There’s not a lot of humour in the printed words of those who write about the genres of indie / rock music is there? It’s as if having a joke just isn’t appropriate for the material; in order to be seen as taking the music seriously it’s necessary to write earnestly about it. Yet with pop music it’s perfectly acceptable to have a giggle.
Worship sound very serious. They have observed the Rules of Rock Chapter 3, para 6.7 which clearly describes the method for obtaining the perfect degree of solemnity to your music. Yet take a look at the photo of the band accompanying this post. There are two things of note. First and most importantly, whereas previously Worship was a four piece they now appear to be down to three. Secondly notice how only two of the band look very serious. These two seem to understand in that in order to create densely moody electronic influenced rock music you need to look the part and that means NO SMILING. But there’s a traitor in the midst. For lead singer Tim has a definite grin breaking out. If we were either Jordan or Tom we’d be examining his MP3 player very closely. We reckon he might be COMMITING THE CARDINAL SIN and be sneakily listening to happy sounding major label pop music. He’s probably in his bedroom right now learning dance routines to Katy Perry videos and will soon be suggesting that maybe the band should take more influence from Lady Ga Ga. In fact whilst we were enjoying (yes enjoying !!!) the gloomy, atmospheric brilliance of Worship’s new free download Leviathan, the ‘wub-wub dubstep influence’ klaxon sounded a little. Surely an indicator of nights in listening to the UK Top 40 singles?
So sorry readers if we haven’t written anything serious about the music (or the music at all) in this blog post, but when the music is seriously good (as this is) all we really want you to do is listen. Now has anyone got Katy Perry’s number? Maybe she would fancy doing a remix? Worship - Leviathan
Stamping your own authoritative sound on a remix is often one of the best ways for new artists to grab the ears of another band’s followers. This is exactly what Brighton based, Blade Runner loving, electronic duo Curxes do as they take Worship’s widescreen modern rock and add their trademark black celebration of industrial-junkyard clattering sounds, dirty bass and slinky synth notes. It’s one of those mournful but surprisingly uplifting reconstructions.
Right now (until somebody grabs this Soundcloud embed) this is the only place in the world you can hear this remix, but if you purchase yourself a ticket for Worship’s forthcoming single release gig at St Pancras Old Church in London on Dec 1 from this link, for parting with cash you will get a pre-order ticket bundle which includes one of 300 limited-edition transparent House Of Glass vinyls and a free physical remix EP, featuring a number of remixes including this one by Curxes.
Heavily featured on Breaking More Waves in 2010 you could easily be forgiven for thinking that the suspenseful sounds of Worship had been assigned to the electronic trashcan in 2011. This isn’t the case at all though. Worship have been busying themselves away parenting a bunch of new songs as well as playing a number of UK festivals, including a warmly received slot on the BBC Introducing Stage at Glastonbury 2011.
House Of Glass (which unfortunately is not about a Building Regulation defying conservatory-like dwelling) is the first new song to be released in its fully-formed studio form and those who have already succumbed to the bands spell of machine-music will be mightily satisfied, whilst latecomers can now begin to appreciate the bands eerie moonlit laptop meets guitar soundscapes. If you are a newcomer, the reference points are Radiohead circa Kid A but without the Aphex Twin fixation, a gentle more indie / electronic Muse and possibly later day Editors, replacing Tom Smith’s baritone boom with something more soothing but equally sombre.
Worship will be playing a special single launch show at St Pancras Old Church in London on Dec 1 supported by pop-noir duo Alpines. A limited edition pre-order ticket bundle is available which includes a ticket to the show, the House Of Glass single, plus a remix EP featuring exclusive mixes from Breaking More Waves featured favourites Polarsets, [Strangers], Curxes and more. You can grab that here.
Here’s something that demands your devotion. If you’ve been paying attention you will already be quite familiar with the modernistic beats and shudders of Berkshire band Worship – we’ve featured them a number of times on the blog because the sound they produce is monstrously good. Their song Collateral – a thunderous industrial machine – is just one example of what the band do - we first featured the song in August, with an earlier pieces here and here.
