Playing House (Featuring How To Dress Well) by Active Child
We first introduced you to LA based Active Child a couple of weeks ago – the majestic, wonderful Hanging On. Get your hands on another free download, Playing House featuring How To Dress Well, below.
20 Jul 2011
Winter Beats by I Break Horses
Swedish duo I Break Horses quickened many a pulse back in May with Hearts, their debut release for Bella Union.
19 Jul 2011
Know no violence by Spanish Prisoners
Brooklyn four-piece Spanish Prisoners release their second full-length Gold Fools in the autumn.
18 Jul 2011
The Archer by The Deer Tracks
It’s testament to the sheer volume of weird and wonderful music emanating from Sweden currently that the boy/girl duo The Deer Tracks’ decide to launch their album in a mine 500ft below ground? Pah!
14 Jul 2011
It's Real by Real Estate
New Domino signings Real Estate are set to release their debut album Days on October 17th.
13 Jul 2011
Lach, the father of anti-folk
Halfway through my interview with Lach, the Brooklynite breaks off from our conversation to admire a nearby flower ‘exploding with colour’ in the Edinburgh garden where he’s sitting. He loses his train of thought. ‘What were we talking about?’ he asks me. You were telling me that anti-folk is not just music; it’s an ethos I say. ‘Oh yeah right’ continues the man widely credited as being the father of New York anti-folk, ‘it’s the poetic acid to crack that mental egg and open you up and bring out that child like innocence’ he says, before returning to the flower.
Lach is in Edinburgh ahead of this year’s Fringe Festival, where he’ll be performing a one-man show throughout August at Cabaret Voltaire. Lach, The Waitress, The Walls and The Weirdos is based on his experiences running and playing at the legendary Antihoot at NYC’s Sidewalk Café for 15 years, the epicentre of anti-folk that spawned the likes of Jeffrey Lewis, Regina Spektor and The Moldy Peaches. In addition, he’ll be resurrecting the Antihoot every night at the Gilded Balloon and producing a CD of the best acts. Does he feel Edinburgh can compete with NYC? ‘(Edinburgh’s) another section of the simultaneous now’ he says. That would be a yes then.
This is his second time at the Fringe. Last year’s The Day I Went Insane show was his first foray into comedy, a move encouraged by BBC producer Richard Melvin, whom Lach had worked with on several radio shows. It was, by the sounds of it, a complete blag. ‘He asked me if I’d be interested in doing the Fringe. As it got nearer the time I think he expected me to have a one-man show prepared but I kept stalling. I just went on stage and started rambling. The room was packed. I didn’t need notes…it was like a drug’.
Now well and truly hooked, it’s hardly surprising that the man once described by the New York Times as a ‘Manhattan institution’ has found the transition to live comedy a relatively smooth one. His songs bristle with a matter-of-fact humour and speak of three decades worth of eccentric character study at the heart of New York’s alternative music scene – he first moved to Greenwich Village in 1982. Take this line from Everyone’s Therapist, a track from his soon to be released sixth studio album Ramshackle Heart: ‘Donald is fucked-up, he knows I’m a sober guy. So why does he spend so much time telling me how great it is getting high?’
The album was co-produced by Neil Halstead, formerly of Slowdive and now Mojave 3, a ‘wonderful songwriter and great guy’ according to Lach, at an old RAF hangar come studio in Cornwall. Recorded in a mere two weeks, albeit with a further two weeks set aside for mixing, it’s a warm, organic record featuring two members of Halstead’s touring band and an untried drummer who turned out to have ‘a bit of a Mo Tucker in her’. Lach seems happy with the results: ‘I was pretty sceptical at first, I had no idea of what the record should sound like…but we had a wonderful telepathy, we were in sync. Kaz is a wonderful drummer; Neil has an amazing voice. I’d like to do another record with him, maybe like a duets album. Our voices work well together’.
Two shows a night for almost a month is surely going to test his endurance, even if he is a ‘sober guy’. Is he planning to spend a good few weeks decompressing back in New York once the festival’s over? ‘Oh I’m not going back to New York’, he tells me, ‘I’m all sold up’. So where is he thinking of settling? ‘I’m seriously considering Edinburgh…but the future is unwritten, as Strummer said’.
Ramshackle Heart is out July 18th on Song, By Toad Records.
12 Jul 2011
Future Islands - Before The Bridge
Future Islands – Before the Bridge from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.
The art-pop construction that is Future Islands seems to get better and better. After their 2010 album-of-the-year contender “In Evening Air”, they return this autumn with a follow up, “On The Water”; the first single from which has just been released. The video is above, and you can download the track for free below.
10 Jul 2011
She Makes War's East End street art bike tour
Here’s an interesting new video from She Makes War, aka Laura Kidd, in which we’re taken on a two-wheeled tour of East End street art. Kidd has created a microsite for the video, complete with a graffiti location map, photos and extra footage. Her debut album is out on Monday.
08 Jul 2011
Hanging On by Active Child
Active Child, a.k.a. producer, singer-songwriter, harpist Pat Grossi, has contributed a new song to the Adult Swim Singles Program – they’re releasing a free digital single every week for ten weeks; artists have included Best Coast, How To Dress Well and Mastadon. The spine-tingling falsetto of Hanging On will also be available on debut album You’re All I See, released August 23rd via Vagrant. Grossi will be touring the U.S. with Oxford’s pop star in waiting and Snipe favourite Chad Valley throughout September. Hopefully we’ll see this inspired pairing slay U.K. audiences with their futuristic brand of soulful man-pop very soon.
07 Jul 2011
Carnival by Disclosure
Baby-faced garage assassins Guy and Howard Lawrence, a.k.a. Disclosure, released a double A-side – Carnival/I Love That You Know – earlier in June via Transparent. You can now download a free EP featuring both tracks, plus three new ones, by hitting the ‘like’ button on their Facebook page.
05 Jul 2011
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- Number of people using Thames cable car plunges
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- A unique collection of photos of Edwardian Londoners
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
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