The UK’s number one human beatbox has been a cult figure bubbling under for way too long, that’s finally about to change with this slinky little thing which also shows off his equally as good singing skills.      

With hip-hop in a terminal decline it’s a delight to hear artists who don’t want to settle for producing the norm, like Pharrell, like Kanye, like The Roots, like Missy, add Killa (to his mates) to that elite mob as ‘Secrets’ is a hugely inventive track unlike a lot of the music in that genre which is currently being made and with the majority of the sounds on the track being made with his mouth it makes the track even more outstanding.

Backed by sweeping strings giving a sense of paranoia which back up Killa’s lyrics perfectly, he could have accidentally made a classic, can you do that ’50’?   8/10

Chris Todd

(more…)

Think of the dirgiest Cure tracks, slap in a bit of Duran Duran, a whole load of irony, a guitarist who thinks he’s The Edge circa 1982, give yerself a supposed provocative name, probably a load of cheap mascara and cheaper speed and you have The White Rose movement.

A band so stylised you have to ask if it’s an industry joke, either that or Flock of Seagulls have made a comeback being represented by a much younger better looking group.

If overproduced silly 80’s synth pop is your thing then why don’t you listen to some Visage or Killing Joke instead? It’d be cheaper and anyway, you already own the Bravery album and at least that worked.

And how dare they name their album after the Inxs classic of the same name? If poo had a sound it would sound like this, come back Fischerspooner, all is forgiven, absolute rot. 2/10

Knickerless Roads

(more…)

After very nearly stealing the show at last years Glastonbury Dave Mcabe and his merry band of Zutons disappeared to come up with this their second long player with the legendary producer Stephen Street at the helm.

Getting off to a particularly stroppy start with the excellent title track, it’s business as usual.

‘It’s the little things we do’ is a storming track which documents the aftermath of a party with Mcabe growling ‘I don’t understand why my brain wants to die’ and goes through the perils of making a ham and cheese sandwich with the ingredients talking to him telling him “don’t eat me I don’t belong in your stomach’…..er…ok

There are great tunes aplenty within like brilliantly innocent ‘Valerie’, the Country haze of ‘Someone is watching over me’ and the highlight track ‘How does it feel’ where Mcabe’s voice is aided by outstanding vocal harmonies and some of the best musicianship you’ll hear on record all year.

So two albums in and no major changes, just not as good as the first but judging by some bands second albums of late, this holds as a major achievement. 7/10

Chris Todd

(more…)

You can condense the crazy 4 years the Vines have had as thus - their tunes turn up on the net, probably the first band to utilize this method of distributing music. They get signed, release a stone cold classic in 2002’s ‘Highly Evolved’, they go crazy on tour and probably crazier on Mcdonalds (and we have all seen the effects of Mcdonalds abuse on Morgan Spurlock) and conquer the world in the process.

They release their second album in 2004, the unappropriately named ‘Winning days’ which instead of being a brilliant second album of stormers is infact the left overs from their first album produced into the ground and a flop.

 Craig Nichols goes crazy, kicks a fifteen year old photographer in the face at a gig and if you think that’s bad, trashes all the bands equipment on the David Letterman show - IN THE REHERSAL.

He is diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome and convaelesces back home in Australia, that was supposed to be the end of a whirlwind romance that lasted just two years with a new and exciting band.

So popping up again just two years after their lead main succombs to illness with this unexpected third album is a total surprise but with no tour to promote and EMI’s strange failure to release a single prior to its release to promote it comes this last role of the dice, will it land on two sixes?

Well no, it is however a marked improvement on the bubble and squeak fare of ‘Winning days’ and lasting just over thirty minutes , it’s crammed with some great stupid rock pop gems covering their usual bases - the all-out Cobain-isms with tracks such as ‘Gross out’ or their sweet Beatles influence psych rock on the title track, it also bears a strane resemblance to Green Days ‘Boulevard of broken dreams’ but without the sales.

