Maldito - Live from Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal 2025

 Maldito - Live from Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal 2025 - Part 1

 

 Maldito - Live from Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal 2025 - Part 2

 

It's hard to believe, but the Norwegian band Maldito is a hitherto largely undiscovered jewel in the current musical landscape of loud and heavy sounds. Maldito formed in Liverpool in 2015 while the band members studied at the renowned Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. Inspired by rock and prog of the 70s, combined with a touch of 90s pop rock, the band has developed their own unique style of music. The band made their breakthrough in the blues and rock scene in 2019, after the release of their first album and their tours through Norway, Germany, England and the USA.The band's live performance, bursting with power, will be remembered by everyone who has seen it. Their rousing energy, the memorable guitar riffs and their songs inspire both the older and the younger generation. "Four guys who make the place shake, but at the same time are exceptionally tight in their blues-based rock format. With the energy of Jack White (White Stripes) and the drive of the Rival Sons, this is undoubtedly a band to look out for in the future." (Blues News) We experience geniuses who develop from blues to rock to metal – and yet there are still these typical, floating pop melody moments. A mixture that is as exciting as it is intelligent, and this music does not have to shy away from any international and historical comparisons with, for example, Blue Oyster Cult, The Beatles or Yes.  From: https://nica-jazzclub.de/en/events/maldito-335 

 

 

 

The Wailin’ Jennys - One Voice - Live on eTown

Right after a band’s name, how a group comes together and not only grows, but sustains—and in the case of folk trio The Wailin’ Jennys, sustains for nearly 20 years— is the next most notable aspect of a band’s story. Though what might surprise some, is the fact that there was never a grand plan or slowly developed strategy for the Manitoba, Winnipeg trio to become an ongoing endeavor back in 2002. To that end, it feels fitting that the first track on The Wailin’ Jennys debut album 40 Days—a song titled “One Voice,” written by founding “Jennys” member and vocalist Ruth Moody—would also go on to become bigger than the sum of its musical origins. 
A three-part, vocally cumulative, acoustic song that builds on a partially repeated lyrical premise of this is the sound of one voice… voices two… voices three… all of us, the hymn-like piece seems not to leave much mystery within itself. However, its simplicity bears more surprises than its surface character gives away.
“You know, sometimes songwriters describe that experience of almost like, receiving a song. And ‘One Voice’ is maybe as close as I’ve ever come to that experience where it just sort of starts, it just kind of arrives, and you just are lucky enough to be there with a pencil and you write it down,” Moody says. “Conversely, I think the seriousness of the song maybe comes from the fact that it was my way of processing, a very, very serious and emotional moment.”
Indeed, Moody was quite fortunate to have pencil and paper within easy reach, as the fated stage for igniting the idea behind “One Voice” was none other than a room full of emotive musicians, all running on the perpetual energy of an open jam session.
“The music and lyrics came very easily and spontaneously,” she explains. “The Wailin’ Jennys toured folk festivals across the country and we were at this one camping festival. There was one night where all the musicians were gathered backstage, around the kitchen, and the jamming went late.
“People just kept starting songs, everyone would join in,” she continues. “It went from sort of rowdy jams, to really moving, intimate, sharing from individuals. I don’t know that I thought about it consciously in this way but, I think the thought just really hit me: If only the world could be more like this—that just the power of music could bring people together. And so, I was so moved by this at around two in the morning, I went up to my tent with my flashlight and just wrote down the words to the song.”
This duality of internal and external experience isn’t the only interesting set of opposites sewn into the song’s foundation. Given “One Voice” became rather iconic for not just Moody, but The Wailin’ Jennys as a whole, it’s interesting to note how despite being one of the earliest projects the band undertook after coming together, “One Voice’s” solitary compositional approach ended up enduring as the primary songwriting method for the band. 
“The band has sort of talked about maybe sharing some ideas but it’s just worked really well for us to stick to that formula of writing our own songs, and we arrange them together,” Moody explains. “I think, the fact that we’ve been in a band for 19 years now—let’s put it this way: It hasn’t hurt us to to always respect the fact that that we’re all solo artists as well because I think that balance is important.”
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of “One Voice’s” finished iteration, comes from how others’ feelings of resonance have manifested through so many altered arrangements of countless cover performances. The sheer creativity and degree of deviation from the piece’s original three part, acoustic folk structure that The Wailin’ Jennys ended up embracing, speaks to the song’s fundamental flexibility. “I think by nature “One Voice” is a folk song but I’ve heard some arrangements that definitely sort of went in different directions from the Wailin’ Jennys and they have also been emotionally effective.” says Moody.  From: https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-song-uniting-behind-the-meaning-of-the-wailin-jennys-one-voice/

 

Timechild - Son And Daughter (Queen cover)

At the end of 2021, the Danish heavy rock band Timechild released their debut album “And Yet It Moves”, and received top reviews and big praise from all over the world. Now the band is back with their new single and video “Son & Daughter”, where they have dug deep into their inspirations of the past and have reinterpreted this underrated and slightly atypical treasure from Queen’s first album from 1973.  It is a song that fits perfectly with Timechild’s sound universe with a powerful and soaring lead vocal and characteristic twin guitars and vocal harmonies.  From: https://mhf-mag.com/timechild-cover-queens-son-and-daughter-in-new-video-and-single/

As much as I enjoy having a feeling with my favorite moody sludge, or letting out that single, definitely masculine tear down my cheek with a beautiful progressive concept album, an urge persists for the thrill of the arena-sized riff and rattle of proper heavy metal. You know, the kind of stuff that makes you feel like you’re a pitch down when you’ve only had a pint, or allows you to imagine your engine revving with the force of at least twice its listed cylinder count.1 Timechild knows this feeling, and with their 2021 debut And Yet It Moves, they presented a solid, proto-metal-inspired outing—your Deep Purple, Rainbow, UFO, and related acts—with focused musicianship and a voice that knows how to soar.
Continuing down their chosen path, Timechild takes the feel-good sounds of hard rock past and fuses a modern-looking, 00’s radio melancholy to form their own brooding yet bolstered identity. Cuts from Blossom & Plague don’t feel far away from the T-injected dad jams of a band like Tremonti or the soulful and virtuosic AOR thump of Winery Dogs, but this unheralded Danish act plays without a notion that bands like that even exist. Hungry and targeted, Timechild instead comes off holding homage as a tool in the kit, reminiscent of fellow Scandinavian throwback act Audrey Horne. And similar to that act, one founding member, Martin Haumann, has spent much of his career far outside the trad circuit, helming the kit for the techy, thrashing Mother of All and the folky, atmospheric calls of Afsky and Myrkyr. Unfitting pedigree—and the unlisted talents of his bandmates—aside, Timechild supplies a bluesy swing and rumble (“Call of the Petrichor,” “Buried in Autumn”) that matches a band that sounds as if they’d been playing for far longer than three years.
Lead vocalist Anders Folden Brink immediately glues the experience together with his warm, gritty baritone croon. Truth is, though he’s uncredited in the metal world, Brink spent some years prior to Timechild with SEA, who boasted a less propulsive but equally rock attitude as this entity. No surprise, he shines there too, but Timechild has allowed him to lay pipe across sneaky, cutting riffs in a junkyard metal fashion (“The Dying Tide II,” “Hands of Time”)—feel good tunes held out with calloused hands. With the spectacle and machismo of peak Coverdale-Whitesnake, and backed by the kind of dark vocal layering pioneered by Alice in Chains, album highlights “Call of the Petrichor” and “Only Our Shadows Remain” see Brink both calling wildly for a stadium-sized crowd to holler yet towering above them at his most dramatic moments.  From: https://www.angrymetalguy.com/timechild-blossom-plague-review/  

