2012
2012 News Items
2012 News Items
19/20.11.12 Doug Murphy & Paul Hamilton popped into Westbourne Rehearsals Studios (where they made Only Two Can Play way back in the halcyon days of 2011) and made up some new songs.
This time they’re singing about camels bumping into one another, pigeons having a bath, incompatible fish, God as a fly, pink knickers, scrotal pimples… So: The usual rock’n’roll stuff’n’nonsense that everybody else is shrieking about, then.
7.10.12 Bisonics Rooz Tavakoli’s film of ‘Salmon Pink Raincoat’ (from Bisonics’ ‘Seconds’ album) reveals itself in HD splendour on both Vimeo [Vimeo.com] and YouTube [YouTube]. Praise higher than God’s stovepipe hat to Kate Quinton and Graham Cawte for their excellent performances.
1.10.12 G.T. Thomas Two-way endorsement frenzy abounds as Gwen provides the vocal for a coffee commercial [YouTube.com] and none other than Van Dyke Parks waves the flag and hoots the vuvuzela for Gwen’s ‘Luckless Pedestrian Years’ CD. To quoth the Zelig of popular song, “We carry G.T. Thomas’ album in our car, to reduce road rage in L.A. It’s a great intro into her subtlety and power as an arranger/songwriter and orchestrator. Check it out!”
17.9.12 Jazz Cattle Their debut farewell album ‘Relaxing At Gunpoint’ – nine new songs plus a remix of their 2010 release ‘Fuck Cops’ – is available for all your jiving needs at our shop in CD format and as a download on bandcamp [http://bisonics.bandcamp.com/album/relaxing-at-gunpoint]. For purchasers of the CD, there is also ‘Kolibri’, a free limited edition CD album of the original demos. The demos – markedly dissimilar from the finished songs – will not be released on the internet.
11.9.12 Horrible Head ‘The Natural State (No Time For Nerves)’ [http://vimeo.com/49276396] is a 20-minute film wherein the Horribles’ guitarist and drummer meet up in Little Rock, Arkansas to smash through a leper’s handful of songs for the first time in 26 years. The original recordings of ‘Sinking Slowly’, ‘I’m A Loser’ and ‘They Don’t Need Me’ are included on the Horrible Head CD ‘The Gloom Of Youth’ but uncollected song ‘Not Your Property’ is a completely rewritten and arranged take on the Pope/Hamilton 1985 composition.
1.9.12 The staff of Smoking Ant Records, absolutely tuckered out from avoiding the London Olympics, are swanning off for a short holiday. To keep a smile on your kite and a twinkle in your toes, we have produced a few jolly music films for you:
- G.T. Thomas performs a solo rendition of ‘Far’ from her ‘Luckless Pedestrian Years’ album here [http://vimeo.com/47621285].
- A film for ‘Sore Thumb Parade’, from Bisonics‘ ‘Seconds’, can be squinted at on YouTube here [YouTube ] or in non-compressed High Definition glory on vimeo here [https://vimeo.com/48217026].
- There’s a pretty basic promo for Jazz Cattle‘s ‘British Empire State’ here [YouTube]
- and a big budget (£100) film for Jazz Cattle‘s ‘Let Me Paint A Picture For You’ here [http://vimeo.com/47442418].
23.7.12 Bisonics, Horrible Head, Reticents, Loudsneakers and Doug & Paul all feature on Billy Snyder’s London Olympics-themed radio show on the OKIBOKI Pirate Radio Station [http://okiboki.com/]. This programme will be available to hear online for the next couple of weeks. Tune in and discover who was ‘The James Bond of British garage rock’! In honour of Billy S – the OK Blokey of OKIBOKI – this label will be getting together a team of our most enthusiastic drinkers to enter the Paralytics 500 Litres High Gurgling. Bring it up!
16.7.12. Jazz Cattle. At last, their album is finished! Let children glow on hill-tops, let bonfires dance in the streets. Mastered by Jason Emberton, using Slate Digital’s Virtual Tapes Machine plug-in designed by Fabrice Gabriel (all you tech-fetishists out there are drooling already), the ten-track set has an almost-definite title of ‘Relaxing At Gunpoint’ and is aiming for a September release.
10.7.12. Bisonics. Doug Murphy, fret-throttler of this parish and local Bobby to the gentry, rejoins his native Norwegian band Keeper for their seasonal shoutalong single ‘Summer Again’ (YouTube).
14.6.12 Bisonics With words and phrases such as ‘nausea’, ‘pornographic fascism’. ‘paranoid worldview’, ‘inviolable’ and ‘over-reaching pretentiousness’, Rumours Of Peace [http://rumourspeace.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/odds-sods-dark-but-brilliant.html] have reviewed ‘Seconds’ and Doug & Paul’s ‘Only Two Can Play’ albums in a manner that could almost make you believe that music matters.
