Post punk

July 12, 2019July 12, 2019

BPREVIEW: GHUM @ The Sunflower Lounge 14.07.19

Words by Ed King / Pics courtesy of Indie Midlands

On Sunday 14^th July, GHUM play at The Sunflower Lounge – with support from Aufbau Principle, P.E.T and Pretty Vile.

Doors open at 7:30pm, with tickets priced at £6 (+bf) – as presented by Indie Midlands. For direct gig info, including venue details and links to online ticket sales, click here.

Out on the road with their new EP, The Coldest Fire, GHUM are stopping off for a Sunday night soirée in Birmingham – playing their second gig in the second city, before up to Manchester and beyond on an eight date UK tour.

Released though the London based Everything Sucks Music on 28^th June – home to Dream Nails, Wolf Girl and Birmingham’s erstwhile Okinawa Picture Show (last seen…?) – The Coldest Fire is a thicker broth than its 2017 predecessor.

Opening with ‘Saturn’, an immediate foundation of frenetic drums and bass (from Vicki Butler and Marina MJ respectively) gives way to Jojo Khor’s piercing guitar lead and Laura Guerrero Lora’s subtle, brooding vocals. Relentless and bold, citing the EP’s title in the second verse, this opening track is a solid introduction to the whole release – which celebrates all the wonderful and dark corners of GHUM’s self-described ‘ghost grunge’.

Produced by Adam Jaffrey, who has worked with acts from Beach Baby to Ekkah to Lucy Rose, the EP’s second half does loosen its grip a bit – with a softer threat to the first two tracks otherwise clear cut knife to the cheek. But don’t be fooled, whilst ‘1000 Men’ and ‘In My Head’ might be a little epinephrine deficient they can still stand up and fight.

Perhaps, however, The Coldest Fire’s brightest moment is in its second track and lead single, ‘Get Up’, with just over four minutes of low menace and rising panic that throw us around the sonic spectrum with frightening control. As a child of the 90’s, who grew up on the foreboding prophecies of early Sup Pop and Swervedriver, this sends me back to the frivolities of my twisted metal youth.

Like an audio ghost train crashing through the walls of a mescaline hall of mirrors; cracking stuff. And God loves a metaphor… at least, that’s what you get in the absence of any Darjeeling railway anecdotes. Out now; enjoy.

‘Get Up’ – GHUM

GHUM play at The Sunflower Lounge on Sunday 14^th July, with support from Aufbau Principle, P.E.T and Pretty Vile – as presented by Indie Midlands. For direct gig info and links to online ticket sales, click here to visit the Facebook event page.

For more on GHUM, visit www.ghum.bandcamp.com

For more Aufbau Principle, visit www.aufbauprinciple.bandcamp.com
For more P.E.T, visit www.facebook.com/petbanduk
For more on Pretty Vile, visit www.soundcloud.com/prettyvile

For more from Indie Midlands, including further event listings and stories from the region’s indie and alternative music scene, visit www.indiemidlands.com

For more on The Sunflower Lounge, including venue details and further event listings, visit www.thesunflowerlounge.com

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NOT NORMAL NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To learn more about the NOT NORMAL NOT OK campaign, click here. To sign up and join the NOT NORMAL NOT OK campaign, click here.

If you have been affected by any of the issues surrounding sexual violence – or if you want to report an act of sexual aggression, abuse or assault – click here for information via the ‘Help & Support’ page on the NOT NORMAL NOT OK website.

June 7, 2019

ALBUM: What Nature Gives… Nature Takes Away – The Membranes 07.06.19

Words by Abi Whistance

It’s 3am. You’re wired as hell, staring at the ceiling so intently that black shapes seem to appear and disappear, moving from one dark corner of the room to another. You’re feeling uneasy and slightly scared, but you’re not quite sure if you’re scared of the silhouettes or scared of yourself for seeing them in the first place.

That, right there, is what The Membranes new album feels like.

What Nature Gives…Nature Takes Away is uncomfortable and foreboding, riddled with the rants and ramblings of an inner-dialogue gone rogue. A collision course of material leaves you bumper car-ing your way through clashes of noise, new wave and the odd spoken word piece, all seemingly coming together in one (hefty) release. This album is a heavyweight; 16 tracks long and at times feeling like a bit sluggish, you really must go in with the knowledge that you’ll be stuck in this gloomy rabbit hole for a long time. And not because it’s a no-good bore, just because it’s weighty on the soul.

Post-punk with an added dramatic flair, The Membranes really have pulled out all the stops to make your skin crawl and body shiver – the addition of both a choir and orchestra feeling far too sinister to be listened to alone. Even for them this is dark; the album name almost as cynical as every song on it, human fallacy ripped to shreds track by track.

For a large chunk of What Nature Gives…Nature Takes Away, The Fall springs to mind. Not necessarily a perfect comparison as such, more the brain frantically searching for something familiar to make itself feel more comfortable. ‘A Murder of Crows’ is far more precise and gritty than the works of Mark Smith. Perhaps because, unlike Smith, they’re not so bugged out on drugs and booze that they can’t conjure up any emotion other than slurry nonchalance.

