They say:
Approved: Josefin Öhrn And The Liberation
Bass-heavy psychedelic duo Josefin Öhrn And The Liberation are set to return this April with their third album, ‘Sacred Dreams’.
Their first LP since 2016’s ‘Mirage’, ‘Sacred Dreams’ comes after Öhrn and her songwriting partner Fredrik Joelson relocated from Stockholm to London. There they brought in a new line-up of supporting musicians, including The Go! Team’s multi-instrumentalist Angela Won-Yin Mak, Eskimo Chain frontman Patrick Smith and bassist Ben Ellis, who has worked with Iggy Pop and Swervedriver.
The record was produced by Andy Ramsay of Stereolab at his Press Play studios, where he drew out an even more dense, room-filling sound than on the duo’s previous records...
Read the full piece here: CMU
---
They say:
After five tumultuous years, Gum Takes Tooth have delivered one of 2019’s early standouts in the form of new album ‘Arrow’. Patrick Clarke meets the band to talk the realities of musicianship in London, automatic writing and the story behind their stunning third record. All pictures by Eric Oliveira.
Jussi Brightmore, Tom Fug and I were meant to take a walk around North London’s Walthamstow Marshes to discuss the pair’s latest record as Gum Takes Tooth. The marshes are next to the studio where that phenomenal album Arrow was recorded, but also represent a uniquely neutral space that mirrors its themes. It is an album informed by the endlessly mounting pressure of trying to both exist and create art in the capital, by the urge for space amidst the relentless drive of redevelopment, and the uncertain, nomadic lifestyle these issues breed. It’s an album that is breathlessly intense, at times dark and oppressive but at others euphoric despite itself. It is already one of 2019’s very best.
As cold February rain lashes down and spoils our plans, however, we must instead take shelter in The Victoria, a strange but lovely haunt that’s equal parts gay bar and old man pub, with pride flags hanging above the dartboard and pool table. Fug and I arrive first as a barmaid sways merrily around the room collecting glasses, singing along to ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ which plays on the jukebox. Brightmore arrives a few minutes later; his two-year-old daughter took a little longer than usual to get to sleep. The act of trying to raise a young family amidst all this chaos is yet another pressure that makes itself known on Arrow.
Read the full interview here: The Quietus
---
They say:
The fifth album from genre-undermining outfit Teeth of the Sea is the latest in a progression, from the multi-layered kosmic grooves and flourishes of their 2009 debut Orphaned By The Ocean to the techno-influenced Master and the crisp, filmic beats of Highly Deadly Black Tarantula. Wraith takes their soundtrack tendencies to a new place where the synths are even more sonorous, the brass extra melancholy, the beats exceptionally crunchy and the scale epic and wild. Since their last album, the band has slimmed to a trio - Sam Barton, Mike Bourne and Jimmy Martin - but the sound is, if anything, more surprising and more accomplished.
Wraith seems to reflect on cultural turbulence and change, with music that mixes elegy with elements of disaster movie and failed futures. Yet as well as chaos there is reflection, stillness and redemption. Teeth of the Sea are now almost veterans of a UK alternative music scene that, over the last couple of years, has delivered some exceptional responses to increasingly disturbed and disturbing times. Albums such as Gazelle Twin’s Pastoral and Gnod’s Just Say No to the Right Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine have set the standards for engaged music. Teeth of the Sea are far from an overtly political band, but how do you retain a sense of purpose without relating your music to your times...
Read the rest of the review here: The Quietus
---
They say:
When you have before you all the prog of a festival, with these unknown names, these untouchable, these Cornelian choices, you can either listen to everything, make a precise program by anticipating, naive as you are, that you will stick to it. . Once the festoche past, you come across a record, without necessarily making the link right away, to finally realize that you missed a great thing.
This is typically the kind of thing that could happen with Gum Takes Tooth. And yet, listening to new album, we can think that live it must be really something. These two Englishmen create a marasmus sound, in which are telescoping hallucinated drums, synthetic pulsations of another world, sounds from no one knows where but we can cleverly placed here and there for one purpose, to raise the tension, even the adrenaline as Bashung said..
Read the full review here: XSilence
---
They say:
It’s hard to believe that Teeth Of The Sea have been going since 2006 and are therefore no longer quite the Young Turks championed by Terrascope pretty much from the offset, thanks to McMullen’s uncanny knack of spotting a good ‘un before it even turns up on NASA’s radar. Along the way they’ve grown up and we’ve grown old in tandem, our paths occasionally crossing, such as when, fully three years ago, they graced one of our events at The Lexington together with White Hills (yes, THAT poster) while guitarist Jimmy Martin did us the honour of DJ-ing Terrascope’s Flowers Must Die gig a couple of years back.
There again it’s not without mild trepidation that a new release from an old favourite finds its way into the reviews pile. When all’s said and done this is TOTS’ first release since 2015’s crushingly good Highly Deadly Black Tarantula, since when they’ve misplaced a band member (they are now a three-piece of Sam Barton, Mike Bourne and the aforementioned Martin).As hiatus’ go, that’s a pretty lengthy one, besides which, following up…Tarantula was always going to be a tall order. What if, after all the anticipation, this turns out to be a stinker?
‘I’d Rather Jack’, mercifully, is not a re-tread of the Reynolds Girls’ 80s manufactured rage against the pop machine but a high octane electro-metallic big dipper that owes as much to its production values as musicianship...
Read the full review here: Terrascope
---
Gnoomes and Hey Colossus join a stunning bill of bands for Triptych Festival which takes place on 8 June at The Exchange, Stag & Hounds and Elmer Road in Bristol.
Info/tickets here: Triptych
---
They say:
Our first recorded material, I think some of the tracks is from one of our first ever rehearsal under the name Flowers Must Die. This would be in the Summer and Autumn of 2006. Lo-fi Basement Blues with Noiserock weirdness, not essential FMD material to be honest, but I know some people want everything with an artist, and it is interesting to hear a band
Two bonustracks, the first 'Battle' is from a session before being named and with other members. 'Finest' could actually be the live recording from our very first live show as FMD. At a pop-up gallery called Jr´s Finest in Linköping. Curated by Rickard Daun and Lars Hoffsten from FMD who also exhibited some art.
Sleeve is from a 70´s fabric and all CDR is different.
Buy.Listen from here: Flowers Must Die
---
