Music News – Jim's Blog

Jimbo’s News Roundup 8 June 2015

Where the hell have you been…sorry where the hell have we been…as Eddie Murphy said “I have to go deep undercover. I’m undercover deep now. This is deep, but I’m going deeper. I don’t want no more money or nothing but I’m going deep, deep, deep, deep undercover.” – not that makes any sense either…here’s the news…

Here beginneth the news:-

Well former Depforth market traders seems a decent place to start and it is three of these market traders who have decided to set up a band called Men with Ven. Sounds alright so far, well this trio have decided that they should be passing homage to Jason Statham, so they’ve released a song all about Jason Statham called Jason Statham, featuring footage of Jason Statham from his various films. Maybe if you’re a fan of Mr Statham’s movies you might enjoy a look at the video over on Vimeo, the rest of us are crying quietly in a corner….
Love your music with a video that was conceived in the 1980s? Then look no further than London based trio Gospel (if I could work out how to put a diagonal line through the o I would do!). With their latest single Ain’t Gonna Let You In out on the 22nd June 2015, the band currently have the single all tripped out over on YouTube.
We featured The Luke State the other day on the website as a news feature and with their new mini-album The Price of Education out today, you could do worse than track down their precursor of a single Can’t Help Myself. Can’t Help Myself is a cracker of a tune indeed you won’t be able to help yourself with its full of hooks tunes and catchy choruses, it’s a real high point and should be devoured over at YouTube.
I wonder if you can still buy Goblin vacuum cleaners? Not even sure where the name came from, but if it was today then no doubt it would be fronted by John Goblikon, who seems destined to keep the nail clippers out of business by releasing more music on the masses. Now the prospect of a single called We Need a Gimmick sounds less than promising, the video itself follows a less than promising line, but either there’s something in this tea or the video is plastered in subliminal messaging, either way there’s something quite mesmerizing about the performance, so much so that we’re going to end the news with the embedded video for Nekrogoblikon‘s We Need a Gimmick:-

Johnny Cash – American Recordings

Albums 81-86, yeah that difficult 82nd album release! When you’re Johnny Cash, who would have thought that in the twilight of your career that you find critical acclaim again, produced by a legendary rap/metal producer! It happened, it was American Recordings, its due a box set vinyl release, read on for more information.

Excuse the pun, but some might argue that this is a ‘cash in’, but with the current revival of vinyl showing no sign of slowing, the opportunity to purchase 180gm vinyl box-set of all of the American Recordings by Johnny Cash is surely enough of a moment to celebrate. For an artist who was a household name from the success of his solo career, his groundbreaking live albums in Folsom and San Quentin prisons, his own TV show and then being a founding member of the supergroup The Highwaymen, few could imagine the impact of American Recordings. Despite this preceding success by the late 1980s/early 1990s, Cash wasn’t a man who seemed relevant to the time he was in. Dropped by Columbia Records, it was the wild hair and bearded Rick Rubin who re-energised Cash’s career. Somewhat remarkable considering Rubin’s background in rap and metal, but less so when you recognise that Rubin style was one of stripping back the music, something that suited Cash perfectly and resulted in some of the most incredible recordings from the reinvention of Soundgarden’s Rusty Cage to the heartbreaking and epithetic Hurt.

The albums are due out on 11th May 2015, with the quality of these recordings laid out in the press release below:-

American Recordings received a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album of the Year at the 1994 Grammy Awards. In 2003, the album was ranked number 364 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Unchained is the second album in Johnny Cash’s American Recording series and contains songs by Tom Petty (“Southern Accents”), Soundgarden (“Rusty Cage”) and Beck (“Rowboat”). Unchained received a Grammy for Best Country Album and Cash was nominated for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for his version of “Rusty Cage”. American III: Solitary Man was notable for being Cash’s highest charting solo studio LP since his 1976 One Piece at a Time. Between Unchained and Solitary Man, Cash’s health declined due to various ailments, and he was even hospitalised for pneumonia.

American IV: The Man Comes Around is the fourth album in the American series by Johnny Cash and his 87th overall, released in 2002. This is the last album released before his death in 2003. The majority of songs are covers which Cash performs in his own sparse style, with help from producer Rick Rubin. For the song “Personal Jesus”, Rubin asked then-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante to re-work an acoustic version, which featured a simple acoustic riff that stripped down the song to a blues style.

American V: A Hundred Highways is the 93rd overall album and a posthumous title by Johnny Cash released on July 4, 2006. The liner notes of “Unearthed”, a box set composed of outtakes from the first four entries into the series, claim “around 50” songs were recorded during the American V sessions before Cash’s death on September 12, 2003. However, only two albums worth of material were released, including American VI: Ain’t No Grave, which was released in February 2010.

The Luka State

Ah Cheshire, land of cows, cheese and bordering on Wales…also a place where you can fine The Luka State, who we seem to hear a lot about, but never say anything about….until now that is…

Now it isn’t often that we do a feature on a band, but The Luka State seem to be a band who we seem to be hearing about, but haven’t registered on these pages yet and for the life of us we can’t work out why. For the uninitiated reader, The Luka State are a three piece band (four if you throw in the guitarist who supports them in live shows) who hail from Cheshire and to be precise Winsford, one of the County’s many towns founded on the rich underground salt deposits. Now Cheshire was never a county that was renowned for its musical output, beyond Mansun or Gary Barlow, the county is somewhat overshadowed by the brighter near neighbouring lights of Liverpool and Manchester. However, The Luka State are building up a fairly decent following after some strategically placed offerings that whet the whistle.