 

Uxu Kalhus - Extravagante

“Radical folk,” “subversive folk,” or “chameleonic sounds” are expressions that Uxu Kalhus, whose name is a kind of phonetic transcription of Os Chocalhos (The Cowbells), rightly uses to define themselves. And rightly so, because, starting from melodies, forms, and lyrics of the Portuguese dance tradition, such as the malhão, viras, corridinhos, mazurkas, and chotiças, their sound is imbued with the tribal force of Afro-Brazilian rhythms, the urban communication philosophy of hip-hop and raggamuffin', and the sensual cadence of Caribbean music with touches of jazz and ska, in a fascinating musical melting pot that continues to surprise with every shifting moment. Didgeridoo sounds and powerful electric guitar riffs combine with bouzoukis, percussion, flutes... Eclecticism, versatility, passion, energy, and a unique originality. An exhilarating musical offering that they have already taken to countless stages and which is captured in two memorable albums: A revolta dos badalos (The Revolt of the Clappers) and Transumâncias groove, in addition to their live DVD celebrating 10 years of Folk in Portuguese, released at the end of 2010.  Translated from: https://cantarranacorps.blogspot.com/2011/06/uxu-kalhus.html

 

Pateka - Night Stairs

Experimental rock quartet Pateka released their self-titled debut album, Pateka. A nine-track, 34-minute EP that blends jazz, psychedelia, and experimental neo-soul–Pateka's let loose on their first full-length effort with a blend of synthesizers, samples, wonky grooves, and uncontrollable time signatures.
Made up of longtime collaborators—Elihu Knowles on vocals and keys, Dylan Ransley on guitar, Quinn Girard on bass, Ryan Higley on drums, and Hayden Dekker on saxophone, flute, and synths—Pateka is a group of old friends who understand each other’s quirks and eccentricities, coming together to create something both weird and special.
Equal parts Discipline-era King Crimson, sparkling 1980s jazz-fusion, and mid-2000s math rock with a smattering of smooth blue-eyed soul, Pateka is a genuinely lush soundscape, revised over months by the band and stuffed full of snippets of recorded dialogue–most notably, a cry of “I’m not going to space, that shit’s too far!”- warm friendship and musical wit.
According to vocalist Elihu Knowles, one particular track, “Teni,” was inspired by their time working together at a Burmese restaurant. “The song plays with the duality of the fast-paced jazz we’d play in the dining room when it was super busy, juxtaposed with whatever was on the radio in the kitchen. Walking between those two zones on a busy day always feels super disorienting, and we wanted to write something that captured that. Most of the dialogue is real stuff we heard from coworkers and customers.”
“Teni” starts up like a whirlwind, almost sinister with its arrival. It then builds, messy layers of dialogue, the ringing of a bell in the background, slow bass, wailing saxophone, and an almost maddening rhythm that refuses to stay consistent.
This same sense of chaos is also adeptly used on track “Gnome’s Orchard,” which shifts between fuzzed-out, background noise-heavy prog bass fighting for dominance with smeary brass, and the quiet moments interspersed throughout, which creates the sense of going through a door from a noisy outside space into a calm house. It’s jarring, and it’s great. Despite its manically upbeat energy, much of the album is dedicated to the loss of a close friend of the band.
Opener “Cafe Chroma” explores the band members’ personal grief journey and acceptance, and alongside the interludes “Big Red” and aptly-named “Loss,” the emotional insistence of the record is palpable, despite its frenetic energy. “Loss” is a jazz standard in almost every way, but specifically if a jazz standard was being played drunk and was being listened to specifically by someone lying on the floor watching the world spin.
The self-titled track “Pateka” carries a touch of Conor Oberst’s emo sensibilities, the vocals smeared across the song as if reluctant to be there, layered over crashing cymbals, rumbling bass, tweeting synths, and an oddly—but sweetly—melodic guitar. It’s like early Muse put through a fax machine, shredded, then reassembled with strips of an also-shredded Battles. It almost shouldn’t work, but like the rest of the album, the confluence of genres and production choices feels deliberate rather than messy.
Album closer “Rock Night” manages to be almost normal–at least, at first. The track really serves to cap the album off at exactly the right point. The vocals might be half-there, the background bloops might be as present as ever, and the rest of the instrumentation might be doing its best drone, but it feels like the end result of an automated song machine finally turning its cogs in sync with itself – that is, until the tracks starts speeding up, and turns itself into something that wouldn’t be amiss as the score for an extended chase scene.
Overall, Pateka is something wholly special. Handled by lesser musicians, it would be unbearable; it should be messy, and it shouldn’t make sense. But this is almost certainly the gift of a band who have worked together – and have known each other–as long as Pateka have. It’s one of the most inventive, freshest things I’ve heard all year, and I’ll be listening to it on repeat for months to come.  From: https://earmilk.com/album-reviews/pateka-show-up-to-the-party-to-make-it-weird-on-their-self-titled-debut-lp-album-review/

Skating Polly - Hail Mary

Scene Point Blank: What’s one thing you wish everyone knew about Skating Polly?

Kelli: I guess just how versatile we can be. I think it's easier for people to think that we're a loud girl band or something. But one thing that I'm really proud of is our band is really versatile -- there’s lots of sides to us. It's funny. I'll have relatives who you know just go, “It’s not my thing” and I’ll go, “It's okay, Grandma. Have you heard this song?” [Laughs.] And then it’s, “Oh, that’s lovely. Why don’t you sing like that more?” [Laughs.]

