A pleasant Thought Forms

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WEST Country post rockers Thought Forms should become a big noise with their eponymous debut album.
Because on the post rock scale, three-piece Thought Forms are more full-on roomshakers a la Amusement Parks On Fire than Sigur Ros-style soundscapers.
Two thirds of the time, their music is drenched in reverberating feedback - for the best part listening to their debut offering Thought Forms is like curling up into a foetal position and lying inside Kurt Cobain's speaker stack.
There's a quieter side too to their music, which waxes and wanes pleasingly across the course of the entire album, although the biggest influence creeping in is of grunge.
So if you're going record shopping next week - keep Thought Forms in mind.

Juice is loose

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WHAT should have been a mouthwatering prospect from Juice Aleem is sadly rather dry.
Jerusalaam Come, the anticipated first album from the UK rapper, should have been a showcase for a brilliant talent.
And in a way it is - with Aleem non-stop throughout with a flow that's half-Roots Manuva, half-Saul Williams, double speed.
When his deep dextrous wordplay is coupled with decent backing tracks, such as on Higher Higher or First Lesson, Aleem is up with the UK's best.
Sadly the sought-after MC is too often let down by staid, predictable backing beats and production which has left his obvious vocal talents buried.
That said, while this LP is unlikely to convert the masses, for hip hop heads there's plenty of reasons to turn on the Juice.

I'm against Gay Against You

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I NEED structure in my life.
I make lists.
I make lists of the lists I have compiled.
For that reason, the anarchic computer abuse that is Gay Against You is just not for me.
The eclectic eccentric electro punk duo's second album, Righteous Signals, Sour Dudes, is a constantly clashing landscape of wildly differing sounds running into one another.
It's no surprise to hear that band members Lachlann Rattray and Joseph Howe don't really get on - making them perhaps the only band in the entire history of bands to form over "artistic differences".
The other day, while looking for my The Best Of The Jackson Five CD, a teetering stack of albums taller than me on tippy-toes fell onto my head.
And listening to the Glaswegians' LP I'm reminded of that sickening moment once again.
Because if you're after the musical sensation of finding fragments of a lifetime's music in a muddled, broken heap, this is it.

Live Xcerpts

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LISTENING to The Xcerts' rough and ready debut album In The Cold Wind We Smile, you could tell that the Scot rockers would have been taking to the road.
Because in a studio setting, the energy and enthusiasm of their Idlewild-meets-Snow Patrol rock was barely restrained.
Whereas at the famed King Tut's venue, the group can let it all out, with tracks like Aberdeen 1987 taking on an extra emotional edge.
The quibbles of their LP remain, such as the need for a little polish - but I imagine if you remedied them you'd be taking out the very charm of The Xcerts.

Feelings Gone to arrive

THE second single from the forthcoming Basement Jaxx album Scars will be Feelings Gone.
The Sam Sparro-sampling single, the follow-up to Raindrops, will be available from September 21.

Y Not see Young Knives

YOUNG Knives are set to headline the Y Not Festival.
The local band are top of the bill on Sunday night at the festival, which is being held in Matlock from July 31-August 2.
Also appearing at the festival are Noah And The Whale, Nine Black Alps, Frank Turner, Beardyman, The Whip and more.
A spokesman said: "For one weekend a year, the gorgeous Peak District countryside is home to the Y-Not Festival.
"Y Not is an intimate music festival steering away from the huge corporate events so many others have become.
"At Y-Not you can see great live music, party the night away or watch the sunrise from your campfire.
"Whatever you want from a festival you will find it here and have a fantastic weekend... so why not?"

Stick In A Pot stuck in a rut

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AS FAR as Stick In A Pot's debut EP When The Monsters Arrive is concerned - stick in a pot, and leave there.

The Brighton-based band's five track outing starts with a Jan Hammer-esque intro, Splinter, that really jars with the rest of the listing, before launching into two painfully plodding second rate indie tracks, Acclimatising and Plinky The Alien that sound like a sedated James.

With dodgy lyrics about beards and aliens, the whole affair smacks of a group that's trying just a bit too hard.

And when the tempo ups with Our Inert Inmate, it only goes to show that the tortuously-low beats per minute was the only thing that seperated them from the crowd.

Closing track Luterin (Victoria's Side Of The Story) is alright.

