Junkboy Special: ‘Belo Horizonte’ Video & Tropicalia Playlist
September 4, 2020
Playlist/Video Premiere
Words: Dominic Valvona
Junkboy ‘Belo Horizonte’
Taken from the reissued/remasterd Sovereign Sky LP, released via Fretsore Records, 25th September 2020
Junkboy ‘Tropicalia Special’ Playlist
Available via Spotify
In the run-up to the release of Junkboy’s acclaimed 2014 cult album Sovereign Sky (released later this month), the Hanscomb brothers in partnership with Ian Sephton of Fretsore Records (who signed the boys back in 2019) have already shared the hazy-soulful Love-esque lapping tidal reflection single-video ‘Salt Water’ with the Monolith Cocktail’s followers, and now, furnish us with a second single of equally lush quality, the sauntering Brazilian psych lilt ‘Belo Horizonte’.
A culmination of Mik and Rich Hanscomb‘s experiments with a number of different styles, Sovereign Sky adopted a relaxed attitude to the pastoral, to cooing frat-folk, surf music, Britpop, the hip sound of Tokyo’s Shibuya Kei district and surprisingly, the languid sweltering rays of late 60s and early 70s Brazilian psych: otherwise known as “Tropicalia”. That album gave fair voice and a wistfully charmed backing of tenderly picked acoustic guitars, stirring strings and hushed, almost whispered, vocals to both the pains and loves of maturity. The brothers mellowed tones and introspection offered a mature observation on the world around them: especially, at the time, their relocated new home of Brighton. It’s a place in which Marc Eric meets Cornelius, and epic45 make friends with Harpers Bizarre; a place where Hawthorne, California and the beach samba saunter of Brasilia is transcribed to the English downs and seaside.
Not just to tie in with that forthcoming reissue release but also, as Mik Hanscomb offers, a reminder that “this is a music of resistance, and well, perhaps that spirit is needed now more than ever”, the brothers have also compiled a homage style playlist to their Tropicalia influences for us on Spotify.
It maybe the end of the summer, but the boys has provided the perfect comedown and ease into autumn. Enjoy.
The remasterd reissue of the previously limited Sovereign Sky is being released on the 25th September 2020 through Fretsore Records. You can read our original review in the link below, and also find previous Junkboy posts and premieres.
Junkboy ‘Salt Water’ Premiere (here)
‘Sovereign Sky’ Review (here)
‘Trains, Trees, Topophila’ Albums Of 2019 (here)
‘Waiting Room’ Premiere (here)
Our Daily Bread 396: Agent blå, Feral Wheel, Floodlights, Ludwig Dreistern, Lou Terry…
September 2, 2020
Reviews/Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
The cult leader of the infamous lo fi gods, The Bordellos, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea has released countless recordings over the decades with his family band of hapless unfortunates, and is the owner of a most self-deprecating sound-off style blog. His most recent releases include The Bordellos beautifully despondent pains-of-the-heart and mockery of clique “hipsters” ode to Liverpool, the diatribe ‘Boris Johnson Massacre’ and just in the last month, The King Of No-Fi album. He has also released, under the Idiot Blur Fanboy moniker, a stripped down classic album of resignation and Gallagher brothers’ polemics.
Each week we send a mountain of new releases to the self-depreciating maverick to see what sticks. In his own idiosyncratic style and turn-of-phrase, pontificating aloud and reviewing with scrutiny an eclectic deluge of releases, here Brian’s latest batch of recommendations.
Ludwig Dreistern ‘Linda/New Oddity’
(Ikarus Records) Single/Out there now
The debut single by Ludwig Dreistern does have a touch of Granddaddy about it and that can only be a good thing surely. It has the same hushed whispered vocal style and the off kilter like psych synth lines they used with a sparing relish that for a short time in the late 90’s was the rigour: it was the thing to flourish at alternative parties by those who loved to dress in black and say such things as “Mercury Rev are to die for” and such…honest I kid thee not. So relive those days of student splendour and working in a record shop at Christmas with this two-track bevy of Granddaddy like remembrance: you will not be sorry.
Loverground & BB Sway ‘About You’
Single/Out There Now
There is something quite Prince-like about this lovely piece of pop fluff. The kind of fluff that sticks to your cardigan and no matter how many times you think you have flicked the litter blighter away you look again and there it is still attached and growing until it reaches a badge like status that you eventually wear with pride; it is always there, always there as a reminder of something so small that means so much to you and makes you smile to yourself: a piece of fluff you never ever want to live without.