Scene Point Blank: Broadly speaking your music is considered to be punk, or at least have a deep punk influence and appreciation. Is there ever a fear that you’re trapped in a box now as far as genre goes? Do you feel pressure to sound a certain way to appease fans?

Kelli: Not really. I think part of labelling ourselves Ugly-Pop was like, you know, when you make up your own genre, it can be whatever you say it is. Ugly-Pop is an oxymoron to me; it covers like all sides of the spectrum a little bit. The idea is every harsh song has a little bit of pretty in it and every pretty song has a little bit of weirdness or harshness or darkness in it. I don't feel too trapped in a box. Sometimes when we’re planning a live show, building a setlist, I feel like we have to do a certain number of the faster, louder ones. Those are also just fun to play. But you know, I think it's weird with Skating Polly fans. A lot of the songs that I am most proud of, that's what people end up latching onto the most as well. There's not been a lot of times where I've written a song and then been like, “Oh man, this one really got overlooked.” I mean, there are songs that are less popular than others. The ones that resonate with me the strongest usually strike a chord with other people as well no matter what genre it is.

Scene Point Blank: You kind of have a song for everyone then?

Kelli: Yeah, it feels like that. With this album, I sent it to a lot of my close friends and other musicians and everyone had different favourites and that's really exciting. So, it’s like they're all really good songs and it's more like what your vibe is.

Scene Point Blank: You’ve talked about Ugly-Pop as this idea of heavy melody mixed with imperfections and blemishes. As you refine your sound and continue to gain experience, is it more difficult to tap into the “ugly” part of Ugly-Pop?

Kelli: No, I feel like that's always very accessible to me. [Laughs.] First of all, as we've become better musicians, we’re pushing ourselves. A lot of the time me, Kurtis and Peyton will write parts that we can't quite play yet. So, there's still room there for errors, you're learning these parts that you're trying to play in the studio. When you aren’t editing yourself with robot perfection, there's always these really cool imperfections. There's always these cool moments, if you just, like, look under the rock and see who’s hanging out. I feel like that’s just part of playing music and putting yourself out there: you will just naturally kind of capture these things, these chatty moments. So no, it's not been hard to tap into that. “Ugly” has evolved in what it means to me. Ugly is a guitar flub we decided to keep in the track or sometimes the content of the song is about a really ugly feeling. Sometimes it's getting vulnerable with my voice in a way that's not the most proper singing but is still just a cool, real moment. To me, it's always been about not editing out humanity. That’s how you keep ugly and Ugly-Pop.

Scene Point Blank: It’s been five years since your last album. Does Chaos County Line feel like a chance to reintroduce yourselves? Or does it feel like you never left?

Kelli: I feel like our first tour after the pandemic was like the chance to reintroduce ourselves. It was the longest Kurtis, Peyton and I had been apart. I was living in LA a bit, I was living in Oregon a bit, so we weren't all together. I do really feel like the record, though, is a continuation of what we've always been doing from the start. But it's evolved and I feel like it's our best work yet. Of course I want to reach new fan --- but I think that people who’ve known about us will also like it. I think this will resonate with them. It's not like we were trying to recapture something we did before, but I really do feel like it was the natural progression of where everything started and kind of like everything's been leading up to this. [Laughs.] Which is like, “Where does the next one go?” which I don’t know. [Laughs.] Yeah, I'm really proud of it. I really do hope it reaches new people. That's another thing that actually happened during the pandemic. A lot of young, cool people found our music randomly. Our audiences have been a lot younger and made up of people who like to make their own clothes. It's like a Skating Polly Ugly-Pop fashion show every night. Like, it's really rad.
Photo by Karen Mason Blair

Scene Point Blank: I've been a fan for a while, and I’ve noticed younger people have recently started getting into your music too.

Kelli: Yeah, it hasn't always been like that. There have been some younger fans and I don’t think young people dislike us, but it's just like we weren't capturing the attention of a lot of young people. We were touring with X and these people that I think -- I don't know -- it's just our audience was a lot of older rockers and that was cool ‘cause it was people who really appreciated music and kind of music snobs, you know, who like Skating Polly. Now we’re catching on with younger people. I feel like the cool kids.

Scene Point Blank: A lot of your past merch has been DIY or handmade and Skating Polly generally carries a do-it-yourself ethos. Does it feel like you, as a band, are reviving a more DIY mindset in comparison to other bands today?

Kelli: I've definitely always been very pro DIY. Just this last tour we ran out of printed T-shirts so we went to Walmart, bought some white t-shirts, bought fabric markers, you know, and went for it. We are on a label -- a small label that’s been really great to us -- but it's funny ‘cause there's just still so much that we take care of. There is so much that we're constantly doing ourselves. It's cool because it would be very un-Ugly-Pop if we had that all streamlined and taken care of. It’s the only way to make sure we’re doing things the most Skating Polly way. I hope it inspires people to just do things themselves. It totally is the same mindset as Ugly-Pop, you know: to just go for it, make it, put it out there, it shouldn't be perfect.

Scene Point Blank: You started making music when you were pretty young. As you’ve aged did it ever feel like there was a point when you had to decide to try and take music on as a career and forgo a more traditional job?

Kelli: I've always known that I wanted this to be my thing. I mean, I'm living back with my parents now. There are times when I’m like, “Oh,” ‘cause I want to move back to LA. [Laughs.] There are times when I want to make more money, but I don't really consider something else as another career. It's just, “What else can I squeeze it so that I can make money while doing this?” There's definitely sacrifices I make so that Skating Polly can be my focus -- same for Peyton and Kurtis. Truly I don't see life without it. This is me and if it never gets to the level where I can just live off of my music then I'll just keep doing it at this level forever. I don't think that'll be the case. I think that things will keep growing and it's not something that I’m going to stop. Peyton and Kurtis feel the same way. We all just want to keep going with it forever. The things that it fulfils in our life couldn't be filled by anything else.

