Who the fu*k are they? (please feel free to join in)

[Hairy Chin]

Goldie Lookin' Chain

If you ain't heard these boys yet, you will soon enough.  They're a bunch of lads from Newport (wales) all done up in Kappa shell suits, hoodies and chains, straight outta da Vallies man.

Here they are, in the net, with an accurate observational pikey colloquialism for their URL

[mr rou-rou]

http://tillyandthewall.com/

Tilly and the Wall, an American quintet from Omaha,

why have I picked them? the drummer... the drummer is a tap dancer, that's right, no drums, just tap tap thump clop thump tappity tap :) it's pretty lo-fi stuff but charming enough, imagine going to see a group where the percussion was shared between three cute indie pop tarts and one of them was tap dancing in front of you :)

I found them by accident while looking for covers of 'hey ya' by Outkast and found their version, shame it's live, but it was pretty cool.

also a good place to drop in one of my favourite albums of last year, still not seen or heard anything more, the chap the horse

The Chap are a punk funk disco rock machine with moog, cello, guitar, drums, bass and vocals. `The Horse` blends edgy guitars, disco strings, dirty, grooving bass and three part vocal harmonies to create an unmistakeable sound that defies any sensible description. Try it.  

I'd go along with that

[lazyhour]

Following Silver SurferGhost's lead, I vote YES to David Devant & His Spirit Wife.  They're just limbering up to release their 3rd album.  I hope it'll be good.  Their original guitarist, Foz (ex-The Monochrome Set), is a fantastic musician, and he doesn't even know what the chords are called!  

Erm.  So, they are great.  Their second album was good but Foz's absence was painfully obvious.  Their new'un could be the great, consistent, perfect album they are destined to make.

Yes, yes, they are the band who dun Ginger.

Could somebody on broadband pop up a Devant mp3, perhaps?  Spread the word and all that.

[mr rou-rou]

I've got some tracks, well, Shiney (sic) on the Inside 1997 LP

is there a particular track you want hosting?

01. Radar 02. One Track Mind 03. Dangerous Dilettante 04. 21 05. Sex Maniacs 06. One Thing After Another 07. Space Daddy 08. Groover 09. Shiney On The Inside 10. Here Come the Imposters 11. Take A Deep Breath

It's pleasantly Bowie like isn't it?

[lazyhour]

I've got some tracks, well, Shiney (sic) on the Inside 1997 LP

is there a particular track you want hosting?

01. Radar 02. One Track Mind 03. Dangerous Dilettante 04. 21 05. Sex Maniacs 06. One Thing After Another 07. Space Daddy 08. Groover 09. Shiney On The Inside 10. Here Come the Imposters 11. Take A Deep Breath

It's pleasantly Bowie like isn't it?

It is a bit.  But then I listen to far more Devant than I do Bowie, so for me it's almost the other way around, ridiculous as that is.

Choose a track, you say?  Oh blimey.  Erm.  One Track Mind?  But to be honest, none of my DD favourites are on this album.  All their B-Sides knock the albums into a cocked hat.  I made a CD-R of all their B's a few years ago, and it's the DD CD I listen to the most.  But I digress.  One Track Mind it is.  

Thanks very much!

[mr rou-rou]

there you go

David Devant and his spirit wife - one track mind

[lazyhour]

Bloody hell, that was quick!  Thanks so much for that.  Now I just hope that people come to the arse-end of this dying thread to find it...

[Silver SurferGhost]

I'll do me bit to bump it back up then...
I see them as more of a mutant hybrid of Bowie, Eno-era Roxy and the Bonzos myself, especially live
(before they cut their performance budget and lost Cocky Young Un and Iceman).

...All their B-Sides knock the albums into a cocked hat.

Into a cocked sparkly top hat with ribbons.
If only you had the first album and singles mr r-r, or at a pinch Dolphin Square,
the best track off Shiney that wasn't on Shiney.
I'm so glad Foz is back, he seems to be the heart and soul of the band where Vessel is the mind and the makeup mirror.
Don't get me wrong, I like Shiney, but it wasn't half as much fun as Work, Lovelife, Miscellaneous.
New album? I'm still waiting for that Lost World CD...

Have you heard the Carfax stuff, lazyhour ?
It's a side-project by Vessel, Prof and some other bloke, not all great but Going To London is the best
non-Devant Devant track ever made...
.

[lazyhour]

I'll do me bit to bump it back up then...
I see them as more of a mutant hybrid of Bowie, Eno-era Roxy and the Bonzos myself, especially live
(before they cut their performance budget and lost Cocky Young Un and Iceman).

...All their B-Sides knock the albums into a cocked hat.

