The Always Unprofessional

Soundcloud is a place where many fascinating and creative minds gather momentum to create what they want, when they want, how ever they want, for whatever reason they want, in their own subjective way. It’s a creatively chaotic and spontaneous exhibition, where anything can happen any time day or night!

The Always Unprofessional aka Jof Walters is creatively spontaneous guided by his own internal world. This guy’s music is without doubt melancholic, but it has a tiny ‘flicker’ to reassure the listener that the candle of hope always shines a light during moments of darkness. Here he sings beautifully ‘Everyone’s Floating In Space’ featuring the wonderful vocal of Cyra Morgan.  His reply to my comment on the track describes Cyra as the Queen of Soundcloud, while he is the tramp at the castle gates!

Everyones Floating In Space - Additional Vocal by Cyra Morgan by The Always Unprofessional

His track ‘Safe From Harm‘ is a very special ballad and a story that reminds us that love is all around, especially at Christmas. It gave me goosebumps when I heard it.

‘Safe From Harm‘ has also been entered into MTV’s Brand New For 2012 competition.

Safe From Harm by The Always Unprofessional

I requested a brief bio from Jof Walters after a listen to his tracks this morning as I was intrigued to discover more about him. Here is his bio untouched by my fair hand…The Always Unprofessional is definitely a tell it like it is kinda guy!

I say I’m not a ‘proper musician’ because I’m not really. I’m one of the millions of people who make music at home on a laptop after the kids have gone to bed (and I have three kids so that’s quite late at night).

I started out back in the 90’s playing local gigs, but then I grew up and got a job. Quite a good job. I’ve built banks and I now own a large investment business that helps everyone from Wealthy Individuals to governments buy businesses. That keeps me a little bit busy. So music is a hobby.

I’ve tried to keep things simple. I have a Soundcloud account that hosts my music and I record on an old macbook with Garageband and a vintage Strat. That’s why I call my music ‘Lo-Fi’. Most songs take about two hours to conceive and record and I write about 3 a week. That means that at least a few are worth listening too, its just statistically likely that once in a while I’ll write something ok!

Lyrically and stylistically I’m a drunken, lovelorn tramp. That’s not far from the truth really. I have two personalities. In the day I have to be ‘on’, I have to be driven and I have to inspire the team around me. That means at night I’m usually ‘off’ – I am a high functioning depressive. Therefore music is a sort of therapy. It allows me to get rid of all the negativity through creativity.

Incidentally I’m 35, male and live in a little town called Lichfield, which has been my home for most of my life. I have always had a community of wonderful musicians around me which allows me to get on stage and pretty much play with a band instantly. Which is nice.

I have no real drive to go beyond what I do currently, but its always nice when people say nice things about my songs!

Buzzin Media wishes The Always Unprofessional much luck for his MTV Brand New 2012 entry.

The Always Unprofessional on Soundcloud

Buzzin Media on Soundcloud

Sigmund Frued - Rock & Shock

Speech Fewapy Records has announced a series of free download releases from new signing Sigmund Frued entitled ‘The Uncanny Beats’.

Starting this month on 28th March with ‘Rock & Shock’ and for the next six months there will be a free monthly download made available through the Speech Fewapy website where people have to unlock the releases by sharing through Facebook and Twitter.

Sigmund Frued still at the age of only 16 has already been cooking up beat laiden floor fillers that have included samples from the likes of Coltrane, Grant Green and even Radiohead drawing influence from artists such as Madlib, J Dilla and MF Doom. He also hosts his own youtube webisodes from the lab of Sigmund Frued.

As ever with Speech Fewapy Records releases, keep an eye out for the accompanying viral marketing campaign designed to lead you to more interesting Sigmund Freud related news. There is also an all new Fuk Yeh Freud Tumblr blog to support the campaign with animated gifs based on famous quotes by the genius Sigmund Freud himself.

Sigmund Frued will be DJing on April 1st at the Island Bar – Tiki Lounge in Birmingham. Also at his own club night ‘Fantastic Damage‘ launching May 12th at Bulls Head, Birmingham (every 2nd Thursday of the month).