From: https://www.scenepointblank.com/features/interviews/skating-polly/ 

 

Telyscopes - Metamorphosis

“I need a change of pace, loss of face,” sings experimental Philly artist Jack Hubbell on the first track from the 13th Telyscopes album, Spectacol ///. “I need an unpaid vacation that never ends.” And sure enough, his narrator gets what he asks for, way down at the very bottom of everything. The song is called “MH370,” framed with a two-note guitar vamp that flashes like a warning light, and it ends not with a wonderful splash, but with audio carnage–howling distortion as grim sound painting of the Malaysia Airlines flight whose disappearance dominated the global news in March of 2014.
Telyscopes’ catalog is, on some level, a flight recorder logging Hubbell’s musical fixation on disaster. Sometimes that’s personal (finding blood in your urine, getting swept away in a flash flood) and other times, it’s social and political (nuclear weapons tests, assassinations). Like the best cinematic horrors and thrillers, the setup creates compelling drama by pushing humanity to the most extreme limits–or at least engages in the time-honored tradition of tapping your fellow man on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, was that fucked up, or what?”
To that body of work, Hubbell adds the chilling “O-Ring,” littered with saxophone, theremin, and debris from the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Is it morbid and horrific? You bet–take it up with cable news, I guess. This is a record haunted by the sense that catastrophe can happen at any time, but Hubbell doesn’t make the alternative sound much better: “What is waiting for us, at the end of our numbered days?” he asks on “Python (In the Weeds).” “Maternity centers, custody hearings, nursing homes, marble graves.”
That’s a rare direct soliloquy on an album that, as often as not, invites you to gawk at its wildness. The title Spectacol /// comes from the Romanian word for “show.” To wit: in the music video for “Metamorphosis” (more chant than song, rattling by on chitinous legs), Hubbell drinks raw egg from a champagne flute before flashing a demented smile at the camera. The album follows much the same spirit, pushing the experimentalism of his last full-length With A Y while cutting back on that record’s diaristic tendencies (unless, of course, there’s something he’s not telling us, re: his experience with prion diseases).
Spectacol /// is personal in other ways–this time out, there are fewer instrumentalists hired from Fiverr and more focus on close collaborators from past projects. Patty Hamill provides pianos and synths, Karl Hovmark plays drums, and long-time live singer Madelyn Van Trieste becomes the first guest vocalist to feature on a Telyscopes record. And in the end, there’s no mistaking Hubbell’s singular rhythm, piloting through ecstatic skronk, synth-laden nightmares, and soft fusion jazz like bends in a jungle cruise.  From: https://theallsceneeye.com/2021/09/21/telyscopes-13th-album-casts-itself-as-a-plane-crash-you-cant-look-away-from/

Old Blood - Midnight Climax

It’s been a long four years since the release of 2020’s Acid Doom, the second album by Californian heavyweights Old Blood. In that time, the band have been busy refining their dynamics, reinforcing their strengths, and plotting for world domination. Back in my first summer of writing for The Shaman, I had the absolute honour of reviewing that very release, and it was on my Top Ten list for the year.
I found both the band, and the album, to be just so utterly engaging, and interesting, in equal measure. The blend of psychedelic occult bluesiness, mixed with those hard rocking theatrics completely blew my mind. Now here we are. Four years on, and the unit have never sounded tighter.
On Acid Doom vocalist Lynx was a relatively new addition, but those sparkles of greatness were evident. Now, fully fledged in the ranks, the vocal dynamics are at the next level and have more than helped to shape Old Blood 2024. Midnight Climax shows just how much Lynx and the boys have embraced their uniquely lavish sound, and have brought something to the table that is very much needed, an air of mystery to music again.
The sounds are vibrantly nostalgic, darkly wondrous and richly intoxicating. The heady desert rock meets psychedelia vibe gives for more of an eclectic sound, which is reminiscent of Jess And The Ancient Ones, but with more of an Americana swagger. Over the course of the seven tracks, this is driven firmly home, and even for seven tracks, you are still getting an incredible forty minutes of otherworldly goodness. It may not sound like a lot, but it’s forty minutes jam packed with awesomeness, which is all killer, no filler.
Opening with the title track, and a somewhat suggestively titled Midnight Climax, the band wastes no time in reintroducing themselves, and picking up where they left off with Acid Doom. With a distorted spacy guitar introduction, the band, one by one, emerge from the darkness and into the light. Dark, brooding and dripping in ‘70s ooze, they firmly announce their return, and it’s somewhat spiritual. Lynx’s vocal is as overwhelming as ever, and with a saucy, sensual display the outpouring begins. It’s a full body desert rock at midnight kind of affair, naughty, but very very nice.  From: https://thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/old-blood-midnight-climax/ 

The Wytches - Unsure

Hi Kristian, how did The Wytches come about?

We started in 2011. Our drummer Gianni and I just decided to move to Brighton because there was nothing going on for us in Peterborough. We both upped and went to university in Brighton. We started in the band in Peterborough with a guy called Mark on bass, but he didn’t want to move with us so we just went.

Was there much difference between the music scene in Brighton and the one in Peterborough?

Basically everything is different about it really. It’s got a culture in Brighton, or several cultures in Brighton, and in Peterborough you are kind of limited. There is not much to do and you are left to your own devices. I guess that can be a good thing but in Brighton you are spoilt for choice.

How did you come up with the name The Wytches?

When we first started we were just called The Witches. I just thought it was quite funny that it was so average. I liked the idea that there were probably a million bands called The Witches. We knew we weren’t significant to anyone back then, as we had just started and we weren’t trying to come into the music industry with a big bang. We were just up for making music and having a really simple name. It kind of fitted.

Is it true that the Y was added to make your name more easily found online?

We got management and they said if we wanted to get things going a bit more, it might be easier. I liked how it was written down when it was spelt with a Y too. We recorded about three EPs under the name The Witches but we didn’t do too much with them. We hadn’t amassed a following so we didn’t feel it was going to harm us to change it.

You have described your sound as surf-doom in the past, do you stick by that?

You know you get really silly genres like ‘moderate-funk’, we said surf-doom as it was a really obscure genre and I found it funny. I think people thought I was being serious. The stuff before the album was a lot more thrash. Now it is more rock music or just songs. Songs played in a disgusting way, hard, loud and unlistenable.

What music influences The Wytches as a band do you think?

This sound particularly is influenced a lot by The Birthday Party and bands like that; old fifties surf music too. This is just the sound of our entrance into the music world though. We jam all the time and it’s not always like that. This is just how we wanted it for this particular album. I have many influences and I wouldn’t want to be one thing. I mean, it will always sound like The Wytches and a lot of noise mainly.

You have an artist called Sam Hull who does all the band’s artwork, is that visual side of the band important to you?

Yes it is. Every band needs some kind of visual side to it and with Sam it is always of a good quality. I know he’ll come back with something great, which is his own interpretation of the music. It’s always his wacky interpretation. He is a really close friend of mine so it always nice to work with your close pal.

How does your creative process work within the band?

I normally record songs at home. I can play the drums too so I can demo stuff myself and then show it to the band. Then sometimes, I won’t demo them and leave them guys to add their own parts to it. It is equal parts collaborative as much as it is me bringing it to them.

Lets talk about the new album, Annabel Dream Reader. What’s the name about?

The name was just something that I just thought of when I was in school. I used to be into creative writing; where music isn’t involved. Where you are just writing for the love. It always stuck with me. I don’t know the significance of it. I just knew I liked it and it made me think of certain things. It felt cool for the album.

