Isn’t it mild out?! Seems very mild out. I think it’s very mild out. Bit rainy. Yeah bit rainy. Yeah. Nevermind, soon be summer. Some humdingers in TOTW this week. Have a walk in the park, kick the leaves, mind the squirrels, monopolise the swings, make a small child cry but make sure you do it listening to these. Enjoy!!
Real Farmer – Consequence
Why we love it: Real Farmer release new single, ‘Consequence’ through Peter Doherty’s Strap Originals label. It’s the third single, along with ‘The Straightest Line’ and ‘Inner City’ to be taken from their debut album, Compare What’s There, which is released 8 March 2024. Real farmer are active members of the vibrant local music scene in Groningen and this comes across in their music. ‘Consequence’ opens with twangy guitars setting the pace. At first the vocal is calm and collected, telling their narrative but then there are bursts of frustration. That guitar hook is ever present and becomes an earworm all on its own. The energy lifts as the track progresses and the vocal becomes more agitated. The accompanying guitar wins the dash to the end of the track – but wait! What is that outro? A typewriter?
Guitarist/vocalist Peter van der Ploeg, bassist/vocalist Marrit Meinema, singer Jeroen Klootsema and drummer Leon Harms create songs full of off-kilter beats embedded in the storytelling of the here and now. The band share the following on the video for the track: “We gave our favourite videographer Héctor Garcia Martin (hache.mov) free rein to interpret and create a videoclip for the song.”
Héctor continues: “The way I treated the video was about not knowing. In the video you never know who the main character is, it could be anyone. Keeping this unknown brings about both feelings of universality, this person could be all of us, as well as of not caring about it at all anymore. It’s a mix of not knowing and not caring. The character itself seems to be wondering around, going through the days, seemingly lost and constantly looking for something.”
Real Farmer have just completed six shows for Independent Venue Week with fellow Dutch upand-comers Personal Trainer (including members of Real Farmer) and The Klittens. In March the band are on the road again supporting Bull in Brighton along with five headline shows in London, Exeter, Oxford, Bristol and Nottingham. (Julia Mason)
VR SEX – Inanimate Love
Why we love it: because this is what love looks and sounds like in a modern climate. Cold, impersonal, inanimate, and, frankly, really quite disturbing.
This is what happens when Andrew Clinco of the Los Angeles’ cyber-synth machine Drab Majesty expands his psychedelic post-punk vehicle VR SEX into a fully collaborative five-piece band and they release a new single, ‘Inanimate Love’, and Danny Perez then hitches a ride with a strangely surreal and downright sleazy animated video.
‘Inanimate Love’ is but one of ten new tracks that will feature on VR Sex’s forthcoming album, Hard Copy, which will be upon us come the 22nd of March via Dais Records. Speaking about the new single VR SEX advise us that it’s “a short-form, contemporary documentary about humans who are in love with things that have not yet (by definition) achieved ‘sentience’.” One day soon all music will be like this. (Simon Godley)
Some Remain – Dead Sound
Why we love it: Irish 4-piece Some Remain have released new single ‘Dead Sound’, their fifth to date. It’s the latest of 3 singles to be recorded with Felipé Loughran-Ponce in Fused Ion Studios, Galway, moving away from their self-recorded early singles. ‘Dead Sound’ captures wild abandon, rough and raucous yet somehow tight. ‘Dead Sound’ canters along at pace, all punky vibes and static fuelled guitars. This is a track that makes you feel the band is having the time of their lives. Some Remain are building a reputation based on the high energy of their live shows. Lyrically ‘Dead Sound’ follows the antics of a dead sound lad on a night out. The garage-punk energy here is totally infectious. There is also a tongue in cheek humour here. I couldn’t help grinning every time I listened. Mid-track the whole sound gets completely out of control until the electric riffs of the guitar eventually everything back on track. The beat and pace is manic to the very end – and that final note! Just class timing. (Julia Mason)
Caleb Landry Jones – Corn Mine
Why we love it: because not only is Caleb Landry Jones a mighty fine actor – you may well have seen him in Breaking Bad, Twin Peaks, Three Billboards Outside Hibbing, Missouri, and Dogman – he is also a mighty fine musician too. Just one listen to ‘Corn Mine’ will tell you as much. It’s the brand new single from his fourth album, Hey Gary, Hey Dawn which will be out on April 5th via Sacred Bones.