International Peoples Gang - Up

Not what you might call prolific, this is the third album from The International Peoples Gang since 1995’s debut 3395, their second Action Painting was released in 2006.

Up is the first IPG album to be released through Amsterdam’s Hi-Phi Music and it finds the gang expanding their hybrid sound even further than before, creating a sumptuous mix of kaleidoscopic house, funk, folk, down-tempo and pop music.

Inspired by a lyric from David Bowie’s Panic In Detroit, The International Peoples Gang was formed by Nottingham (UK) residents Martyn Watson and Ric Peet who have since created their own sublime sound through their IPG albums and masses of production work and remixes.

Martyn and Ric use concepts of sound as their material, throwing them at blank spaces and watching abstract images and audio-visual beauty take shape. The result combines warm, organic dub soundscapes with classical stylings, elements of folk with fuzzed guitars, creating a manipulation of language with electronic experimentation.

Up kicks off with the anthemic and uplifting Second (featuring elements of The Who’s “Blue, Red and Grey”) showing off the pair’s impeccable taste for beautiful sound but as the name also suggests, this album was produced by Martyn & Ric with much valued contributions from their gang.

The pair have brought out fantastic vocal performances from Jay Thomas (daughter of house producer Tony Thomas) on Angel Delight and Katty Heath (who has also sung for Mylo, Bent and breakbeat duo Slyde among others) on the tracks Caught Up In Something which features Crazy P producer Jim Baron on Trombone and 271 The Trencherman, with upright bass by Arwel Hughes.

From the shimmering and hypnotic Son of Still to the more upbeat stance of Instant Sideways and Chika Woodward’s spoken word diatribe on the sparsely beautiful Nascent, International Peoples Gang continue their musical ascent with Up.

The sleevenotes give a valuable track by track insight into how the album evolved from none other than the The International Peoples Gang themselves;

Up Sleevenotes:

Junior Cycle
Due to a love affair with the fuzz-tone noise of Johnny Thunders and Mick Jones I’d always fancied a Les Paul Junior and, after treating myself to one as a birthday present, I played it non-stop for about a month…riff, riff, riff and then another riff. Eventually I formulated this pretty little cyclic tune that has alternating bars of 6/4 and 5/4 but; please don’t go scratching that ‘prog’ rash y’all, it grooves.

Second
I’ve always loved the ‘me against the world’ sentiment of Townshend’s lyrics to ‘Blue Red and Grey’ and, with its sonic-palette of ukulele and brass, it’s certainly an odd sounding Who record. The track has been a nagging inspiration since autumn ’75 and Ric and I were so made up when Pete let us use it.

Caught Up In Something
Featuring an ace vocal interlude from Katty Heath, a woozy, boozy coda courtesy of Jim Baron’s trombone (Fa fa faah…), an experiment with mutating room-ambience and a lawn-mower solo; this is the latest in a long line of IPG ‘musique-concrete’ melodic creations.

Place des Abbesses
Whilst living in Paris during the late ‘80s I often found myself ‘people watching’ at the Café St Jean and the art-nouveau splendour of Metro Abbesses. This tune, with its reflective clarinet theme, accordion splashes and heat-haze Algerian buzz takes me right back there.

Son of Still
Anyone remember ‘Still’ from em:t 3395? Check it out. I love the way that the nagging sequencer resonates with the naïve, piano part to create a kind of theatrical suspension between aggression and humility. Yin and Yang.

Instant Sideways
This one’s got a disorientating party vibe as it lurches from one idea to another…never quite making its mind up…like most Friday nights. The joyous kids were recorded on a carousel in Paris, the bells are from a June wedding in Derbyshire and the harmony guitars are totally 1973.

Angel Delight
The centrepiece of the record for us. This track has got a spacey, loopy, bluesy quality that Jay Thomas absolutely nails with a totally gorgeous vocal performance. I’d demoed this in falsetto so Jay sings it in an unusual register for her but still reckons that she’s never sounded better. Love on ya baby.

Spacebook
Dave Morton squeezes out a gorgeous violin tone from his electric guitar and sucks the listener into a propulsive electro groove. Ric’s orchestral collage has a disassociative quality and, when I close my eyes, I get a similar vibe to the stylings of ‘Aeroplane’ from our first album. Lush and dreamlike.

