I don’t really ‘get’ Halloween, so fortunately this weekend keeping me out of trouble was Brainwash Festival IV, posing one of the most exciting festival bills seen anywhere going - with some in the holiday spirit and others not so much. Plus, since this is literally right on my doorstep, I might add, it would have been incredibly rude not to. A couple of my personal highlights, I give you then.
Firstly, I’m very glad I made the decision to hop on down early on Saturday as to catch The Old Romantic Killer Band playing a blinder in Royal Park Cellars. They describe them as a blues band first and foremost, with added punk and folk extracts. They’re rad.
Watch: The Old Romantic Killer Band - ‘Lovers Pass’
Moving over to the Sunday, where a gaggle talented acts were taking over a couple of intimate stages dotted around the Leeds University Union. One said act were Leeds post-rock fivesome Vessels, who were simply staggering in their set both in terms of sound and visuals.
Watch: Vessels - ‘A Hundred Times In Every Direction’
The Van Pelt saga began in the basement of a New York University dorm room, sometime during 1993. The end product was two LPs, ‘Stealing From Our Favourite Thieves’ and ‘Sultans Of Sentiment’ in 1996 and 1997 respectively. The latter of which, I’ve frankly not been able to turn off over recent weeks.
Sadly now defunct and, discarding two US reunion shows earlier this year, have been since ‘97, the four piece played an intricate blend of indie and emo comparable to the likes of American Football (<3) and Meneguar. Have a listen to the above, taken from the aforementioned second album, which for the record, is one of the finest pieces of work I’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing.
Most artists find that the process of writing music, honing a live set, securing a contract and making a name for themselves takes time, generally speaking. There is another route, however, like playing a house party show infront of Gordon Raphael (producer of the first Strokes albums) and accepting the subsequent invitation to record your debut EP round at his home studio in Berlin free of charge. It saves a bit of time in the whole starting out grand scheme of things, you feel.
But that’s just how London experimental trio Three Trapped Tigers went about things. Their sound is tricky to define in terms of a single genre, with elements of electronica, post-rock and math rock tend to make them appear ever so slightly all over the place. Comparisons to Battles are justified yet this outfit have, within their short career, already shown signs of rewriting the instruction manual.
I’ve figured I’ve had ‘Forget The Night Ahead’ on heavy rotation for just about long enough now to make an assured judgement on its merit. But yeah, I’ve seen these guys branded in a number of places as ‘postpunk’, ‘shoegaze’, ‘post-rock’, ‘emo’. However you put it, there’s no denying they’re one of the most exciting bands in the country at present.
The new record takes its cue from 2007 debut ‘Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters’ and digs deeper into the Scottish foursome’s sound. It kicks off with the haunting bass that sets the tone exactly where it needs to stand, the vocals (fair play, the accent does James Alexander Graham a few favours here) are soothing yet unforgiving, which together with the full compliment of instruments, sounds massive even on the lowest volumes.
It’s been a couple of weeks since Colour sadly moved on to pastures new. Days after their last ever show at The Fly in London, Big Scary Monsters released ‘Anthology’, a thirteen track discography, if you like, in celebration of their brief history.
The record consists of tracks recorded throughout their two year history, including two recorded after the split was announced. It’s available now to buy here for £8. Think of it as a thumbs up to the guys over at BSM for putting the disc out there, which is excellent, by the way.
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