22.05.12 G.T. Thomas Pop along here [http://soundcloud.com/radiomeisjes-2/radiomeisjes-uitzending-5] and scroll along to 34m20s for a brief gibber-jabber with Gwen and a gaggle of Dutch DJs, one of whom sounds remarkably like Bruno (the Sacha Baron Cohen character). At the 40 minute mark there’s a live solo rendition of ‘North Star’. Shoopershtar!
20.05.12 Reticents Their farewell/get-off-and-good-riddance release, the ‘I Want One Too’ E.P. (2010), is now available to be ignored and shunned en masse on bandcamp [http://bisonics.bandcamp.com/album/i-want-one-too-e-p]. Along with new graphics supplied by ex-Horrible Head twangsmith Dave Pope, the original four-song release has been bolstered by their 11-second tribute-cum-jingle to DJ Marko Fontaine, whose tireless championing of the band on his WCNS and WECS radio programme Marko’s Punk Rock Jukebox has put them where they are today – in penury.
Sashay along to here for the background poop about the making of this landmine recording.
17.05.12 Jazz Cattle Twitches of life were detected at Westbourne Rehearsal Studios in West London when vocal tracks to ‘Wonderworld’, ‘Waves Of Words’ and ‘Let Me Paint A Picture For You’ were thrillingly re-mumbled.
27.03.12 Doug Murphy & Paul Hamilton Two songs from their ‘Only Two Can Play’ album have been used to soundtrack film student Roozbeh Tavakoli’s short ‘Dealer’s Waiting Room’.
13.2.12 This YouTube stuff is all well and good up to a point but, if you want to watch films without having your retinas raped, you’d be well advised to wander around vimeo.com (he says, surreptitiously receiving a back-hander). We’re currently in the process of slinging our better filmic efforts up on http://vimeo.com/smokingant/videos
10.3.12 Jazz Cattle Better Lactate Than Never: Their album is being milked, pasteurised, creamed and homogenised THIS VERY SECOND. Gold! Top!
5.3.12. Bisonics Their 15-song monsterpiece ‘Seconds’ is now available as a download album at http://bisonics.bandcamp.com/album/seconds. Audioheads need not flinch and cower at the thought of this version being some weedy, tinny, 9000th-rate mp3 rubbish. We have used the full-strength AIFF master files, and we recommend you buy the FLAC version (at no extra cost) for a better class of headache.
Unfortunately, due to the bandcamp website’s restrictions on graphics, we couldn’t include Stephanie Johnson’s excellent CD booklet of images without merciless cropping. We didn’t want to see her works butchered so, as a compromise, the download version of ‘Seconds’ has a replacement set of illustrations doodled by Paul Hamilton.
1.3.12. Reticents Their tribute to British broadcasting legend and self-proclaimed ‘World’s Most Boring Man’ John Peel is there to hear and see on YouTube (YouTube). One suspects they are trying to honour the ‘Exquisitely Dull’ one in the aptest way possible with the World’s Most Boring Video.
29.2.12. G.T. Thomas Fittingly, perhaps, it was on this Leap Year day that had us leaping in the air when we learnt that Danny Baker had been playing a couple of La Thomas’ songs on his BBC London 94.9 FM show. ‘Food For Thought’ (YouTube) was on the menu of his 17.2.12 broadcast, and ‘North Star’ (YouTube) was found brightening his show of 28.2.12.
19.2.12. Loudsneakers A mere 18 months after the release of their debut album, Loudsneakers burst into action with a video for its opening song Me And The Moon (YouTube). Filmed at Tate Britain, singer Sean meanders round the exhibits and has his tower of boxes knocked over – not once, but twice – by fledgling art lovers.
25.1.12. A belated ‘Happy New Year’ for 2012 from all of us here, and an extremely premature ‘Happy New Year’ for 2013. Bisonics have been titting about with their cameras again and putting together some videos for some songs from their ‘Seconds’ album.
Shark [ YouTube ] uses Stephanie Johnson’s artwork from the album’s booklet, whilst Soft Afternoons [ YouTube ] was made with the help of London art scene’s maverick Harry Pye, for which a prolonged outbreak of curtseys.
Five Little Monkeys [ YouTube ] features Hamilton’s nieces Megan and Emily, plus nephew Shaun, going bananas.
My Drugly Past (Part 2) [ YouTube ] features appearances by all three Bisonics. Woooo!
Plans are afoot to make an extended film about ‘Seconds’. Rest assured, it won’t be a clip’n’quip effort like those yawnful TV arts documentaries – if it gets made at all…
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