Who got played this week? How do you find our more? Here come the details...

Easter Sunday so to the studio was closed today, this is a repeat on the March 2nd show.. 

1/intro: TRANSISTOR SIX – Back Yard Rocketship (Blackbean & Placenta) - our adopted theme tune so you know where you are. Transistor Six is Frances Castle, there’s lots of her fine art and creativity to explore so please please do. You can now get the whole tune downloaded for yourselves and find links to her artwork, albums and lots more over at www.myspace.com/transistorsix

2: B FOR BANG – Helter Skelter (KML) – A track from the forthcoming album “Across The Universe of Language” in which B For Bang “rewire” The Beatles. B For Bang are a collective of respected avant music creators – people from Dimension X, Zu and such, and this album (out on March 10th) is laced with way left field interpretations of Fab Four classics along with assorted bits of sound collage and experimental electronica – this is basically Beatles reworked and rewired for Resonance! www.kmlrecordings.com or www.bforbang.com

3: PLAAYDOH – Purple Mini Jack (Winning Sperm Party) – One more play of a track from that excellent Plaaydoh EP, we loved it from the moment the first note hit us. No, loved it as soon as we opened the envelope and got our hands on the home-made package. “Plaaydoh are a lo-fi pop band from Glasgow” says the scribbled piece of paper – and yes, the piece of paper is correct. Plaaydoh are a brilliantly spiky shouty poppy lo-fi diy band from Glasgow with five songs - three of which are instant bites of creative punk rock attitude and abrasive pointy adrenaline (the other two aren’t that far behind either). Comes is an excellent hand made sleeve – tactile, inviting, demand your instant attention. Limited to 100 (ours is orange and number 11). Purple sounds like The Fall meet a very edgy Go Team via a shouty Vile Vile Creatures (or Bis), Boyscout sounds like lo-fi Bananarama for pop loving Liars fans, Oh Jay is just a brilliant delight. Plaaydoh are charming, messy, Plaaydoh are full of bite, most of all they have these great songs that are laced with delicious energy and dangerous character, Plaaydoh are brilliantly different. We love this EP, we want more... and these Winning Sperm Party people look like they’re up to good things tooooooo – go investigate – this is why we do this Organ thing! - www.winningspermparty.com  or www.myspace.com/plaaydoh

4: EFTERKLANG –  Caravan (Leaf) – The wonderful Efterklang have announced a spring tour of the UK and Ireland. Like their hugely successful tour in November/December last year, the group will perform as an 8-piece. The line-up will include Anna Brønsted, whose solo act Our Broken Garden, will perform as support for the tour.The Danish collective, currently on tour in Europe, will release “Caravan” as a strictly limited edition 7” (and download) to coincide with the tour. The single is taken from the acclaimed album Parades (last year’s Organ album of the year). You can listen to Caravan here: www.myspace.com/theleaflabel, find out more at www.myspace.com/efterklang  “Highlight of the Efterklang tour is a headlining show at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on April 2nd - and we can announce that the latest Leaf signing, Wildbirds & Peacedrums, from Gothenburg in Sweden, will make their debut UK performance at the show. Their album, Heartcore, will be released on April 28. - www.myspace.com/wildbirdsandpeacedrums
         EFTERKLANG have now been confirmed for the Supersonic festival in Birmingham on Saturday 12th July. The festival, put on by the Capsule people, takes place at the Custard Factory on the 11th and 12th – and what a bill it looks to be! BATTLES, HARMONIA, EARTH. OXBOW, GUAPO, DALEK and lots lots more – serious Other Rock... www.capsule.org.uk/Supersonic

