Your attention please. WHITEY is a sort-of solo project by N.J WHITEY. He is a misanthrope that spends most of his time skulking in dark corners. When he plays live he is accompanied by the following friends and associates- Wildcat (drums/sequencers), Scott X. Fairbrother (guitar/bass) and Shah (guitar/keys). For the first year guitar was also Patrick Walden (Babyshambles)… however the bright lights/hot pipes enticed him away. The fifth secret member is Robert Harder, a mysterious Bavarian who operates the mixing desk. Over the past two years WHITEY and his live sidekicks have played over 200 shows alongside (amongst others) Undertones, Buzzcocks, LCD soundsystem, New Order and Iggy Pop. There have been sessions for XFM and Radio 1. It was a lot of fun, but now they are having a lie-down. They will be back with a live XFM broadcast in late May. WHITEY is currently finishing his second album, GREAT SHAKES. It draws on a delirious range of influences, and features the live act as guest musicians. Its very good. You should hear it, really. This album is a follow up to the 2005 album THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL IS A TRAIN (1234 Records). This made many critical ‘Best Of Year’ lists. You should listen to this too, if you can find it.
After remixing the likes of Tom Vek and those neon, new rave tykes Klaxons for the past few years, Jens Moelle and Ismail Tuefekci, aka Digitalism, are aiming their own robotic house-rock at the dancefloors of the world. The perfect move, considering cats such as Simian Mobile Disco and LCD Soundsystem thrive as healthily as any sub-Libertines trilby-rockers. Indeed, ‘Idealism’ is dusted with the kind of metallic house glitter caking LCD’s ‘Sound Of Silver’, and, just as promisingly, the title track could have been carved from Daft Punk before they decided they were human after all. Elsewhere, synth-punch ‘Pogo’ thwacks like a double uppercut from The Chemical Brothers - just one of the block rockin’ feats here.
The duo of Handsome Furs began as an idea in the winter of 2005, comprised of Vancouver residents Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade) and his fiancée, Alexei Perry. Dark and minimal while noisy and earnest, the point was to be as sparse and repetitive as possible with the help of little more than vocals, guitars, and a new drum machine. Through this, songs of earthbound captains, eggs made of gold and iron, and sleepless bodies were born. Boeckner’s disenchanted vocals thinly resonate while cloaked in a frenzied undertone of fear and uncertainty, all punctuated by bare drum machine beats. Through the course of each track, a deep-seated sense of longing struggles with staunch realism as a restless disdain for both urban life and smaller towns collide. Handsome Furs toured Europe before writing any songs. They have since opened for the likes of David Cross and Modest Mouse before releasing a proper record. Recorded at Wolf Parade’s studio, Mount Zoomer, in the heart of December, Plague Park is their debut. It is a record of melancholic tendency and heartfelt desire; a stripped-down symphony roaming between city and country, and made for ears of either side.
2007 has been an amazing year for records so far - and we haven’t even reached Summer yet. As well as stunning turns by Von Sudenfed, Dinosaur Jr and Dalek we’ve had three stone cold classics in the form of ‘Sound of Silver’, ‘The Magic Position’ and now this. Battles, for the uninitiated, are a four piece featuring ex-Helmet sticksman John Stanier, multi-instrumentalist Ty Braxton, former Don Caballero guitarist and keyboardist Ian Williams and Dave Konopka from Lynx. They caused something of a stir a year or so ago when Warp gave their first two EPs a licensed release in the UK and they came over for a number of gigs including an amazing turn at Birmingham’s Supersonic Festival. But if people had them pinned down as math rock experimentalists (an incorrect assumption even then) this album visibly dispels that myth immediately. From the opener ‘Race: In’ this album is a sunburst of ideas and styles, presumably painstakingly written, and fairly difficult to play but never anything less than instantaneously accessible. The set up works like this: John hammers out the kind of jazz and metal inflected breaks that work as a focal point for the rest of the band, who evolve and devolve loops all around him. Trilling and thrilling themes ebb and flow, keyboard riffs ape guitars which in turn ape processed vocal loops. Amazingly this is actually how they sound live as well, at any one point during a track by Battles up to eight instruments (vox included) are being played by four people. The most astounding track on an astounding album is the aptly titled ‘Atlas’, which is a conceptual joke of sorts. The Helmet vet travels regularly to see his girlfriend in Cologne where the DJs had grown really sick of the minimalist Kompact scene and started hanging out in rock clubs before transferring their own lolloping Glitter beat to techno tunes to create shcaffel; the sound that would eventually influence Goldfrapp and Rachel Stevens. Battles thought it would be funny to cover the techno as a rock band and see what the results would be like. They were, of course, phenomenal. Elsewhere the symphonic prog pop of The Cardiacs informs on ‘Ddiamondd’; the sumptuous horror-show of ‘Rembrandt Pussy Horse’-era Buttholes on the creepy ‘Leyendecker’ and the twitchy jazz rock of ‘Tij’. This is not just an album that can be appreciated by fans of the avant-garde, pop and rock alike but a genuine fuck you to the people claiming modern music has nowhere left to go. Essential. John Doran
Don’t miss it!!!!
play:
June 11th 18th and 25th at The Mercury Lounge, NYC
June 24th at Central Park SummerStage, NYC
Jun 17th at Union Hall Brooklyn, NY
Band: apostleofhustle.com
MySpace: myspace.com/apostleofhustle