Now we are pleased to present their debut video, directed by Blake Claridge which adds Blair Witch forest gloom and beauty by jam jar to supplement the music with an additional exquisitely atmospheric layer. The band are playing a number of shows this winter including gigs with Breaking More Waves favourites Trophy Wife and Islington Boys Club – check the bands Myspace for details.
Amongst the industry conferences / debates at Manchester’s In the City there was one whose brief was to discuss the difference between UK and US blogs. The brief went a little astray at times as the discussion veered towards the wider aspects of new music blogging with a panel consisting of Pitchfork’s Ryan Schreiber, Hype Machine’s Dev Sherlock, My Band’s Better Than Your Band’s Oliver Clueit, David Greenwald from Rawkblog and Drowned In Sound’s Sean Adams. The first part of the discussion is not on the recording, but the remaining fifty minutes you can catch below. Sean Adams arrives part of the way through, having been stuck in traffic.
Some of the discussion revolves around what the invited panel considered to be a decent blog with the consensus being that good blogs have their own personality and put the effort in – they don’t just post the latest Lady Ga Ga remix to generate hits – content is everything.
However, there are elements of the discussion that we’re not so comfortable with. The idea that the best blogs post only niche material as suggested by one panel member smacks to us as indie snobbery – our love of music is broader than that. We wholeheartedly agree with blogs acting with integrity and not just posting a ‘big-name’ track to get high hit count from ‘readers’, free goodies, guest list passes or the like from PR companies. However if a blog posts a Lady Ga Ga remix MP3 we feel there’s nothing wrong with that providing that it truly represents the taste of the blog author and that they have some genuine quality content linked to the MP3. (And the MP3 has consent from the record company / artist / PR company to post!)
The MP3 blog market is over saturated and blogs that have a unique selling point such as great content in the writing or a different way of doing things are more likely to survive – if only because their author is showing a degree of commitment. However one issue that is quickly touched on (when Skatterbrain is mentioned) but that isn’t discussed within the conversations is how many blogs have a limited shelf life, often being written by students / the unemployed / those trying to get a job in music journalism or the music industry at large and those without other commitments such as families. As these authors personal commitments increase often their blog activity lessens particularly if their blog isn't monetised or linked to their day job in some way. Skatterbrain for example has only posted about ten times since the end of July. We’ve seen a number of other blogs all but disappear as their authors find the pressures of adult life leaving them less time to write their blogs.
Breaking More Waves is lucky in that with a family, professional career a long way from music and an already busy life before we started the blog. We have managed to time manage our real life pressures to ensure that we can continue to deliver regular content. Hopefully with our more discursive articles (such as this) we also occasionally offer up something a little different that the regular MP3 blogs don’t offer. We’ve never aimed to be a ‘big name’ blog – our blog is very much a hobby (but a hobby with a strong enthusiasm for its subject) – but are happy that with a growing readership, ONE that has doubled in the last eight months, we’re doing things along what we consider to be the right lines, and hopefully our regular readers agree –otherwise they wouldn’t be regular.
Now here’s that Lady Ga Ga remix. Only joking. Instead we feature something a little more ‘niche’ to help our indie snob points – a of track that we’ve posted about before and would like to give a little more exposure to. Enjoy Film Noir by Portsmouth’s The B of the Bang as well as the whole debate courtesy of Rawkblog.
Tell anyone that you’ve been to a multi band event or festival and the inevitable question you will be asked is this. “Who was the best?” It’s a question we hate because, like a long term relationship, we prefer to consider the sum of the parts rather than individual moments. The overall consensus from those attending In The City seemed to be that after being out in the wastelands, the 2010 event was fresh, focussed, re-energised and had re-established itself on the map. However, in order to explain why In The City was very good, to get the sum of the parts, it is necessary to review the elements that make up the whole.