5: VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR – Over The Hill (Virgin) – A wondrous twelve and a half minute epic from the forthcoming (March 17th) album Trisector... When Van Der Graaf made that comeback a couple of years ago with those unexpected shows and the Present album people refused to believe it was going to happen until they were actually stood there in front of us singing of black days at the bottom of the blackest sea. The euphoria, the disbelief and the celebration is behind us now, one of the finest bands ever are properly back and the second album from this new period of Van Der Graaf life is here.  Stripped down to a trio of original 1968 members now – Hugh Banton, Peter Hammill and Guy Evans - the first thing to say about Trisector is that there is material on here to stand up next the best from any period of the band’s many lives. Peter Hammill is on top form with his extremely personal lyrics - inward looking, unflinching as ever as age takes hold; the melancholy, that wonderfully distinctive voice, that clock that’s always ticking and a lifetime spent unlearning all that he knows. The twelve and a half minutes of Over The Hill is classic Van Der Graaf Generator with all those breathtaking rollercoaster rides and stabs of jarring drama that lead us to that euphoric grandness. We Are Not Now is seriously progressively challenging rock – Van Der Graff are not the kind of band who you expect to just rehash things, they don’t here! There are moments on Trisector that are genuinely pushing at musical edges – and if you want emotion that Peter Hammill is still the (emo? This is the real stuff). The best moments more than make up for the risks that don’t really pay off – the album opens with a rather uneventful four minute instrumental that really did lower my expectations and had me fearing the worst.  Start your first listen with the opening moments of Interference Patterns lose yourself in more ceremonial quicksand... Another very fine album from probably the greatest English band ever. 
                 Trisector is out March 17th – you can catch them on tour in early April, including the 3rd here in London at the Queen Elizabeth Hall – taste some classic VdGG downloads at all the news at www.vandergraafgenerator.co.uk

6: CARDIACS – A Little Man And A House (Alphabet) – Well how on earth were we expected to follow the brilliance of Van Der Graaf other than with a classic slice of the world’s other greatest band of all time? – www.cardiacs.com

7: YOU SLUT! – 1s, 2ns, The Original Door (Stressed Sumo) -  A track from the Derby/Nottingham band’s Crucial Meat album that’s release this Monday 3rd March. Tight-as-you-like mathyness that's clear, big and well on the rockout side of things, from a band with a name that is either ridiculous or inspired, depending on how compulsively you stroke your chin.  Yep, You Slut don't mess about, doing agile heaviness with a deft, easy touch. They're fat and chunky yet bright and breezy, plonked in some happy intersection of the effing Champs and Don Caballero, leaning more to the former.  Quoting Oxes as an influence, they're more accessible because they're more focused; if they sound like anyone, it's a fatter Rumah Sakit. If you want to talk purist math rock, this is as good an example as any: lots of gratuitous time-changes and pointed unexpectedness, but overall tempo and volume staying the same.  You Slut! Do complex - but not too complex - chugging upbeat rock with neat imaginative flourishes and a sly sense of fun. Next London show is at the Social, Portland St, London on 11th March  – www.stressedsumorecords.co.uk or www.myspace.com/youslut1

8: M.I.A – The Modern Way (download) - Recorded off the  radio in 1984 when the classic American hardcore punk band played a show at the Concert Factory in Costa Mesa, Calif., The show was aired on the UC Irvine radio station. You can download the track yourself from the band’s website. Sadly, we played some MIA this week in remembrance of front man Mike Conley, Mike was found dead last Thursday night, details are not that clear right now, initially his death was reported as murder, seems that might not be the case now – this track was played for Mike, his friends and family  - www.miaband.com

9: B FOR BANG – Come Together (KML) – see track two...

10: SON LUX – Weapons (Anticon) - There’s an otherworldy ethereal whispered quality that eases you in to this expressively rewarding piece of work. At War is a deceptively easy knowing work that’s actually in reality is very busy and bursting with organic goodness. The artistic challenge you come to expect from the consistently good Anticon people – a label that you know are never going to settle for the same old thing. A forever evolving musical outlook, clever textures, sublime beats, classical ambience and a work that without really shifting that much and almost without you noticing, evolves in to delicate songs as those seductively  soulful vocals come in - and then, just as unobtrusively give way to lush strings and something far more avant post-rock oriented – born of hip-hop composition, revolving around single piano notes. A drawn string here an echo there, a plaintive female voice... They will wither, always.... “Classically trained and rewired by his own hands”. Ryan Lott, for this is his project, is a frequent collaborator, occasional curator and “consummate man behind the curtain”, this is him emerging at the front of something rather challengingly different – and more importantly, something rather beautifully easy to lose yourself in, something to really connect with. Operatic, classical, other-rock, very accessible high-art and the turning of ideas on to heads and taking them all in a different way – and somehow for all the rewarding challenging At War is a classical piece of other pop music - post-rock, post hip-hop, post whatever. An alternative palate, aural hues, arranged as much around rhythm as melody. Snippets of this, bites of that, filtering through the radio waves, pulsing orchestration, transcendent beauty, always the beauty shining through and pulling you up there with it. This really is something different, something special, something inspiring, challenging and most of all something to put on repeat and just simply enjoy again and again.   www.myspace.com/sonlux available in the UK via www.southern.net

