Here are the following "SummerSounds" for you all to have a listen to whilst on that lovely sunbed! These releases are brought to you by Ninja Tune / Big Dada / Counter Records. Keep checking back on Altsounds.com for the bestest, newest and most exclusivist news!
The Heavy - Sixteen - SINGLE - 13th July (Counter Records)
http://www.myspace.com/theheavy73
The Heavy follow up the garage-band madness of "Oh No! Not You Again!" with pure vintage voodoo soul . "Sixteen" asks the question: how much can you learn in sixteen years? The answer is, a hell of a lot, but none of it good. Produced by Jim Abbiss (best known for his work with the Arctic Monkeys), "Sixteen" sees Swaby offering up a soaring soul vocal over a beat that swoops and bumps along just right. Over on the B side, exclusive track "No Time" is raw and swampy one minute, all breaks and brass riffs the next. All in all, another spine-tingling package from one of the most exciting bands in the UK just now, "Sixteen" is taken from The Heavy's forthcoming second album, "The House That Dirt Built". With a growing rep in the States, festival dates lined up for the summer and a huge tour to support the album this autumn, the Heavy just may have been spending a little quality time with the Lord of Darkness themselves.
NEW SIGNING! - Cougar - Patriot - 24th August - ALBUM (Counter Records)
http://www.myspace.com/cougarsound
Conceived in Madison, Wisconsin, Cougar's instrumental arrangements fall somewhere between Four Tet, Fugazi, and Nick Drake's guitar work, albeit optimistic as opposed to morose. The band's singular sound is rooted in a keen sensibility of form and texture, more in line with sample-based music and modern classical than indie rock - which isn't to say this is rock-as-academia - Cougar also invoke the roaring riff monster, the fist-in-the-air, anthemic head-banger to which so many groups give only an ironic nod. Cougar's second album, the forthcoming "Patriot," is an aggressive, narrative affair that sees the band reach even greater extremes than on their debut, "Law." The epic, sparkling counterpoint of the first record crops up, but "Patriot" firmly establishes itself as a different music, one that shreds the lines between electronic, rock and modern, but never forgets to pay allegiance to the hook. From the nuanced drive of opener "Stay Famous". Extensive touring supported the group's debut album, "Law" (mixed with John McEntire of Tortoise), which made numerous Best of 2007 lists in the USA. Live dates in the States and abroad included stints with U.N.K.L.E., Maximo Park, Art Brut and more. Paul Smith of Maximo Park (in calling "Law" his favorite release of 2007) is on record as an admirer of their "unique blend of beautiful instrumental melodies and propulsive rhythms, both organic and electronic," which sums up this unique group's unique appeal about as well as anything.
Juice Aleem - Jerusalaam Come - 3rd August - ALBUM (Big Dada)
http://www.myspace.com/jerusalaam
Juice Aleem, long-acknowledged as one of the finest MCs the UK has ever produced, finally goes solo. The sometime New Flesh and Gamma frontman who has also worked with Coldcut, Hextstatic, Evil 9 and Adam Freedland amongst many, many others, has decided that at last it's time to go for self. "Jerusalaam Come" is the result - thirteen tracks of varied beats and broad musical influences held together by Juice's unique lyrical style and mental dexterity. Largely produced by Gamma/Shadowless legend Blackitude, it's an album which is both as raw and as sophisticated as the minds who have made it. There's no pretence with Juice Aleem - the working title of this album "This Is Not For Everyone". If you're not interested in lyrical intelligence, in hip hop, in MCs with something to say, in Blackitude's skank-funk, in ragged intellect, in ideas, in difference, in coming correct, then you may as well give it a miss. It's an over-used phrase, but in terms of what hip hop is supposed to be about, Juice Aleem is the real deal. If you prefer the fake deal, the trendy bullshit, constant novelty without substance, then turn off now.
DJ Food - One Mans Weird Is Another Mans World - 6th July - SINGLE (Ninja Tune)
http://www.myspace.com/strictlykev
At last, the first EP is here with another two to follow before forming the bulk of an album next Spring, tentativety titled 'Stolen Moments'.
One Man's Weird Is Another Man's World is a 5 Track 12" with over 30 minutes of new music and a poster cover drawn by 2000ad comic artist Henry Flint.