We recently suggested that Clock Opera are never likely to write another song as good as Once and For All. On the basis of their In The City show we were wrong. Their last two numbers, the cataclysmic Lesson Number 7 and another tune of unknown title that started as a gentle electronic hymn and then grew into a snarling tempestuous beast were incredible. Lead singer Guy Connelly, dressed in a t-shirt emblazoned with keyboards, sang with leg trembling passion. The rhythmic digits of Piece of String were punctuated with the whole band bashing cans, jugs and other random implements to create an exciting crashing rhythm - it was no surprise to find that they were greeted with a loud cheer by the Roadhouse crowd, who included producer and potential pop king Starsmith. On the basis of the set, when Clock Opera get an album out, it could be a contender for a Mercury prize nomination – intelligent, interesting and unique.
Worship may be less original – there’s an obvious Radiohead comparison to be made, but their clattering drums, moody soundscapes and haunting beats which are defined on Collateral and song Three Wolves are still worthy of attention. Despite the bands surly atmospheric dark technoid-indie-rock sound there was a moment of humour in the set. “How are you?” their lead singer questioned. “How are you?” replied a member of the audience. The singer replied that he was a bit tired – it was a long way from their hometown of Reading. “Stop moaning,” someone else shouted. “I’m not moaning, he asked,” was the response, which raised a small ripple of laughter.
Over in the Mint Lounge Bright Light Bright Light did their very musical best to get cool music industry types dancing. Everyone one of Rod Thomas’s songs was filled with 90’s influenced synth pop joy. He’d probably hate us for saying it but D:Ream sprang to mind. Disco Moment with its Moroder throb and anthemic chorus and the soaring dance floor friendly Cry At Films were screaming for a handbag to shimmy round, bottle of WKD in hand.
A quick run through a couple of rainy, boozy streets found a small crowd watching starlet in the making Spark. In a past review we criticised the lack of emotional impact of Sparks songs, but there’s no doubt that her super confident strutting and striding pop works. Like Marina and the Diamonds raised on a diet of Rhianna, Spark owned the stage, prowling like a caged tiger. “This is a masterpiece,” she belted out. Although masterpiece may be an over exaggeration, she certainly knows how to perform a good pop song.
We first wrote about Glasser back in February 2010 and since then have noticed gradually increasing coverage, particularly on the blogs, about this mystical U.S performer. Glasser was like the new Enya it’s OK to like, or Clannad on dance pills, ghoulishly prowling the dry ice filled stage like a witchdoctor conjuring a spell, as tribal drums and icy Fever Ray styled electronic rhythms floated and ebbed through the room, gradually drawing people in to her lair. There was no in between song banter, just a precise execution of vibey music. Expect her slow build rise to continue.
Our final act of the day was Manchester’s Dutch Uncles. Despite taking the stage to big cheers from a now (drunken?) up for it crowd, and blazing through a fast paced set that included opener Face In, Fragrant and The Ink, the band seemed to have little of the class of any of the other bands seen that evening. Seen it all before writhing indie math pop got the better of us and sent us home to bed, after what had, as a sum of the parts, been an excellent In The City.
One of the greatest things about Bestival (besides the Women’s Institute Tea Tent, Forum Campsite and Fancy Dress day on Saturday) is the music. With rain clouds and mud making an appearance it was the music more than anything that did its very best to blow the grey clouds away.
Berkshire 4 piece Worship was the first band to grace the poorly named Rock N Roll stage on Saturday (a stage that during the weekend would feature pop, dance and acoustic folk - hardly Rock N Roll). Worship were the embodiment of a modern rock band - laptops set to melancholy, guitars tuned to atmospheric, like Radiohead and Delphic twisted in a suffocating wrapper. Collateral is a grinding steel beast of a song and the closing In Our Blood has a ghostly throb that could quite easily darken arenas.
