Don't you love it when a plan comes together......

Just a note to gloat about the fantasticalness of the blog (this one) that may not say too much too often, but boy when we do say something we come up with the goods.

In case you managed to avoid them for the whole of the ridiculous amount of time they've been faffing about not bringing an album out, today was the stupendous day that saw Veronica Falls, one of LTCOs' past pet bands, releasing their debut album. It took them so long to come up with their eponymously named long-player that I'd begun to worry they were going to miss the scuzzy harmony-driven lo-fi post-punk boat that is fast sailing over the horizon. Now I'd like to hope that they wouldn't give a flying fig's bum about whether they're on the cutting edge of all that indie nonsense or not, but equally I wouldn't want them to miss their opportunity to bask in the hot sun. 'Tis nearly winter, after all.

For all my bast bleating about Veronica Falls (or V. Filly, as I've decided I will now call them cos it's less annoying to type), I very nearly lost patience after waiting sooo long for an album. But! I have to say that even with the disappointment of the fact that they've already made six (six!) of the tracks on the album available in some form or other, and that if you've seen them play a few times (as I have, don't you know) you'll have heard pretty much all of the tracks, the album as a whole (and the rest of the tracks) are rather good stuff. Even if you've heard the six already-out-there-on-the-web tracks, it's worth listening to the new shiny production makeovers to see what you think.

Get yer ear'oles round it in full at Stereogum or listen to the not-previously-released-in-any-way title track (does it count as a title track when your album is named after the band? Hmmm?) below:

Veronica Falls - Veronica Falls by user5158728

Hey Punka!

What with the recent release of Let's Wrestle's second album, I've been coming over all punk. And as we all know, there's nothing quite like getting your punk on. Especially when you're dancing around your flat with a feather duster (not that that actually happened, you understand. Just creating some amusing imagery, like).

So anyway......I've never had a hardcore (or even softcore) punk-head phase, but occasionally my astoundingly impressive eclectic tastes lead me to bop around to a pop-punk tune or two - nothing too unbecoming of a lady though, Cloud Nothings or Let's Wrestle is about as far as I go. So imagine my surprise - nay, shock even - when a couple of punk bands have managed to be my soundtrack of choice this fine bank holiday.

Eagulls are jumping about all over the scene at the moment, having released their 7" 'Council Flat Blues' on Not Even last year, a small label releasing records under the wing of the Moshi Moshi imprint. They're the kind of band that will play a raucous, drink-kicking, flailing around spraying sweat all over the crowd set (that'll be a punk band, then) and I found myself grinning at the stage like an eejit while they were playing (whilst standing perfectly still with folded arms of course, as is my style). Listen to the single below, and if you happen to be lucky enough to live in Manchester, get on down to Gullivers tonight to catch them and their sweaty antics.

Council Flat Blues - Eagulls by Radar Maker

The other band to be piquing my interest this rainy afternoon are Men, a three-man bouncey pop-punk band from Norwich, a place particularly close to my heart (I went to university there, y'know). They put a free seven-track release up on their Bandcamp way back in 2009, which is still happily available for the downloading here. Whilst Eagulls are more of a moody, frown-and-nod-your-head-vigorously kind of deal, Men are a full-on jumping-on-the-bed pop kind of deal; they even have a track containing some phat 80s synth sounds, 'Big Fucker'. Have a listen to 'Calculators' on the player below as well for some sugary sweet summery goodness. Men appear to be on something of a European tour at the moment, so have a look at their Myspace to see if you can catch them coming your way. Happy puking! Oh, I meant happy punking!

Stag & Dagger was upon us!

So! The London indie festival season has officially opened with the whirlwind passing of Stag & Dagger in London and Glasgow this weekend. With just Friday night in London across ten Shoreditch / Hoxton venues and Saturday night across seven venues in Glasgow (with some one-off gigs in-between in both cities), they have managed to cram in (and cram is the word) some bleedin' good audio treats.

As far as I was concerned from going through the lineup, the dance and electronica tipped the balance this year. As blathered about a little while ago on LTCO, Christian Aids would've been a highlight of all that jazz, but quietly disappeared from the lineup - poopsticks. Not to worry, trip-hoppy dubsteppy housey goodness abounded this year with the likes of Becoming Real, Dam Mantle, Chad Valley and Cloud Boat. Now Cloud Boat were my personal highlight of what I managed to see of the London side of the festival, having played a beautious little set in the basement bar of The Queen Of Hoxton. Have a listen to their forthcoming single on R&S Records, 'Lions On The Beach', below:



This year's lineup also brought to my attention the silky smooth r'n'b sensibilities of Lapalux (pictured at the top) who, as it happens, put his EP 'Many Faces Out Of Focus' up on Soundcloud an hour before I typed this very post; howzat for hot off the press? So here it is boys, girls and cats of all ages:

Many Faces Out Of Focus (2011) by Lapalux

There's definitely a whiff of a trend goin' on what with all this bassy easy-going r'n'b around. Compilation making time, methinks...........