With its lush orchestral sweep and strange harmonic dissonance, ‘Corn Mine’ evokes a strangely surreal sensation in the listener that slowly evolves into a lovely reflective calm. God, don’t you just hate folks that are this talented? (Simon Godley)
Franklin – Bebby
Why we love it: Franklin have released their debut single ‘Bebby’. The Belfast 5-piece have been making music for the last 18 months or so and ‘Bebby’ is the first piece of music they played together during the singers’ audition for the band. Kevin immediately got the gig as soon as they heard him – and it’s easy to see why. This is a track full of power with glorious guitar riffs that soar especially mid-track. The vocal is full of emotion with a passionate delivery, perfect for this track.
Lead singer Kevin shares the following on ‘Bebby’: “I always played in Pop Punk and Emo bands and so never really had the chance to write an actual love song and because I’d never been given a chance to express myself like that. When I’d heard the instrumental, the inspiration for it to be a love song hit me in the face like Cupid’s arrow. It’s a weird one because when I wrote the song nearly 2 years I was in a very different point in life, but now the girl I wrote the song about is my fiancé and we’ve just had our first child. So I guess it really is impossible to leave when you’ve found the one.” (Julia Mason)
CRINC – Crachach
Why we love it? Anger, rage and anarchy, the meeting point of early Jesus and Mary Chain and the Manic Street Preachers? CRINC‘s awesome single ‘Crachach’ is shot with a cyclical exocet of guitars, frenetic bass lines and sneering vocals of Llŷr Alun colliding with samples taken from a vitriolic speech from Aneurin Bevan, mixed by Daf Ieuan SFA, mixed by Kris Jenkins. Writhing with a rage from the margins taking all the frustration at the Westminster government and channelling it into a fearsome noise pop single. It’s incendiary and absolutely vital.
Hailing from Bangor, North Wales, the track appears on CRINC’s Cig Cymreig album that came out in September 2023, will be released as a single this Friday 26th January.
Llŷr Alun from the band explains: “I wrote the song in Bangor during lockdown and recorded the demo for the ‘Cofi-19’ album. I didn’t like the final product with the electric drum kit from GarageBand so we recorded it again at the Buarth, live with Dafydd Ieuan and Kris Jenkins, after I moved to Cardiff.”
The single is being released in response to the Gaza crisis at the moment and any income generated from the track will be donated to UNICEF.
Donate to UNICEF Here: https://orcd.co/crachach (Bill Cummings)
Sunna Margrét – Come With Me
Why we love it: Icelandic left-field artist Sunna Margrét has shared the beguiling ‘Come With Me’ a minimal pulsing synth pop track that eschews elements of post punk and experimentalism. with a pungent click track scattered across the track, decorated in glistening keyboard lines, like clarion calls, nagging bass and unique vocal dexterity comparable with Bjork, Grace Jones or Jenny Hval, it meditates on female pleasure, inspired by women speaking out about their experiences of oppressive relationships and unmet needs in relationships “Mainly because in our culture men tend to ‘come first’ in every meaning of the word” she explains. The push and pull at once alluring, foreboding and intoxicating.
Sunna used to be in the widely celebrated Icelandic electro-pop ensemble Bloodgroup. It was actually Ólafur Arnalds that introduced her to the band after they worked together on a movie score, Arnalds often wrote string arrangements for them.
Her debut Finger On Tongue cites influences from krautrock legends CAN and Neu!, outsider synth pop artist The Space Lady and electronic music pioneers Suzanne Ciani and Eliane Radigue. (Bill Cummings)
