Great Heat's #DreamSofar

Similarly to the bar which they call home, Great Heat have many faces. A creative hub, an experiment, a secret; The Doodle Bar, with its Test Bed space, is not simply a bar. Great Heat is not simply a band.

Born in the early stages of 2012 via the reshuffling of a few other bands, the four of Great Heat stumbled upon what was The Doodle Bar – and more importantly Testbed1 – in the making. To such an extent did they find the building-come-project to be their kind of ‘space’, the boys decided to settle down somewhat to figure out which direction their sound was to go. In fact, so settled did they become, in no time it was deemed their ‘isolation centre’. A whole year later, the self-prescribed metaphorical Winter was over and the band were ready to come out their hole and face the big, wide world. Judging from the resultant material, in the form of lead single Laid Bare and its B-side Who’s The Dude, it was well worth the wait. Described by themselves as a cocktail of ‘the dirty riffs of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the churning ambience of Arcade Fire and pop vitality of The Black Keys’, the sound of Great Heat is one that is rich in its complexity, yet is not afraid to say what it thinks and cause some damage should it be thought necessary.

It is not just their written craft that offers so much in so many ways, though, for there is also the manner in which the band perform their product to take into consideration. Whilst, for example, on record Laid Bare is cool as cats and Who’s The Dude has a distinct chilled Summer holiday vibe, played live the songs are treated to a whole new dimension; when it was performed at a recent Sofar in London, for instance, the former got people onto their feet and, even, dancing. This energy is, quite literally, getting the four piece all around the live scene, and justifiably so; in addition to their more traditional gigs (they’re next playing the not-yet-opened The Monarch on March 6^th, with an as of yet unannounced UK tour soon after), their live quality is also warranting approaches from areas of the industry that aren’t quite so obvious – last Summer they were invited to play at Peace & Love, Sweden’s biggest musical festival, and just the other week they played a fashion week show for designer friend Sarmite Ostanevica.

Unsurprisingly, such buzz, such promise, is getting the attention of the kinds of people that can take the funky rockers to the heights they deserve. Laid Bare, for example: was mastered by Brian Lucey, who has done the same for the likes of The Shins and The Black Keys; was the ‘Track of the Day’ for several blogs, including Killing Moon; has a video featuring Will Payne of current ITV periodic drama hit, Mr. Selfridge (to be unveiled on Saturday). And, most importantly, the band are managed by none other than Sofar’s very own Tom Lovett.

Great Heat’s #DreamSofar would be:

Otis Redding (Blain McGuigan, vocals and guitar):

‘Otis Redding's voice is my personal favourite of all modern singers: dynamic, soulful and unique. A stripped back set-up would have allowed the audience to fully digest the Madman from Macon's famously electric live performance. The Sofar ethos is intimacy between the crowd and the artist, and I believe Otis Redding had the capacity to illuminate a small crowd more than most who have lived.’

The Kills (Sam Travers, bass):

‘I think the whole Sofar thing is an interesting environment in which an audience can engage with an artist, not just on a personal level but to see the chemistry between performers. I would probably have to say The Kills. I have seen them a fair few times now but at fairly large shows. They are remarkably visceral songwriters, valuing expression more highly than technical showmanship. The tension between Mosshart and Hince makes for very charged performances. Jamie Hince is probably the biggest influence on me as a musician; I love his tone, inventive style and The Kills overall minimal sound, particularly Keep On Your Mean Side.’

Creedence Clearwater Revival (Alex Cameron Ward, lead guitar):

‘John Fogerty's howl, his honest, simple and yet extremely relevant lyrics make me feel a type of cool that shatters my spine. All the inner battles and doubts are put to rest, Creedence Clearwater Revival make me feel like the man I want to be. To see these guys (in their prime of course!) play I Heard It Through the Grapevine would be electrifying.’