Fink - Sort Of Revolution - 13th July - SINGLE (NInja Tune)
http://www.myspace.com/finkmusic
Fink returns to tantalise your eardrums this Summer (just confirmed for glastonbury and big chill) with lead single and title track from his brand new album, "Sort of Revolution". As if the original wasn't already an effortlessly classy, subtle and moving piece of work, Fink has enlisted label-mate Jason Swinscoe for a rare-as-hen's-teeth Cinematic Orchestra remix. The single, available as a digital only bundle, also includes a genius spaced-out Dub remix from Sideshow, and yet another perfect piece of songwriting, delivery, and production from Fink in exclusive bonus track "Don't Look Down".
Roots Manuva - Do Nah Boddda Mi - 29th June - SINGLE (BIg Dada)
http://www.myspace.com/rootsmanuva
Mr Manuva returns with one of the standout tunes from last year's superb "Slime & Reason." "Do Nah Bodda Mi" was produced by man-of-the-moment Toddla T and, in true Rootical style, Rodney Smith used this bouncy piece of electro-dancehall to tell people to leave him alone! Packing in the hooks in amongst his switchback turns of phrase, it's a superlative performance from an MC absolutely at the top of his game and having all the fun he can squeeze into three minutes of rhythm. And that's before the remixes get going... On "Do Bodda Mi," Wrong Tom takes the original and turns it into classic eighties digi-dub, the spirit on "Sleng Teng" snapping with the lyrics so perfectly it's hard to tell which is the original. Xrabit then turns in another of his dayglo, cartoon-bright productions, a little like Mr Scruff bogling, but less beardy. The package is completed by Red Light's club stomper, a straight-to-the-floor cruncher that's already being caned by the DJs. Roots Manuva himself is currently working on material for his new album as well as liasing with Wrong Tom, whose reggae version-excursions will see the light of day later in the year on the full length Manuva retrospective "Slime & Version".
NEW SIGNING! - Grasscut - High Down - 20th July - SINGLE (Ninja Tune)
http://www.myspace.com/grasscutmusic
"Plying the kind of steam powered imagined futurism that Daedelus does, Grasscut mesh phonographic samples with toy keyboards and Fender Jaguar riffola. It look likes Fuck Buttons on paper. I'm pleased to say it sounds nothing like that" - FACT magazine
Welcome to the world of Grasscut: sweeping melody, epic build, rain, dislocation, glitched-out psych-pastoralism, beauty and beats. Inspired by and continuing the bold tradition of English transcendentalism, this is music that could serve as a contemporary soundtrack to long-lost films by Lindsay Anderson or Powell and Pressburger. Grasscut are Andrew Phillips and Marcus O'Dair. Phillips is an award-winning film and television composer with over one hundred screen credits. O'Dair, whom he met in their hometown of Brighton, is a double bassist, keyboards player and general noisenik. Together, suited and bespectacled, they are a kind of Gilbert and George of electronic music. The pair made their live debut at the Loop Festival (Fourtet, Caribou, Holy Fuck) in August 2008, each armed with a laptop and keyboard - Phillips also on vocals and guitar, O'Dair double bass and stylophone. They have since played audiovisual shows at Tate Britain and The Great Escape and supported the likes of Fujiya & Miyagi, Nathan Fake, Wildbirds & Peacedrums and BLK JKS. Their forthcoming, eponymous debut album is a transcendental journey from the Sussex South Downs of High Down to the Nintendo cathedral of Muppet. Weaving in between the lead vocal are voices from the past and the present, snatched from mobile phones and gramophones - a 1920s tenor, gossiping mums, a Victorian singing poet, a woman reminiscing about post-war rationing. Some have heard in their music traces of composer Gavin Bryars, others Another Green World-era Brian Eno or the "steam-powered futurism" of Daedelus. Yet lead single High Down in many ways most resembles a kind of folk music - an original, unsettling exploration of the beauty, alienation and downright strangeness of contemporary life.
