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AUSTRALIAN band PVT don't like doing things by the book - in fact, when they formed they were a completely improvisational act.
And this boundless approach to music making is evident of PVT's latest Church With No Magic, which seesaws between electronica and rock.
The LP by PVT, previously known as Pivot, has an ever present electro throb and piston-like beats balanced in varying degrees with a Robert Smith-like vocal and Joy Division synths throughout.
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IF YOU'RE not too into your sludge metal, a first encounter with Thou is more like "ow".
However for fans of the genre such as myself, the up-and-coming act don't so much tick the boxes as slowly crush them.
Downbeat, deep, dark and deadly, the fact the throat-vocal heavy metal group drag five tracks out over an hour tells you all you need to know about
Summit.
However among this intense, thick miasma of metal, flecks of experimentation appear, such as acoustic instruments and choirs.
With
Summit Thou haven't peaked, but they're inexorably on the up.
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IT’S ALWAYS nice to have a local band doing good - and Love Ends Disaster!, having swapped Loughborough University's Freefest for Reading and Leeds, are doing just that.
With their debut album
City Of Glass, you can see them emulating the likes of Belton’s The Young Knives, Castle Donington’s Late Of The Pier and Wymeswold’s Wave Pictures.
An inventive collection of indie rock which sounds like a cross between Talking Heads and The Rakes, the group seem at home in the studio.
Eschewing standard songwriting formula, the group throw off-kilter riffs at the listener and frequently explore unexpected musical avenues.
As a result it’s a rock LP that intrigues the listener rather than knocks them for six - but it grows on you eacha nd every listen you give it.
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THEY may not be as festive as their name would imply, but dance act Sleigh Bells sound like they’re trying very hard to get some form of festivities going.
The problem is on
Treats they’re trying too hard - with speaker-busting levels of samples and sound effects taking their toll, even the sturdiest of speakers will struggle not to fart out these tracks.
On the occasions everything gels - like the Funkadelic-sampling
Rill Rill - Sleigh Bells really are a treat.
The rest of the time they need to treat their work with a less is more attitude.
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FOLK, especially English folk, doesn't get a fair outing.
Bands like Shooglenifty, alongside peers including Seth Lakeman, Lau, Jim Moray, Patrick Wolf - all of these oft-ignored folksters deserve plaudits beyond plaudits.
Folk fusion band Shooglenifty are an instrumental act playing traditional reels and whirls and suchlike, but they add to this on Venus In Tweeds a dance element, making a sort of post trad folk.
It may not be traditional folk, but the Scottish band are what folk music is all about - it's accessible, upbeat, entertaining and you can work up a sweat to it.
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ALTHOUGH I’m a month behind the release of Emancipator’s
Safe In The Steep Cliffs, I’m bursting to blog about it.
The DJ came to the fore supporting Bonobo recently after a steady ascent to fame, and you can see how he landed the job - with similarities between this LP and Bonobo’s brilliant
Black Sands.
Equally chilled out and possessing the same head-nodding beats, the LP is an abundance of warm, string-soaked, orchestral cinematic electronica, and deserves an equal amount of plaudits.
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