We’ve decided to produce a new monthly mixtape featuring some of the featured artists on https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk in the past month! We could have probably added another ten tracks but you have to stop somewhere right? So here it is in all its 26 track glory the GIITTV Monthly Mixtape for January with relevant links for your reading pleasure.
1 This Year
By The Puncture Repair Kit
“A hopeful ditty, from Cambridge’s self styled “rickety chamber pop band” the Puncture Repair Kit. Building gradually from intertwined boy/girl harmonies, threaded with strums and violins patterns into almost Los Campesinos-esque clattering streams of consciousness, it takes in Middle Eastern politics alongside somewhat more tender and modest hopes for improvement and tolerance.” https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/07/track-of-the-day-the-puncture-repair-kit-this-year/
2 Little Blip
By The Joy Formidable
“That bouncy Welsh trio, The Joy Formidable, have a new album entitled ‘Wolf’s Law’ winging its way to us at the end of January. Having released three singles from it already is a dangerous move, but the album holds together well and is a progression from their last. It won’t be enough to gather too much fresh momentum sadly, but they remain one of my faves, so here’s a track to set the year off in fine style.”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/08/track-of-the-day-186-the-joy-formidable-little-blimp/
3 Feet For Hands
By Everything Everything
“The pounding drums of Feet for Hands promise an explosive change of direction that never comes, yet there is more than enough satisfaction in the rumbling bass line and cascade of guitar notes towards the song’s end.”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/14/everything-everything-arc/
4 Judgement Call
By Villagers
An array of influences are apparent on {Awayland}, all of which help to reinforce meaning and give greater depth to the album; from the use of electronic devices such as percussive synth sounds and lyrical repetition in ‘The Waves’ that help exemplify the repetitive nature of the sea, to the pure harmonies and delicate instrumentation of title track {Awayland} that create one of the most beautiful musical landscapes on the album. Also captured on {Awayland} is an exploratory feel that is heard in the twenty second A Day In The Life-like psychedelic orchestral section that ends ‘Judgement Call’ and precedes Indie-pop single ‘Nothing Arrived’, and in dynamic track ‘The Bell’ where Villagers experiment with Peter Gunn-style horn parts, Hammond organ and rhythmic lyricism.
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/21/villagers-awayland-domino/
5 Wet Blanket
By Metz
“Sub Pop’s very own Canadians have welded the words power and trio into an altogether new meaning. They take a huge metal spoon to your head, slice off its top like some soft-boiled egg, scoop out your brains and then plug them back into the mains. For thirty five minutes your membranes are frazzled by surge upon surge of a post-Seattle electrical wipe out. Under the hood of this great hulking machine, though, lies melody and nuance, albeit knocked out and loaded into oblivion. An apocalyptic “Wet Blanket” signals the end of the show, if not the world”
6 Anomaly 24
By Doldrums
“Absolutely smitten with this even despite occasioning into fitful bouts of humming out loud ‘the look of love’ by Dusty, latest offering from Montreal’s Doldrums – which according to the notes is something of an avant-electro project headed up by Airick Woodhead – will see a debut full length ’lesser evil’ heralded by the arrival into sonic space of ’anomaly’. After swooning responses – according to the press release – following re-drills of grimes, Portishead and Peaking lights ’Anomaly’ is set to arrest your listening space by way of a swooning and demurring sly slice of aural seduction which shimmers with lovelorn sophistication between a sound axis upon whose curve a finite space is shared between heather duby, grimes and Susumu Yokota. Cradled in all manner of trip-a-delic tenderness and resplendent in a succulent nocturnal décor this ice sculptured gem ripples and ruptures with cooled chill toned dream wired effervescence – in short the sexiest thing on planet pop right this minute.”