NEW SIGNING! - Ape School - Ape School - 6th July - ALBUM (Counter Records)
http://www.myspace.com/apeschool
A swamp-ape from panhandle Florida, Michael Johnson arrived in Philadelphia to teach music technology at a downtown arts university. There he made a discovery with which he would create the Ape School. Hidden away in a corner of the school was the fourth Moog Modular synthesizer that Robert Moog ever made, forty years earlier in 1965. Michael dusted it off, fixed it up, then set about recording songs which would go far beyond his prior tenures in Kurt Heasley's Lilys and SubPop's Holopaw. Michael used the Modular to weave lush motorik dreamsounds over dynamic instrumentation, topping the results with his distinct croon. Mixed in Jamaican Brooklyn with Michael Pecchio in a bath of reverb, delay, tape echo, smoke, mirrors, orange juice and cayenne pepper, Ape School has finally come together. An album initially intended for release by co-conspirator Alfred "Daedelus" Darlington has found a home at Ninja Tune's Counter Records, upon graduation from Primate U. With a band of student musicians rescued from the confines of musical education, Ape School has opened its doors to limited faculty enrollment. Composed of previous cohorts in Lilys, Holopaw, Human Television, and beyond, the live Ape School incarnation takes one monkey's creations on summer vacation to civilization. Evidently basted nightly.
Xrabit + DMG$ - Love of My Night - 22nd June - SINGLE (Big Dada)
http://www.myspace.com/xrabit
"Love Of My Night" details the traumas and madness of the one-night stand and works less as brag about how Trak Bully and Coool get theirs than as a cautionary tale on the (very funny) dangers of mixing Jaeger and Red Bull. Xrabit once again shows his production smarts by mixing pure booty rhythms with sparkling cascades of synth work. It shows why there's such a buzz around this producer. And, if you really weren't sure, check out his superb, housed up remix of the same tune or his original version of the psychedelic drugs tune, "R We Friends." With some crazed live shows at SXSW and a US tour with 2 Live Crew in the works, Xrabit & DMG$ are finding love wherever they go...
Mr Scruff - Keep It Unreal (10th Anniversary edition) - 6th July - ALBUM REISSUE (NInja Tune)
http://www.myspace.com/mrscruffofficial
The 200,000 selling + album that launched Scruff into the world is being reissued with 6 bonus tracks from the same sessions, look out for an exciting invite only show!
The Heavy - Sixteen - SINGLE - 13th July (Counter Records)
http://www.myspace.com/theheavy73
The Heavy follow up the garage-band madness of "Oh No! Not You Again!" with pure vintage voodoo soul . "Sixteen" asks the question: how much can you learn in sixteen years? The answer is, a hell of a lot, but none of it good. Produced by Jim Abbiss (best known for his work with the Arctic Monkeys), "Sixteen" sees Swaby offering up a soaring soul vocal over a beat that swoops and bumps along just right. Over on the B side, exclusive track "No Time" is raw and swampy one minute, all breaks and brass riffs the next. All in all, another spine-tingling package from one of the most exciting bands in the UK just now, "Sixteen" is taken from The Heavy's forthcoming second album, "The House That Dirt Built". With a growing rep in the States, festival dates lined up for the summer and a huge tour to support the album this autumn, the Heavy just may have been spending a little quality time with the Lord of Darkness themselves.
NEW SIGNING! - Cougar - Patriot - 24th August - ALBUM (Counter Records)
http://www.myspace.com/cougarsound
Conceived in Madison, Wisconsin, Cougar's instrumental arrangements fall somewhere between Four Tet, Fugazi, and Nick Drake's guitar work, albeit optimistic as opposed to morose. The band's singular sound is rooted in a keen sensibility of form and texture, more in line with sample-based music and modern classical than indie rock - which isn't to say this is rock-as-academia - Cougar also invoke the roaring riff monster, the fist-in-the-air, anthemic head-banger to which so many groups give only an ironic nod. Cougar's second album, the forthcoming "Patriot," is an aggressive, narrative affair that sees the band reach even greater extremes than on their debut, "Law." The epic, sparkling counterpoint of the first record crops up, but "Patriot" firmly establishes itself as a different music, one that shreds the lines between electronic, rock and modern, but never forgets to pay allegiance to the hook. From the nuanced drive of opener "Stay Famous". Extensive touring supported the group's debut album, "Law" (mixed with John McEntire of Tortoise), which made numerous Best of 2007 lists in the USA. Live dates in the States and abroad included stints with U.N.K.L.E., Maximo Park, Art Brut and more. Paul Smith of Maximo Park (in calling "Law" his favorite release of 2007) is on record as an admirer of their "unique blend of beautiful instrumental melodies and propulsive rhythms, both organic and electronic," which sums up this unique group's unique appeal about as well as anything.