Tea and cake

Let's start this second bank holiday with a bit of traditionalism, what with it being the big royal dookeroo today an' all. I'm sure an appropriately massive amount of tea will be consumed across the UK in the next few hours, most of it hopefully accompanied by some sweet spongey goodness. Mmmm...

Fika Recordings, the indie cassette label touting today's musical delight, subscribe to the (clearly genius) view that music is best digested with tea and cake. Fika, they tell us, is the Swedish version of afternoon tea. Muchos appropriate for the royal wedding day, no? They even send a recipe for a delicious baked treat with every purchase, along with a tea bag that they deem will suit your musical choice. So, to match the electro-pop sunshine rays of their new Petter Seander cassette release, they'll also send you a recipe for hazelnut cookies and an elderflower tea bag - how lovely is that?!

"But!" I hear you cry, "'tis no use if the music doesn't tickle my fanciful bits!" Fear not, intrepid music lovers, Petter Seander's new 'Destroyer' EP (you knew I'd get to the point eventually) contains jolly good upbeat-yet-angst-ridden Swedish pop songs. The only way I can really describe it is by saying it sounds as if Outkast and The Postal Service met at a Passion Pit party. And if you hate all of those things, then at least you'll get a recipe and a tea bag out of it, eh? The tape is available for pre-order from the Fika website in a limited edition of 100 for the princely sum of £3.50 each (but you also get an instant high-quality download of the full EP), and seeing as I've bought one of those 100, you'd better get your skates on! Listen to all four tracks below:

Bossing it

I used to live in Bournemouth. For one whole year. I liked it, on the whole - mainly for the gawjus beach and the Time Crisis game in the pier arcade (and they had one of those Mario Kart machines where you could put a picture of your own head on the characters, hours of fun) - but I have to say that the local music scene was pretty much a shocker at the time. I'm glad to see, then, that today's band are holding the fort for the Bomo massive. They're from Boscombe just up the road from Bournemouth, a place that I walked to along the seafront just a handful of times in that year, and all I remember was some dodgy-looking bars and an even dodgier-looking branch of Primark. The band are named after Boscombe, being called Bos Angeles, which has the following entry in the Urban Dictionary:

"Another slang term for Boscombe, heroin capital of England and home of the Bafia (boscombe mafia). Also features a suprisingly pleasant cafe."

What gets me is the word another; how many slang terms for Boscombe can there be? We can but wonder......

So, Bos Angeles are pretty good anyhoo, from the sounds of the one track they've got floating around on the tinterweb. The track, Beach Slalom, was played on the Beeb's 6Music this week and is a rather tasty slice of attitude-filled indie pop. They're playing a show in Bomo next month so presumably they have some more tracks to play (or they might just play Beach Slalom over and over again which would be fine by me) - keep an eye on their Myspace page for developments!

Bos Angeles - Beach Slalom by thissceneisntdead

Tight like a tiger

Decent free album alert! And it's very nice, very nice indeed. New Animal are a duo from Atlanta who make wistful, quirky harmony-centric pop of the Panda Bear / Animal Collective / Atlas Sound ilk. And no, they don't share any members or direct link with any members of the above, somewhat incestuous, bands (as far as I know, which is little).

Now, you may think this 'psych pop' (as it seems to have been coined) scene is pretty much covered for what is essentially quite a specific sound, but New Animal manage to freshen it up a bit with a few phat beats peppered around the album and some darn catchy vocal hooks. I quite like that their name, whether intentional or not, pre-empts the old chestnut of music journos labelling bands as the 'new' this or that. No need to call them the new Animal Collective if they're already called New Animal, is there? Ho ho!

Their free self-titled debut album, available here, was released in January and is a lot of bang for your non-existent buck at no less than 15 tracks in length. And these tracks ain't short, neither, with the shortest number covering a generous 4 minutes.

The opener, 'Nightmares Of Candy Yang & The Black Italian', is a clear winner with 'choon' stamped all over it, and I'm also loving 'Science' with its skippy skippy beat, and 'Frightened' for its little driving hook - but hey, you can make up your own mind what to give or take as the whole bleedin' thing is free! These are new times people, new times indeed......

