May 2012
2 posts
Friday 25th May 2012
In the June issue of The Wire, Joseph Stannard interviews East London local Ralph Cumbers – Bass Clef – who speculates on the ‘regeneration’ of Hackney and the surrounding areas in 2012. He describes the inevitable ‘awful, creeping presence’ of cash-soaked Olympic sprawl, and ponders whether attempts to sanitise and gentrify the area will, in the long term, threaten its reputation for diversity...
Friday 11th May 2012
I type while sat in a corner of the Dome in Brighton shortly before taking part in an ‘in conversation’ session with Xfm’s John Kennedy at The Great Escape. It’s a small window within which I’m trying to upload this podcast, which I recorded at home yesterday morning and edited in a hotel room last night. After I’m finished with the JK interview I’m jumping on a train to Manchester to cover...
April 2012
3 posts
Friday 27th April 2012
Uploading a podcast towards the end of a Friday feels slightly like turning up at a party with cold beer minutes after everyone else has left for a club. This one takes in an astounding new remix by Laurel Halo - who twists Kuedo’s upcoming single into a composition that sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard - and new music from old New Noise favourites Doldrums, Stealing Sheep and...
New Noise Record Store Day Special
The fifth annual Record Store Day takes place this Saturday, 21st April. To mark the occasion I interviewed the UK representative and Rough Trade East boss Spencer Hickman for a one off New Noise RSD podcast.
Musically - along with a few of Spencer’s favourites - there’s a chance to hear some of the most sought after releases of this year’s event: namely a split 7” which, on either side,...
Thursday 12th April 2012
It’s been a while so I thought I would make a long podcast and split it into two. Side A and B. Two podcasts, then. Hurry up and listen because I’ve already recorded the next one too. It’s a Record Store Day 2012 special and features a few of the exclusive releases that’ll be on sale for that one day only, wrapped around an interview with Rough Trade East boss and UK RSD rep Spencer...
March 2012
3 posts
New Noise Live: March 2012
(originally published in the March 2012 issue of Clash Magazine) Tiny Ruins @ The Green Note, Camden (02.02.12) Blouse @ The Shacklewell Arms, Dalston (07.02.12) “This is a Keep It Down venue”, reads a small sign just inside the door of The Green Note, situated off Camden High Street. Step through the red velvet drapes and you are met with what is essentially a modest candlelit vegetarian...
Thursday 22nd March 2012
This podcast contains the following: three covers, a hip hop homage, an assault on the concept of pop music as a commodity, a track from a major label debut by an obtuse punk outfit, a belated nod to one of February’s finest albums, a late replacement, two different songs produced by Rory Bratwell and the voice of a man in search of band. Full details and links to everything can be found...
Friday 2nd March 2012
This week, by chance rather than intention, I appear to have made a podcast littered with technical proficiency*.
Before you run this doesn’t mean an hour of finger-tap widdle hell from Vai or a series of thumb funk numbers courtesy of Caron.
This New Noise goes out to Che, Getz, Dilla, Stanier, Reinhardt, Stetson, Coxon, Shepherd, Burton, Boon and, especially, Reimer: heroes who found the...
February 2012
1 post
Sunday 19th February 2012
It’s been a while so I thought I’d make a slightly longer podcast than usual. I hope you don’t mind sparing the extra MBs. This one contains thirteen songs and stretches to an hour and eight minutes – probably a bit long for a bath but perfect if you’re driving from Staines to Leighton Buzzard (via the A41).
Click here to download this New Noise podcast directly (right...
January 2012
2 posts
Tuesday 24th January 2012
The first New Noise podcast of 2012 gathers up some of the songs I’ve been listening to relentlessly over the past month or so (the tracks from the Bathetic Records Expressway compilation, Sinkane, Hospitality, Altarboy, Amateur Best, Coolrunnings and Way Yes) alongside a few of the best things I’ve discovered within the past week (Constant Mongrel, Schoolboy Q, Cross Record).
Originally I’d...