The standout is however the swaggering ‘Don’t listen to the radio’ which reveals Craigs hometime habits; ‘I don’t listen to the radio, cos I aint got no radio’, tv shows also feel his ire but it’s all because he hasn’t got a tv "oh" and as for the telephone,well, you know the rest.

Craigs radio ownership refusal is there for all to see on this album because they haven’t moved on from the 2002 post White Stripes boom but that aside, it’s great to have them back! 7/10

Chris Todd

(more…)

Hip Hop - Chris Cuevas (Atlantic)
by Sean Smith
It was a long, sultry summer evening in Leeds, the kind of perfect night that just seems to go on forever until you blink and suddenly it’s midday.

Nicki’s mum was having a party in the back garden of her house on Spencer Place. All manner of mad-heads, oddballs, students, hippies, yuppies, posh girls and rude boys, even a few amiable low-level gangster types, passed through during the night. It was wild.

(more…)

THE PADDINGTONS are to play their last UK shows til the Summer festivals in the gaps between tours of Japan, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. 

They have written and demoed 30 new songs in their East Yorkshire home of Hull, some of which they debuted on their sold out February tour. These Include ‘Broken Man’ and ‘You and I’ which on some dates featured one of the Holloways on violin. The Padds will soon enter the studio to record a selection for their second album which will be out on Mercury later in the year.  

"Skinny kids with a silent-hooligan pose. Lead singer Tom Paddington is hypodermic-thin, hair over his face, and a nasty sneer. It starts to feel claustrophobic, then the drummer shouts ‘1234′ and the club
explodes…. A 1000mph riot of maxed out, sugar-coated electricity" - NME 

"Reckless high-energy guitar pop that leaves you breathless…..White hot…4/5" THE SUN 

"The Paddingtons are writing tunes with enough verve and energy to take them out of the shadows of The Libertines" -MUSIC WEEK 

"These punk-rocking, brogue-wearing teenagers are the real deal. Eight days a week" - iD 

"Fantastic. Another rabbit-punch of pure punk-pop from our finest dumb pop hopefuls" NME 

"Green Day with brains" - NME 

"A torrent of unbridled punk energy" - TIME OUT 

"The Paddingtons are lead by the most staringly intense frontman since Johnny Rotten. The band fuse the viciousness of the Sex Pistols and the wisdom of The Clash" - DAILY STAR

THE PADDINGTONS 
And Crawl Through Camden on their way to 2nd Album

20th April - Camden Crawl 

29th April - Rock Against Racism - Trafalgar Square 

22nd May - Kentish Town Forum (w/ Dirty Pretty Things) 

(more…)

THE PADDINGTONS are to play their last UK shows til the Summer festivals in the gaps between tours of Japan, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. 

They have written and demoed 30 new songs in their East Yorkshire home of Hull, some of which they debuted on their sold out February tour. These Include ‘Broken Man’ and ‘You and I’ which on some dates featured one of the Holloways on violin. The Padds will soon enter the studio to record a selection for their second album which will be out on Mercury later in the year.  

"Skinny kids with a silent-hooligan pose. Lead singer Tom Paddington is hypodermic-thin, hair over his face, and a nasty sneer. It starts to feel claustrophobic, then the drummer shouts ‘1234′ and the club
explodes…. A 1000mph riot of maxed out, sugar-coated electricity" - NME 

"Reckless high-energy guitar pop that leaves you breathless…..White hot…4/5" THE SUN 

"The Paddingtons are writing tunes with enough verve and energy to take them out of the shadows of The Libertines" -MUSIC WEEK 

"These punk-rocking, brogue-wearing teenagers are the real deal. Eight days a week" - iD 

"Fantastic. Another rabbit-punch of pure punk-pop from our finest dumb pop hopefuls" NME 

"Green Day with brains" - NME 

"A torrent of unbridled punk energy" - TIME OUT 

"The Paddingtons are lead by the most staringly intense frontman since Johnny Rotten. The band fuse the viciousness of the Sex Pistols and the wisdom of The Clash" - DAILY STAR

THE PADDINGTONS 
And Crawl Through Camden on their way to 2nd Album

20th April - Camden Crawl 

29th April - Rock Against Racism - Trafalgar Square 

22nd May - Kentish Town Forum (w/ Dirty Pretty Things) 

(more…)

Another excursion through the looking glass of Wayne Coyne, the 12th in 23 years to be precise is an intoxicating experience of mellifluous other-worldly wonderment transporting you to a place very different from the one we reside in.