Kurt Vile (band choice):

‘Collectively, we would love to see Kurt Vile. He has a really inspiring way of making quite simple stuff sound interesting. Sofar sees lots of really talented acoustic performers every day; however, we think it might be cool to see somebody meliorate the acoustic performance a little. The way Kurt Vile constructs an aesthetic through his use of effects makes his songs truly idiosyncratic. He is not the greatest singer, he is just a really expressive musician who would bring something more than an acoustic guitar to a performance. There is virtue in stripping something down, but maybe adapting sonic characteristics makes for a more memorable performance in our books.’

Glitches' #DreamSofar

When asked what process they go through to create music, Glitches answers in two parts: a) moments of road-to-Damascus-like inspiration (rarely), b) hours of artless grind (mostly). An answer that, in being self-degrading and humorous, is one that you should disregard, for Glitches are a band of the highest quality and thus one to be taken very, very seriously.

This is not to say that everything Glitches says should be abandoned. Far from it. Whilst, for example, one might expect the three piece saying that they’re influenced by the Algerians and Moroccans who live in the ‘African mafia den’ below them to be another joke response, most probably at the expense of our gullibility, you’d be surprised. Not only do African-style beats keep their plucky first single, Leper, ticking along nicely, the band also made heavy use of them when performing their recent single, Warm Seas (which can be bought here), for those who were lucky enough to catch them at the London Sofar just before Christmas.

It’s actually in Warm Seas where Glitches’ high quality really shines through. Not because Mick supplies the funkiest of basslines, not because it showcases Robbie’s soaring vocal chords, not because it’s all held together by James’ percussion as well as it could, and not because it’s recently been favoured by both John Kennedy of XFM and Huw Stephens of BBC Radio 1, two radio heavyweights who’s primary purpose is to uncover the latest and greatest upcoming acts, but because it’s enormously different to Leper. If a band from Whitechapel being partially inspired by the sounds of Algeria and Morocco isn’t enough to prove the diversity, and thus talent, of Glitches, comparing the mysterious and epic of Warm Seas to the content, holiday vibes of Leper ought to do the trick.

Similarly to the way Glitches devote their many talents to producing such different tones for their two official singles thus far, they also do so by creating in ways that doesn’t include them writing songs, only further highlighting their diversity. The band are also, for example, organising their own live music events. Just as the diversity remains, so too does the quality – having previously been asked by promoters ATP to curate a headline show at the legendary Sebright Arms, by the looks of the line-up of Halcyon Nights XI (Beaty Heart, Ryan Philips of Cat Lovers, Jen Long of BBC Radio 1 and Glitches themselves, due to take place on March 7^th), the gang certainly aren’t hurting the local music scene.

What really seals the deal is, when asked what their dream collaboration would be, Glitches reply ‘Working with the director, Sergei Eisenstein, to create a modern score for his silent film, Battleship Potemkin.’ It must be said that a sure-fire sign of a band going places is when one can’t be sure whether the ambitions they express are to be taken as a joke or seriously. Probably best you go to see them fight their own battles (at the Old Queen’s Head in Hoxton on March 1^st and Birthdays in Dalston on April 17^th, with tickets for the latter available to buy here) and we found out what their #DreamSofar would be, then.

Glitches’ #DreamSofar would be:

Vangelis (Robbie, vocals/keyboards/samples):

‘My dream performance would be Vangelis. Specifically, I want to hear his album, Soil Festivities, performed from start to finish. I think that album really portrays a sense of wonder at nature. It makes me feel like I'm walking through an untouched forest which is awakening into the throes of spring. While he is more known for his soundtracking work, I have a particular weakness for these compositions. We try to create a cinematic feel in many of our songs, so he's a real inspiration. This album, in a Sofar Sounds session, with a good light show, would be mesmerising.’

Brian Eno (James, drums/percussion):

‘I'd like to see Brian Eno perform Another Green World at my dream Sofar Sounds session. I love how he creates soundscapes with interesting rhythms interwoven throughout. I would be fascinated to see how he would translate his music to an acoustic session, especially since working out this translation was what I enjoyed most when Glitches prepared to play Sofar Sounds.’