Small wonders

A band I've ashamedly only come across this week, Big Troubles released an album in September of last year and are due to support The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Real Estate in Americacaca before hopping over here to play a little UK tour next month.

They've been gushed about by someone or other at Rough Trade, making the ubiquitous My Bloody Valentine comparison and saying that Big Troubles' sound is "totally damaged and beautiful", but to me, although they do stand up to the whole My Bloody Valentine likeness, they do have a bit of their own thang goin' on. It's all very scuzzy and 'now' but, contrary to sounding 'damaged', the inclusion of a good slice of pop and tunefulness gives it a lovely warm cheeriness, and rather than making me want to wallow in my own insignificance, it makes me feel like doing a little shuffle-dance in my bunny slippers.

In fact (although My Bloody Valentine are clearly awesome) the most My Bloody Valentines-ey ones are actually my least favourites, because, gosh darn it, I like a band to have a bit of their own personality. Try 'Bite Yr Tongue' on for size and you'll see why they're supporting Pains Of Being Pure At Heart:



or 'Drastic And Difficult' to get your slipper dance on:

03 Drastic And Difficult by OESB

Both from their album 'Worry' out on Old English Spelling Bee Records. Check out their Myspace for upcoming tour dates.

Hell, yeah!

Now quite a few of you outrageous muso boffin-heads probably already know about this band but I just thought I'd bring your collective attention to them in celebration of their new release this Monday just gone. Reading Rainbow are a very good band from Philly, who make a pretty brand of harmonic lo-fi (well, it sounds pretty lo-fi, who can tell these days?) with a healthy dose of punk thrown in. They're playing a plethora of shows over in the US of A, but sadly none scheduled for the U of K at the mo but watch their blog in anticipation and hound them with messages asking them to play over here (or not, whatever). If you like the Internet Forever track featured here a few months ago, you'll love their infectiously fun and catchy track Wasting Time:



Their new single is called Cover The Sky - which is a little bit spooky seeing as Internet Forever's pop masterpiece is called Cover The Walls - and is out on Hell, Yes! records right at this very point in time.

READING RAINBOW "Cover The Sky" by HellYes

Sunday services

Festival season is (almost) upon us! Would you Adam & Eve it?? Trawling the London line-ups for juicy things to check out, I was just about losing the plot (and the use of my ears) when, praise be, I stumbled upon some stupendous chawns by the silly-named Christian AIDS, by all accounts a reclusive band from Manchester. Having done a bit of the ol' research, it looks like I'm quite late to pick up on these guys; the blogosphere has been all over them like a rash of late. And well they might be - I keep listening to the band's Soundcloud page over and over again.

They fit quite nicely into this whole 'chillwave' thing that's been going on, although let's not put them into such a crappily-named musical category. They make that finest kind of house music that is both relaxed and fantastically thumpy at the same time. It's cool as hell, but if your partial to a bit of ravey cheese as a guilty pleasure to lift those knees up to, they've got something in store for you as well.

The good news is they've got a single out soon, available for pre-order now from Double Denim Records. Hurry up and nab one if you like it though, it's a limited 7" of 500 copies. The single is on their Soundcloud named Stay Positive, but just to cement their status in the uber-cool musical underground they've changed it to Stay +. Well, you've gotta keep up with them kids these days, haven't you? Check it out below:

Stay Positive by christianAIDS

And, to return to what I started off by saying about festivals before I rambled on a bit, they're playing at the Stag & Dagger festival in London on 19th May. So get a ticket, aaiiight?

Aloha! Now we've had enough of all that festive cheer nonsense, LTCO is back for the new year and will be featuring the best darn musical treats you've ever had the good fortune to read about on a blog............just as soon as we work out all the technical stuff.......

See you soon!

Hotter than Lady Gaga's bra

Bonjour! LTCO returns to the floor simply because the following announcement is sooooo important that we came out of hibernation under a rock just to say it. Listen. To. This. Band. Superhero tune-wielders No Age reportedly recommended these guys to our friends Upset The Rhythm (we don't actually know them, we just wish they were our bestest buds) and we can see why. So enamoured were UTR that they have helped them to organise a UK tour, which graces The Grosvenor in Stockwell tomorrow night (that's Thursday 21st October, if you're reading this after the fact then it serves you right for not constantly checking a blog that hasn't had any posts in months! How could you?!). I would tell you all the other dates on the tour, but as they have an endearingly empty Myspace (nowt on it, like), I can't.