Franky panky

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TO BE Frankmusik must be a lot of fun.
His debut album, Complete Me, is a turbocharged collection of synth pop that is bouncier than a spring made from jelly.
The dancey backing tracks sound like Erasure on steroids, while Frankmusik - real name Vincent Frank - sings over the top like a straight-laced Mika.
When it's good, it's pure pop perfection.
The problem is for every gold-plated track, there's two that have been soaked in cheese, and as a result the LP is inconsistant.
But it matters not.
The Stranglers-sampling When You're Around, In Step, Three Little Words, Better Off As Two - if there's any justice, Frankmusik should have complete chart domination with Complete Me.

Sleepy Sun shine

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ALL this recent Mercury Prize talk has got me in the mood to look back at the past year of releases - and one album that demands a mention is Sleepy Sun's dawning.
Akin to last year's In The Future by Black Mountain, one of my Albums Of The Year no less, their debut LP Embrace sees classic rock and stoner rock coming together.
And into this mix, the San Franciscan band - whose motto is "let's get weird" - add a covering of acid-soaked, spaced-out psychedelia.
It's a heady feedback-drenched mix - especially as most of the tracks on the album, which was released back in May, are seven-minute epics.
If you want to fly your freak flag high, Embrace is definitely one to hang on to.

Do not cross The Bridge

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SOULFUL new singer Melanie Fiona, who aims to link classic soul with modern R&B with her debut album The Bridge, makes the crossing to the UK on Monday.
The neo soul album's keystone, the Zombies-sampling lead single Give It To Me Right, starts the LP off to a promising start, followed with the poppy Bang Bang and the toe-tapping Monday Morning.
Sadly things get rickety for Fiona, real name Melanie Hallim, quite quickly after this.
From Please Don't Go (Cry Baby) onwards, the whole affair is largely forgettable, a bit cheesy, and hardly likely to leave the listener in a state of suspension.

Classic thirty five - Princely Fresh

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SLY And The Family Stone's 1973 masterpiece's title Fresh remains as apt as ever.
Because despite more than 35 years passing since the funk LP's release, the album still is.
When you think of funk, you think of irrepressible grooves like Funkadelic's One Nation Under A Groove, Parliament's Up For The Down Stroke, Sly And The Family Stone's Dance To The Music, and just about anything by James Brown.
But Fresh takes that base and builds on it.
From opener In Time with its brooding basslines, to all-time classic tracks like If You Want Me To Stay and Skin I'm In, the funk here grows from a groove, and lives and breathes fusing with elements of soul and jazz.
Put simply, if you want an album that stands the test of time, you want to get Fresh.

Crimea X rated average

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CRIMEA X play disco-flecked house music - if it was a house that just happened to have been built on the moon!
That's right, they play deep house - deep space house, that is!
In fact you could say that the Phoros EP is house music that's out of this world!
You get the idea.
The Italian dance outfit's debut, which is a meeting of minds between creators DJ Rocca and Jukka Reverberi of glam post-rock band Giardina di Miro, is a steady flow of house laced with piano and 1970s sci-fi sound effects they describe as "cosmic disco".
And backed by a set of Seaside Resort remixes - on the Sea Of Tranquility I'm guessing - there's more than enough here for an enjoyable short break to their hedonistic house world.
Spacious rather than insistent, while Phoros isn't exactly going where no dance act has gone before, you can rest assured that you'll be jetting off to a good place.

Mercury Prize fighters

THE 12 album shortlist for the Mercury Prize 2009 has been revealed.
Contesting the competition this year are -

● Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
● Florence and the Machine - Lungs
● Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
● Glasvegas - Glasvegas
● The Horrors - Primary Colours
● The Invisible - The Invisible
● Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Aslyum
● La Roux - La Roux
● Led Bib - Sensible Shoes
● Lisa Hannigan - Sea Sew
● Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy
● Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Twice Born Man

From the list, I'd like to see Kasabian walk away with the gong.
What are your thoughts? Comment below or head over to Sound Off and let me know.

Token Four - Look out for The Invisible

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MIXING the ecleticism of jazz with elements of alt-rock, electronica, soul, funk and countless others, supergroup The Invisible's self-titled album is not one to be overlooked likely.
The work of jazz singer Dave Okumu, Polar Bear bassist Tom Herbert and Hot Chip drummer Leo Taylor, The Invisible is as hard to pin down as Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
The group have been labelled as a British TV On The Radio - imagine if you nobbled Bloc Party and Prince with horse tranquilisers, tied them all up in a big sack, and threw said sack into a canal, you'd be halfway there.
As a result the LP, released back in March to little fanfare, is probably too far removed from trad jazz to constitute a token inclusion - but in a few hours we'll find out...