Mark Knopfler (Mick, guitars):

‘I would like to see Mark Knopfler performing Romeo and Juliet. He plays the guitar as if it were an extension of himself and, unlike many guitarists of his age, uses it as a vehicle for the song, rather than the other way around. Romeo and Juliet is a song in which the silence between the notes is as important as the notes themselves, and Sofar Sounds provides the perfect environment to fully appreciate this.’

The Notorious B.I.G. (band choice):

‘All three of us would all definitely like to see Notorious B.I.G. We're all big fans of the rhythms and flow of rap, in particular the focus on building a powerful yet simple groove. In our opinion, Biggy's tracks are the best at doing this, especially Juicy where an infectious beat gels perfectly with his rapping style. To top it all, you just can't beat his lyrics; how often do you hear about butter and toast in a rap song?’

The Smiths (band choice):

‘We've also agreed on that The Smiths would perfectly cap off this Sofar session. Their songs threaded through so many experiences of our adolescence. The lyrics describe, so vividly, exactly what we've experienced about the love and longing of youth. Morrissey's histrionics would no doubt entertain. There's no chance in hell it would ever happen, but we can all dream, right?’

Review of Duologue's debut LP, 'Song & Dance'

There are some artists and bands out there who are ruined by adopting the mentality ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ far too literally for far too long. There are some bands out there who are too ‘artistic’ to be ‘pinned down’ by labels and consequently make it their mission to dabble in every genre going, thus alienating their already somewhat perplexed fans. Then there are the artists and bands who get the balance just right and, if you’re lucky, create their own ‘sound’ in the process. Judging by their debut LP,Song & Dance (which you can buy here), Duologue is one of those bands.

The strength in depth, the sculpted eccentricity, of this record is simply staggering. You could say this is solely represented by Zeros – how often does one come across a combination of guitars that are rocked as hard as the drums, piano that is played as elegantly as the accompanying strings and dubstep, let alone one that actually works? – but the rest of the album simply wouldn’t allow for it. For example, whilst Sinner and Snap Out Of It have the gutsy aggression of a band just coming into their own (the latter is reminiscent of Muse’s Plug In Baby days, with the most adequate way to describe the former being the kind of song the forces of Good and Evil would fiercely battle to), Underworld, with its relaxed beats and soft chimes, reveals the other half of Duologue in a way that is a little more subtle than the crash-bang dubstep evident on Cut and Run.

Rather oxymoronically, it’s to the epic Push It, clocking in at more than ten minutes, that one can find instances of the five piece’s intricacy and tenderness. Rather than forever trying to impress with how much noise their guitar strings and Korg machines can make, and thus place themselves in the dangerously repetitive ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ category, Push It, and the LP as a whole, is diced up when the band illustrate what kind of noise their tools can make, as well as how little. Just as the band show how they can do dark and ominous synth as well as they can plucky math rock on just a couple of the many sections of their recent single, such blood, sweat and tears have evidently been dedicated to the likes of the heartfelt Escape Artist and the soft Constant in the hope to maintain the high attention to detail and complexity omnipresent throughout the album.

It is their ability to compose a not-so-subtle rock anthem that’s as good as a more subtle detailed electronica beat, to embrace two hugely contrasting genres in such an innovative way, that creates their very own sound and consequently makes both the band, and their debut LP, so exciting.

Review of To Kill A King's debut LP, 'Cannibals With Cutlery'

To introduce their debut album, Cannibals With Cutlery (available to buy physically and digitally): two elephant seals fighting each other. The video for leading single, Cold Skin: what can only be described as clowns gone wrong wrestling. Although on the surface To Kill A King’s promotional material appears to be nothing other than plain bizarre, delve a little deeper and you start to uproot what the five piece is all about; they are connoisseurs of the alternative-folk genre, but with evidently more emphasis on the ‘alternative’ aspect than the ‘folk’. It’s fortunate as the genre can be one full of clichés and stereotypes happily conformed to but, with 100,000+ views of Cold Skin (and counting), it’s a quirkiness the listening public are clearly embracing.