Nascent
I woke up from one of those mad semi-lucid dreams with a template for this in my head. I scribbled down as much as I could and stuck it on the studio wall. Ric spent the best part of six months sound-designing and it ended up as a sprawling monster; a soundtrack looking for a narrative. Independently, Japanese artist Chika Woodward had written a poem musing on the Hiroshima bombing from the perspective of a young mother taking her child to school that morning. We put them together and it worked. Just like that. Synergy.

Astronomy
Dedicated to Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

Easy
This was written, late at night, during a snowstorm and is my reflection on a brand-new relationship. If Bowie hadn’t done it first this would be called ‘A New Career In A New Town’. I dig what Ric did with the scratchy, flanging, phasing guitar sounds and the breakdown to silence. “Of course you can…”

271 The Trencherman
This one’s a collision between a desire for love and peace and a more prosaic, gritty realism. Kind of like a Hippy v Punk wars being fought in your mind. The title is the address of a Chelsea restaurant owned by ‘60s hipster Terence Stamp…the building seen being bombed with graffiti in The Stones/Godard film ‘Sympathy for The Devil’. The lyrics are a paean to dream state of pre-Manson California and Arwel Hughes’ upright bass cunningly avoids jazz. Phew.

Up
Ric and I worked hard at establishing a sense of order/disorder by the use of pop-art/action-painting/mixed-media collage techniques. We love shaking things up and there are no rules. We did a lot of field recording (aren’t mobile phones ace?) and cared not one jot if we found ourselves ‘doin’ our thang’ in a ‘studio’ or not. Indeed, Isobel’s front room, post-fracture morphine, Ric’s sunlit yard and serene interludes amidst episodes of mid-tour mayhem all played their part. All in all, ‘Up’ took about 3 years to put together…we’d write and record in chunks and then spend ages reviewing and editing material…attention to detail and all that. We guarantee that this record will reward careful listening. You know us.

ARTIST: INTERNATIONAL PEOPLES GANG
TITLE: UP (LP)
FORMAT: CD / DIGITAL DOWNLOAD
LABEL: HI-PHI MUSIC
CAT NO: HIPHILP1
RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW DIGITAL / CD COMING SOON

Javelin's self-titled EP

Cousins Tom Van Buskirk and George Langford are Javelin. They make their music using numerous samples from barely traceable records, and perform live by transmitting their music to FM, a signal then picked up by various boomboxes at their shows.

Sound like a gimmick? Well it’s not. The home-made approach is like recycling for the music scene, or like those artists that occasionally get bigged up because they make all their sculptures out of rubbish (“What a marvellous idea!”). Javelin’s music is like an oral summary of a section of their record collection.

It’s almost hard to describe Javelin without making them coming across like another band with their own gimmick like a tap dancing rhythm section or 27 members (Tilly and the Wall and The Polyphonic Spree respectively), but this stuff sounds genuine.

For starters, there’s no real singing over it, so you can tell the producers have got lost in the sounds and rhythms they are compiling and splicing with keyboards, drums and whatever other instruments may be lying around.

Secondly the tracks themselves are inventive without being deliberately difficult. The riffs fade in and out, are altered and return; the rhythms make you want to dance; the . The overall sound is like hearing distant party music which you don’t quite recognise.

And it’s good fun. At no point do you think there is a contrived point to be made or a hankering for an NME ‘look how these guys make music!’ exclusive. It’s just two cousins having fun with the music they find.
The opening ‘Lindsay Brohan’ and ‘Soda Popinski’ are, along with ‘TWYCE’, the standout tracks on the self-titled EP. ‘Lindsay Brohan’’s basic keyboards and popping rhythms making it sound like a 90s German kids party tune. ‘Soda Popinski’ is like an symphony for Nintendo sounds, and apparently contains lyrics such as “This is a song for Soda Popinski / My spirit animal would be Klaus Kinski”, making it a relief they are too distorted to hear.

The duo currently live in New York and will soon be playing shows across the US with The XX, The Very Best, Lucky Dragons and Yeasayer. The duo has, in the past played venues as diverse as the children’s branch of the Olneyville Public Library (RI), to the Museum of Modern Art (NY).