11: TRICLOPS –  Duende War (Alternative Tentacles) – Savaged prog-fused acid punk from San Francisco and a track from the forthcoming album Out Of Africa. Triclops are people from Lower Forty-Eight, Bottles And Skulls, Victim’s Family and The Fleshies and yes, a lab experiment gone horribly right! (that’s a borrowed quote – hey its late!) – www.triclopsband.com or www.alternativetentacles.com

12: NOTORIOUS HI-FI KILLERS – Queen O’Fuck (Rocket) They have a new album out, raw garage blues that feeds in a rather raw and wired progressive way on the legacy of The Stooges, MC5, Pere Ubu and dirty filth feedback. The London band play Herzoga’s Wrong Pop first birthday party on Friday 7th March in Stoke (at The Glebe), they share a stage with Herzoga and loads of other fine bands at Silver Rocket’s Long Good Friday at London’s Buffalo Bar on Good Friday 21st March – www.myspace.com/hifikillers or www.rocketrecordings.com or www.myspace.com/wrongpoppresents or www.myspace.com/silverrocketclub

13: ATTACK! VIPERS! –  One For One (Rat Patrol) - Blistering hardcore metal with a desire to be just a little bit different, to challenge and to peel back your skin and rip your metaphorical throat right out. A band with a pedigree, a band who clearly know their stuff and know how to grab hold of things and push them a little bit more rather than just following the latest moves. Out of Portsmouth with a serious blend of old school hardcore and scathing screaming progressive metal violence. Scathing riffs, relentless onslaughts. They talk of Grade and Drowningman and Pelican and As Friends Rust, they’ve done time in bands like Jets Vs Sharks, Thirst and such  – they know what they’re doing, they know what they’re talking about and they’re well worth your time, money and your bruises, and we revisited the album this week because they’re playing a Smash EDO benefit in Brighton in association with our comrades over in Brighton at Hair Of The Dog Radio/zine – www.myspace.com/hairofthedogurf or www.ratpatrolrecs.com or www.myspace.com/attackvipers – probably the best place to find links to explore what  Smash EDO is www.schnews.org.uk

14: CHRIS SCHLARB -  Extract from Twilight And Ghost Stories (Asthmatic Kitty) – This is a remarkably beautiful album/piece of work, wonderfully detailed restraint. Raindrops, dust, vinyl crackle (on a CD), background sound, field art. Twilight And Ghost Stories is a delicate restrained quiet set of atmospheric whispers, a 40 minute composition alive with atmosphere, warmth and delicious detail – spoken word, background colour, hints of of free-jazz, electronica, folk, post-rock - and all put together as one whole body of deliciously detailed slowly unwinding unobtrusive beauty. Dense yet very very light and with so much space and time to breath and soak in all the smells and tastes. Twilight And... is a forty minute piece, a composition featuring “a disparate cross-section of musicians from the avant-garde, independent folk, jazz and electronic communities”  - the work includes contributions from Dirty Projectors, Sufjan Stevens, Walter Kitindu, Catanets, Parker Paul, Bhob Rainey, Mick Rossi and more... This is a wonderfully resonant piece of work, a beautiful modern challenging composition and a piece of wonderfully creative art – most of all though this is just simply a very beautiful, highly original and very easy to listen to piece/album that you’ll want to get lost in again and again – www.asthmatickitty.com

15: B FOR BANG – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (KML) – See track 2... 

16: TRANSISTOR SIX – Back Yard Rocketship (Blackbean & Placenta) – A proper play for our intro... see track 1. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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