Backed up with the kind of gorgeous harmonising Brian Wilson orchestrated in the mid-60s with music imaginative enough to sound not only contemporary but calmly familiar taking in influences as varied as  drum n bass to Prince with lashings of fuzzed up bass and deep hallucinogenic psychedelia.

Laughing in the face of the theory that if you’re making music in your 30s you’re finished by at least 15 years, the Lips continue to go from strength to strength, this, in a triple whammy of brilliant albums starting with 1999s ‘The Soft bulletin and in between that and this, 2002’s ‘Yoshimi battles the pink robots, forward to this 2006 gem which completes their rich vein of form and is easily better than those albums that have preceded it.

Kicking off with the forthcoming upbeat single ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’ song where the sunny nature of the tune disguises its darker natured lyrics about dodgy world leaders making the world a more dangerous place  “Would you make everybody poor if you could be rich – would you do it?”. Politics come up throughout the album but not as in your face as on
‘Free radicals’ which despite it’s commendable intention is a directionless attempt at polemic which due to lack of tune goes absolutely nowhere but that is the only blip here, ‘you’re not so radical, infact you’re fanatical’, yep, cheers Wayne.

Elsewhere, ‘Mr Ambulance driver’ is a gorgeous techno influenced treat with the most sumptuous of vocal harmonising, ‘Haven’t got a clue’ is a pounding modern rock track backed with lush mid-70’s Beach Boys soaring harmonies, ‘It overtakes me’ starts off as the funkiest track you’ve ever heard before breaking down into a majestically funereal mess of Pink Floyd and way too many late nights and the shimmering ‘Pompeii am Gotterrdammerung is a sweeping mass of fuzzy white noise which is so otherworldly it’s as near to taking drugs without breaking the law.

Forget spotty kids from up north singing songs about beer when this is on the shelf, a certain bet for one of the albums of the year….with ease. 10/10

Chris Todd

(more…)

1. Casino – Running on back to you (Cosair)

A genius mixture of thumping house beats and sweaty amphetamine laced Northern Soul, this track has been at the top of the tree for me all year and when you hear it, it will be so for yours too. An obvious juxtaposition which begs the question why this wasn’t done before, dance music mixed together from now and the 70’s Wigan nightclubs where Northern Soul thrived. All glued together perfectly with vocal hysterics so over the top it sounds like Sly and the family Stone if they lived in Streatham or like Tom Jones down at Trade after shoving a couple of round ones up his arse…disgusting analogy for a disgustingly brilliant track, nothing can touch this, not even come near.

2. Flaming Lips- The Sound of Failure
3. Morrissey – I’ll never be anybody’s hero now
4. Eagle*Seagull – Your beauty is a knife I turn on my throat (Myspace)
5. Flaming Lips – Vein of stars
6. Lorraine – I feel it
7. Flaming Lips – Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung
8. Graham Coxon – You and I
9. The Vines – Anysound
10. Gnarls Barkley – St Elsewhere

(more…)

“When is the next one?” has been on the lips of many since you came along to the first reject musical trash night last month, well, the sleepless nights due to the anticipation can end as we return for another night of alternative and indie classics new and old with a sprinkling of electroclash punk and dodgy pop all played as badly as possible. It should be called the ministry of some drunk blokes playing great music badly…bit of a mouthful that so imaginitavely it’s called - reject musical trash…come!

This Saturday April 8th 2006) at

Old Parrs Head

Upper Street (near the fire station)

Islington

London, N1

9pm til late (FREE!!!)

(more…)