Juice Aleem - Jerusalaam Come - 3rd August - ALBUM (Big Dada)
http://www.myspace.com/jerusalaam
Juice Aleem, long-acknowledged as one of the finest MCs the UK has ever produced, finally goes solo. The sometime New Flesh and Gamma frontman who has also worked with Coldcut, Hextstatic, Evil 9 and Adam Freedland amongst many, many others, has decided that at last it's time to go for self. "Jerusalaam Come" is the result - thirteen tracks of varied beats and broad musical influences held together by Juice's unique lyrical style and mental dexterity. Largely produced by Gamma/Shadowless legend Blackitude, it's an album which is both as raw and as sophisticated as the minds who have made it. There's no pretence with Juice Aleem - the working title of this album "This Is Not For Everyone". If you're not interested in lyrical intelligence, in hip hop, in MCs with something to say, in Blackitude's skank-funk, in ragged intellect, in ideas, in difference, in coming correct, then you may as well give it a miss. It's an over-used phrase, but in terms of what hip hop is supposed to be about, Juice Aleem is the real deal. If you prefer the fake deal, the trendy bullshit, constant novelty without substance, then turn off now.
DJ Food - One Mans Weird Is Another Mans World - 6th July - SINGLE (Ninja Tune)
http://www.myspace.com/strictlykev
At last, the first EP is here with another two to follow before forming the bulk of an album next Spring, tentativety titled 'Stolen Moments'.
One Man's Weird Is Another Man's World is a 5 Track 12" with over 30 minutes of new music and a poster cover drawn by 2000ad comic artist Henry Flint.
Fink - Sort Of Revolution - 13th July - SINGLE (NInja Tune)
http://www.myspace.com/finkmusic
Fink returns to tantalise your eardrums this Summer (just confirmed for glastonbury and big chill) with lead single and title track from his brand new album, "Sort of Revolution". As if the original wasn't already an effortlessly classy, subtle and moving piece of work, Fink has enlisted label-mate Jason Swinscoe for a rare-as-hen's-teeth Cinematic Orchestra remix. The single, available as a digital only bundle, also includes a genius spaced-out Dub remix from Sideshow, and yet another perfect piece of songwriting, delivery, and production from Fink in exclusive bonus track "Don't Look Down".
Roots Manuva - Do Nah Boddda Mi - 29th June - SINGLE (BIg Dada)
http://www.myspace.com/rootsmanuva
Mr Manuva returns with one of the standout tunes from last year's superb "Slime & Reason." "Do Nah Bodda Mi" was produced by man-of-the-moment Toddla T and, in true Rootical style, Rodney Smith used this bouncy piece of electro-dancehall to tell people to leave him alone! Packing in the hooks in amongst his switchback turns of phrase, it's a superlative performance from an MC absolutely at the top of his game and having all the fun he can squeeze into three minutes of rhythm. And that's before the remixes get going... On "Do Bodda Mi," Wrong Tom takes the original and turns it into classic eighties digi-dub, the spirit on "Sleng Teng" snapping with the lyrics so perfectly it's hard to tell which is the original. Xrabit then turns in another of his dayglo, cartoon-bright productions, a little like Mr Scruff bogling, but less beardy. The package is completed by Red Light's club stomper, a straight-to-the-floor cruncher that's already being caned by the DJs. Roots Manuva himself is currently working on material for his new album as well as liasing with Wrong Tom, whose reggae version-excursions will see the light of day later in the year on the full length Manuva retrospective "Slime & Version".