7 Hell Bent
By New Order
“My excitement rose upon hearing about the first New Order album for eight years then dissipated rapidly when discovering it is just leftovers from the last album. But new material by the band is always welcome and they rarely disappoint. The new album is called ‘Lost Sirens’ and . it’s only eight tracks long but, as suggested, they’re all worthy additions to the catalogue and one of them sits here.”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/15/track-of-the-day-181-new-order-hellbent/
8 I Know Its You
By Guards
The success of Guards is down to the power of Twitter apparently and a leg up from Cults and MGMT to boot. Early in February they release their debut album ‘In Guards We Trust’ and it’s a pretty decent effort. It’s anthemic and rousing but with a heart full of soul
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/17/track-of-the-day-guards-i-know-its-you/
9 Perfect Pain
By The Vestals
“Newport’s The Vestals have been a name to drop in hushed tones recent months and they have already shared stages with breaking acts including Swim Deep and Bastille and will be touring the UK throughout 2013.’Perfect Pain’ in particular hints at huge promise, with sweeping widescreen production added to chopping guitars, and bittersweet vocals that arc and soars into an indie pop gem….”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/10/preaching-from-the-pews-the-vestals/
10 My Love Takes Me There
By Crime And City Solution
Crime & The City Solution ‘My Love Takes Me There’ – From the upcoming LP ‘American Twilight’ (Mute) 2013. Appears on Dominic Valvona’s The ‘Tickling My Fancy’ Music Revue #1 mix here:
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/02/04/the-tickling-my-fancy-music-revue-1/
11 Bruise Or Be Bruised
By Prissy Clerks
“I was literally stopped in my tracks by a song on Prissy Clerks‘ debut album ‘Bruise Or Be Bruised’ which was out last month. The track was ‘Losing Time’. The way that the lo-fi opening guitar line was chased down the hole by an accordion being played in a church hall, and then by Clara Salyer’s voice, was at one and the same time one hundred years familiar and yet dead fresh. It made me so excited I had to go and write on my Facebook page, so there!
Happily that was just the flare to draw me into an album, the rest of which was just as good to eat as that first track. It turns out they’re out of Minneapolis, a city that’s provided a fair few of my listening favourites over the last couple of years. Every bit of literature about this band makes a Sebadoh comparison. I’d say think instead 90’s Boston scene – say the Muses, with moments of Los Camps (OK, so I’m referencing my most dearly held bands here), all of which is then played garage style, and the whole lot sung under with a breathy insouciance by Clara.”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/07/prissy-clerks/
13 New Dimensions In Sound
By Public Service Broadcasting
“Public Service Broadcasting’s music is where the past meets the future. I’ve had my eye on this lot for a while now, and following last year’s brilliant ‘Everest’ single and some impressive EPs, I’m glad to hear their debut full-length is ready for release. It’s hard to sum up their musical style, without a doubt they provide a refreshing and unique sound that has to be heard…
The duo sample old public information films and archive material and set them to new music. Live, the films are screened simultaneously as laptops are fiddled with, drums are pounded, theremins are wafted at, guitars are bashed and banjos furiously plucked. Teaching the lessons of the past through the music of the future.”
14 Taste For Blood
By Tom Morgan
“Back in ’91 when all things were about to get very, very guitar-based indeed Sydney band Smudge released the cheeky, obviously wonderful ‘Don’t Wanna Be Grant McLennan’. A backhanded tribute to the much-missed Go-Betweens troubadour, it managed to foreshadow both the rise of rackety rock as well as the kind of hazy summer sweetness that would typify lead singer and songwriter Tom Morgan’s musical relationship with Evan Dando and The Lemonheads (which consisted of him contributing to many of their most beloved songs including ‘The Outdoor Type’ and ‘It’s A Shame About Ray’).On tracks like ‘Taste For Blood’ you’ll find the brevity and charm of the McLennan he definitely never wanted to be as well as the half-awake beatific nature of the Lemonhead he helped out so often.”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/02/01/tom-morgan-orange-syringe-fire-records/
15 Hellion Earth
By Blanck Mass
“Blanck Mass is non other than Benjamin John Power taking time out from his fuck buttons responsibilities for some extra curricula activities. Following said set now comes ’Hellion Earth’. A deftly turned 10 minute slice of alluring night pop that twinkles as were though something foolishly left on the cutting room floor of an Arthur Baker studio following a heady all night recording session with a c.83 New Order with the tapes resurfacing some two decades later having been accidentally turned up by Zombi who under the spell of nightly visitations a la ‘thieves like us’ on a nocturnal setting sprinkle upon the template tapes a smoulder tanned Balearic underpin and an attractively murmuring trance like re-tuning – does it for us.”
14 State Of The Art (A.E.I.O.U)
By Jim James
Jim James is Mr. Man for My Morning Jacket, a Kentucky band who have picked up a fair amount of critical acclaim over the past decade. Well time to release a solo album then and James puts out ‘Regions Of Light And Sound Of God’ at the beginning of February. Don’t ye fret though, he hasn’t become a Christian rocker and the album isn’t a great departure from his day job. It’s a wistful collection, even mystical in places and deserves a listen.