Is it true you recorded the whole album in just two days?

We knew the songs and they were really old when we went to record them. We built those songs properly from playing them live rather than figuring them out in the studio. Most of them came together in their complete form. It just happened to not take that long at all.

Why did you decide to record it all analogue to tape?

All my favourite bands recorded on tape. We tried recording on digital loads of times before but it just never really worked. Digital is cool when you are tracking everything so you can isolate things and put it together that way but tape for me works better when you do it all live, when everything is bleeding into one another and all the instruments are blending.

From: https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/interviews/the-wytches-this-is-just-the-sound-of-our-entrance-into-the-music-world

 

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway - She's a Rainbow (Rolling Stones cover)

“It just kind of happened organically. I wanted a fun project to work on and it was nice because it kind of re-inspired me during the pandemic,” Molly Tuttle explains, while discussing the origins of her new record. On …but i’d rather be with you, the dynamic acoustic guitarist and singer interprets 10 songs from other artists, ranging from Harry Styles (“Sunflower, Vol. 6”) to Karen Dalton (“Something on Your Mind”), The National (“Fake Empire”), FKA Twigs (“Mirrored Heart”) and the Grateful Dead (“Standing on the Moon,” which yielded the album title). “I was feeling drained and it was hard for me to write my own songs. So coming back to these songs that I love was helpful.”
At the time, she was in the initial stages of working with producer Tony Berg on the follow-up to her acclaimed 2019 album, When You’re Ready. “We had been talking about making a record sometime this year or early next year so I had been staying with him. We were just trying to get to know each other while we did some preproduction—we’d play songs and listen to music together. I flew home to Nashville from his house in LA and then went into quarantine. A couple of weeks into it, we both felt like we should start working together and put these covers together. I sent him some demos—just me playing songs that I liked. And, when he heard them, he was like, ‘Why don’t we just make an album of these covers, quarantine style. You send me your guitar and vocal tracks, and I’ll have people that I work with play on top of them.” That list eventually included: Taylor Goldsmith, Matt Chamberlain, Patrick Warren and Ketch Secor.
In making her song selections, Tuttle decided to focus on compositions that were uncommon in acoustic picking circles. That is why the 26-year-old musician—who studied in the American Roots Music Program at the Berklee College of Music and would go on to win the IBMA Bluegrass Music Award for Guitar Player of the Year in 2017 (when she was the first women ever nominated in the category) and 2018—opted to take on The Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow.”
Tuttle acknowledges, “The style of the song is so different from my own that it was a little challenging to work up. But once I realized that I wanted to learn the piano part as closely as I could on the guitar, the song opened up to me and I felt like I could put my own spin on it while still paying tribute to the original.” Not only does the song appear on …but i’d rather be with you, but Tuttle also conceived an absorbing, ruminative video in which her own performance of the tune is juxtaposed with appearances by a series of guests (including Tom Morello, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Linda Perry, Nathaniel Rateliff, Lilly Hiatt, Danny Clinch and Ali Harnell) who share their handwritten reflections on gender roles and social equity.  From: https://relix.com/articles/detail/molly-tuttle-shes-a-rainbow/

 

David Bowie - Queen Bitch - Old Grey Whistle Test 1972

“I’m up on the eleventh floor, and I’m watching the cruisers below.” That’s how it starts: the singer unable to sit still, pacing the narrow length of his hotel room, unwillingly returning to the window over and over again so he can watch his lover pick up someone on the street. It could be a transvestite, or a female prostitute—it’s galling to the singer in any case. And what’s most galling isn’t the betrayal, really, but the sort of pickup his man’s descending to—“Oh God, I could do better than that!“ he snarls in desperation and envy. Is he talking about his own taste in cruising, or that he’s flashier and prettier than the streetwalker? It’s either or both.
It’s Bowie’s Velvet Underground song (the riff’s a bit like “Sweet Jane”‘s, and “sister Flo” is a cousin of “Sister Ray”), but “Queen Bitch” isn’t an imitation of the VU as much as it’s an utter annexation of their sound. It’s as if Bowie had taken a photograph of one of Lou Reed’s urban landscapes and imposed his image upon a corner of it, a vicious face framed in a hotel window. When Reed finally sang it in public, at Bowie’s 50th birthday concert, he looked amused and slightly bewildered, as if wondering whether he had written the song himself.
There’s the riff, of course—a primal progression of C-G-F. Bowie gives it first on his 12-string acoustic, then Mick Ronson zips in and steals it whole, his guitar mixed so that it leaps from right speaker to left, his tone loud and dirty. The riff is all there is (no solos, only a slight variation in the chorus): it’s set at a breakneck tempo, repeated twice with each appearance, and arranged so that the repeat of “C” comes just before the bar, heightening the anticipation, furthering the drive. Bowie’s so enamored with the riff (and he should be) he has it bolster most lines of his verses.
The first verse, only five lines, sets the stage, while the chorus delivers the put-down. But in the second and third verses, as the singer’s indignation bursts, he simply won’t let the song go, pushing out the verses for another three or four lines, the band coming with him—Woodmansey crashing on cymbals, Ronson thrashing his guitar—while the singer pounds his hands against the cheap hotel wall. It ends in a series of jump cuts: “And he’s down on the street! so I throw both his bags down the hall! And I’m phoning a cab, ‘cos my stomach feels small!…It could've been me oh yeah It could've been me!”  From: https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/queen-bitch/

Townland - Highland Park TV 2023

For those potentially out of the loop, Townland is a Los Angeles-based project that’s made up of Shannon Locke (lead vocals), Matt Gourley (guitar, e-bow, vocals), Daniel Michicoff (bass, vocals), and Wade Ryan (guitar, keyboards, percussion, vocals). Although the band has been around since around 2008 and experienced many iterations, finally they managed to get out their long awaited debut album titled Honey on the Hi-Fi. It’s an eclectic mix of soft rock, country, Americana, and so much more that comes together and delivers an unbelievably wholesome and uplifting listening experience. Plain and simple, we love it, and truly cannot recommend it enough.
Coming in at 12 songs that span right around 45 minutes, it immediately comes off as one of those listens that shows you what it’s got up front, but only gets better with repetition. While we’ve had many opportunities to enjoy this over the course of last year, a major factor of our love for it is its versatility and sincerity. It’s quite obvious that Shannon’s euphoric vocals steal the show right up front, but that’s not a slight to every other talented member of the band that plays with passion and love. It’s not something you can learn, rather a feeling that effortlessly comes off. The breezy, lighthearted, and slightly more doomy songs hit you right in the feels as you attempt to connect the dots within their storylines, however everything is still up for interpretation depending on how you depict it as a listen. Thankfully we got some much needed backstory on some of these songs’ origins and how far their creation dates back, which is another reason we’re urging everyone to enjoy this conversation prior to your listen.
Another underrated aspect of this record is its cohesiveness and the way that it flows so smoothly from track to track. While there may not be an overarching message, it hardly matters, because everything about Honey on the Hi-Fi is one laidback mood. As mentioned during our conversation, an ideal listen would take place on a quiet and slow Sunday morning with a hot cup of coffee, popping this on the turntable, and letting the music curate your day. It serves up that coveted album experience that feels like a lost art nowadays due to single streaming culture, so if you’re looking to lose yourself in something that borders on perfection, this is 100% the record for you.  From: https://www.wewriteaboutmusic.com/reviews/townland-honey-on-the-hifi-interview 