NEW SIGNING! - Grasscut - High Down - 20th July - SINGLE (Ninja Tune)
http://www.myspace.com/grasscutmusic
"Plying the kind of steam powered imagined futurism that Daedelus does, Grasscut mesh phonographic samples with toy keyboards and Fender Jaguar riffola. It look likes Fuck Buttons on paper. I'm pleased to say it sounds nothing like that" - FACT magazine
Welcome to the world of Grasscut: sweeping melody, epic build, rain, dislocation, glitched-out psych-pastoralism, beauty and beats. Inspired by and continuing the bold tradition of English transcendentalism, this is music that could serve as a contemporary soundtrack to long-lost films by Lindsay Anderson or Powell and Pressburger. Grasscut are Andrew Phillips and Marcus O'Dair. Phillips is an award-winning film and television composer with over one hundred screen credits. O'Dair, whom he met in their hometown of Brighton, is a double bassist, keyboards player and general noisenik. Together, suited and bespectacled, they are a kind of Gilbert and George of electronic music. The pair made their live debut at the Loop Festival (Fourtet, Caribou, Holy Fuck) in August 2008, each armed with a laptop and keyboard - Phillips also on vocals and guitar, O'Dair double bass and stylophone. They have since played audiovisual shows at Tate Britain and The Great Escape and supported the likes of Fujiya & Miyagi, Nathan Fake, Wildbirds & Peacedrums and BLK JKS. Their forthcoming, eponymous debut album is a transcendental journey from the Sussex South Downs of High Down to the Nintendo cathedral of Muppet. Weaving in between the lead vocal are voices from the past and the present, snatched from mobile phones and gramophones - a 1920s tenor, gossiping mums, a Victorian singing poet, a woman reminiscing about post-war rationing. Some have heard in their music traces of composer Gavin Bryars, others Another Green World-era Brian Eno or the "steam-powered futurism" of Daedelus. Yet lead single High Down in many ways most resembles a kind of folk music - an original, unsettling exploration of the beauty, alienation and downright strangeness of contemporary life.
NEW SIGNING! - Ape School - Ape School - 6th July - ALBUM (Counter Records)
http://www.myspace.com/apeschool
A swamp-ape from panhandle Florida, Michael Johnson arrived in Philadelphia to teach music technology at a downtown arts university. There he made a discovery with which he would create the Ape School. Hidden away in a corner of the school was the fourth Moog Modular synthesizer that Robert Moog ever made, forty years earlier in 1965. Michael dusted it off, fixed it up, then set about recording songs which would go far beyond his prior tenures in Kurt Heasley's Lilys and SubPop's Holopaw. Michael used the Modular to weave lush motorik dreamsounds over dynamic instrumentation, topping the results with his distinct croon. Mixed in Jamaican Brooklyn with Michael Pecchio in a bath of reverb, delay, tape echo, smoke, mirrors, orange juice and cayenne pepper, Ape School has finally come together. An album initially intended for release by co-conspirator Alfred "Daedelus" Darlington has found a home at Ninja Tune's Counter Records, upon graduation from Primate U. With a band of student musicians rescued from the confines of musical education, Ape School has opened its doors to limited faculty enrollment. Composed of previous cohorts in Lilys, Holopaw, Human Television, and beyond, the live Ape School incarnation takes one monkey's creations on summer vacation to civilization. Evidently basted nightly.
Xrabit + DMG$ - Love of My Night - 22nd June - SINGLE (Big Dada)
http://www.myspace.com/xrabit
"Love Of My Night" details the traumas and madness of the one-night stand and works less as brag about how Trak Bully and Coool get theirs than as a cautionary tale on the (very funny) dangers of mixing Jaeger and Red Bull. Xrabit once again shows his production smarts by mixing pure booty rhythms with sparkling cascades of synth work. It shows why there's such a buzz around this producer. And, if you really weren't sure, check out his superb, housed up remix of the same tune or his original version of the psychedelic drugs tune, "R We Friends." With some crazed live shows at SXSW and a US tour with 2 Live Crew in the works, Xrabit & DMG$ are finding love wherever they go...
Mr Scruff - Keep It Unreal (10th Anniversary edition) - 6th July - ALBUM REISSUE (NInja Tune)
http://www.myspace.com/mrscruffofficial
The 200,000 selling + album that launched Scruff into the world is being reissued with 6 bonus tracks from the same sessions, look out for an exciting invite only show!