Into a cocked sparkly top hat with ribbons.
If only you had the first album and singles mr r-r, or at a pinch Dolphin Square,
the best track off Shiney that wasn't on Shiney.
I'm so glad Foz is back, he seems to be the heart and soul of the band where Vessel is the mind and the makeup mirror.
Don't get me wrong, I like Shiney, but it wasn't half as much fun as Work, Lovelife, Miscellaneous.
New album? I'm still waiting for that Lost World CD...

Have you heard the Carfax stuff, lazyhour ?
It's a side-project by Vessel, Prof and some other bloke, not all great but Going To London is the best
non-Devant Devant track ever made...
.

don't get me started on Lost World...  The bugger's never going to come out, is it?  And I vote Yes to Dolphin Square.  It was going to be on Shiney, you know, but htey pulled it 'cos they're stupid.

As for Carfax, I've only got one song by them, I think, but I'm *desparate* to get hold of the album!

Apart from that, I strongly agree with everything you've said.  For a bit of fun, why not go to http://www.doremi.co.uk/dd and look at the messageboard, where there's a post by me complaining about the horrendous image they've put up to advertise the new single.  It's just fucking ghastly!

Pointless glory-hunting:  I've been to Foz's house.  Thanks.

[european son]

not a shameless plug for my old fanzine (it's dead anyway), but a girl i once dated wrote an article about DD&HSP for it, as well as dragging me to a bunch of their's (and Carafax's) gigs (all at the Water Rats in Kings Cross if i recall), so you might be interested in a gander.



Page One, Page Two, Page Three

[lazyhour]

Ha!  I interviewed them at one of those Water Rats gigs!  The interview appeared in the DD zine that my associate and I used to do, "My Magic Life."  Maybe we should make a new one for the new album...

But zines are dead now, aren't they?  Internet and all that?

[Silver SurferGhost]

Zines are forever (so long as you don't spill tea on them), not like this ghostly electronic interweb gubbins
that can disappear forever at the crash of a server. sob

Ta for those euro, your former datee had it about right about the second album but what do you think of them?
Generally people either love them or hate them, I've never found anyone who's ambivalent.
Work, Lovelife, Miscellaneous was one of the few albums of mine I had to fight for custody of when I got divorced.

"Pope" was Jon Klein (wasn't he), and strangely enough he's now in a new band (Snail) with an ex-member
of another favourite band of mine, The Soft Boys.

You didn't imagine I could carry on much longer without mentioning them, did you?

[mr rou-rou]

maher shalal hash baz? - anyone?

Maher Shalal Hash Baz are incredible; the self proclaimed 'kings of error', their music is unselfconciously skewed and triumphantly melodic. This lovingly compiled retrospective traces their roots from the early 80s Japanese underground through to their historic Glasgow show in 1999. MSHB make you feel like you're hearing music for the first time - Domino Records

...undecided whether it was musical or unmusical, graceful or gauche, sophisticated-naive or just unfinished. It's as if Tori Kudo felt his music had to fend for itself....

I've been listening to From a Summer to Another Summer (an Egypt to Another Egypt) & Blues du jour and I have to say, I really really like them.

Most of the time they sound like a Japanese special school orchestra rehearsing, heh, and then you get this burst of something like the Velvet Underground on Opium, all slurred and strangely passionate.

in fact they've tickled me so much I'll post some samples, dear god - run for your lives.

sample 01 - MSHB - Peter Said

sample 02 - MSHB - Post Office

sample 03 - MSHB - Recorder and Euphonium

[9]

maher shalal hash baz? - anyone?

eurgh! thanx for the clips sir, I downloaded the first one...but it did my fucking head in! Not to my taste i'm afraid. it all sounded a bit twee.  i'll try the other two tomorrow. ;-)

[chand]

I love Maher Shalal Hash Baz, I find something wonderfully endearing about the way the guy sings, and they have that Guided By Voices type knack of being able to write a million 45-second songs, with bits of joyfully scattershot genius in them. It's very throwaway, in the nicest sense.

But, I could understand someone hating them, and I can see where 'twee' would come from.

[lazyhour]

Hooray!   Maher Shalal Hash Baz!  I've got From A Summer To Another Summer and Maher On Water.  Both lovely things.  So you'd recommend Blues Du Jour, rou-rou?  I'll have to get that soon.

I personally think they are at their best when the vocals are kept to a minimum, or not present at all.  I *love* their wonky instrumentals like the version of Unknown Happiness sans vocals.  Brilliant.

And I bought the new David Devant single today.  Quite good.

[mr rou-rou]

yes indeed, I don't know why I posted the three vocal tracks I did, perhaps I thought people need words in order to be welcomed into the world of wonky music.

Both have charm, I have another called Maher on Water it only has a measly 10 tracks and not the generous 20+ and 40+ tracks of the other two, for some reason that one just washes over me, I must have another look, it could be a best of or something because some of the track names look familiar.