Here’s Javelin’s MySpace page.

Boredoms: Super Roots 10 (Thrill Jockey)

Boredoms – Super Roots 10 – EP review

Boredoms, the boundary- breaking, sonic-shifting, head-messing group are releasing the Super Roots 10 EP through Thrill Jockey, only available as a limited double 12” release. Super Roots 10 is produced by EYE, who equally created the artwork accompanying the release.

This new Boredoms EP includes a remix of the Antz 10 track by Lindstom, the critically acclaimed Norwegian dance/house producer who has remixed a whole host of artists, including Franz Ferdinand and LCD Soundsystem. Super Roots 10 also includes a remix from the Japanese artist Altz.

Ant 10 Original is nine minutes of buzzing, tribal, rhythmic intensity, with a small thirty second break in between. The drums are thick and saturate the track, as do the drones. The Mineral Dub Break Remix is almost unrecognisable whilst Linstrom does another full overhaul on his remix, bringing in some crisper beats, subtle 80s synths and keyboards, making the pounding drums part of the background arrangements. His style from his recent collaboration with Prins Thomas is certainly recognisable.

A studio album can be expected in 2010, whilst Boredoms member Yoshimi P-We is to release her new album with OOIOO entitled Armonico Hewa on Thrill Jockey in November.

Track listing for Super Roots 10:

1. ANT 10
2. ANT 10 / ESTEREO 10 (REMIX BY ALTZ)
3. ANT 10 (REMIX BY DJ LINDSTROM)
4. ANT 10 / MINERAL DUB BREAK (REMIX BY ALTZ)

Fuck Buttons New Single: Surf Solar

The Fuck Buttons are back with Surf Solar, the first single off their new highly anticipated album Tarot Sport (ATP Recordings), out October 12th.

The synth- noise duo (Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power) formed  in Bristol in early 2004, after extensive touring developed a large cult following through out the UK, and with the release of their debut album Street Horrrsing, the duo quickly grew to international fame with their own (almost pretty?) take on noise music.

Solar Surf is a powerful but mesmerizing opening track that serves as an excellent teaser to the new album, leaving the listener begging for more. The track demonstrates that the duo are still very much interested in the experimental music making process, letting a pedal loop endlessly and unafraid to let a beat pound on through out the entire track.

However, this said they also bring a number of new elements to the track borrowing from the sound of micro-sample artists such as the Field, relying on a repeating vocal sample, which they then slowly build synthesizer lines around.

With more of a focus on electronic elements in this track, it will be interesting to see if this stylistic decision is something that holds true for the whole album.  When asked about Solar Surf, Hung described the track as “a bridge between ‘Street Horrrsing’ and ‘Tarot Sport’….it has an emotion attached to it that is unique to us: one of anxiety. It’s an urgent track”.

Tarot Sport was recorded at Rotters Golf Club Studio in London with Andrew Weatherall taking care of production and is said to have really pushed the duo to reflect a new-found complexity of sound and a more layered depth to the recording.

As Power says, “I think it sounds a lot thicker than our previous work….our brains kind of went into meltdown”.

Fuck Buttons will be touring through out the UK this September in support of the new record.

SEPTEMBER
17th – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
18th – Sheffield, The Corporation
19th – Oxford, The Cellar
20th – Manchester, Deaf Institute
21st – Nottingham, Bodega
22nd – Birmingham, Hare & Hounds
23rd – Newcastle, The Other Room
24th – Glasgow, Stereo
25th – Lancaster, The Storey
26th – Bristol, Colston Hall (as part of Geoff Barrow’s Invada Invasion event)
27th – Brighton, Audio

OCTOBER
27th – London, Heaven

Necro Deathmort - This Beat is Necro Deathmort

Necro Deathmort release their debut album on Distraction Records on 31st August.

Necro Deathmort is Matthew Rozeik and AJ Cookson and their amusingly titled album This Beat Is Necrotronic is a real cacophony of sounds and genres.  Yes its noisy but there is more to it than that. Multi-layered soundscapes conjour up contemporary visions of 1980s industrial metal bashers Test Department and SPK and the classic DJ Shadow debut album Entroducing, while I can also hear echoes of Krautrock, death metal, drone metal, and the electronica experimentalism of Aphex Twin.