Wolves, for example, is accompanied by a faint synth-based beat that would not be so out of place in the EDM scene, whilst Children Who Start Fires is kept company by drums that are surprisingly bongo-like. Even more curious, though, is frontman Ralph Pelleymounter’s choice not to make full use of his deliciously baritone vocal chords on Fictional State, but instead opting for a style not so dissimilar to that of Mike Skinner of The Streets. And the album, maybe even the alt-folk genre as a whole, is much more refreshing as a result.

But it’s not just the London outfit’s overly aggressive elephant seals and pseudo-clowns that can be read into. So, too, can the album title, Cannibals With Cutlery. As previously established, the band likes things to be on the slightly unconventional side, thus accounting for ‘Cannibals’. As for the ‘With Cutlery’, one can turn to the sheer sophistication of the album; sure the layers of brass and strings featured on over half of the tracks brings a certain refinement to proceedings, but it is the band’s use of the instruments that really shine through. As expected, the boys make use of the manpower to hand in obvious ways – Choices has to be described as majestic and Funeral nothing short of epic – but in other instances the orchestral sections really help to evoke feeling and emotion that is otherwise unreachable; it is difficult to imagine the power of Gasp and the contrasting tenderness of Family without TKAK using the help offered from the classical genre to such good effect.

It is their maturity, their ability to see what works and what doesn’t, their capability to work with what they have and haven’t got (compare a stripped back Sofar to a recording studio packed out with an orchestra) that confirms To Kill A King are ready to gobble up the world before them. Let’s hope they’ve got enough cutlery, because they’re going to need it.

Review of Edwyn Collins' 'Understated' LP for Artrocker magazine

Given his veteran status (his previous band, Orange Juice, started out in the late seventies) and recent health problems (a brain haemorrhage suffered less than a decade ago reduced him to repeating the four phrases ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘Grace Maxwell’ and ‘the possibilities are endless’ over and over), Edwyn Collins’ Understated is refreshingly youthful. Even more refreshing, though, is that it is youthful in several respects.

Musically, it has the same energy, the same buzz, of the much anticipated debut album from the latest hot act that NME has no doubt already labelled ‘the saviour of guitar music’. Whilst Too Bad, for example, has the same optimistic sound that made earlier material from The Beach Boys so seductive, It’s A Reason shows that Collins and his backing band are quite content to go at a slightly slower pace, to let the music do the talking. And, with the backing band Collins had behind him during the recording of Understated, no wonder; a supergroup-worthy combination of Primal Scream, The Pretenders, Dexys and Sex Pistols, with such talent to hand there were never going to be The Strokes Angles-era like fracases. You can tell.

Another beneficiary of the likes of Barrie Cadogan and Paul Cook both metaphorically and literally playing off each other is the innovation evident on the record. Whilst Collins stays true to his guitar-driven pop for the most part, and there’s the occasional lack of ‘edge’ (the chorus of Dilemma consists of little more than one simple line on a loop), there’s real diversity that often only the most artistic of musicians can achieve; Carry On, Carry On sounds as if it came before even Collins’ time, whereas by contrast 31 Years has a hint of the kind of surf pop that so many of today’s NME-heralded bands try so desperately – and thus fail – to achieve. It even sounds as if there are aspects of Baby Jean that were inspired by the parts of sunny Spain.

Most importantly, though, given his dice with death just eight years ago, the album gives the impression that Collins’ mindset is enormously rejuvenated. Even better, the Scotsman knows it. Almost four songs in a row, Collins makes his lust for life quite clear: on Forsooth he is feeling “alive” and “reborn”, there are no prizes for guessing where he is “living” and “breathing” on In The Now, with the album finishing with an ode to how “good” love has been to him that is as heartfelt as it is grateful.