Late Of The Pier dates disappear

CASTLE Donington rockers Late Of The Pier are taking a break from playing live shows.
But in the meantime the band plan to concentrate on running their own label, Zarcorp Inc.
Band member Andrew Faley said: "We're going to take some time out from Late Of The Pier live shows for a while. Figure things out properly. Do it bigger and better next time.
"In the meantime we're going to be working on a heap of other projects, one of which is dedicating a lot of time to setting up our label Zarcorp Inc, something that'll allow us to present other records and artists we're involved with, love, wish we'd made or simply just honest music we feel deserves to be encased in time.
"It'll also be the way we release all physical copies of future LOTP records.
"We're doing everything from our bedrooms, completely DIY, meaning we have complete quality control, selling it entirely via paypal on the MySpace - and a few copies will be stocked in Escalator Records in Tokyo - and processing/posting them all from home."

Token Three - Acoustic Ladyland land

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MOVING away from folk, another group I'd like to see on the shortlist would have to be the ever-amazing Acoustic Ladyland.

No strangers to the Mercury Prize, having seen their alter-ego oufits Polar Bear nominated in 2005 for the album Held On The Tips Of Fingers, the group's fourth album, Living With A Tiger, was released earlier this month.

And the album is a electrifying return to the riff-based jazz of their sophomore album Last Chance Disco, which was one of my Albums Of The Year 2005.

Combining a punk ethos to making music with funky sax riffing and deliciously manic grooves, Living With A Tiger is beast of an album.
● You can grab a copy of Glasto, one of the tracks from the new LP, by clicking here.

Token Two - Lau is wow

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WITH the Mercury Music nominated albums due next week, I figured the time is nigh to finally blog about some albums already out there that could sneak onto the shortlist

Every year the Mercury's 12 picks invariably include token albums from the worlds of folk and jazz - last year for example saw nominations for Rachel Unthank And The Winterset's The Bairns and Portico Quartet LP Knee-Deep In The North Sea.

For 2009, from the world of folk I'm tipping Jim Moray, whose album Low Culture came out last year and is my Token One, and Manchester trio Lau.

The group, who brought their fabled live skills to Loughborough Town Hall just over a week ago, are surely in with a shot.

Their current album, Arc Light, is a glorious slice of 21st Century folk music - which welds together trad warmth, sizzling musicianship and irrepressible rhythm.

In folk terms, Lau is now.

Pictures provide backdrop

FORMER Hefner frontman Darren Hayman has put out a new live LP recorded with Wymeswold band The Wave Pictures.
Madrid was recorded by a technician unknown to the singer and band at a gig in Madrid in 2007.
The 12-track release also features one Hayman track, The Genesis Rock, that is previously unreleased.
Hayman said: "I had a tour to do in Spain and Sweden and because they were Hefner fans I thought I could get them to be my band for cheap.
"They said 'yes'. The tour certainly had its ups and downs. Hard drives, some sparse gigs.
"They made me feel old, with their energy and optimism.
"One night I was watching their set and I realised that they were really, really good.
"This show was recorded by the desk engineer on the Madrid show of that tour, a happy accident. It has its faults, that's why it's cheap."
To order a copy click here.

Shaping up nicely

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THE dance music on Rec Tangle's Heavy Maple is not the sort to get you throwing shapes.
Instead, the Brighton-based Frenchman's debut album has a Kid Loco-style lushness to it more suited to soundtracking someone lying prone on their bedroom floor than someone on the dancefloor.
There are uplifting moments, here, granted, but it's when Tangle - real name Adrien Rodes - colours the air with his brooding, threatening palette that Heavy Maple shines.
With an organic feel that surely comes from playing nearly all of the layers live, tracks like opener Square One, Anima's Lament and The Meadow Green flower into swirling, threatening beasts of chillout tracks.
Heavy.

Sparks fails to ignite

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I MUST point out first that I've made my feelings on American Idols abundantly clear previously, here and here.
That in mind, I really tried to give Battlefield a fair crack of the whip - but sadly Jordin Sparks failed to spark a change in my opinion.
Sparks straddles a line between being a 'big' singer, doling out a emotional ballads a la Mariah Carey or Leona Lewis, but there's also a fair amount of dancefloor diva too, competing with the likes of Rihanna and Ciara.
And when these two combine - such as on the majestic Battlefield or Let It Rain - Sparks is on fire, it's just sadly not balanced right on most tracks.
So while Sparks may have won several battles over my prejudice here, for me Battlefield is a failed campaign.