After DJing a good few gigs, Cardiff’s Big Weekend and the ill-fated Buffalo Lounge, USVTHEM move their “noisy and danceable” alternative night to Undertone, Ten Feet Tall, this Friday night. To give you a taste of what to expect, Graf ‘Spillers Records’ Middleton, Adam ‘Hack/flash’ Chard and Jonny ‘Dirty Pop and Twitter’ Bull talk us through their favourite 7″s and albums of the year so far, as well as some ace remixes…
Graf recommends…7″s
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Belong (Fortuna Pop!/Slumberland)
Side one track one and first single this year off of their awesome second album. So what if it’s more polished than their first? With songs and this good and guitars this fuzzy WHO CARES?! Also, any song that kicks in and steps up three times in the first 30 seconds is a winner in my book.
Euros Childs and Norman Blake collaborate to make sweet sweet pop music that sounds exactly like if Gorky’s and Teenage Fanclub ever made a record together. Oh, wait…
The Victorian English Gentleman’s Club – Bag Of Meat (This Is Fake DIY)
Not a single as such, but a free 7″ clear flexi-disc (split with Greek band The Callas) given away with their third album (conveniently also called “Bag Of Meat”). Lurching bass heavy riffs provide the unsettling backing while lines like “sitting on the bus with my meat in my hands” make me very grateful that I live withing walking distance of the city centre!
Grinderman – Palaces Of Montazuma (Mute)
OK, OK, this is a 12″ not a 7″ but it’s so beautiful I feel prepared to cheat myself. Translucent flourescent green vinyl with all kinds of colour splashes strewn throughout it in a blue foil printed sleeve, it’s the most lavish thing I’ve seen in a long time. Oh yeah, by the way, the song’s great too!
The Voluntary Butler Scheme – The Chevreul EP (Split Records)
Four track EP that preceeded Rob Jones’ second album (“The Grandad Galaxy”). Featuring both “To The Height Of A Frisbee” and the computer-game-gone-wrong bleepy fun of “Do The Hand Jive”. Bonus points for keeping his Stourbridge accent which always makes me a little nostalgic and homesick.
Adam recommends…albums
Holy Ghost! – Holy Ghost! (DFA)
I love everything on DFA. Fact. But while some of their releases can be a bit too bleepy / minimal / trippy (delete where appropriate) for some, this is endlessly listenable catchy dance pop with more hooks than a well-prepared fisherman. Think Cut Copy with that signature James Murphy sound. See?
Four Tet – Fabriclive 59 (Fabric)
Ok so not an album per se, but… no, it is, IT IS. Absolutely captivating, this is the best Fabric in ages (since Damian Lazarus’s effort for my money, which kicked off with Four Tet’s Love Cry – coincidence???). Field recordings from the Fabric nightclub give you the feeling of moving from room to room; KH’s 101112, Burial’s massive, bedroom-rumbling Street Halo are highlights.
Mariachi El Bronx – Mariachi El Bronx (II) (Wichita)
Basically, any Bronx release will be in my best-of-year list, whether it’s in their original hardcore guise or their newfound (probably more commercially succesful) crooning mariachi one, purely from the endless goodwill factor from a gig at Bristol’s Thekla where they supported themselves and blew the place apart. Twice. Album opener 48 Roses made my (late, shit) summer.
Samiyam – Sam Baker’s Album (Brainfeeder)
Excellent release on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label (see also: Thundercat, and Martyn, who’s sure to be one of Swn’s highlight’s this year), which I discovered by reading Doug Nicholls’ post on this very blog. Woozy, stoned and wonky, it’s the kind of cat-sampling, vocal-free hip hop I love. There’s no real stand-out single (apart from the aforementioned Kitties; but even that seems about 40 seconds long), more bits and bobs that float by in a big groove haze.
Austra – Feel It Break (Domino)
Easily my most-listened-to album of the year. Dark, gothic, operatic and electronic. And all tunes your mum could hum along to… until she worked out the lyrics, anyway. Single Beat and the Pulse is the big Depeche Mode song Depeche Mode haven’t made in about a million years. A storming performance in Undertone sealed the deal on this one.
Jonny recommends…remixes
Not strictly speaking the best version of 1234 (that’ll be the Sesame Street version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ9WiuJPnNA) but one that shoves the twee, jaunty album version on a flight to whatever island kids go to in the summer these days and is all the better for it.
Hooray For Earth – True Loves (Cereal Spiller remix)
This one is a grower, not a shower. What at first seems like the sort of bleepy noodling Jimmy Tamborello could knock off on his lunch break slowly builds into a stomping bit of, erm, bleepy noodling.
The video by Cyriak is a monument to what one man can do with a computer, some imagination and a gargantuan amount of spare time.
Uffie – A.D.D.S.U.V (Armand Van Helden club remix)
Hey, do you remember Uffie? She was big on Myspace. Do you remember Myspace?
She was a hot French/American rapper back before female rappers existed. She talked about being the best rapper while sounding incredibly bored. ADD SUV teams her with Pharell Williams, the master of rapping like he’s in the middle of filling out a tax return.
Thankfully, Armand Van Helden fixes everything by cutting Uffie and Pharell down to a minimum and sticking them over the top of the sort of thing he used to knock out for fun back in the mid 90s.
Coldplay – Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall (Swedish House Mafia remix)
The original of this song is Coldplay’s career in microcosm. It starts off quite promisingly, like it’s building somewhere interesting, Chris Martin sings a laughably ridiculous lyric (‘I’d rather be a comma than a full stop’) and it all descends into some disappointing U2 style twiddling.
Swedish House Mafia have kept the first bit, ditched the U2 nonsense, kept the stupid lyric and crammed it full of excessive, obvious, button pressing 90s rave that Sash! himself would find a bit tacky. It’s glorious.
New Order – Bizarre Love Triangle (Shep Pettibone remix)
It’s twenty five years old. Everything about it is still completely perfect.
USVTHEM runs 9pm – 2am on Friday 14th October, and costs £3. It will be fun.
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