As a DJ played It’s Raining Men from the main stage (just after a mini dance off in the audience - see video below), the skies opened and Stornoway should have really considered changing their name to Storm-away. Stornoway’s songs sounded lovelier than they have ever sounded, simmering with banjo, acoustic guitar and occasional fiddle, lead singer Brian’s vocal full of sweet sweet earnestness. Brian chatted to the audience about ghosts and the zoological attractions of the Isle of Wight, bringing a unique serious factual charm to the stage that engaged in the same way that songs such as the thoughtful We Are the Battery Human and the delightful acoustic pop of Zorbing did. It may have poured throughout their set but the enthusiastic audience remained, happy to be soaked in the beauty of it all.
“Sorry I couldn’t come in fancy dress, our ideal fancy is a businessman,” joked Theo from Hurts in the Big Top. If you don’t know the Hurts sound / image by now, where have you been? Suits. Hands clasped in prayer. Opera singers. Head bowed with hand behind back poses. Big electronic passionate pop ballads. Hurts seem to divide opinion. Yet at Bestival there were very few critics in the large audience, which was bolstered by those taking shelter from the rain. Rain suits Hurts. With a lyrical stock of “Clouds go back and thunder rolls,” and “I see the lights through the rain,” Hurts take epic solemnity and push it higher. Yet although they’ve been criticised for taking themselves too seriously, there’s another side to Hurts which was displayed as Theo laughed at the man dressed as a Health and Safety inspector in the audience, who held up a clipboard with the words “Danger - Good music,” written on it. Better than Love and Blood Tears & Gold were received with hands in the air worship and Hurts won a surprising victory at Bestival. “Best festival of the summer,” Theo said with a big smile on his face - it seemed that Hurts had just stepped up a level.
Out at the smaller Bimble Inn three up and coming bands / acts all delivered excellent sets in different ways.
“Sorry about the delay, we were having costume change issues,” announced Lulu and the Lampshades. Flanked by two dancing girls with lampshades on their heads, the groups alt-folk harmonies, plucked violins and use of unusual objects such as clattering typewriters or overturned cups gave the group an enjoyable quirkiness that got the clowns, fairies, garden elves, Snow Whites, superheroes and parrots in the audience on their feet and dancing. “An hour ago I was sat feeling f*ckin’ miserable in a car, now I’m so happy,” one of the band gleefully announced.
Spark was an altogether different proposition. She may have played to the smallest audience of the whole weekend, but her confident stage manner and strong pop voice suggested that it may not be long before that all changes. Dressed in an animal print hoodie and backed by just bass, drums and a laptop, songs such as the energetic “Woah-oh-oh” call of Blow and the classy elegance of Revolving hinted that Spark is getting ready to light up the radio.
Next up in the Bimble Inn Visions of Trees created a vibey slo-mo electronic atmosphere awash with ambient gentleness and ethereal splendour. Carefully contained by rhythmic beats created from natural and electronic based instrumentation, this London based duo worked together perfectly in unison - Joni with his head lowered, layering soundscapes, Sara fixing her gaze on the audience with unnerving confidence. Transcendent and hypnotic, Visions of Trees produced dreamy perfection that got the welly shod crowd dancing.
Back over in the Rock N Roll tent Mount Kimbie displayed their credentials as pioneers of new-electronica. With an expansive post-dubstep sound, their down-tempo clicks, beats and loops created a mellow fragmented journey of faceless brilliance. As they left the stage shouts of “One more tune,” rang throughout the venue.
Dancing of a different type continued with Canada’s Think About Life. From the moment that their playful and edgy pop sound, typified by their funky party jam Havin’ My Baby, blasted out - a mix of TV on the Radio and Kele from Bloc Party - disco feet moved. The band seemed a little phased at the whole spectacle of the mud, fancy dress and groovy party people at Bestival, explaining that they only stepped off a plane a few hours ago, arrived at the festival and went “What the...?” Unfortunately their set was cut cruelly short due to a power cut three quarters of the way through, and despite shouts for “Drum solo,” and “Acoustic,” Think About Life left with the audience definitely wanting more.
