 |
|  | Franz Ferdinand
Ulysses
16/01/2009
Domino
Gang of Four, Josef K, Throbbing Gristle, Devo, LCD Sound System
|
| What's to plug? Courtesy of a home for the deaf, some fibreglass, a little rockwall and the good people of Glasgow and Fort William, the savvy and tirelessly tight-assed and swanky, Franz Ferdinand unleash third-album, ‘Tonight: Franz Ferdinand’ to a nominally suspecting audience on Monday 26th January 2009. By way of foreplay, however, the band release new single, ‘Ulysses’ a week before, eagerly fondling the anxious divide between new wave, old wave, post-punk and post-electric, which all roughly translates as part throbbing synth-gristle, part noir and part ‘art-beat’ party anthem. Love is not only the seventh wave. It’s also the new wave. |
|  Ulysses [video] | Windows Media [hi] Ulysses [video] | Windows Media [hi]
|
|  | Robert Wyatt and Bertrand Burglat
This Summer Night
20/10/2008
Domino Records
Hot Chip, daft Punk, Air, Aim, The Avalanaches
|
| What's to plug? With the exception of a Maureen Nolan-John Cale collaboration they don’t come much more eclectic than this, the wheelchair-bound genius of 70s mushroom man, Robert Wyatt funking it up with eccentric French producer, Bertrand Burgalat and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor on the hip-swiveling, wheelchair-spinning, mirror-ball smashing disco freakout that is, ‘This Summer Night’. Naturally, it’s a totally inappropriate and anachronistic release for December, but then what should one expect of England’s most shameless recording mavericks? Bertrand Burgalat, on the otherhand is perhaps more famous for producing a track-for-track remake of the Beatle’s ‘Let it Be’ album for avante-garde band, Laibach. Infectiously esoteric. |
|  This Summer Night [video] | Windows Media [hi] This Summer Night [video] | Windows Media [lo] This Summer Night [video] | Real Media [hi]
|
|  | Eugen McGuiness
Eugen McGuiness (LP) / Moscow State Circus (single)
13:10:09
Domino
Magnetic Fields, Last Shadow Puppets, Jim Noir, Theresa Andersson
|
| What's to plug? We loved him the first time around and we love the wee little fella now. Moscow State Circus is the brand new single from Eugene McGuinness, released on October 27th. It is the first single taken from his self-titled forthcoming album, out through Domino on 13th October. Twisty, turny and wriggling like some snake-hipped charmer gatecrashing the stage during a performance of the Nutcracker Suite, Moscow State Circus marks an audacious return to form for the 22 year old Arctic Monkeys contemporary. Not that it’s a straightforward proposition, providing as it does a fairly looking-glass take on equally baroque Domino releases like ‘The Age of Understatement’. And I don’t make the comparison lightly: show tunes, crazy songs about the Fonz, lamentful ruminations about Wendy and magical monochrome classics like, ‘Those Old Black and White Movies Were True’. It’s like stuffing the Magnetic Field’s 69 Love Songs down Alex and Mile’s Y-Fronts. The 7” is backed with And The City’s But A Giant Game Of Jenga, a more mellow, gentle, contemplative acoustic number. |
|  Moscow State Circus [video] | Real Media [hi] Moscow State Circus [video] | Real Media [lo] Moscow State Circus [video] | Windows Media [lo] Moscow State Circus [video] | Windows Media [hi]
|
|  | The Verve
Love Is Noise
03/08/2007
Parlophone
Oasis, Neil Diamond, The Verve, New Order, Charlatans
|
| What's to plug? They’re back. Normally, it’s a statement that is met with gasps, the momentary suspension of belief or (perhaps more infrequently) a crack of thunder and the appearance of a chorus of angels. But this time there’s little more than the shuffling of feet, polite smiles and weary resignation to greet it. Produced by the band and recorded at State Of The Ark and Metropolis studio in London, 'Love Is Noise' is the first single is taken from their new album ‘Forth’, due for release on Monday 18th August 2008. By most people’s standards it would be an audacious, triumphant return, but whether it’s because we are expecting the earth to shift its axis each time Ashcroft opens his mouth or simply because it has that wretched ‘disco’ beat, it has all the impact of a 0.5 pound meteorite hurtling through our atmosphere and blazing a fiery but unnoticed trail before sinking into the dirt of a small allotment in Billenge. Capable of standing on the shoulder of giants, the Verve settle for scabbing a piggy back off their own lofty status. Enjoy the trail it leaves rather than the impact it makes. Appearing at the V Festival in August. |
|  Love Is Noise [video] | Real Media [lo] Love Is Noise [video] | Real Media [hi] Love Is Noise [video] | Windows Media [lo] Love Is Noise [video] | Windows Media [hi]
|
|  | White Williams
Smoke (album) Violator (single)
16/06/2008
Double Six
Elton Motello, Hot Chip, Fischerspooner, Chicory Tip, Plastic Bertrand
|
| What's to plug? If there’s a sizeable crack in your record collection between your Marc Bolan , your Giorgio Moroder and your fancy Fischerspooner records then squeeze in a bit of this: the laptop-dancing, moog twiddlin’, genre-bendin’ debut from White Williams. Recorded over two years by the Cleveland 24 year-old in various sublets in New York and San Francisco, ‘Smoke’ rifles through an unpredictable archive of pop, cartoon afro, talking heads, noise libraries, funk and circuit-board psychedelia. A bit like Hot Chip. Only on acid. New single ‘Violator’ is released on the 16th June on strictly limited edition hand-stamped 7” vinyl. Feast your lugholes on this. It’s full of vintage goodness. |