17 tags
ATP Nightmare Before Christmas. 9/10/11 December...
A new New Noise podcast will be posted by the end of this week. I’ve not had a chance to make a new one for a month or so, largely due to a three week stint covering Chris Hawkins on BBC 6 Music, but now -free of 3am alarms and a withered, sleep-deprived mind - typically unreliable regularity should resume. In the meantime, below is a review I wrote for Clash Magazine (the edited version...
December 2011
2 posts
Friday 9th December 2011
This is a turbo podcast. I started compiling it at 8am this morning and managed to get it recorded, edited and uploaded etc within 3 hours: a new personal best. I’m most likely now listening to these songs (loudly) on repeat while bombing down the M4 to Minehead for ATP’s Nightmare Before Christmas. Obviously, then, you’ll find included a few of the many, many things I’m excited to see at...
Saturday 3rd December 2011
Just in case you weren’t getting enough of this kind of thing lately, here’s another music-related list to fill two or three minutes of your week. Invest a further forty five of those minutes and you can spin through the whole lot, bundled together neatly in a row and only occasionally interrupted by excitable, loosely informative (sometimes slightly irrelevant) chat. There’s some good...
November 2011
3 posts
Friday 25th November 2011
Here’s a podcast I put together a week ago but was unable to record because I contracted tonsillitis. Bummer. Having spent half a week in bed, head lifted from the gushing musical stream, to me now this stuff sounds even more fresh and exciting than it did pre gland-swell. The footwork jungle herein should be singled out for special services to recuperation. Tell me when and where you...
Friday 11th November 2011
Open your ears for another hour-long audio excursion, which in the main seems to reflect a fairly melancholy mood on my part. That is except for two of the most exhilarating musical moments of the year so far, both of which surfaced online within the last few days – brand new songs by Factory Floor and Hans Peter Lindstrøm. As ever, notes, comments and suggestions are gladly received,...
Friday 4th November 2011
A succession of tedious factors have conspired to prevent a New Noise podcast happening this week. Bit irritating but there it is. Back next Thursday.
Image: Erica Dorn
October 2011
4 posts
Friday 28th October 2011
Sea Weeds are a Minneapolis duo, one half of which is Lizzie Carolan of Total Babe, (a band whose chipper, twee-pop songs I played repeatedly on the radio a couple of winters ago). When news of a new project arrived in my inbox from the label this week I anticipated something good, but not quite this good. Fall Boi is one of two free downloads preceding the imminent release of a full length, and...
Thursday 20th October 2011
In a break with recent form it’s a new New Noise on a Thursday. What a novelty.
Included in this week’s collection, (ideally suited to chunky listening systems): deep dark sonic exploration from the likes of Pariah, Peaking Lights and LA’s Eras, Cleveland’s Gap Dream invites us to spend time with a mysterious loner on My Other Man, Belfast’s Girls Names and Melbourne’s Twerps demonstrate...
Friday 14th October 2011
There’s quite a bit of guitar on this week’s podcast. Nova Scotia’s masters of cracked indie pop Quaker Parents make a thrilling return, along with five combined minutes of bouncing garage surf pop from the LA’s Fidlar and Hollows of Chicago, plus an outstanding, (and previously unheard) track from the awesome imminent debut album from True Panther’s Bay Area trio Wet Illustrated.
Sufjan fans...
Sunday 9th October 2011
This is the creature we made and then dressed in the winter. Laughing at looks we would get with true even tempers. It would sleep in our beds and would sit at the table content. And on car rides it never whined about stupid cassettes.
Even if we spent all day lounging on couches, for better or worse its presence made me feel accomplished. When it posed for our parents their pride just came...
September 2011
5 posts
Friday 30th September 2011
“..and then you step outside in the sunshine, and you can’t believe you would ever go underground… that’s crazy!”, sings Eleanor Friedberger on Roosevelt Island, a song on this week’s podcast.
Though I’m most likely taking the line utterly out of its intended context, it’s one that resonated with me as I walked along in the London sunshine today.
