EP Review - Cats and Cats and Cats - Oh Boy! - This is Fake DIY

Cats and Cats and Cats are as difficult to listen to as their name is to type after having to listen to Ben’s strained vocals yell over what could be quite good guitar chords and melodies...maybe. Whilst the band is undoubtedly innovative, sometimes there is a reason why it hasn’t been done before, or at least it hasn’t reached our ears before. And that is because it doesn’t work.

The three track EP appears too thought out and fundamentally comes down to being around 15 minutes of music which is simply quite hard to listen to. Eve’s vocals are soft and elegant but on ‘A Boy Called Haunts’ and ‘The Boy with The Beak’, the chaos and screaming just doesn’t do her pleasant voice justice.

Like the high frequency noise that only youngsters can hear that is blasted from Co-ops late at night in dodgy UK areas to keep the Vicky Pollards and Kidulthood riffraff from loitering, there may be some element to this EP that only the seemingly young target audience can hear to appreciate. And perhaps it is a sign of my age and a lot of teenagers will love just how ‘niche’ Cats x 3 are but for more mature ears, it just sounds like a bit of a racket. Think Los Campensinos! as a bad Britain’s Got Talent entry.

Album Review - The Brute Chorus - The Brute Chorus (This is Fake DIY)

Welcome to the shambolic, testosterone exuding, over-dramatic world of The Brute Chorus. Like a bull in the china shop, the four-piece come stomping in uninvited but a few minutes in and their presence becomes welcome. Full of so much youthful energy that its almost contagious, this, their debut album, plays and distorts a plethora of musical directions and styles of lo-fi, Indie, Pop and Folk, to name but a few of those recognisable.

Recorded, rather ambitiously for a debut, at The Roundhouse’s FreeDM studios, the album maintains all the best points of a live show, without the annoying attention-grabbing girl standing behind you screaming to hear herself fill the silence, rather than to show support. The atmosphere is catching and leaves the listener wishing they were at the live show and anticipating when they might well be.

Musically, it album smacks of the newest work of The Rumble Strips with all the chaos and shambles kept mildly under raps by the binding strings of retro 60s chords. There are hints of Franz Ferdinand style theatrics and early Matt Pritchard vocals but in a way that seems wholly organic and does not in anyway undermine the far-from-mainstream sounding tracks. Think of it as Pritchard meets Kapranos’ badly behaved younger brother, who, rather than follow in his model brother’s footsteps, has turned to legal highs and Marlborough Lights.

The Brute Chorus show has arrived and be warned, once they barge into your unsuspecting little world, you’ll have trouble getting them to leave.

Album Review - Stricken City - Songs About People I Know

Despite being based in London and having formed in the Midlands, there’s something seemingly quintessentially continental about Stricken City. The misshapen arrangement and disregard for conventional musical structure becomes an insatiable format as standout track “Sometimes I Love You” effortlessly shows a darker side to the four-piece. Accompanied with an accordion, the feeling of lying in the Parisian grass is conjured, with all the painful indifference of a long-suffering tortured heart prevailing in lyrics like /Sometimes I’m dead inside/ Call me a doctor/ Get me out of here quick/.

Juxtaposingly, “Five Metres Apart” is the perfect transition from the lyrical prominence of its predecessor to a quirky upbeat whimsical and toe-tapping gem, as with “PS”, which perfectly functions as a platform to demonstrate the warbling brilliance of lead singer, Rebekah Raa’s almost Bjork-esque vocals.

Yet, the mini-album is not without its flaws. The almost draining nature of final track “Terrible Things” (ironically) finds the pitch of Raa’s vocals grating over melancholy piano notes and the eerie, over-thought capella intro track can be included in these.

What this does do is showcase the diverse capabilities of what is a fairly new band with the perfect balance of innate unconventionality, 80’s overtones and an addictive Indie personality, all seemingly fluently fused into an impressive debut that Stricken City should be proud of.