Saturday’s headliners The Flaming Lips know how to put on a show. There were videos of hallucinogenic naked space ladies giving birth to the band, ticker tape explosions, glitter cannons, huge colourful balloons, Wayne Coyne singing a song atop the shoulders of a man dressed as a bear, tangerine coloured crowds bouncing either side of the stage, lasers and of course the now infamous zorbing ball with a stumbling Coyne inside rolling over the audience. A Flaming Lips show really is like no other. However sometimes the visual treatment distracted from the music, which ranged from the brilliant, such as the beautiful Do You Realize and the trippy Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Part 1), to the comedic, to turgid psychedelic prog-rock nonsense that should have remained in the recording studio locked in a double bolted cupboard. Coyne himself was the worlds greatest mad uncle, or the lord of freaks depending on your perspective, singing “I can be a lion,” and getting the audience to roar in unison. He then continued asking them to also impersonate monkeys, helicopters and sneezes. We can’t imagine many other headline acts having such fun. Praising the crowd for being “beautiful freaks,” it was clear that Coyne was enjoying Bestival immensely, and didn’t want to leave.
By the time you read this we will have journeyed from our base on the south central coast of the UK to Scotland and then after one days pause will have continued on to Spain. It may seem a convoluted journey, but in this case it's necessary.
It will have appeared that we’ve still been busy posting, but the reality is we’ve been laying on a beach catching the sun, sea and sangria for a few days now and have gone nowhere near Breaking More Waves. With the exception of our recent post concerning the new Paper Crows single the last weeks worth of blogs were all pre-written and pre-scheduled 2 weeks ago. You don't honestly believe that we sit at our laptop just waiting for 1 minute past midnight or minute past twelve in the afternoon to hit 'Publish post' do you ? Sorry if we let you down in your expectations, but with a full time non-music related career, a family and a busy and active social life we are highly time restricted. We are embarrassed to admit that the time we put into creating this thing is pretty minute compared to some of our bigger better music blog cousins. If this blog was a school report we would probably only get a C for effort. One day we'll take some time and get an A+. For now we snatch moments and that is all.
And for now we're grabbing lots of moments back. We’re taking a break right through to September, when we’ll return. Our twitter will remain active during our holiday, so if you don’t already do so, why not stalk us there instead ? We might even tweet something of interest.
In the meantime we’ll leave you with another track from a new band we recently posted about - Worship. Enjoy some Midnight Sun
Berkshire based group Worship first cropped up on our radar back in March, but with just the odd live excursion, a radio session and a remix there has been very little in the way of new material to listen to. Having decanted to Norway to write and record, Worship are now ready to reveal the first fruits of their labours, and one track, Collateral is ripe for your picking and free download below.
With Collateral Worship assault the ears with the dirty stutter of evil-robot electronica, jerky clattering drums and a vocal that bears a significant resemblance to one Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Like a dark sci-fi war movie Collateral seems to threaten weary violence, but is graceful and composed enough to never do so. We continue to file Worship in our drawer marked ones to watch, and you can get the chance to do that watching in the next few weeks when the band play Club. The. Mammoth in Shoreditch, London on the 13th August, Tunbridge Wells Forum on the 20th August and then make their festival debut at Bestival in September. Moody, eerie experimental rock that is as unsettling as it is beautiful. Great stuff.
We’re not in a habit of posting about remixes. Not that we don’t like a good remix - the best are an art form in themselves, defining songs in a whole new way, but the blogosphere is so full of the things, that readers are well catered for elsewhere.
One of our favourite approaches to the movement is the Aphex Twin method - a man who released a compilation of remixes called Twenty Six Mixes for Cash. It’s brutal, but at least Aphex Twin was honest enough to admit that producing the remix was all about the money. In an artistic sense however, what we love about Aphex Twin was that he had no respect for the original artists work, often stripping a song back to virtually nothing and then rebuilding. Once when asked by a record company to remix a Lemonheads track he reportedly gave the record company one of his own pieces of music, masquerading it under the guise of a remix and allegedly received a significant payment for it.