Every week I fret enormously over the music I...
Friday 23rd September 2011
With Peggy Sue delivering the musical goods on last week’s podcast, a fortnight of adding songs to a New Noise potentials desktop doc. left me with a long glittering list of shiny diamonds. Having sifted out the flawed pretenders we’re left with the following: a glossy slice of bubbling greatness from Lapalux; the very welcome return of Earlies/Late Cord man John Mark Lapham - this time with...
Friday 16th September 2011
This postcard was sent to me, tucked inside the plastic sleeve of a CDR demo, in January 2007. I’d contacted Brighton duo Peggy Sue and The Pirates asking to play a song of theirs – The New Song - on a new podcast I’d just started making: New Noise. Since then, the band have released an EP, slightly changed their name, gained a member, signed to Wichita Recordings and released an album, 2010’s...
Saturday 10th September 2011
As I allude to in one of this week’s wind-filled wordburps, (or ‘links’ as some call them) this podcast contains a last minute replacement, crammed in at the eleventh hour when I realised mustard wasn’t quite being cut - lightly dented even - by something I was going to include. Listen to hear what got the nod instead, and why.
I also mention that this New Noise could well have included 10, 10...
Friday 2nd September 2011
I got back on the horse. Granted it may be a knackered, slightly lame old beast but boy it felt good to fill more minutes wheezing out irrelevant dreck about songs I’ve become obsessed with: ten pieces of music I believe to be filled to the brim with majesty.
There’s something sublime from the new M83 double album; outrageously good new new wave from Rats on Rafts; a leg melting piece of...
August 2011
4 posts
Saturday 20th August 2011
“In Back to Future, Marty McFly goes back to 1955,” said Danny Baker this morning on 5Live. “But it was a mistake. He’d actually set the controls to arrive in the future: the 26th October 2010.” On a related note, I would now like to ask you to spin your own minds back in time. But not very far. It is the afternoon of Friday 19th August 2011. You’ve just had an amazing sandwich for lunch, a...
Friday 12th August 2011
A barnful of beautiful music is gone. Support PIAS and critically affected independent record labels however you can. As a Chemikal Underground statement read this week: “The innocuous act of purchasing an album becomes a potent symbol of solidarity for independent music.” You know what to do.
Direct Download (75MB) New Noise: 12th August 2011
1. Pinkunoizu ‘Everthing Is Broken or...
Wednesday 3rd August 2011
Now in its fifth year music festival Field Day returns to London’s Victoria Park this Saturday with its largest, most eclectic bill yet. On this New Noise special I spend an hour in the company of event organiser Tom Baker, during which I look to find out a bit more about the man himself – his background, passions and personal music taste - and also ponder what on earth might drive a person to...
Tuesday 2nd August 2011
On the BBC 6 Music show I presented on Friday night young South London brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence - aka Disclosure -popped a couple of internet BS balloons: revealing that a) they’re not as young as people say they are and b) they’re not strictly from South London, either.
The duo went on to explain their musical heritage, unveiled details of a brand new EP and roughly outlined how they...
July 2011
4 posts
Friday 29th July 2011
At one point this week, I think around 10.30am on Tuesday, I pondered that I might have time to cobble together a quick podcast.
Alas I did not, mostly* due to spending whatever spare minutes I had preparing another BBC 6 Music show for tonight.
If you happen to be around to listen live I’m in for Tom Ravenscroft again from 9pm on 6, and - along with new music from people like King...
Monday 25th July 2011
I was on BBC 6 Music for three hours on Friday night, covering the inestimable Tom Ravenscroft.
Alongside a live interview and remarkable (and very exclusive) mix from Vondelpark, the show included new music by the likes of Balam Acab, Total Slacker, Baxter Dury, Death in Vegas, Rudi Zygadlo and Widowspeak, plus a breathtaking cover of Nirvana’s ‘Stay Away’, by Charles...