Interview with Sam Johnston of Flasguns -Noize Makes Enemies

Four boys with an equal adoration for Kurt Cobain and bursting with the-world-doesn’t-understand-me teenage angst come together to form a band. Boys leave school and grow into young men, forcing their lyrics to be all the richer from their experiences of growing up and brother-like mentality. Same old? Perhaps on paper:

“We were childhood friends and the drummer and I played in bands before and then we came together in our last year of school and started making music a bit more seriously and it just went on from there. It’s just the three of us now, seeing as our keyboard player left not long ago, but it’s just sort of some mates making music which is how it came about and it’s just sort of got more serious every month or so since we left school.”

But Flashguns are far from the same old clichéd musical outfit. With their eclectic jangley sound, it is the well-thought, mature lyrics that function as the fraying string, binding the epic chaotic synth guitars in place as its unexpected vastness hits with full force on each and every Flashguns track. Something no doubt largely inspired by the band’s impressive back catalogue of influences;

“All the stuff I used to listen to a lot is still some of my favourite music. Like Deftones and Nirvana stuff, but more recently I got more into bands like Biffy Clyro and The Killers are absolutely one of my favourite bands ever. And then stuff like Moby and Sigur Ros, which is a bit more like more musically advanced. So a big mixture of sounds.”

With such an effortlessly unique and three-dimensional sound, even lead singer, Sam Johnston, struggles to pinpoint its description:

“It’s definitely rock. Like a grungey sort of sound I think. Quite reminiscent of the ‘Never Mind’ album, mixed in with more of a modern synth twinge which, I don’t know, is like a Killers’ sort of vibe. It’s kind of like grungey, epic, sort of soundscapey stuff. It’s cool. A lot of guitars, a lot of chorusy guitars and big vocals. It’s a sort of big imposing sort of thing. It’s hard to explain!”

As Sam stumbles over his words and amidst his neologisms exudes his youthful self-doubt, it is almost hard to believe that he is the same charismatic front man who appears on stage full of such lyrical wisdom and self-assuredness. But his vulnerability is undeniably endearing and reminiscent of the likes of the face-to-face shyness of Flashguns’ touring buddies, Bombay Bicycle Club. Talking to Noize the day of their final gig with the band following a sound check (“But I’m bunking off loading up the van so that’s not too bad”), Sam explains how it all came about:

“We’ve been on the Bombay Bicycle Club tour for about two weeks now and tonight’s the last show. It’s going to be a weird change having the go-back-to-normal life again but we’ve got tonight still which is going to be a wicked show.

We’ve played with them and toured with them a bit before and we’ve known the guys for a while now. We just happen to be on a similar sort of keel if you know what I mean.”

It’s easy to see how the two bands get on so well with the same intoxicating stage present and quiet likeability away from the bright lights. Yet, with the future looking so promising for Flashguns, it would seem that the band are likely to find their time away from the media frenzy less and less common as they plan for their debut album;

“We’ve got an EP out which is called ‘Matching Parts, Similar Hearts’ and that’s got 4 tracks on. I think we’re kind of starting to think more seriously about recording an album but for now the EP is our main thing and where people can get an idea of what we’re about. I think we’ve come a long way with our sounds since then, we’ve done a lot of growing since the release of the EP.”

Since playing Reading in 2008 and with a lot of support from new music connoisseur, Zane Lowe, earlier this year, Flashguns are now starting to see the rewards from all of their hard work pay off. But for the next few months at least, having been bitten hard by the touring buzz, the band’s plans are to stick to the open road:

“I think earlier this year was probably when I would like see the beginning of Flashguns really and it’s kind of like a slow growth kind of thing. We’ve had a lot of support from the BBC which has been amazing and has been a massive help. It’s not been like a massive hype but its been like a flow of growing and it’s been really good.” “I think we’re going to try and book another support tour which would be really cool. Probably the wrong time of the year for it but it would be great to get in another consistent session. We’ve got a lot of writing to do, I think we’re going to be trying to write a whole new bunch of songs. Preparing for recording an album at the end of the year or something, I think that will be the plan. And gigging as much as possible, just playing shows all over the place and just trying to grow the fanbase.”

But for one of Britain’s most exciting and deserving new talents, it would seem developing more fans shouldn’t be too much of a problem as we eagerly await their first major release.