Brighton's black fairy tale post-rock troubadors Esben & The Witch release their debut record Violet Cries at the end of this month through Matador, and they have made it available for streaming in it's entirety, and allowed everyone to host it on their sites. So nice! (They are, all indeed, very nice people as this will attest). They are also incredibly talented and have produced a record so tangibly otherworldly, mediaeval and ornate that it seems as if it has been crafted in some darkly romantic tryst between the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christen Andersen. Not easily ascribable to any one genre the songs flit through ideas like shadows through forests, castign shapes upon the bark and your wide eyes, leaving lasting impressions upon the mind with space for you to fill in some interpretations of your own.
There are also two remixes available to download - those shadows having been interpreted thusly by two excellent revisionaries - the worriedaboutsatan one will be on repeat for me for a while, I can feel it:
And yet on they still come, with offerings for your senses: they have served you up this video to Warpath, in anticipation of the physical release,which you can feast your ears and eyes on here:
They're playing the Pavillion Theatre, Brighton on 1st February, with plenty other dates around the UK and Europe - see HERE for details.
Not content with releasing my 12th top album of 2009 and resting on that accolade for too many moons Leeds duo worriedaboutsatan have been pretty busy recently, so here's a bit of a round up of what they've been up to of late.
Earlier this week they put out a beautiful, elegantly haunted reshaping of White Hinterland's Icarus, backing Casey Dienel's disturbingly ephemeral imagery of knives through water with their cosmic minimalism, a shimmering liquid tapestry threaded with glitched beats and wordless vocalisations. Listen to it here:
They also posted three rough/demo/experiment tracks on their Soundcloud a month or so ago, one of which is this astonishing remix of Blackstreet's No Diggety. Yes, astonishing, because in reducing the original to it's intro shuffle and a few minimal vocals they've kept the edginess and tension and ratcheted it up further with their own creeped out drone and shadow boxed beat. Check this and be wowed:
GoldFlakePaint blog posted an entertaining, informative and illuminating video of teamsatan's guide to making Heart Monitor yesterday, but you can also watch it here:
Heart Monitor single:
I missed out on posting about Heart Monitor when they released it back in March, so here's the full Heart Monitor track from a you tube vid thing for you. The addition of vocals is a major addition to their sound, and like the vocals of Eluvium's Similies album earlier this year, really add a subtle embellishment which contrast with the previous instrumental only aesthetic whilst enhancing the human feel of the music.
The bands live show listings are as sparse as their music, with only a couple lined up for the rest of the year so far (although they did just support Pantha Du Prince which must have been a pretty awesome night). They play London with our Brighton's inspirational post-rock experimentalists Esben & The Witch and Wrexham's Gallops who sound like a clubbed up glitter-wave rescrub of Foals- that's pretty good thing. Gig's at Elektrowerkz on November 10th. Londoners, be there.
AND FINALLY! whew - Their Twitter is worth a follow too - www.twitter.com/teamsatan. They also devote far more time than is probably healthy to their other less serious hipster-baiting side project, but I'll leave you to find out what that is for yourselves.....
Brighton's most elegant post-rock/avant-pop band released this super limited 7" which sold out instantly, leavign us with only this video floating in the ephemera. I say 'only' - there is nothing slight about the majesty of this track.