So, they're called Gun Outfit (hence the Lady Gaga reference, geddit?) listen to a couple of their tunes on their Myspace and get yourself down to The Grosvenor if you're in London for some seriously 90s-tastic Sonic Youth-y, Comet Gain-y goodness.

"High Places" by Gun Outfit (High Places EP, Make-A-Mess Records) by brilliantcolorsinfo

Power is money

Don't you just love a bit of old-school 80s instrumental hip-hop? No? Well, I do. Which means I also like C Powers, one of the artists featuring at the Stag & Dagger festival this weekend.

Get yo'self down to the delectable 'do tomorrow (London) or Saturday (Glasgow), whether you be in Glasgow or London, to sample the delightful musical spread they have prepared for you grubby punters to roll around in, which just happens to feature a couple of LTCO's old friends from past blog posts. But especially get down to the festival if you're in London, because C Powers is going to be old-school-80s-instrumental-hip-hoppin' the place up like there's no tomorrow. So you know what sort of thing he does (did I mention it's old-school 80s instrumental hip-hop?), but in case you need some comparisons to whet your imagination, it's a bit Prince, a bit DJ Shadow, a bit Mantronix, but it's, y'know, cool.

I haven't got any tracks I can post but just take a second to look at his Myspace, OK?? Peace out.

Oh oh oh, wait a sec - he's on at 10:30pm at 93 Feet East tomorrow night. And there's gonna be loads of other amazing bands on as well. Peace out again.

Tea Each by C Powers

Robots in disguise

Arrrright? Whilst perusing through the list of bands I should go and see at The Great Escape this year (oh yes, I had to get that in) I've happily stumbled across Masks, a lovely instrumental shoegaze group that make a kind of ambient-yet-paranoid noise, a bit like watching Twin Peaks with a hot chocolate. In fact, when interviewed for fellow blog Dummy, David Lynch was mentioned as an influence. Masks are another band to add to the growing list of bands-wot-make-scuzzy-guitar-like-noises-with-no-guitars, and, well, we just love that sort of thing round here.

Masks actually do wear masks, which they partly explain by saying they're "going for that Venetian look really, whilst ripping off The Knife while we’re at it". Fair 'nuff, it's nice to have a band whose name is just simple and descriptive for once.

They had an EP out last month on Fear & Records and, although based in Brighton, are hoping to start gigging elsewhere soon. Below is a little video of the wonderfully titled title track, 'Forever Dancing' - I'm just lovin' the simple yet effective keyboard melody, something that's exploited to it's fullest in the excellent chunky 'Entrepreneurs SB Remix' featured on the band's Myspace player.



If you are heading to The Great Escape this year, be sure to check them out, along with fellow Fear & Records act Rolo Tomassi; if my trawling of the unsigned lineup is anything to go by, I have a strong feeling that they might just shine a little beacon of goodness amongst the swathes of unsigned middle-of-the-road acoustic guitar twangers hanging around the place.

Can you guess what it is yet?

Right, we've had a couple of indie bands on recently, so methinks, in the name of eclecticism, it's time for another burst of electronica.

Patten is a tasteful Londonite making very pretty and very moody atmospheric nuggets of house music full of boopy bass lines. Y'know, the type that can only be described to other people by going 'boooooooooooooooooooop' at them. Yup.

So anyway, both of the tracks featured on his Myspace can be downloaded for absolutely nuffink from Bandcamp so you can boop along to them whenever and wherever you fancy, or you can listen to 'Fire Dream (C90 Demo)' below.

It's a short one today because I have a hunger headache and am off to chew some teabags. Toodleloo.

Three's a crowd

Isn't it just sickening when people are in more than one good band? It's bad enough when we have to be jealous of the people in one, never mind if they spring up another one as if it's the easiest thing in the world. Two bands is fine, but two good bands is just showing off.

Today's duo, The Proper Ornaments, contain one of our old familiars from Veronica Falls, something that only dawned on me when I went to see them in the flesh. And guess what? They're good! James Hoare of The Proper Ornaments is not only from Veronica Falls but was in the not-half-bad Your Twenties for a time before being ousted. And it certainly didn't do him any harm, as he clearly has a taste for reet good indie music. It's a bit surfy, quite a bit retro, and it has poppy harmonies and pretty melodies - all the things that are cool at the moment, but it's nice and sleepy too. It feels like summer, which is definitely what we all need a dose of right now.

Check out any of the tracks on their Myspace, they're all good.