Name: Saturn by GHUM
Duration: 3 min 52 s
Description: Out on 28th June on Everything Sucks Music.

Following on from their great EP on Woodsist and a summer of packed shows and increasing anticipation, we are very proud to bring you "Alight of Night," an album that more than delivers on the promise of their early singles. So what's it like, you ask? There is a definite flavor of Velvet Underground to be had, but Crystal Stilts' spectral avant-garage also takes in such far-flung references as: the spooked 60s Texas psych of 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola, the gothic blues/punk howl of Gun Club, the dark, experimental DIYism of early Flying Nun/Xpressway groups Pin Group and Plagal Grind, and a post-punk minimalism that brings to mind early Rough Trade and Factory releases. There is definitely a strong pop element as well, with the buzzsaw bubblegum of early Mary Chain b-sides and Meat Whiplash coming to mind.

These are all just rough points of reference, though -- "Alight of Night" is far more than just the sum of the bands influences. From the twang 'n' echo of "Crystal Stilts" to the primal pop stomp of "Prismatic Room" and the lovely jangle of "Shattered Shine," the band always adds something extra and unique to the mix, whether it's a fleeting dash of harmonica, a hypnotic organ line or just an amazing guitar sound. There is a unity of purpose at work here, a special mood conjured by the sounds, production and sequence of songs that lifts this album into the realm of the classics, and reveals new twists and turns on each listen.

Like all great albums, every piece just sits in exactly the right place, each song builds on the last and by the end you couldn't imagine changing anything about it at all. Eerily familiar but totally now, "Alight of Night" is a brilliantly haunting slice of rock primitivism.

Crystal Stilts - Departure

order: fatpossum.com/products/candy-mountain-7/

(10/14 US & 10/13 UK) - Fat Possum - Katie Monks and Liz Ball started Dilly Dally in 2010 while living in a cockroach-infested apartment near Toronto’s Kensington Market. The two shared a love for dreamy guitars, weed, and karaoke. Turning to good friends Corey Marshall (drums) and Michael Guiliani (bass), the four piece spent the next 3 years playing any bar or basement with a P.A., building a solid fan-base in Toronto and sharing the stage with notable bands such as Born Ruffians and Tokyo Police Club.

By 2014 the band had recorded their first full length record with producers Leon Taheny (Owen Pallett, Austra, Dusted) and Josh Korody (Fucked Up, Beliefs, Greys) at Candle Studios in Toronto, capturing a collection of songs that had been written over the course of three years. Now Dilly Dally is delving deeper into a heavier grunge/ pop aesthetic. In four words: Dilly Dally is pumped.


Dilly Dally - Candy Mountain

Side A on the new tour single for Makthaverskan. Out digitally now!

Out on 7" March 3rd in Scandinavia, April 18th in the US. 

Makthaverskan - Witness

Track taken from Gold Class' debut album. 

https://www.facebook.com/goldclassmusic

Gold Class - Life As A Gun

Matter of Choice

Only Human

The Underground Youth - Alice

"Shake The Shackles" is Crystal Stilts' first release since "Love Is A Wave" and is a great snapshot of where the band is now and a taster for their forthcoming second album, due early 2011. Driven by echoed guitar strum and droning keys, it's a dexterous update of 60s garage pop that places it alongside late 80s Paisley Underground heroes like Green On Red and later Dream Syndicate, but the song itself is totally timeless, and impossible to place anywhere but firmly in Crystal Stilts' own unique style.

Crystal Stilts - Shake the Shackles

Out on 28th June on Everything Sucks Music.

The Coldest Fire

Saturn

Belfast-based four-piece Girls Names are a singular proposition, both geographically and psychically removed from their contemporaries at home and abroad. Released in February 2013, their second album 'The New Life' is the sound of a band on the fringes striving to forge their own path, purposefully out of step - and time - with their surroundings. Weighed heavy with the grey landscapes of their hometown, 'The New Life' is isolation laid bare, shot through with an undeterred sense of purpose and individuality.

Having released a series of singles and EPs on various independent labels, Girls Names made their first significant impression on the wider world in 2011 with their debut album, 'Dead To Me,' earning plaudits from the likes of Pitchfork, NME and Loud & Quiet amongst a host of others. And yet, despite all the praise heaped on it, as soon as that record was released Girls Names were already moving into a different headspace. 

The band’s performance at this year Primavera festival provided them with their first real opportunity to showcase the songs that were to comprise 'The New Life.' The sunshine backdrop of the Spanish coastline offered a somewhat incongruous setting to the eerie dissonance of the new material, a kind of trial by fire metamorphosis rapturously received. Following a tour of Europe, the band returned home to record the album over a series of months. Having been produced by singer and songwriter, Cathal Cully, they’ve managed to capture that sense of otherness the performances at Primavera hinted at. The expansion to a four piece means the garage-clatter of the spritely pop songs of their debut have been replaced by a deeper, shadowy exercise in catharsis, driven by repetition, psychedelia and Dionysian crisis. And the record was born of a weighty concept too, as Cully explains: 

“'The New Life' is not an over night change for Girls Names - just over two years in fact. 'Dead to Me' literally was dead to us by the time it was committed to wax. But it's a learning curve. We started moving on as artists the moment we finished that recording session, maybe even before. Not to dwell on the past, 'The New Life' is what happens when you reset everything back to zero and start again, but try to perfect. It starts back at zero the minute the needle hits the groove but we're also starting back from zero once the needle lifts at the end of the record. Ad infinitum. 'The New Life' is what follows now.”

The album’s title track, and the first single to be taken from the album, is an ideal entry point. Just shy of 8 minutes long, it rotates around a hypnotic bass line, and in Cully’s evocation of renaissance, offers a perfect metaphor for the album as a whole. New single ‘Hypnotic Regression’ - available to stream today - reflects another side to the record. The reverb-heavy guitars and compelling melody are immediately memorable, but there are signs of experimentation, too; the white squall of the lead break; the uneasiness in the vocal echoes that furnish the verses. As such, 'The New Life,' stands as a brave statement; the mark of the band untying themselves from the past and easing forth into the unknown.

"The New Life" will be released on February 18th, 2013 on Tough Love (UK) and February 26th, 2013 on Slumberland Records (US).


Saturn

GHUM

Recent comments

Денис Саленко

Jorge Eduardo Berríos

WABI SABI

But Matthew

Related tracks