Back in 2005, Collins repeating his belief in the possibilities being endless was considered a negative consequence of the brain haemorrhage. Now who, most probably quite literally, is laughing?

3/5

Released: 25th March 2013 (AED Records)

Duologue's #DreamSofar

Foals. Everything Everything. Alt-J. All three are especially highly regarded and deservedly so; the first two have been nominated for the Mercury Prize (2010 and 2011 respectively), whilst the latter won the esteemed award last year. The correlation? Each have sculpted their own distinct sound.

Probably best Duologue’s highly anticipated debut LP, Song & Dance (which you can stream here and inevitably pre-order here, with a review from us to come on Monday) is shortlisted, then. At the very least.

You wouldn’t, for example, often associate the sweet tunes of acoustic with the aggressive wub-wub of dubstep, and yet front man Tim Digby-Bell tells no word of a lie saying “You could pick some songs and we’d be likened to a folk act, another few and we’d be called dubstep”. Considered by many to be the antithesis of each other, taken on their own both folk and dubstep have their merits. Stitched together, though, and as seamlessly as the London five-piece do? New innovative territory is breached, with the result being what can only be described as the sound of Duologue.

Of course it is not just us at Sofar who think this way. The people at both Clash and Q, who, it is safe to say, probably know a thing or two, also agree that Duologue are not merely content with taking today’s music for what it’s worth, but are instead stretching it in every which way in order to overcome and create new boundaries; the former describes their material as ‘songcraft borrowed from the indie sphere with glitchy, forward-thinking electronica’, the latter deeming the outfit ‘a rock band effortlessly in tune with electronica’.

The absolutely ram packed album launch the band played at Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen last week proved two things. First, their ‘effortless forward-thinking’ is gaining them a fan or two, some perhaps a little more notable than others (Jim Abbiss, who helped produce their debut, has also worked with a real up and coming female singer-songwriter, Adele, and little know Sheffield-based indie-rock outfit,Arctic Monkeys), and second, their live show is just as dynamic as the music it’s built around; making use of vocal manipulation, a drum machine, a projector and the suchlike, their stage presence is a real master class of all that is good in today’s technology and is consequently as much of a spectacle for the eyes than it is for the ears.

Fortunately, Duologue are soon embarking on a tour around the country with fellow electronicistas, Post War Years. Even better, entrance is absolutely free. The likes of Stephen Hawking and Dr. Emmett Brown are nothing less than complicated and confusing when it comes to the future of the world. Be sure to check out the track-by-track guide of Song & Dance written by Digby-Bell, and the band’s #DreamSofar below for, quite literally, the future of music.

Duologue’s #DreamSofar would be:

Nick Drake (Toby Leeming, live programming and beats):

‘Of all the artists I have listened to and read about, it seems Nick Drake suffered from stage fright the most – something we can all empathise with. I think if he were to ever enjoy a gig it would be in the 'Sofar' vibe and to hear him play his songs live at close quarters would be amazing.’

Tom Waits (Tim Digby-Bell, vocals):

‘He's one of my all-time favourite artists. I think Alice may be one of my favourite songs ever; I've been listening to it regularly for years and just not bored of it at all. It has the most beautiful words – it sounds like a Bukowski poem.’

The Rosenberg Trio (Toby Lee, guitars):

‘My dream Sofar gig would have to include Stochelo Rosenberg, a gypsy jazz acrobat performing proper acoustic music with virtuosity, flair and, most importantly, balls!’

Grateful Dead (Ross Stone, bass):

‘Had Sofar existed in 60s California, I'm positive it would have played host to the masters of tripped out, genre defying improvisation. Cram me into an incense filled living room for hours of heady, hypnotic jams. Peace.’

Rodriguez (Seb Dilleyston, violin):

‘I feel lucky to have found Rodriguez's music this last year. His music is sincere and beautiful, his voice unmistakable. It's as if you can feel the journey this man has been on. In an intimate setting, just Rodriguez and guitar: perfect.’