A UK special this one and in the words of one Mark E Smith it’s time to leave the capital! …well not just yet but it must be said its over-rated, expensive and there’s no need to paraphrase Marc Riley (more Fall references for you).
Here’s the ever excellent Brainlove Records from that infernal London. Let’s have a lookie at some of their great artists: Brainlove is pretty much a one man army with John Brainlove running the label, managing artists, promoting and DJing and writing articles, when does he sleep?
Three things on BRNLV really caught my ear — a beautiful track from the Bleeding Heart Narrative EP (listen to the cello come in about half way through — incredible).
Ghost Cats Disappear Into the Night by brainlove
And a fantastic piece of looping drone-pop from Bastardgeist – listen to that lovely lolling bass and tell me that isn’t sublime — if you liked twin shadow and their soft melancholic electronic pop you’ll love this…
Bastardgeist – Shift by brainlove
Now for some really odd mad staring eyed folk pop marked by a distinctive low growly Yorkshire burr – David Thomas Broughton. His is a life affirming coo of a voice but not in a grating too fey listen how be-cardiganed and loomy I can be way – I’m hooting and howling over this. It’s way too good to stay in the margins of freak folk — he’s obviously got a sense of humour about himself and it’s a very charming thing he’s made — get to know this mad bastard now!
Now as promised we are out of LDN and over to the west country to visit some mad West Country bastards — argh! ketamine for breakfast drinking cider out of a dead rooks beak and all that. There’s plenty more to the West Country than free parties and hydroponic cultivation but all that adds up to a heady range of influences which feed into the strange discordant teeth rattling NOISEs coming out of the Hacker Farm.
They first caught my attention when they sent me a mail with just the header HACKER FARM, nervously I opened the email expecting twenty million types of diseases to creep through my computer what I found was a link to their crazed music made in deepest darkest Somerset — specifically the cultural hot bed of Yeovil! (The local football team have a hard as nails casual firm you have been warned Hereford!) Working out of an old dis-used farm the hackers create eerie looping discordant ambient noise shying away from any hype they slowly release their electronic apple saft into the world. And their juice is good!
Already sipping from their appley cup is a hero of mine: Simon Reynolds picked their album as a top release from 2011. Hacker Farm, Pound-land in their own words it’s “A celebration of the home-made, the salvaged and the hand-soldered. DIY electronics performed on obsolete tech and discarded, post-consumerist debris. Make-do and mend. Broken music for a Broken Britain.”
Very west politic very good go buy Poundland direct from the grower: http://hackerfarm.net
Here they are freaking out the very excellent Vortex club in the Turkish community / fixie riding handle bar mustache drop out paradise of Dalston (that London again) bringing the spirits of the cow shed to the urban miasma:
….now short pop over the River Severn to Cardiff home to Counter Cultural Heroes Super Furry Animals and a whole host of ambient / noise freaks. One such freak is Justin Toland who records under various names such as Location Baked.
http://locationbaked.bandcamp.com/ and most recently Stuttgarter Strasse
http://soundcloud.com/stuttgarter-strasse
A Deutsche electronische themed tribute to South Wales in his own words: “Stuttgarter Strasse…Road to the future”..
Part homage to a certain legendary German synth quartet, part history lesson at the Isaac Asimov School for Young Robots, Stuttgarter Strasse is the sound of teknologische musik in an era of progress and a spirit of European friendship. “Ansichtskarten aus Wales (“Postcards from Wales”), a 4-track EP based on an imaginary road trip through South Wales by the aforementioned German synth pioneers will be available to download for your listening pleasure in November 2011, with a vinyl release planned for 2012.”
Keep an ear out for this youngster – interesting art and music concepts are bound to flow from his digital hive over the coming years…
Words by Rob Jessup