Thursday 14th July 2011
Holidays are brilliant. Except for when you find yourself with twice as much stuff to squeeze in before you finally get to sod off to wherever it is you’re going. And so I’m sat watching a slow upload bar edge across the screen at 2.14am on Thursday night. I had planned to head off at around 8am Friday morning. Before I go, a quick mention that I’m on BBC 6 Music next week –...
Friday 8th July 2011
Ok, so I’m not exactly finishing Friday inwardly stricken with the knowledge that 99.9% of the British population believe me to be the indestructible epitome of modern moral bankruptcy, but still, I’ve had a long ol’ week.
Since we last spoke I’ve been to quite a few gigs. About nine live ‘experiences’ in all. And somewhat helpfully - for a knackered, cold-ridden sloth the wrong side of 30 – it...
June 2011
5 posts
Thursday 30th June 2011
Of her stint as receptionist at Sub Pop in the early 90s, Megan Jasper says, ‘I knew everything that was happening all the time… the good, the bad, and everything in between’.
Over 20 years later, and now Vice President of the label, Megan was good enough to spend an hour with me in London last week to discuss all manner of Sub Pop-related business. From first getting in the door as ‘a crusty...
Thursday 23rd June 2011
There seems to be an air of menace about this week’s New Noise podcast. I’m not entirely sure why. From the off we sink into the other-worldly swirl of Planningtorock’s astounding rework of Creep’s ‘You’, and from there the clouds never really manage to part.
Once The Twerps are done sticking their own twist on garage rock, we’re knee deep in dark disco with Guy Andrews, gasping for air in the...
Thursday 16th June 2011
With Toronto’s NXNE Music and Film Festival taking place this week, along with the announcement of this year’s Polaris Prize longlist earlier tonight, I suppose this New Noise was always destined to include a sizeable chunk of Canadian goodness. Accordingly Pat Jordache and Volcano Playground make for an exceptional pair of musical bookends.
Elsewhere, absorb intense electronic pleasure by...
Friday 10th June 2011
Late last Sunday night, with a crackle, a hiss, and the unmistakable opening plucks of Pavement’s Stereo, the Domino Radio soundsytem whirred into action.
And what a week it’s been. Wall to wall incredible music - new, old, weird, wonderful and, in some cases, exclusive. Most of all different. Just today I’ve been awed by the Alex Chilton-inspired show by About Group, a fifth and final...
Thursday 2nd June 2011
I’ve been struggling to work out what to write here for a couple of minutes now. Regrettably my train of thought has been comprehensively derailed by a slow, creeping nausea, brought on by inadvertent exposure to ‘The Lazy Song’ by Bruno Mars, which is currently being piped into the canteen I am in. It truly is a lyrical marvel.
Today I don’t feel like doing anything I just wanna lay in...
May 2011
4 posts
Friday 27th May 2011
In the second New Noise Special I’m joined in the studio by Kev Douch (Big Scary Monsters), Simon Morley (Blood & Biscuits) and Alex Fitzpatrick (Holy Roar), who have together formed new umbrella collective Pink Mist. Along with individual interviews with each label boss - exploring the history, ethos and practicalities of running their own staunchly independent imprint - the three Pink Mist...
Friday 20th May 2011
Contending with a gargantuan ATP comedown and a busy week in super humid London was never going to be easy, and thus this week’s New Noise trundles home like a wayward adolescent, out long past their bedtime.
Pretty much all usual avenues of discovery seemed a bit flat and barren this week, (probably down to me more than them), which makes this 50 minute trek through the ten I liked the most...
Thursday 12th May 2011
Tomorrow (or later today, even) I’m off to Minehead for the last ever Spring ATP Festival, this time curated by Animal Collective. In anticipation, I’ve included a couple of the artists I’m hoping to see in this week’s New Noise, among them Ear Pwr and Zomby whose excellent ‘Natalia’s Song’ is finally coming out officially as a limited 10” on 4AD on Monday. Alongside beguiling and...