Currently the band are releasing their single The Believer on 16th March 2015 as part of a planned mini album which should be out later in the year. The Believer is an upbeat, catchy tune with the sort of none demanding lyrical chorus that you won’t be spending too long rote learning over. The idea that The Believer started life a short intro-acoustic track shouldn’t detract too much from its brightness, but watch the video below and make a decision for yourself or buy the single from iTunes:-

However, The Luke State are more than just the new track The Believer, in fact for fans of the TV series Wolf Hall, then you may have already glimpsed the band with actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster featuring in their video for 30 Minute Break. A track that shows a much stronger side to the band, one that had over 750,000 views on YouTube and surely most of it to do with the quality of the music on offer with little hints of the riffs that The Arctic Monkeys so happily launched their career on and of course if you’re not one of the 750,000+ people to have watched the video for 30 Minute Break then we’ve included it below:-

But we don’t stop there and if the above two tracks don’t capture the imagination, then the band have played an absolute blinder and offered up a fresh sounding cover of the classic Beatles‘ track Tomorrow Never Knows. It’s a classic and what you don’t do with a classic is tear up the book, instead The Luka State inject enough energy to offer a suitable tribute, modernisation and ultimately put their own stamp on it. Far be it from this site to excel the virtues of this track, Q Magazine suggested that this was one of their 5 weekly tracks to listen to. With The Luka State having now graced these pages and in some style, to finish this feature wrap your ears around their cracking cover of Tomorrow Never Knows:-

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/194161757″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Jimbo’s Newsround Up 1 December 2014

From glam rock to death metal and jazz, we bring you this week’s eclectic news.

Right loads to get through so no prevaricating with intros that don’t really set the scene, but are a lyrical flow through to the real news which is about to come.

Firstly hats off to Canada, the land of the maple syrup, Mounties and alt-noise rockers Your Favorite Enemies. Now I normally have a problem with bands that are described as alt-, but it seems that Your Favorite Enemies might be the medicine to my affliction; whatever they are brewing in Canada then it is going down particularly well and with their new album Between Illness and Migration out now, you should take a listen to album track Empire of Sorrows currently playing over at Soundcloud.
Glam rock…yes thought that boat had sailed, but it seems not as glam rockers Spiders and Snakes are trying to get you back into the swing of things with their latest album Year of the Snake due out on 9th December. In anticipation of you finding your silver boots the band have released album track Kawasaki City over at YouTube, just don’t expect a glam revival at Musique Review Central.
Now we like videos that are clever and for that we take our hat off to Acollective who have cleverly used a variety of album covers to tell the tale of their third single BreakApart from their album Pangaea, basically imagine the lyrics sung by someone who looks like Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop etc. The downside is that we can’t really get away with the music, it’s all a bit non-descript, but the video is clever and worth checking out over at Youtube.
We began with Canada and as 30% of Canadians cite French as their mother-tongue, it seems a fitting bookend to bring you news of Trepalium . However, this isn’t so much of an end as a peach of a discovery that blends the brutality of death metal with the je ne sais quoi of jazz…yes you heard right death metal and jazz and it’s a revelation. So if you want to wrap your ears around what Trepalium are offering then below we deliver you the video for Moonshine Limbo, which is one track off Trepalium’s latest EP Voodoo Moonshine which is out on February 9th.

Jimbo’s Newsround Up 28 August 2014

From alt-rock disguising itself as post-hardcore and an orchestra who aren’t playing classical music, the news is somewhat of a confused animal this week.

Allez! Allez! More news….

Post-hardcore from Yorkshire you say? Well that’s peaked my interest, so here comes news of Road to Horizon who have an EP called Faultlines out in October and prelude it with the single Sirens, which is available to view on YouTube…although having taken a listen it suspiciously sounds like alt-rock with some growly vocals…interest well and truly peaked and on the decline!!
The rather excellent Manchester Orchestra have a new single due out next month called Girl Harbor and are currently playing it over at Soundcloud and it’s definitely worth the click to hear what exciting a band they are. Plus if that whets your whistle the band are on a UK tour, with tickets available at Ticketmaster.
Moving slightly heavier we bring you news of the quite marvelous Witchingseason, a band who will bring you back in love with powerful guitar riffs, generating enough fuzz to stick a balloon to your car when you’re doing 60mph. Yes it might be all talk, but go over to Soundcloud, listen to single Spiders and come back here and tell me I’m wrong!
Ah the soft spot that is Girl Band, the lovely Dublin lads have released another track in I Love You, which has suspicious nods towards The Fugs, it is another corker of their imitable disinterested fuck-you-punk offerings. Head over to Soundcloud and just take it all in.
To end on a somewhat softer moment, we bring you news of Janet Devlin…yes the same Janet who appeared on the X*cough*Fa*cough*…sorry on the X-F*cough*…alright that show on TV…anyway lets hope that without the TV exposure we might still have found Miss Devlin as she is somewhat of a gem of an artist, those unmistakable quirky vocals and this time Janet is releasing Creatures of the Night co-written with Newton Faulkner. In fact it is such a lovely video that we’ve included it below.