Monorail Music - Optimo album of the month, March 2011 
Nialler9 ‘Top 30 Irish Albums of 2010’ - #15
Stranded ‘Top Irish Albums and Songs of 2010’ - #1
Electric Whipcrack ‘Top 20 Irish albums 2010’ - #5
Human Pleasure Radio Show ‘Best Releases of 2010’ - link

’New Thoughts is a receptacle for all sorts of musical history, from 1960s psych to taut post-punk and elemental disco and funk, yet never succumbs to any one ideal enough to derail this singular expedition.’ - Irish Times (4/5)
‘Thread Pulls are the reformed, rationalised, efficient rock-making machine of the future.’ - Hot Press (4/5)
‘at their core lies an urgent, tribal drumbeat which at once saves them from the encroaching claws of oppressive melancholia and takes them to the rhythmic heights of proto-disco’
Clash Magazine (8/10)
‘It takes a lot of invention to make a setup like this work across the full duration of an album, but the angsty minimalism Thread Pulls summon up is more than up to the task’ - Boomkat
‘Heavy on percussion, the group have honed their rhythmic edge into a surgical knife…a very lean and focused album…they are obviously riding on the crest of a wave of inspiration.’ - Brainwashed
‘Thread Pulls are the perfect soundtrack to driving around broken down industrial areas of Northern cities late at night, they recall some of the greatest bands to walk this sodden earth, apart from the afore-mentioned Liars and Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, PIL, Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division, ESG, DAF all spring to mind at various points’ - Norman Records
‘like This Heat rearranging their Twilight Furniture for some spirit dancing.’ - 20 Jazz Funk Greats
'Thread Pulls hew a hypnotic rock gem from a spartan foundation of drums, bass, &amp; arabesque synth flourishes’ - Altered Zones
‘Thread Pulls swallow almost nothing, swallows it raw, and makes it sound like a full plate.’ - Visitation Rites
‘Imagine a ghostly echo of the Gang of Four’s ‘Entertainment’ with all the guitars removed, with a touch of Joy Division’s most funereal bass’ - Resident (record of the week)
‘this truly amazing twopiece! Basically with bass and drums, but also using synthesizer and trumpet, THREAD PULLS produce highly rhythmical Post-Punk with a minimalistic approach, but at the same time multi-facetted!’ - X-mist
’this tight, pounding record twists and turns as they egg each other on and add more concentration lines to their foreheads.’ - RTE ten (4/5)
‘threadpulls is great to knit along to’ - Laura Ajmes
’The prime cuts include How To Talk, No Sound, HhYy and Starts/Ends, but it all makes for exhilarating, chilling listening. Just wait until it gets under your skin.’ - Sunday Business Post (4/5)
‘This is music in thrall to the idea of rhythm. Lead guitars? No chance; they’d be a flourish too far on an album that snakes through a poisoned undergrowth of drum, bass, and occasional chopped-up fragments of trumpet and synthesiser.’ - AU (8/10)
‘the perfect entry point to one of Dublin’s most consistently fascinating bands’ - Totally Dublin (4/5)
‘the impressive final section that sees the duo nail their sound into three slices of near perfection that culminates in the most vibrant track on the record; ‘No Sound’. It’s an outstanding end to an excellent album.’ - State.ie (4/5)
‘loaded with hooks, choruses and melodies, a claim which can rarely be made of an Irish artrock record. New Thoughts is frequently a stunner.’ - Metro Herald (4/5)
’You sense that time has allowed a great deal of thought to go into New Thoughts, of what to take out, how little can been left, not what else can be added. Hopefully New Thoughts will open a faster revolving door for Thread Pulls.’ - Sonic Masala
’This is a record with real surprises, and moments of narcotic mesmerism. Rush out to buy this record, because it’s one of the best releases of the year.’ - Their Bated Breath
‘so sharp and right it’s 90° with just enough of a wave between those points to add a little mystery.’ - Harmless Noise (8/10)
’The awesome Kraut-rockish Thread Pulls have followed fellow Dubliners Twinkranes in releasing a stonking debut album.’ - Cork Independent
’’the sense of rigorous control in their sound has been the most compelling thing for me, and it’s taut and driving here throughout, though the result is very full and it manages not to be difficult listening despite being distant and at times a little sinister.’ - Handsome Young Stranger
’New Thoughts is certainly an excellent record, its pounding percussion and sinister basslines creating hypnotic patterns.’
Electric Whipcrack link
‘The sound is warm, the sound is bass-heavy and booming, the sound is big, inviting, intriguing, a futurist post-punk primal stomp.’ - The Organ link
‘New Thoughts is consistently dark, lending a ghostly atmosphere to proceedings…People say ‘less is more’ and that’s certainly the case with Thread Pulls, feeding their very distinctive sound.’ - We are noise link