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/21/track-of-the-day-jim-james-state-of-the-art-a-e-i-o-u/
15 Mud And Milk
By Manors
“After tripping over a demo by Manors which is currently airing on band camp and heartily advised that we check it out at our earliest convenience. The blighter’s right you know and on the evidence of this three track set alone this lot have been immediately placed on our watch list for the year. Hailing from Brooklyn – and its here that the information trail run cold – this trio of cuts originally surfaced in September 2010 and since then there’s been diddly squat which alas might require the filing of a missing persons report which is rather a shame given these three cuties come armed in a seriously lo-fi’d loveliness. Expressing elements of a youthful neutral milk hotel albeit studio sparring with an equally youthful of Montreal, these lovelorn teen breezed testaments coo and scratch with a classically eyed effervescence whose template nibbles around the edges of an as were recently discovered buddy holly songbook best evidenced on the 50‘s bubblegum breezed fuzzed up twang of ‘these things I wouldn’t do to you’ which arrives as a deliciously sprightly slice of purring power pop. But it is the parting lackadaisical ‘mud and milk’ that hits all the buttons all at once as it dizzily demurs to a sweetly cowed trimming of twinkling bells, kookiness aplenty and a sense of ‘ah well’ resignation.”
16 Sans Soleil
By Thought Forms
UK South West three piece <strong>Thought Forms</strong> are soon releasing their second album ‘Ghost Mountain’ via Invada Records on February 18th 2013.The album was produced and recorded by Jim Barr (Portishead live band of 20 years) and sees Thought Forms evolve and expand their sound into new territories. Their trademark sonic explorations are still here; ethereal doom, heavily psychedelic soundscapes and shoe-gaze. But the band have also taken their guitar-destructive cacophony and mixed it with a more 3 minute pop song ethic, which can be heard on ‘Sans Soleil’, the first track to be revealed from the album.
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/11/interview-thought-forms/
17 Differently Tonight
By Bell Gardens
Bell Gardens are a band based around the duo of Brian McBride (one half of drone outfit Stars of the Lid) and Kenneth James Gibson, a member of 1990’s dream-noise act The Furrys as well as a man responsible for various other projects. Wanting to experiment in what they believed to be a classic type of sound, the two used mainly live instrumentation, thinking about what was available in studios from the 50s to the mid-70s. Preset software sounds were rejected for their own recording of pianos, strings and horns.”
The result is a wonderfully natural sound as well as a joyous, subtle mixture of styles. At eight tracks long, there’s no filler, just beautiful and well-crafted songs which often leave themselves plenty of space to breathe, while still bearing a pleasing amount of strikingly majestic arrangements. It’s a record that sees a welcome revival of classic pop while still drawing from a palette of interesting and intelligent sounds.’Differently Tonight’ is a warm, strummed lullaby that sees the introduction of Gibson’s soothingly captivating vocals, resting on a genuinely touching melody, before the gorgeously emotive piano notes.”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/15/review-bell-gardens-full-sundown-assembly-southern-records/
18 Sorrow, Tears & Blood
By Fela Kuti
Forever synonymous as both a founding patriarch and leading vehement voice in Afrobeat, <b>Fela Kuti</b> the legend transcends the musical style that he made his own. His music was amplified across the globe as his reputation and exotic funk-licked grooves leapt out of the African continent to Europe, America and beyond.
A vessel for social change, thorn in the side of the Nigerian authorities, Kuti was hailed as ‘a man of the people, for the people’. The West African superstar’s proverbial foot hovered vengefully on the throat of his oppressors; a teasing, often acidic critique, awaited the corrupt with politically charged broadsides levelled not just at the military juntas which controlled Nigeria during the 70s and 80s, but also attacked the Imperialistic miasma that still effected Europe’s former colonies.Notable additions include the extended original version of the plaintive, Isley Brothers-esque, paean to the South African apartheid’s crushing of the Soweto Uprising in 1976, ‘Sorrow Tears And Blood’, and the Afro-funk bewailed ‘Black Man’s Cry’.
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/17/fela-fever/
19 Nothing To Dismay
By Bad Religion
Bad Religion have been consistently releasing albums since 1982 and the sixteenth one, ‘True North’, is out this week. Greg Graffin has never adopted a traditional punk image and, at the age of 48, is unlikely to do so now. The band, however, epitomise what punk rock has always been about and that’s high energy blasts of melodious songs with an infectious punch. They haven’t really altered their sound much during their existence, so if you’re not already a fan, this one won’t convert you.