Foreigner - S/T - Side 1

01 - Feels Like the First Time
02 - Cold as Ice
03 - Starrider
04 - At War With the World
05 - The Damage Is Done

Born in Portsmouth, Mick Jones had been in bands since the early 60s, and had achieved a modicum of success when he lived in France and worked with Johnny Hallyday.
“He was – and still is – treated like the French Elvis,” says Jones. “And being in his band gave me the opportunity of meeting so many greats, like Jimmy Page [who played on the Hallyday single A Tout Casser] and Otis Redding, who came over to teach Johnny how to sing soul. It was an incredible grounding, which taught me a lot. I call it my ‘French Period’.”
In 1973, Jones hooked up with Gary Wright to start Wonderwheel. “Then Island Records asked us to get Spooky Tooth back together [Wright had been an original member of the band], and that lasted about three years. But when Spooky Tooth broke up I was left high and dry in New York. However, I got the chance of joining the Leslie West Band [who released one self-titled album in 1976]. Working with Leslie was such a privilege; he was a great guitarist and songwriter, even though there were harrowing experiences at times. But it prepared me to do my own thing.”
In 1976, Jones began to bring to fruition a vision he’d been harbouring secretly for a long time. “What I wanted to do was a British take on American music. I had gotten into R&B and also loved soul music. I was very comfortable with the idea of doing rock with a soulful feel – and that was the foundation for the new band.”
One of the most crucial people involved in this project from the beginning was Bud Prager. The pair had met because Prager managed Leslie West, but now they began to realise there was a synergy between them, one that would later prove to be mutually beneficial.“We challenged one another,” laughs Jones. “I threw down the gauntlet to him to prove he could be an effective manager for me, and he dared me to prove that I could actually put together my own band and make my musical dream come true. It was a great partnership.”
“I understood from the start that Mick wasn’t just an artist, but one who had the discipline to make things happen,” Prager once said. “Our relationship was more than just a manager and his client. I knew that first album would sell at least a million copies even before it was recorded, because I had complete faith in Mick.”
The quest for Jones was to put together a band who could bring his ideas to life, and he began with two Englishmen whom he already knew. “I had met Ian McDonald before the band idea ever came up,” Jones says, “and so it seemed logical to ask him to be part of this from the start.”
Multi-instrumentalist McDonald (who had been part of the early King Crimson) has a slightly different recollection on the timing of his recruitment.
“As far as I can recall, Mick already had a couple of musicians on board by the time he contacted me. I believe Al [Greenwood, keys] was already in the line-up, and there was one more as well, although I can’t now recall who this would have been. But Mick and I got on very well, so working with him was the sensible thing to do.”
The probability is that drummer Dennis Elliott was already involved when McDonald was brought in, because his arrival is seen as crucial by Jones. “I had played with Dennis on Ian Hunter’s first solo album [1975’s Ian Hunter],” says Jones, “and he inspired me a lot in terms of the direction the band should take. He had a really special feel in the way that he played, and I loved that. Dennis acted as a sounding board for my ideas, and I’d say he was a major part of Foreigner. In fact, he was the spirit of the band as far as I was concerned.”
But Jones was also determined to bring in young talents who elicited a freshness and vitality. Musicians who weren’t tainted by years of failure or bitterness. “Al Greenwood and [bassist] Ed Gagliardi both came from the New York area, and while they’d been in local bands for a few years, they’d not had any significant success. But both fitted in with what I was after.”
The American duo were both found through a series of extensive auditions held at a rehearsal studio in the building where Prager’s office was located. “The studio had been built by Felix Pappalardi of Mountain, when he worked with Bud [the two effectively co-managed Mountain], so we just based ourselves there for nine months while the line-up came together.”
The biggest problem they faced was finding the right vocalist. In the end, around 50 hopefuls were auditioned. “We tried out so many. And all of them were young guys who were unknowns at the time; I don’t think any of them went on to have success, though. There were a few who were good – but not good enough. You see, I had an idea in my head of how the singer should come across. I’d hear a Robert Plant or Paul Rodgers doing the songs, and I kept on singing to myself to get an idea of what worked. So I wasn’t prepared to settle for less than someone who really knocked me out.”
Two high profile vocalists were almost offered the chance to front the band. One was American Ian Lloyd, who had topped the US singles chart in 1973 with Brother Louie, while he was a member of Stories. “Ian was a friend of mine, and he helped us out during the auditions. And I came very close to asking him if he wanted to be the vocalist in the band. He was really good, and it felt right when he did the songs.”
Lloyd would end up doing backing vocals not only on this album, but also subsequent Foreigner recordings. The second possibility, meanwhile, was a little more far-fetched. “I had gotten to know Steve Winwood when Spooky Tooth toured with Traffic,” says Jones. “And while we were still struggling to find a suitable vocalist, I went on holiday to Wales with a friend. Steve was staying very close by, and we hung out for a few days. I was always a fan of his voice, and was very tempted to ask him if he’d consider joining the band. But I could never quite bring myself to ask him. I just thought he would inevitably turn down the whole idea, so it remained one of those thoughts you never put into action. Still, I do sometimes wonder if he might have agreed to give it a go!”
However, all such thoughts were dispelled when Lou Gramm entered the story. Formerly with Rochester, New York band Black Sheep (who had released two albums), Gramm was asked to audition by Jones. “What happened was that when Mick was still in Spooky Tooth, they played in Rochester, New York, where Black Sheep were based,” says Gramm. “So we went along to the show, and because our manager worked for A&M Records [to whom Spooky Tooth were signed in America], we got to meet the band afterwards, and gave them copies of our two albums [1974’s self-titled debut and the following year’s Encouraging Words].
“Then we had a major piece of bad luck. We’d been chosen to open for Kiss, but after the first gig in Boston our van hit a patch of ice, which not only destroyed the van but most of our equipment as well. That meant we had to pull out of the Kiss tour, and come off the road for ages.
“In April 1976, Mick tracked me down and asked if I’d like to audition for his new band. But I turned the offer down, because I was committed to Black Sheep. Anyway, Mick said he’d call again in two weeks to see if I’d changed my mind. Now, when I mentioned the offer to the rest of the guys, they told me to go ahead and audition, because Black Sheep would be out of action for a long time. So when Mick did call back, I accepted his offer.”
McDonald says that Jones took a lot of convincing before he finally plumped for Gramm as singer. “Mick put on the first Black Sheep album, and as soon as I heard the vocals I just knew Lou was the man for us. I said so at the time to Mick, but he insisted that we had to go through the whole process of auditioning him. I kept on at Mick, telling him we had to grab this guy before someone else did, and finally he agreed with me. He was very cautious about it, though.” Jones, though, suggests he was won over by Gramm almost immediately.
“As soon as he came in to the audition, I realised we’d found our guy. He sounded exactly the way I wanted the band’s singer to come across. Lou was just so much better than anyone else we had tried out. He brought everything to a new level.”
Gramm sang four songs in his audition: Feels Like The First Time, At War With The World, Woman, Oh Woman and Take Me To Your Leader. And these were the same songs the newly cemented sextet elected to record for the demo that they hoped would get them the all-important record deal. This was cut in the same rehearsal room where the auditions were held, and in the case of Feels Like The First Time it featured Gramm’s very first try at doing the song.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/foreigner-debut-album