New thoughts

A selection of mastering projects mastered at Analog Heart by Stephen Quinn

Mastered @ Analogheart

Taken from the EP, These Thoughts Are Like Mandatory Chores, out Sept 18th (Fat Possum - US, Magniph - Japan, Tough Love - R.O.W)

Pre-order EP
iTunes - http://smarturl.it/yung.itunes
EU 12" (green vinyl) -  http://smarturl.it/Yung.ToughLove12 
US 12" - http://smarturl.it/yung.fp

https://www.facebook.com/yungbandstuff
http://yungbandstuff.com/


Blue Uniforms

'Car Crash' is the second song from CYMBALS second album, Light In Your Mind, released on 25th August. Available on CD, black vinyl, cream vinyl for indie stores only and a very limited yellow vinyl pressing with a fanzine which is only available through the Tough Love shop.

Pre-order Light In Your Mind
http://radi.al/LightInYourMind

CYMBALS live
31st August - Thousand Island, London - tickets -http://rockfeedback.seetickets.com/event/cymbals/thousand-island/1123474

Light In Your Mind - MP3

CYMBALS - Car Crash

Taken from the album, Stains on Silence, out 15th June on Tough Love. Pre-order here -  http://smarturl.it/StainsOnSilence

Formats:
LP  - black vinyl, with cream sleeve
LPX - orange vinyl, with black sleeve (indie stores-only - 300 copies)
LPXX - ultra clear vinyl, with black sleeve, poster and hand-numbered (Bandcamp only - 200 copies)
CD & digital

Biog

It stands to reason that many vital albums come critically close to never being made. The eight-track upshot of doubt, upheaval and financial strain, Stains on Silence by Girls Names is one such release.

Following 2015’s blitzing Arms Around a Vision, and the parting of drummer Gib Cassidy just over a year later, the Belfast band suddenly found themselves facing down a looming void. “There was a finished – and then aborted – mix of the album, which was shelved for six months,” reveals Girls Names frontman Cathal Cully. “We then took a break from all music and went back to full-time work. We chilled out from the stress of rushing the record and not being happy with it, as well as being skint with no impending touring on the cards and constantly having to worry about rent.”

The stumbling blocks that proved a strain became the album’s defining breakthrough. Recorded in various locations including Belfast’s Start Together Studio with Ben McAuley, Cully’s home and the band’s practice space, spontaneous creation, cut-up techniques and self-editing took centre-stage for the first time. "We started tearing the material apart and rebuilding, re-editing and re-recording different parts in my home in early Autumn last year,” says Cully. “When we got them to a place we were happier with we went back into Start Together Studio with Ben McAuley to finalise the mixes to what they are now."

Where AAAV proved a brazen statement of intent, Stains on Silence bounds forth as its feature-length comedown. What could have seen the band buckle became an opportunity for approaching things tabula rasa. During its two-year transmutation, Cully, bassist Claire Miskimmin and guitarist Philip Quinn had a single aim for their fourth album: to make an old-fashioned record clocking in around 30 to 35 minutes in length that made the listener reach straight for repeat. From the Bang Bang bar-summoning swoon of opener '25’ and the submerged disco doom of ‘Haus Proud’ to the rapt, dub-leaning ‘Fragments of a Portrait’, Girls Names have excelled in their goal by forging an LP of synchronous nuance and defiance.

