Edinburgh-based producer George T announces the release of his latest single, “Love Letter,” which is set to drop on Paradise Palms Records. The track, a beautiful mind buffet of left-field and dubby influences, marching hypnotic lead synth, pads, syncopation, and an enchanting, haunting vocal. “Love Letter” marks a new chapter in George T’s rich and ever blossoming career, showcasing his talent for crafting genre-bending tracks that blur the lines between electronic and experimental music. With its intricate production, mesmerizing melodies, and captivating rhythms, the single transports the listener to a warped pleasure planet. In addition to the original version of the track, George T also offers up a hypnotic dub version “Dub Letter.” Doused in acid and featuring an instrumental-only arrangement that emphasizes the song’s rhythmic and atmospheric qualities.
The single and accompanying dub is releasing digitally with Paradise Palms Records and being distributed globally through EPM on the 14th of July.
Keep your mind open.
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Teddy Thompson has announced his eighth studio album, My Love Of Country, will be released August 18. True to its title, Thompson offers deeply personal and heartfelt readings of ten classic country songs by songwriters like Buck Owens, Hank Cochran, Eddy Arnold, Cindy Walker and even his own father, Richard Thompson. The collection’s first single “A Picture Of Me Without You” (listen/share here), a top ten hit for George Jones in 1972, and its accompanying video (watch/share here), directed by Ethan Covey, is out today
The simplicity and emotional intensity of classic country has been a big part of Thompson’s own sound as an artist, which The New York Times called “beautifully finessed” and NPR hailed as “the musical equivalent of an arrow to the heart.” Back in 2007, he explored his roots with Up Front and Down Low, an album of Nashville golden era favorites. And now he’s picked up the thread again.
“The goal was to do it in the way that country records I love – mostly from the ’60s – were made,” says Thompson. “Everything was mapped out, with charts and string parts in place. The musicians came in, and we cut the songs the way they did back then. We just blazed through them.”
The results are riveting. Thompson’s rich, honeyed voice responds beautifully to “A Picture Of Me Without You,” “Cryin’ Time,” and other songs of poetic despondence, throwing off both sparks and tears without ever seeming showy. You can hear how he’s listened deeply to the genre’s masters, absorbing the finer stylistic points of their influence. But rather than imitate, he does something more nuanced and profound. He makes the material his own, and makes the familiar sound new.
Helping Thompson realize his vision for My Love Of Country was multi-instrumentalist producer David Mansfield, whose resume includes touring with Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, scoring Oscar-nominated films like The Apostle and years of high-profile session work with the likes of Johnny Cash, Lucinda Williams and Dwight Yoakam. Mansfield and Thompson assembled a list of twenty titles, then whittled it down to ten. There are well-known standards, old and new, such as Hank Cochran & Harland Howard’s “I Fall To Pieces” (a signature hit for Patsy Cline in 1961), Randy Travis’s 1989 western swing-flavored chart-topper “Is It Still Over?” and Cindy Walker’s portrait of unrequited love, “You Don’t Know Me” (a hit for both Eddy Arnold and Ray Charles). Adding balance are lesser-known gems such as Dolly Parton’s 1968 album track “Love and Learn,” Don Everly’s “Oh, What A Feeling” and a finely-etched drinking song, “I’ll Regret It All In The Morning,” penned by Thompson’s father Richard Thompson. Recorded at Mansfield’s studio Hobo Sound in Hoboken, NJ, the album balances elegant, wrap-around arrangements with one-take energy. A star-studded group of harmony vocalists, including Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell, Logan Ledger and Aoife O’Donovan, added final touches.
“These are all songs that I’ve known and loved for years. That’s the real key, having them in your body for a long time, decades really. I didn’t really have to think at all about how to sing them. I just honored the originals,” explains Thompson. “In my favorite eras of music, it was all about the song. Most of the classics that I know and love were recorded by dozens and dozens of people. And it was all in the service of the song. I grew up with that being the most important thing. For this record, that was a huge part of it. I just want people to hear these songs.”
Today Glasgow & Berlin-based band Current Affairs have shared another new single from their forthcoming debut album ‘Off the Tongue’, which is set for release on July 14th via Tough Love Records.
Written from within the world of crumbling services, broken bonds and wounded spirits, their debut album ‘Off the Tongue’ rolls off an ecstatic rage, filled with hope for you, them and everyone else.
Following the raw and biting love song, “No Fuss“, and the call to arms against the fragmentation of the left, “Right Time“ today they share third new track entitled “Reactor“.
“We wrote Reactor in that fizzy space of the will-you, won’t-you” explains front-woman Joan Sweeney. “It’s a love song more for the feeling than the person, if you’re really honest.” The track comes accompanied by a karaoke-style visual – online now.