Necro Deathmort create a twenty-first century mushroom-chewing trip for the offspring of Hawkwind and Gong fans, erring more towards synthetic noise and metallic chaos rather than freeform love and jazz.

From the album intro white noise and funky drone beat of Woburn Place Corner it is clear this isn’t going to be a commercial trip.  This assault spills over to Splith (Spill Your Filth) but the third track, Hurt Me I’m Bored,  drops the onslaught and offers a calm, gentle moment in which to gather your senses.   This track is closer to prog rock and krautrock than the opening gust of noise.  Hurt Me I’m Bored builds slowly with drone metal distorted guitars; and as the drums rise, at one point I thought the whole thing was going to switch to a speed metal onslaught of Napalm Death proportions. But in true prog rock tradition the epic sound continues to build for a full six minutes without going anyway.

I like the way tracks merge into each other giving the album a concept that becomes one long trip rather than individual tracks that can be plucked from the album and heard in the same sense as a single iTunes downloadable song.  Albums should sometimes be heard as albums, not a collection of tracks that can be randomly chosen to play in any order.

The album includes some great titles too. How can you not want to hear tracks like Origami Werewolf and I Fought The Law But The Law Won (Because Fighting Is Against The Law)?

Necro Deathmort’s This Beat is Necrotronic is a wonderful album.  But not to be played on Sunday mornings or at house-warming parties thrown to impress your new neighbours.  This music is as hard as nails and as deep as it is loud.

Listen to and buy This Beat is Necrotronic direct from Distraction Records.

Alaska In Winter: Holiday

After teaming up with Zach Condon of Beirut, Heather Trost of A Hawk And A Hacksaw and other friends, art student Brandon Bethancourt spent some time recording his debut album Dance Party In The Balkans in an idolated cabin on the south coast of Alaska.

His follow-up album Holiday, though, recorded under the same name of Alaska In Winter was recorded after Bethancourt gave up his job and moved to Berlin, about whose influence Bethancourt says:

“Berlin’s electronic music definitely played a big part with this record, as well as the fact that I didn’t have any access to instruments while I was living there so my music turned out very Berlinesque – very electronic… The all night dance marathons have been big inspirations.”

Alaska In Winter’s other influences come from years of growing up in the American South West as well as an Arabian influence from Bethancourt’s parents. Mixing this with the kind of Balkan influenced music that Condon’s Beirut is famous for (Condon appears on ‘Close Your Eyes’)and then filtering it all through the vibrant electronic scene of Berlin may not be something that sounds normal or even remotely appealing, but on Holiday, it is clear that Bethancourt has immersed himself fully in, and entirely fallen for the electronic scene, for it sounds so natural that it is hard to question.

Holiday’s opener ‘We Are Blind And Riding The Merry-Go-Round’ is a perfect example of the clash of genres on the album. Opening with a Balkan ukulele, it transforms into a slow, brooding and understated piece of electronic, Bethancourt’s vocals filtered though a vocal machine to obscure their clarity.

And understated is perhaps the best word to describe the Alaska In Winter project. Whilst these are synthy, techno-inspired tunes, the vocals remain melancholy and hidden between dampened 80s dance keyboards and muffled bass drums. ‘Speed Boat To Heaven’ pulses along discreetly, with Bethancourt’s vocals subtly affecting, whilst ‘Highlander Pt. 1’ is a duet with Kyra LaMariana whose vocals heart-achingly cut through the buzz of synths and drums.

The trilogy of songsentitled ‘Streetgang’ are ominously slow, before they speed off into a sliding, frantic keyboard riff. ‘Horsey Horse Pt.2’ ends Holiday on a high, the beats stronger than before and the sound more uplifting.

Perhaps the clash of German electronic music and these more melancholy sounds is what makes Alaska In Winter so fascinating. The hybrid of ecstatic nights and peaceful reflection makes for a wonderful representation of an inner voice trying to be heard through the buzz of a new, exciting and foreign city.