 

Return to Worm Mountain - Lisp

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Duncan Park of Return to Worm Mountain, Rise Up Dead Man & More.

How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

At the core, I play guitar and write songs. I started playing when I was ten years old, largely because my dad played guitar and my parents played loads of great guitar music in the house as I was growing up. At that age I also started listening to my “own” music, which at that point in time was pretty average pop “punk” like the Offspring and Blink-182 and then nü-metal bands like System of a Down, which was also generally guitar-oriented music.
From there I quickly realized that I love making new sounds on the guitar and started writing my own licks and riffs. At a very young age I knew that I preferred creating my own music to playing covers. I suppose it all just snowballed from there, especially as my tastes in music expanded and my artistic horizons broadened, which opened my eyes to the almost infinite possibilities of musical creation.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

This is an incredibly difficult question. There are so many moments when writing music which give one an unbridled feeling of euphoria which is immensely satisfying, and I suppose these moments are my best musical memories. One moment in particular would be when Cameron and I wrote the song Umdhlebi Tree for the second Return to Worm Mountain album. We only had a handful of songs and whilst we were jamming and recording some live take’s in his garage to get things started on making the album he said to me we needed to write another song for the record, and kind of put me on the spot to come up with a riff there and then. I felt this immediate pressure and just started to let my fingers wander up and down the fretboard trying to find a riff. He kept saying “nah, I don’t like that” to everything I was coming up with, until I fell upon that serpentine arpeggio that makes up the main riff of the song. At that point we both knew we had something that was special to the two of us, and to this day that remains my favourite riff I have written, and Umdhlebi Tree is one of the songs that I am most proud of out of everything I have ever recorded.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

In the immortal words of Shia LaBeouf, “Anything that moves you is art,” and much to my own amazement, I agree with the guy on this point. Whether it makes you reconsider the fabric of reality or just makes you feel happy and want to dance, if it moves you, it is art. Art’s most essential function is to move the audience. I’m sure there are artists who create their art with the intention to communicate something specific (even I have created art with this intention), but once it’s out in the world people will experience and interpret it in their own ways which you cannot, and should not be able to control. So regardless of the specific intention of the artwork, so long as it moves people, it is art.

From: https://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2022/03/16/the-obelisk-questionnaire-duncan-park-of-return-to-worm-mountain-rise-up-dead-man-more/

Monika Roscher Bigband - Witches Brew

OL: First, I asked Monika to describe how a big band works.  Eighteen musicians feels like a lot of personalities to have to control…

Monika: “It's the worst to organise a big band, because we are spread out and you always have to call everybody and write emails and stuff, but once you have organised everything, and you meet and play the concert, it makes a lot of sense. They are such amazing musicians, and for me, it's such a pleasure to work with them and they play my music, which is so cool”

OL: It must be quite difficult to organise them and make them all behave. Are you very strict?

Monika: “Not really, because we are all friends. Playing in a big band is not a very lucrative job, you know, so you have to be on fire and love the music.  Everybody is a part of it and it's easy. So I'm not strict or bossy!”

OL: I must admit that I had a very cliched idea of what a big band was, you know, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, or even people like Robbie Williams.  But the Monika Roscher Big Band is very different. It's very modern sounding and it doesn't sound anything like that at all really.

Monika: “Actually, Big Band is just a name. It is a lot more experimental than that and I just love the colouring that is in it. I have the flute and the trumpets and also live electronics, and I play the guitar in a rock way. I love to challenge my drummer to try different patterns, not in a swing way, but more in a drum and bass way or whatever, you know, so I'm totally open for everything.  I love the open playing field I have with eighteen musicians, because in a rock band with four musicians, you are a little bit limited but with a big band, you have every possibility open to you. It's usually a lot better than I imagined in my head how it would be. There are no borders and I love that.”

OL: Do you think people perceive you in a certain way because you are a big band?

Monika: “I don't really think about how people react to us. We play jazz festivals but also play rock festivals, like the Fusion Festival, an electronic music festival in Berlin. I like to be between chairs, that's how we say it in German, like one foot between the chair, and no chair. I never think about how the audience should react to us, I'm just totally focused on that we play cool, and we have the energy that we need for the day.”

OL: You also have a light suit, which I think you've worn for a couple of performances?

Monika: “Yes, I wanted to go into the music to be a part of it, to kind of dissolve in to the music and become like a starry night. It started out in a trashy way, you know, putting some LEDs on a black suit, then my live electronic player Hannes said, you know, I can build you this suit and it's gonna be really cool and we will make it an instrument that you can also play. It has sensors and I can play it like a Theremin, so it's really cool. I can move my arms during a solo and play the suit.”

OL: Plus you can be your own light show! Let’s talk about the new album now ‘Witchy Activities and The Maple Death’. There's elements of a sword and sorcery tradition which we've seen a lot in heavy metal music, and also goth music as well.  Do you feel that there's a link to that musical history within what you're doing with the new album?