To call Current Affairs a Glasgow band may initially seem misdirection. Though Joan Sweeney (ex-Rose McDowall’s Band, Aggi Doom, The Royal We) is a lifer, Sebastian Ymai (Comidillo Tapes, Pissy, Anxiety)came from Chile via York, recently relocating to Berlin in 2021, and new member Gemma Fleet (The Wharves, Order of the Toad, Dancer) alongside Andrew Milk (Shopping, Pink Pound) were persuaded to leave London for the ‘second city’ after touring through with previous bands. However, Glasgow is the heart and hub of the band’s music, musical life and the place where ‘Off the Tongue’ was solidified and produced.
Current Affairs’ presentline up formed in 2020, but the four have been circling each other for years, touring and playing with their previous bands within the close UK network of DIY music. Stalwarts of their respective scenes they finally began working together through the creation of the Spitehouse collective – a project designed to promote Queer and female-fronted music through events mainly held at Transmission Gallery and Glasgow Autonomous Space, putting on many local and international acts (Sneaks, Sacred Paws, Still House Plants and Comfort amongst others). When an opening for a new bassist arrived, Gemma was the obvious compliment, the slogan of Spitehouse being the language of Current Affairs – “Everyone’s welcome, but don’t get it twisted.”
Following on from 2019’s EP singles collection, ‘Object & Subject’, the wait for their debut full-length may belie the urgency of its sound, but as the album’s lead single emphasises, “it’s the right time!”
‘Off The Tongue’ is ten short, sharp bursts, written in pieces over a long time and distance, but fully formed in the instant of the recording room across just a few days by producer Ross McGowan at Chime Studio. Current Affairs’ song-writing process has always been collaborative. Songs are developed responsively, with each of the band’s members sending/bringing elements or hooks to each other, but practices being the place where the songs flesh out, structure and are fully realised. These new songs feel a little brighter than their previous offerings, yet still hold true to their propulsive and caterwauling sound. Still embryonic in the most exciting way that that can be. Current Affairs’ music straddles new-wave pop and gothic post-punk in the way that you should expect a Glasgow-Berlin band to do so: with grit and panache.
Flowing through the many different layers of relationships, moving from romance to friendship, community and socio-politics before coming back to a personal conversation at the end, Sweeney sees her songwriting on ‘Off the Tongue’ as a way to inhabit the different parts of herself and let them speak with unfettered clarity. “Current Affairs is where I can burn the world down one minute and then push for brighter things the next” she explains. “I wanted to show that there’s a place for all your feelings and personalities and that we should sometimes let the negative thought ring out honestly and then show it a little compassion, give it a purpose. It’s not always bad to rage, cry or be a Pollyanna.”
Current Affairs tour dates: July 20th – Glasgow, Stereo July 21st – Birkenhead, Future Yard July 22nd – Sheffield, Delicious Clam/Clamlines July 23rd – Cardiff, The Moon July 24th – Nottingham, JT Soar July 25th – Bristol, Crofter’s Rights July 26th – London, The Lexington July 27th – Oxford, Divine Schism July 28th – Leeds, Wharf Chambers July 29th – Newcastle, Lubber Fiend July 30th – Edinburgh, The Wee Red Bar
Keep your mind open.
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A master of playful sonic whimsy, electronic pioneer Mort Garson spent a lifetime quietly pushing the boundaries of synthesis. The latest track to his name, “Zoos of The World,” is baroque and unpredictable. Centered on warm keyboard patches that come together to replicate the tonalities of a retro-futuristic orchestra, the springy cut was taken from a 1970 National Geographic special. The track follows “Moon Journey,”the soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. Nearly in tandem with the release date, July 20th will mark Garson’s 99th birthday, and the anniversary of the moon landing. Both taken from the forthcoming archival release Journey to the Moon and Beyond, out July 21 via Sacred Bones.
Journey to the Moon and Beyond advanced listening parties have been announced at the following locations for July 20, 2023:
Amoeba, San Francisco, US
Balades Sonores, Paris, FR
End Of An Ear, Austin, US
Family Store, Brighton, UK
Monorail, Glasgow, UK
Newbury Comics, Boston, US
Rough Trade, New York, US
Seasick Records, Birmingham, US
Stranger Than Paradise, London, UK
It’s hard not to use plant terminology when discussing the long, strange career –and subsequent renaissance– of Mort Garson. Like a seed buried deep and left to germinate for months (or in this instance, decades), his great body of work was scattered in record bins and tape closets and all but forgotten in pop culture. A classically trained musician and electronic researcher with a tireless work ethos that led to nearly over a thousand writing and arranging credits, Mort Garson’s music got buried in the topsoil of time.