For your next break why not enjoy a skiing holiday?

Max Tundra 2009 UK Tour & New Single

Max Tundra releases a new download single, Which Song, which is taken from his recently released third studio album, Parallax Error Beheads You on 2nd February 2009.

Which Song will be released amidst a string of UK dates, which, having recently supported Hot Chip on an extensive UK tour, sees Max play the following shows:

JANUARY 2009
28th Cardiff Shape Function / Club Ifor Bach (w/ Ben Butler & Mouse Pad)
29th Bristol The Fleece (with Ben Butler and Mouse Pad)
30th London Cargo (with Pete Um, Ben Butler and Mouse Pad)
31st Brighton Freebutt (with Ben Butler and Mouse Pad)

FEBRUARY 2009
3rd Cambridge Soul Tree (with Ben Butler and Mouse Pad)
5th Leeds Brudenell Social Club (with Ben Butler and Mouse Pad)
6th Manchester Deaf Institute
7th Bracknell South Hill Park

There are more ideas crammed into the 41 minutes of Max Tundra’s third album than most bands manage in their whole careers. Parallax Error Beheads You is a masterpiece of micro-melodies and sound-bytes; a triumph of splicing, dicing and editing. It’s an intricate mosaic of sounds and styles, some of which you might recognise from the last 30 years of pop, rock, prog, disco, funk, techno, rap, metal and soul, but many of which are completely new: either from a startling recombination of existing genres, or from Max inventing an original one himself. The attention to detail, and the sheer speed at which ideas whizz past you in the mix, will leave you stunned.

Mentioning that Which Song sounds like Scritti Politti had they signed to Warp in 1991, Max admits, “I like the Scritti comparisons.” For him, 80s pop isn’t a Guilty Pleasure, it’s an untapped resource.

In between furiously mixing and matching and inventing new futures for pop he’s been supporting himself by doing remixes of other bands, both unofficially (Missy Elliot, The Strokes) and officially (Franz Ferdinand, Futureheads, Pet Shop Boys).

For more information visit www.myspace.com/maxtundra.

Eric Copeland: Alien In A Garbage Dump

Eric Copeland has released the EP Alien In A Garbage Dump on 12” vinyl as a precursor to a full length with his band Black Dice coming in 2009. Alien In A Garbage Dump picks up where his previous album Hermaphrodite left off and consists of seven electronic mixes of fragmented ideas and sounds. The EP teases and criticises the American stimulus machine with a warped sense of humour and a nightmarish perspective.

The music is literally buzzing with skewed sounds jutting in, fragmenting, combining, clashing and disturbingly repeating in a seemingly unending spiral. The songs are overloaded, often with highly polished sounds that in the throng become frayed and distorted. Alien In A Garbage Dump is clearly a comment on the intense overstimulation, desperate delusion, and relentlessness of modern city life.

Every now and then, though, sunshine breaks through on Eric Copeland’s world. The end of the song ‘Alien In A Garbage Dump’ sees a clean 3/4 time melody emerge after the preceding squall before it is brutally cut off only for similar sounds to reappear flattened and hoarse in the next song, the tonally warping ‘Corn On The Cob’.

And the moments of peace and retreat are striking by their rarity and distortion. The possibility of a carnival tune is always present on ‘Osni’, for instance, but it is under the near opaque veil of the production that distances the drums – too far away to properly hear. This is even more the case on ‘Scones and Bull’.

Yet there is hope amid the turmoil; there is a voice that doesn’t need to speak in contrived hip-hop rhymes and a tune that can be heard and recognised by all. This becomes more apparent as Alien In A Garbage Dump progresses, though that melody is at times loud, at others quiet.

Eric Copeland’s fairly short Alien In A Garbage Dump is described well by its title. It takes an alien perspective on a world brimming with garbage. The alien’s response on this album is one of confusion and overstimulation, with a small glimmer of happiness taken from the hectic world.

Listening to Eric Copeland is not always easy, particularly at the outset, but it is always artistically interesting, and worth listening to if only for that.

Eric Copeland releases Alien In A Garbage Dump exclusively on vinyl through Paw Tracks. Visit his MySpace page.