Marked by the presence of drum machines and programming throughout, these eight masterfully-woven tales are once again commandeered by founder Cully, whose words, understated yet defiant, mine purpose and meaning from the mire ("I want to bathe again, I want to swim again / In a pool of twisting bodies, blackened gold." — ‘25’). But while Stains on Silence came critically close to never being made, having lived with it, reconfigured it, and guided its metamorphosis from flickers of inspiration and half-formed schemes, it’s both a statement of pure perseverance, and a head-on confrontation with ambivalence that couldn’t be more assured. (Brian Coney, March 2018)

https://www.facebook.com/GirlsNames
https://twitter.com/Girls_Names
https://www.instagram.com/girls_names/
https://girlsnamesbelfast.bandcamp.com

Girls Names - 25

Taken from the debut album, Sentimental, out 26th October 2018 on LP, CD and digital formats. Pre-order on limited edition green vinyl here - http://smarturl.it/ValueVoidLP  

Follow Value Void
Bandcamp - https://valuevoid.bandcamp.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Value-Void-1663713310348708/

Biography
London trio Value Void are an offbeat proposition. A sui generis bolt from nowhere, their debut album Sentimental (due out in October on Tough Love) is a collection of luxuriantly deep, shag pile-warm, analogue proto-punk. Paz Maddio and Marta Zabala grew up with each other in Azul, a small town south of Buenos Aires, where the seeds of this project were sown. They collaborate in the same way that Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote songs, with Marta penning lyrics then taking them to Paz to spin them in to music. 

Marta first came to London on tour with the super-slanted art punks Los Cripis, where she met Luke Tristram (of Cop, Score and Owner) who released their record via his Unwork label. Paz followed to join them and scrape rent from the city's bars and cafes.  

By early 2017 the three of them were holed up in practice rooms, Luke adding Evens-esque basslines that laid concrete to their minimalist guitar-lead pop songs. Originally as WVS, they started playing shows with bands that had once orbited the tiny Power Lunches venue in Hackney and, since its death, were now to be found on bills at DIY Space, New River Studios and other dusty successors of its autonomous, cheap drink, creative-friendly spirit. In common with bands like Shopping, rudimentary surroundings and resources fed into nonetheless ambitious, hooky work. Songs such as “Teen For Him,” a self-effacing lark importing strains of Leslie Gore and the Velvets; the minimal, Guided by Voices-reminiscent chug of “Bariloche” and “Cupids Bow,” an up tempo, Breeders-esque standout, were lynch pins of a pummeling, inspired set.

In April of that year, they recorded with Euan Hinshelwood of Young Husband at the studio TVT, in an overlooked corner the other side of Blackheath, tucked under giant knots of flyover on the way to Charlton in South East London.

The intention was casual but the results, seven dazzlingly assured songs nailed in a couple of days, sucked attention from several quarters as they skipped between hard drives. They secured a tour with Frankie Cosmos and signed to London label Tough Love, who released the single “Back In The Day” in May 2018.

Upon deciding to flesh the songs out for a full length, they returned to TVT studios with Euan in April this year, tweaking the mix and laying down two new songs: “Mind,” a down tempo lullaby/lament in which the band track into the territory of early St. Vincent, Grouper or Julianna Barwick, supported by a raw dirge that blossoms in feedback, and “The Deluge,” which is also reflective but structured by a roaming curiosity and big chorus seeking road movie oblivion. 

The album is instantly affecting, with an ease and clarity that suits the elegance of the lyrics: coded love songs and cool reflections on life which are all the more vulnerable and touching sung in Paz Maddio's lilting, ultrachromatic voice - a ceramic-sharp diagonal transatlantic on a pure open tone, with subtle waves of vibrato at its top end. It's a particular heart breaker on tracks such as “Babeland” and “Dead Ladies Lament”.

Restricted to a palette of drums, bass, guitar and double tracked vocals caught on 2" tape, coloured here and there with a daub of feedback or a passage of ground-shifting tape delay, this is the sort of thing that gets called “stripped back”. It speaks to the powerful understatement at the heart of their style, but it fails to capture the crafty, delicate, taught and spaced-out ride Value Void subject you to: a species of NY proto-punk and Californian post-hardcore born miraculously from London's piss swilling street level like religious icons in toast.

Sink and swim

thread pulls