When Sacred Bones first began their Mort Garson reissue project in 2019 with a proper reissue of Plantasia, the Garson-naissance began in earnest. Soon after, you could hear Mort Garson and his Moogs bubbling up on TV shows, documentaries, podcasts, hip-hop tracks, or anywhere else, the man a cultural phenomenon once more. (And naturally, just playing the vinyl reissue of Plantasia at home made every single plant in your house thrive.) Like a perennial that returns with each new spring, the Mort Garson archives have brought to bear yet another awe-inspiring bloom. Journey to the Moon and Beyond finds even more new facets to the man’s sound. There’s the soundtrack to the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Eye (starring Fred Williamson), some previously unreleased and newly unearthed music for advertising. Just as regal is “Zoos of the World,” where Garson soundtracks the wild, preening, slumbering animals from a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. The mind reels at just what project would have yielded a scintillating title like “Western Dragon,” but these three selections were found on tapes in the archive with no further information.
The crown jewel of the set is no doubt Garson’s soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Moogkind. But for decades, this audio was presumed lost, the only trace of it appearing to be from an old YouTube clip. Thankfully, diligent audio archivist Andy Zax came across a copy of the master tape while going through the massive Rod McKuen archive. So now we get to hear it in all its glory. Across six minutes, Garson conjures broad fantasias, whirring mooncraft sounds, zero-gravity squelches, and twinkling études. It showcases Mort’s many moods: sweet, exploratory, whimsical, a little bit corny, weaving it all together in a glorious whole.
Maybe at the time it scanned as crass and opportunistic for Garson to apply his keyboards to subjects like astrological signs, the occult, hippiedom, houseplants, or the moon landing. But more than most other electronic music pioneers of his ilk, Garson foresaw the integration of such electronics into our daily lives, how they would allow us to engage with the world –in small daily things, popular trends, and big historical events– with our tweets, posts, reaction videos, and the like. In that way, Garson lived such history and then added his own little spin on things.
L7 have announced two upcoming tours that will include shows in small venues.
Seeing L7 live is always a good choice, and seeing them in a small venue is a no-brainer. If you’re on the other side of the planet, check out this tour in December.
As you can see, the last two shows of that tour in Melbourne, Australia are already sold out. Bricks Are Heavy is a great album, and hearing all of it live would be a blast.
They’ve also announced a new single will be released soon, so keep your ears open for it.
British / North American post-punk outfit Tantrum Zentrum present their new single‘Don’t Be A Fascist‘, which is both well-timed and thematic given the crazy state of affairs in the world at the moment. The most unlikely love story ever – this song is about falling head over heals… with a fascist!
Based in London, Tantrum Zentrum’s members draw from the UK, Canada and the USA, music having brought them together like a magnet while living in London. Inspired by early 70s krautrock and late 70s New York no-wave bands, they deliver sonic dissonance and poppy hooks with great energy and style… imagine Killing Joke on happy pills.
This is the second of three songs recently recorded with renowned producer Steve Evans (Robert Plant, Siousxie Sioux, Goldfrapp). The earlier-released single ‘Der Leiermann’ is performed in German. And while the new single is performed in English, it contains a few Bosnian and corrupted German words for emphasis.
Made up of Vaat Dafuq (vocals, guitar), Sabine de Rousseau (guitar, vocals), Valhalla Schimmer (bass guitar) and Kur Putchnik (drums). Tantrum Zentrum makes hi-energy post punk interlaced with funk, goth and krautrock influences.
“‘Don’t Be A Fascist’ is a wartime love story. Inspired by the 80s Yugoslavian pop hit ‘Fa Fa Fašista’ (performed by Sarajevo’s Plavi Orkestar), the song tells a story as old as time itself: boy meets girl, and they fall in love. Then their country gets occupied by the German forces of the Third Reich, and the girl falls for the tall, handsome enemy soldier in a magnificent uniform. Needless to say, the boy is furious!” says Vaat Dafuq.
“We chose a bombastic title that may resonate with many even now. The release is accompanied by a humorous ‘explainer’-style video that shouldn’t be taken too seriously.”
With analogue synths, distortion and hypnotic drums played with Devo-esque precision, the band’s music shares elements of Krautrock pioneers Neu! and Faust, along with goth and no-wave experimentalists such as Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca and Theoretical Girls.
Tantrum Zentrum creates memorable live performances loaded with good energy, humour, excellent musicianship and in several languages. Always happy to play for their audience, they aim to get people moving, while fostering genuine connections and a sense of community. The band will be playing a number of club shows in the UK in support of this release.
