherit The Moon craft weaving, homeless songs that filter slowly into your brain, and then, just as you realise how comforting its presence is, dissolve into nothing again. Part III is icy but pulsing with warmth. You’ll wait for Part IV to really get going, and then find yourself glad that it never did.

Zen, calm, relaxo-therapy – call it what you want. We All Inherit The Moon‘s music is balm for your mind, soothing like a big hug. Like vines crawling over an old building, their songs will slowly grab you, and you won’t want to be freed. Yum. Listen here!