[chand]

'Maher On Water' was the first one I got, it's a very short EP but it has some interesting stuff on it. 2 versions of 'Stone In The River', which I'd probably hate if it was done by another band because it seems a fundamentally boring song, but it has a certain charm, perhaps some of which is down to some slightly mangled lyrics that only foreign artists can come out with. Most of the rest of that CD is divided between short acoustic pop and little less-than-a-minute sketches which are more ideas than actual songs.

[Gamma Ray]

Has anyone heard anything about a band called Orquesta del Desierto? I was looking at the Hermano website just now, because my friend's band has just been signed to their US label,  Tee Pee. I saw that one of the guys in the band had another project called Orquesta del Desierto, and they have a website here (not too sure about the suits, chaps ...). Now I'll give anything from the desert a go, it breeds a rarer kind of music. This album also has a couple of other things in its favour - it was recorded at the infamous Rancho de la Luna studios (home of the Desert Sessions and the Queens Of The Stone Age/Kyuss split EP among others) and it features a guy called Pete Stahl on vocals. I believe that his main band is called Goatsnake (who I'd also like to check out) but his contributions to the Desert Sessions are fantastic (especially Nova). The little clip at the Orquesta website bodes well, and is a little different to the usual heavy blues desert style.

Have any of you heard the record? I suspect that it may be a little more to your tastes than the low end rock that I usually fry my ears and brain with.

[mr rou-rou]

I'm cheating really because Tortoise are pretty well known.

I just wanted to point you to the new album if you weren't aware of it already , as usual, streaming from that Dutch website

Tortoise - it's all around you

[Lumiere]

Mars Volta - after some initial hubub all support of them has died.

[TraceyQ]

Um, no it hasnt. Where's your proof? It's been 12 months or more since the release of their last album, they're in the studio, writing and planning a tour.

[TraceyQ]

I'm cheating really because Tortoise are pretty well known.

I just wanted to point you to the new album if you weren't aware of it already , as usual, streaming from that Dutch website

Tortoise - it's all around you

I dont know them that well, but have managed to blag guest list on their next tour. What stuff should I start with?

[mr rou-rou]

They'll probably play tracks off the new one, not sure what they'd do from Standards, TNT or Millions now living will never die having never seen them live or even spoken to another Tortoise fan to ask what their fave tracks are.

http://www.allmusic.com perhaps and read the bit at the bottom where is says song highlights, plus you can read the bio and get a blaggers guide to them.

oh yes darling, everything I know about my favourite band I read on allmusic ;)

edit: positive review

[mr rou-rou]

Eagles of Death Metal (bloke from QOTSA is in them, not my bag but I know there are fans (completists) on the boards)

Click here for new LP "Love Peace Death Metal" in Flash streaming format

I like the Owls newish one, Our Hopes and Dreams? any other soft lads out there enjoying this charming 24 minute long 8 track mini LP?



two lads and two lasses from Minnesota (or is it Minneapolis?)

bands mentioned in the reviews,
Beatles, Stereolab without the electronics
Belle & Sebastian, Nick Drake, Nico without the accent,
Cat Power, Slowdive
talk about casting the net wide,

I'm not sure about any of those, but I like the tunes, it's just gentle pop and I can't put my finger on who they sound like and I'm not really bothered.

[NattyDread]

I dont know them that well, but have managed to blag guest list on their next tour. What stuff should I start with?

I'd start off with their first self titled one, then take it from there. I don't think they've bettered the first. They were great at A.T.P. Went on slightly too long though, or maybe I was just all rocked out.

[mr rou-rou]

Regina Spektor anyone? (ignore that shite she did with the Strokes)



Playing in Manchester, 14/06/2004, Night and Day cafe.

She's a piano player, comparisons abound, but she has interesting lyrics + she looks cool in that picture :)

rightclicksaveas

sample 01

sample 02

sample 03

Flash link for a listen to the previous album 'Songs'

[gazzyk1ns]

Everyone here is always on about Captain Beefheart... who the hell is he/are they? Without this place I'd not have heard of him/them, for the last 3 years I have been "looking out for a mention" of him/them amongst mates and in the media and not one has occurred, which is improbable, as I have a fair amount of mates who all have broad tastes, and in an average week I end up having a fair bit of contact with a lot of the "media".

[sore bottom mum]

I enjoyed the Regina Spektor mr rou-rou... It's actually quite refreshing hearing something 'independent' that's not guitar based, with a whiney white-boy singer.

[mayer]

Regina Spektor anyone?...

that was bloody good that!

Playing in Manchester, 14/06/2004, Night and Day cafe.

if i'm still about, and if you're going and don't object to a wee bairn such as myself accompanying you, that looks like it could well be a fine evening out.