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/29/track-of-the-day-201-bad-religion-nothing-to-dismay/
20 Bellio
By Dutch Uncles
“It is quite amazing to realise that this is the Mancunian quintet’s third album and that they have not lost their iconic bouncy piano backbone nor their frontman Duncan’s falsetto. About mid-way through the album, Flexxin is definitely the highlight of the album. Flexxin features a gorgeous mix of strings throughout and is very catchy that I am quite sure it will be the next single off this album (plus, it links pretty well with the Fester single).
The longest track from the album lies at the very end of it, Brio has a plentiful of breaks, allowing a rich development.”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/18/dutch-uncles-out-of-touch-in-the-wild-memphis-industries/
21 Mouth On Me
By I Am Kloot
Formed in 1999, I Am Kloot finally broke through to a wider audience with their acclaimed 2010 album ‘Sky At Night’, which as well as giving them their highest chart position to date also earned them a Mercury Music Prize nomination. Now they follow it up with their sixth effort ‘Let It All In’, a more varied record that builds on the sparse acoustic sound of its predecessor while reintroducing and expanding the style of their early work. Like the previous LP it’s produced by Elbow’s Guy Garvey and Craig Potter, who have been friends with Kloot long enough to know how to bring out the best in their music. The success of the previous album has given the band greater confidence, and this one will surely take them further.Fitting together wonderfully, Let It All In sees John Bramwell moving in to a higher league in terms of songwriting, a strong and consistent album that provides I Am Kloot with their definitive work.
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/16/review-i-am-kloot-let-it-all-in-shepherd-moon/
22 Push
By Scp Eco
“There’s a EP looming near on the horizon entitled ’push’ from which this here title track has been sneaked out as a pre-release teaser. A bliss kissing 5 minute dreamscape dinked in noir skinned slow seduction as though the handiwork of Giorgio Moroder had he been relocated to a 90’s styled Bristol beats scene, presage upon this some delicately lush air brushing of alluring after dark sophistication that smokes web like sultry hazes of darkly toned glitch graced dream pop and round it off with a pristine purring production and you have something that tailgates sumptuously into environs currently patrolled by the likes of the Neighbourhood and No Ceremony whilst not forgetting to mention causing swooning fits aplenty for Curve admirers of old who mark my words will not be found wanting.”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/07/preaching-from-the-pews-spc-eco/
23 Deathwaltz
By Esben And The Witch
“The band have matured nicely and it’s a classy yet powerful offering, whilst maintaining the air of gothic mystery from the debut. Rachel Davies’ vocals are better than ever and the album suggests bigger and bolder things await this fine Brighton trio.”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/02/06/track-of-the-day-205-esben-and-the-witch-deathwaltz/
24 On The Air
By Winter Villains
Welsh collective Winter Villains have a deliciously ethereal single ‘The Air’ out on February 4th through Barely Regal Records, it’s lifted from their fine album February which also sees the light of day this month. Prepare to be haunted.
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/25/video-winter-villains-the-air/
25 Lament
By Mount Moriah
Mount Moriah are out of North Carolina, a faraway place that enjoys a ‘fervent’ music scene. Much attention is rightly focused on front woman Heather McEntire, by the looks of it, a hugely compelling performer that we’d just love to see perform live at some point in our lives. The whole band infuse the sound with languid Americana. Comparisons abound, and while I’ll agree that yes, this percussion line might sound like 1973 Neil Young, or that chord sequence can sound like whoever; don’t do that – stop and simply take it on its own merits.
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/30/track-of-the-day-202-mount-moriah/
26 Sing It Out
By Martin Rossiter
It’s eleven years since the last Gene album and I know not what Mr. Rossiter has been doing with himself, but to prove he’s no Reggie Perrin like his great uncle, he’s just released his first solo effort. It’s called ‘The Defenestration Of St. Martin’ and his voice is still like Morrissey’s not surprisingly. The material is far more sombre and detached that Gene and the instrumentation is pretty much all piano (apart from the very last minute, when he finds his guitar).
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2013/01/10/track-of-the-day-188-martin-rossiter-sing-it-loud/
GIITTV Monthly Mixtape – January by Godisinthepod on Mixcloud