Thursday 5th May 2011
Just got back from seeing PS I Love You play at the Lexington in front of an audience of around 50 people, tops. But what a lucky 50 we were. Audacious axework, incredible songs and a very fine line in sweatbands. Between us, a friend and I made off with two 12”s, one 7” and a t-shirt (and only that was because they’d run out of mediums meaning we couldn’t have one each). Further...
April 2011
3 posts
Thursday 28th April 2011
This week’s New Noise is brought to you with the help of copious amounts of dark chocolate, the sulky, slightly pathetic yet often inspirational skill of Spain’s finest football teams, an eight hour DJ masterclass from Erol Alkan, a week that never seemed to get going, a deliciously dark and engaging Timber Timbre gig, the United documentary, the Mojo Ramones issue, a brilliant new album from...
Thursday 21st April 2011
Perhaps the most fun (and often overlooked) aspect of Record Store Day is the bit where you get home and carefully remove each of your beloved new records from their sleeves, (mindfully holding them only with a flat palm on the edges), place them on the deck and drop the needle.
On this week’s podcast I invite you to share in the crackles and grooves of a few my own RSD purchases, and to have...
Thursday 14th April 2011
After last week’s foray into Captured territory this week’s New Noise podcast returns to a familiar format, namely 10 (or 11) slices of confrontational, divergent magnificence, unwillingly bundled together and forced to try and make the best of it. Not unlike Manchester City. Only with less cash and sulk.
Within: Heavenly instrumental jams courtesy of Old King, Gyratory System and Three...
March 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Thursday 31st March 2011
A first for New Noise this time around, namely an exclusive interview with enigmatic Blank Dogs man and founder of Brooklyn’s Captured Tracks: Mike Sniper.
Marking the label’s 100th release the hour-long special features early releases and brand new exclusives alongside a selection of songs that have helped shape the sound and ethos of the influential New York imprint, along with an interview...
Thursday 24th March 2011
Download Directly (right click save as) New Noise: 24th March 2011
1. Little Scream ‘Cannons’ (Secretly Canadian) from album ‘The Golden Record’ out 12th April (free download via Secretly Canadian) 2. Dream Hits ‘Dead’ (demo) Bandcamp 3. Talkers ‘Lido’ (Demo) Soundcloud 4. Timber Timbre ‘Woman’ (Full Time Hobby/Arts & Crafts) from album ‘Creep On Creepin’ On’ out 4th April 5....
Sunday 13th March 2011
Direct Download (right click save as)
New Noise: 13th March 2011
1. Taragana Pyjarama ‘Sundanese Blonde’ (Fool House) from ‘Taragana Pyjarama’ EP out 28th March 2. Carnivores ‘Darker Days’ (Double Phantom Digital) from ‘Chandelier EP’, download free via Bandamp
3. Wild Beasts ‘Albatross’ (Domino) free download here, from album ‘Smother’ out 9th May
4. Nicolas Jaar ‘Space is Only...
Wednesday 2nd March 2011
Direct Download (right click save as)
New Noise: 2nd March 2011
1) Lapalux ‘There Are Monsters in This Bed’ (Pictures Music) from ‘Many Faces Out of Focus’ EP out 14th April
2) King Creosote + Jon Hopkins ‘Bats in the Attic’ (Domino) from album ‘Diamond Mine’ out 28th March
3) Dananananaykroyd ‘E Numbers’ (download free via Soundcloud)
4) Drugg ‘In These Found Times’ (Less Music) from...
February 2011
2 posts
Friday 18th February 2011
download directly New Noise: 18th February 2011 1. tUnE-yArDs ‘Bizniss’ (4AD) from album ‘W H O K I L L’ out 18th April, free download from tune-yards.com 2. Dignan Porch ‘Stream’ (Captured Tracks) from ‘Deluded’ EP out 8th March 3. Drop/Dead ‘Waiting On Call’ (download from Don’t Die Wondering) 4. Josh T Pearson ‘Country Dumb (piano version)’ (Mute) free download...