The album itself doesn’t come with a warning, but I’m going to have to give one. This is NSFW: not suitable for wallowing. Avoid at all costs when you think life can’t get any worse, because The Membranes will remind you that yes, it can. And it’s probably your fault. Get ready to feel like your drowning deep in this record, and equally get ready to feel like you might drown yourself if it gets any murkier.

But if you are, on the off chance, feeling like you want to tip over the edge, then listening to What Nature Gives…Nature Takes Away is probably the best way to do it. Well composed, well written and well executed, The Membranes have created something that only the most addicted to unhappiness can listen to in one go, and the rest of us, feeble-hearted as we are, will keep trying because it’s just that good.

‘A Strange Perfume’ – The Membranes

What Nature Gives… Nature Takes Away by The Membranes is on general release from Friday 7^th June – out via Cherry Red Records. For more on The Membranes, including links to online sales, visit www.themembranes.co.uk

For more on Cherry Red Records, visit www.cherryred.co.uk

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NOT NORMAL NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To learn more about the NOT NORMAL NOT OK campaign, click here. To sign up and join the NOT NORMAL NOT OK campaign, click here.

August 31, 2018

ALBUM: Joy As An Act Of Resistance – IDLES 31.08.18

Words by Emily Doyle / Pic by Lindsay Melbourne

I first encountered IDLES at All Years Leaving 2017. They headlined the Sunday night. I have vivid memories of Table Scrap’s Tim Mobbs, who was photographing the show, scrambling over the makeshift crowd barrier in a bid to save his camera from the chaos that erupted as soon as they began playing. A few songs in and I was hooked. These guys weren’t just some Bristolians with that one song about Mary Berry.

The elegantly titled Joy As An Act Of Resistance is IDL ES’ second full length release, out from 31^st August on Partisan Records. It opens with the imposing ‘Colossus’, a five-and-a-half minute statement of intent to rival Refused’s ‘New Noise’. Sighing guitars underscore Joe Talbot’s drawl. The track reaches a dissonant crescendo, before unleashing a blast of the shout-along agit-punk that IDLES fans have been waiting for.

Joy As An Act Of Resistance flirts with hardcore and post punk in equal measure, but at its core is an album of protest music. Guttural backing vocals are woven throughout – the radio-friendly pro-immigration anthem ‘Danny Nedelko’ has two word chorus that’s made for a 2am Snobs crowd to chant along to. It’s shamelessly catchy. But throughout the record, guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan are there with a double attack of grinding fuzz and shrill stabs to stop the listener getting too comfortable.

It’s Talbot’s lyrics that take centre stage most of the time. Whether it’s personal or political (and more often than not, it’s both) his trademark wit is ever present. Talbot loves to create characters – in the acerbic ‘Never Fight a Man With a Perm’, he describes an unfortunate acquaintance as, “not a man but a gland… one big neck with sausage hands” and a “Topshop tyrant, even your haircut’s violent; you look like you’re from Love Island.” The face of modern masculinity is a fixation for Talbot – in ‘Colossus’ he sings, “I am my father’s son, his shadow weighs a tonne”, while IDLES’ recent single, ‘Samaritans’, dissects the pressures on young men today before dissolving into a chorus of “I kissed a boy and I liked it.”

IDLES rose to prominence singing that, “the best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich”, and their socialist battle cry shows no signs of going quiet – as Talbot articulates in Joy As An Act Of Resistance’s jaunty ‘I’m Scum’, “this snowflake’s an avalanche.”

The record isn’t all angry chanting. IDLES offer up an unhinged rendition of Solomon Burke’s 1961 soul hit ‘Cry To Me’, which nestles strangely comfortably amongst their tales of bravado and Brexit. There’s also space for Talbot to be characteristically raw. IDLES debut album, Brutalism, dealt with the death of his mother. Her portrait featured on the artwork, and a very limited run of the records had her ashes encased in the vinyl itself. On its release, Talbot admitted that, “people are a bit freaked out that this was a person. People are terrified of that physical link with death.” Since Brutalism, Talbot and his partner also lost their daughter, Agatha. In ‘June’, Talbot sings, “a stillborn, still born, I am a father” over a dirge of crackling synths.

Joy As An Act Of Resistance is poised to cement IDLES as one of the UK’s great punk bands. There’s a seventy date world tour on the horizon too, coming to the O2 Institute in Birmingham on 26^th October, and their fanclub on Facebook numbers over seven thousand and counting. Said fanclub call themselves the AF Gang, mostly talking music, mental health, and the poems of Dylan Thomas. IDLES’ influence is spreading, and it can only be a good thing.

‘Samaritans’ – IDLES

IDLES release Joy As An Act Of Resistance on 31^st August, out through Partisan Records. For more on IDLES, including links to online sales, visit www.idlesband.com

IDLES play the O2 Institute in Birmingham on 26^th October. For direct gig information, including venue details and online ticket sales, visit www.academymusicgroup.com/o2institutebirmingham/events/1149321/idles-tickets

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NOT NORMAL – NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To sign up to NOT NORMAL – NOT OK, click here. To know more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK sticker campaign, click here.