|  Violator | Real Media [lo] Violator | Real Media [hi] Violator | Windows Media [lo] Violator | Windows Media [hi]
|
|  | Hot Chip
One Pure Thought [single]
12/04/2008
EMI
Devo, Kraftwerk, Art of Noise, Black Grass, Buggles, The Korgis
|
| What's to plug? Fair enough, they might not let go in the same way Peaches or Test Iciles used to let go, but they've loosened their grip, relaxed their anal sphincter muscles and unbuttoned their shirts. Not quite as poppy as 'Ready For the Floor' but just as wriggly, rubbery and infectious and trangressing as many boundaries as Graham Norton in a Male Voice Choir. In Britain they’ve already confirmed Glastonbury, V Festival, All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP Vs Pitchfork) and T in the Park with more announcements still to come. |
|  One Pure Thought [video] | Real Media [lo] One Pure Thought [video] | Real Media [hi] One Pure Thought [video] | Windows Media [lo] One Pure Thought [video] | Windows Media [hi]
|
|  | The Corrections
Barcode
07/04/2008
EMI
Wire, Arcade Fire, Interpol, Killers, XTC, Kaiser Chiefs
|
| What's to plug? This is more like it: feisty, fiery and firsty. Barcode is the first single to be taken from London-based five piece The Corrections’ forthcoming debut album ‘Repeat After Me’ on EMI Records. Morsey, staccato buzz-action intro, a few spiky riffs, a few snappy beats and Joe Winter's urgent, paranoid vocals provide the board the rest of the song kicks back against in a springy New Wave fashion. Part Vapours, part Killers (when they were good) and part Josh Homme's right hand. If XTC had been born in Palm Desert, California and not Swindon - this is what they might have sounded like. The band play the London, Islington Bar Academy on 1st April. |
|  Barcode [video] | Windows Media [hi] Barcode [video] | Windows Media [lo] Barcode [video] | Real Media [hi] Barcode [video] | Real Media [lo]
|
|  | The Kills
Cheap and Cheerful [single]
03/03/2008
Domino Records
PJ Harvey, LCD Sound System, Royal Trux , Siouxsie and the Banshees
|
| What's to plug? The pair are alleged to have taken inspiration from Pizza Pizza Daddio, a Sixties documentary about kids in inner-city schools in the USA, and the children’s rather dark, macabre playground songs (hey, ain’ they always?). Banged out on an old school hand-punched MPC-60 hip hop drum sequencer, the end result is this – a timeless and shamefully forthright shot of adrenalin right where you need it most – in the groin. The production, featuring beats and studio smarts come from Spank Rock’s producer Alex Epton aka Armani XXXchange. The killer hooks, teases and curls could only come from space. Spanky and uncomplicated. Just how all good girls should be. |
|  Cheap and Cheerful [video] | Real Media [lo] Cheap and Cheerful [video] | Real Media [hi] Cheap and Cheerful [video] | Real Media [lo] Cheap and Cheerful [video] | Real Media [hi]
|
|  | Make Model
The Was [single]
19/11/2007
EMI Records
Flaming Lips, Red Box, Polyphonic Spree, Guillemots
|
| What's to plug? Following the release of their debut single, ‘The LSB’ on their own imprint The Biz earlier in the year, Glasgow’s new dazzling pop-therapy sweethearts, Make Model are preparing to ramp up the stakes with second single, ‘The Was’, out on November 19th 2007 through EMI. Something of a statement of intent, the terrifically uplifting ‘The Was’ combines the pre-school silliness of Lemon Jelly, the throbbing love euphoria of The Guillemots and the brass-busting, harp-tugging orchestral sweep of the Polyphonic Spree at their most magical and sublime. Throw in a xylophone and dashes of space-rock backing vocals exploding like fireworks across the mix and you have something approaching methylenedioxymethamphetamine for lugholes. |
|  The Was [video] | Windows Media [hi] The Was [video] | Windows Media [lo] The Was [video] | Real Media [hi] The Was [video] | Real Media [lo]
|
|  | Wild Beasts
Assembly
26/11/2007
Domino
Cardiacs, bonkers Scott Walker stuff, XTC, Dudley Moore, Guillemots
|
| What's to plug? What is it about Kendal that insists on dispatching us up tor and lofty crag with little more than a half-pound of mint-cake, a pair of stout walking boots and the shortest of guitar straps imaginable? Hayden Thorpe just like his Lake District brother, ‘Yan’ Wilkinson of fellow Kendal mint-band, British Sea Power both wear their guitars somewhere just short of their neck line and both are responsible for staging some of the most theatrical costume spectacles this side of a Wayne Coyne walking-bubble. An exotic falsetto, a little music hall, some bunk beds, a pair of drooping breasts and some bizarrely ticklish ivories. Comes somewhere between The Cardiacs, XTC, Monty Python and a Year 7 assembly. Eccentric but not duff. Come backed by the faintly ‘Tilt-esque’, ‘Sylvia, A Melodrama’. |
|  Assembly [video] | Real Media [lo] Assembly [video] | Windows Media 56K Assembly [video] | Real Media [hi] Assembly [video] | Windows Media [hi]
|
|
|
|
| |