End It Tonight is the second single to be taken from the Teenagers In Tokyo album Sacrifice, which is due on the 24th May 2010. The original track is a reasonably competent but hardly ground breaking piece of indie rock. Then Worship get their hands on it.
We’ve already featured Worship (lead singer Tim pictured above) a couple of times here and here, and now in quick succession they are back again. Worship adopt a route similar to Aphex Twin with their remix, deconstructing the original and turning it into something else completely. End It Tonight now becomes a dark electronic ghost march of ambient menace as it builds into something that borders on the colossal. There’s no attempt to just throw a dance beat and a few effects over the original song here, instead Worship create a fluttering, pulsing, night-cloaked beast.
As a live experience visual stimulation can often be the downfall of laptop wielding bands, particularly in small venues. Unable to hide behind banks of hypnotic lighting or multi-media visuals, all that is often left is the spectacle of watching some vacant looking individuals twiddling knobs.
Nedry (pictured) overcome these problems with their secret weapon – their Japanese born singer Ayu. Like a small child she dances and skips around the stage with a complete lack of self-consciousness, clawing at the air like a cat. She is strangely compelling to watch. Her voice is a ghostly wail, reminiscent of a more spectral Bjork, echoing and looping through effects pedals. The two male members of Nedry also give it their all, heads and bodies bobbing in unity, wrestling with their technology - a synchronised downtempo-dub-step-glitch-rock-trip-hop groove machine. Nedry are a complex mix of experimental noises, beats and riffs that challenge the ears, and despite the computerised base from which much of their sound emanates it never feels anything less than organic and loose, jetting off in different directions at any given moment. Scattered is full of evil rampaging blasts of fuck-you-backwards guitar anger, whilst Apples & Pears is more graceful - a fusion of simpler soft guitar work, clipped beats and low-end frequencies. Innovative, progressive and visually engaging, Nedry defy the idea that geektronica doesn’t work without the camouflage of additional imagery or videos to distract.
Support band Worship are a little more familiar sounding - there’s a sense of new-seriousness about their Radiohead-esque songs. Like Nedry they are driven by laptop based instrumentation but this time with a more traditional guitar sound. Lead singer Tim has a brooding, soul-stirring vocal that floats over the Berkshire bands atmospheric music. Worship may not yet be fully formed – not every one of their songs being fully captivating, but they’re weightily polished. It probably explains why despite their infancy they were recently invited to play a live session on BBC Radio One, despite not having yet released a single. There’s a sense that Worship are a band who are still discovering themselves in terms of audience engagement in live performance; despite a chirpy hello and an announcement that this is their last show for a while, watching them feels invasive and voyeuristic. It’s almost as if they are in the recording studio and the audience have been invited to peep through the keyhole to preclude their shyness. There is no doubt however they are highly competent and have a good deal of substance in their music – the staggeringly good In Our Blood being a deft pulsing example. As we said before, file in the drawer marked ones to watch.
A band taking a name like Worship may seem just a little arrogant. Are they expecting to develop a devout crowd of fanatics who follow their music with religious zeal ? Well quite possibly yes. Because this band produce incredibly taught, mysterious sounding, modern rock music. Although we’ve only heard a small number of their tracks, we have been left impressed with the more than achingly beautiful In Our Blood, and the supremely absorbing guitar atmospherics of their song Billion. Then there’s the electronically synth patterned Day and Age, which throbs with haunting experimentation and shadowy moodiness. Reminiscent of Radiohead and the direction Editors took with their most recent album (but better), Worship may well find that their name becomes an apt command.
We know very little about Worship, but our investigations reveal that they are west Berkshire based, have been booked for Bestival later this year, have upcoming support slots with more Breaking More Waves favourites Nedry and The Good Natured and have recently remixed Parasol by My Luminaires. It's probably a little too early to start thinking about our ones to watch for 2011 list, but we will be keeping a careful eye and ear out for Worship. Listen to their music here and watch them play live below.