Monika: I always try to invent myself a bit further. I just want to embrace what's coming.  I like metal music as well and I'm open to every kind of music, but I never start with a concept. That creeps in later. In the beginning I'm open to what is around me. For this album, I was collecting mushrooms in the forest and we found a Witch Bonnet. That's the name in Germany. I was like, wow, this is a Witch Bonnet. You know, I had never heard of it before. This just helped me to start something.  I went back home and played the first saxophone part on my piano and it sounded like witches laughing! Then I start collecting everything I could about the witches, the women that had all this wisdom and knowledge and I just went down this rabbit hole for months and checked out everything about witches. They were helping people and were curing people when there was no other medication apart from leeches and bleeding. So I think it has nothing to do with evil, I think they were really cool and it's fun to play around with all the magic and stuff. You know, it's all in there.
There's also a little tiny piece in the album from when we went to Istanbul in 2016 to play a concert.  When we were there, there was a Putsch. I'm not quite sure how you say that in English [a Coup], and there was a huge military thing going on.  It was such a crazy aura everywhere and it was really kind of scary. So I also put that in the song because it's such a mystical atmosphere.”

From: https://outsideleft.com/main.php?story=it-all-started-with-a-big-band

 

Ukandanz - Tchuhetén Betsèmu

Raised on rock’n’roll, I never really got around to listening to ethnic music. At times bands have tried to add a Western perspective on these foreign genres, but usually it ended up sounding quite patronising. Therefore I am quite astonished at how great uKanDanZ works. The band consists of Asnake Guebreyes, a charismatic singer from the Ethiopian capital city Addis Abeba, and four French musicians on guitar, saxophone, bass and drums. Their sound is labelled as Ethiopian crunch music, which didn’t ring a bell with me, but closer inspection showed that the quintet is cooking up a mesmerising stew of rock, jazz, noise and East African music.
Their debut album Yetchalal came out in 2012 and showed already a really tight playing band, but this year’s follow-up Awo shows an even more incredible band. The album consists of six rather long songs that make it to nearly three-quarters of an hour. It’s clear from the onset that uKanDanz don’t care about commercial structures, although there are always lots of melodies woven into the sound. Take for instance the opener Sèwotch Men Yelalu, a six and a half minute behemoth that sounds like a stripped down King Crimson session from 1969. One minute into the song, the vocalist joins in and you know that this is definitely something else. Asnake’s vocals are high, wild and conjuring, riding up and down the strangest tonal scales, and yet in the middle ground you can always encounter a recurring theme. Tchuhetén Betsèmu is another wild ride of Eastern African jazz, and it feels really great that no one is trying to soften things up for a mainstream audience. The drums are laying down a brutal beat, the bass guitar is stomping up a fierce rhythm, the guitar and saxophone are often duelling each other, and on top of this are the captivating vocals. Lantchi Biyé is a somewhat more sedate track, which we probably need after the furious two preceding pieces.
And then it’s back to jazz rock mayhem with Endé Iyérusalem that combines the band’s harsh sound with the vocals at their trippiest. Gela Gela comes at a more moderate pace, before the quarter hour long Ambassel To Brussel ends the album on its most progressive note. This monster track shows that uKanDanz are at their best when time is of no matter. I don’t know if you can dance to uKanDanZ’s music... well probably not in the usual meaning of the word, but I am convinced that a lot of people can lose themselves in this EuroAfrican / AfroEuropean ethno jazz noise rock crossover.  From: https://www.disagreement.net/reviews2015/ukandanz_awo.html

The Neptune Power Federation - Skies Of Sound

It's odd that Mano A Satano flew largely under 2012's radar, considering that The Neptune Power Federation features Jay Frenzal on bass and Nancy Vandal alumni Fox Trotsky and Dean Bakota on guitar and drums respectively. It's the alternative zeitgeist's loss really. This cheesy homage to '80s hair metal is fun from the opening monk chants of the album's title. Screeching guitar and Poison-reminiscent vocals will separate the lovers from the haters seconds into the record. By the time track two, Wizard Lovin', kicks off, you're likely sure whether or not you'll be enjoying the remainder of the album. Over the top lyrics about maidens being seduced by a forest man with wizard powers and magic hands? Yes please.
Skies Of Sound is one of the better things anyone attached to this band has penned in recent years: pulsing electro funk and screaming guitar work usher in comically epic lyrics about flight and the heavens. Curses too, delivers on the record's high concept idea of tongue in cheek, through brilliant, guitar shredding and demonic-sexual lyrical work. Something must be said of the production work too, which was handled in house by Trotksy (or 'Inverted Crucifox' as he is known here). The crisp, punchy and polished-but-not-too-polished sound suits the album to a T. The occasional electro flourishes by way of science fiction soundtracks appear intermittently to great effect.  From: https://themusic.com.au/reviews/the-neptune-power-federation-mano-a-satano-andrew-mcdonald/uWCqrayvrtE/03-01-13

The Fatal Flaw - California Evergreen

Meet the Band: Fatal Flaw
The band: Joel Reader (voice, bass) is a recent transplant from San Francisco; Zack Wells (guitar, voice) and Josh Megyesy (guitar, slide guitar, voice) grew up on the North Shore; and Dave Bryson (drums) moved from Connecticut with his wife, a doctoral student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The sound: Boston cynicism meets California sunshine pop. Or as lead singer Reader puts it, it’s music with an “East Coast mentality and a West Coast disposition.”
“I didn’t realize until I sat down and read the lyrics just how cynical they are,” Reader said. “I have that California sunshine upbeat sound, but the message is sort of a downer.”
The back story: Thank you, Ashley Moody. The pixieish keyboardist of synthpop band the Information started dating Reader when they shared a Los Angeles-based record label. The couple tried the long-distance thing, but when Reader’s band broke up, he decided to switch coasts with a batch of ready-to- record songs. Moody introduced Reader to Information guitarist Wells, and the Fatal Flaw quickly came together. Earlier this year Wells recruited Megyesy and Bryson to complete the four-piece.
“I remember being really impressed with Zack,” Reader said. “He’s just one of those connected people that everyone likes. He’s also like a human recorder. He hears something once and he can play it back.”
The album: Reader calls the Fatal Flaw’s debut, which was finished this week at Barefoot Studios in Allston, a hybrid of his old and new musical lives.
“The process started last April is now locked and left for history to judge,” Reader said. “It feels kind of good to say. This particular batch of songs has taken two bands and two coasts.”
The special guests: The Flaw’s forthcoming album includes a veritable Who’s Who of the Boston alt-pop scene. Jared Marsh of Taxpayer, Luke O’Neil from the Good North, Heidi Lee from the SnowLeopards and Ashley Moody of the Information all contributed.  From: https://www.bostonherald.com/2008/06/20/meet-the-band-fatal-flaw/