Hiroki Tanaka ‘Inori’
Single/Out there now
This track is a fine slice of musical beauty wrapped in a sweet chocolate like covering of yearning sadness. A song to serenade your dark side into a soft becoming ball of slush with a Radiohead-becoming-The Beatles like melody that sucks you in, and, doesn’t spit you out but just hugs you with a gentle rocking slumber of your most darling hopes wishes and dreams. I bet the forthcoming album is going to be a gem.
Lou Terry ‘If I’m Me Who Are The Other One’
(Metal Postcard Records) Album/Out there now
A shallow bathe in the lost beauty of misery and of love lost and found, the power of gentle melodies and the light touch of the lyrical twist really cannot be underestimated, and the master of all those things is Lou Terry whose new album is brimming with songs full of those qualities.
Recorded over the lockdown, like so much of the new music I’m listening to, it is graced – well with the grace and understanding and sublime loss that normally can be found in the outpourings of 80s Go Betweens and the obscure 70s home recordings of John Lennon. When Lou Terry’s voice cracks it is thing of true beauty as it does on ‘Sickly Peach’. You wonder how on earth he is not better-known; it has the same effect as spying a long-lost lover across the street and her shyly smiling the smile that breaks the passing of the years and in an instant you are eighteen and beholden, you are completely lost and once again under the power of her magical spell. And the beauty of this album achieves all this. It almost wants you to feel broken and betrayed lost and bewildered. If I’m Me Who Are The Other Three is the album to soundtrack the oncoming melancholy of Autumn nights; a thing of great beauty.
James PM Philips ‘Manikhana’
Single/Out there now
This is a rather wonderful beast of a track, a lo-fi adventure of pure undiluted home recorded psych; one that brings to mind the off-kilter joy of Skip Spence’s masterpiece Oar, or the magical musical workings of Craig Smith/Maitreya Kali. A song to chant to your own personal god, be it a badly buttered slice of toast or the mythical goddess of pop Deborah; a true work of off the cuff musical madness, one that should be both lauded and applauded. Great musical outpourings indeed.
Lo Tom ‘LP2’
(Self-Released) Album/11th September 2020
Polished Mary Chain-like guitars played by Bryan Adams kick off this self-released [a round of applause for Lo Tom] album of alt rock, and although it attempts nothing new or revolutionary this album it is no worse and a lot better than a lot of the Alt Guitar rock music I’m sent to ponder over. It has a certain bombastic melodious appeal that the Icicle Works sometimes achieved and the emotionally charged exuberance a lot of people will find rewarding. Although not the kind of album I’d normally choose to listen to I can think of a lot of people who will really enjoy this album of well worked alt guitar rock. So if bombastic alt guitar is the kind of thing that rocks you Daddy-O I would advise you to give it a listen.
The Green Child ‘Low Desk: High Shelf’
(Upset The Rhythm) Single/Out There Now
This lovely piece of synth poppery is a fine example of how pop music is still alive and kicking in 2020: A song built on such a floating-on-the-air synth riff it could have kept the Titanic afloat. Beautiful melodies, whispery soft as silk fragile vocals combine to give three and a half minutes of perfect pop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmA9BRRLgZY&feature=youtu.be
Feral Wheel ‘The Dolphin Way’
Track/Out There Now
The second track from the rather marvelous newish Liverpool band Feral Wheel takes us drifting back to the late sixties, when the lazy guitar sounds of Arthur lee and his merry band of Love ruled the roost. There is something quite magical about great Liverpool guitar bands and trust me the Feral Wheel show all the signs of being a great Liverpool guitar band. They have the air of woozy stoned- out summer afternoons, of an 1980s stroll down button street after spending far too long deciding which volume of Pebbles the Garage rock comp you were going to buy from the old Probe records store; the sun was always shining the girl you was with was always beautiful, your friends full of wit and a shared excitement for the future, and there was always the music, music like the Feral Wheel to soundtrack the passing of those late summer days, quite sublime sounding like the Feral Wheel.
Agent blå ‘Frustrated’
(Kanine Records) Single/Out there now
A Gothic like pop subculture melts into Wayne Hussey’s out-stretched arms in a riff ridden glory ride of a skinny dipped PJ Harvey. Pink hi ho silver away tear dropped shaped memory of a gurning John Peel dressed in spurs and a cowboy hatted joker of dead eyes and frippery. Yes those were the days nobody ever mentions anymore. A fine single none the less…and yes, if you put it close to your ear I am sure you will hear the ocean.
Floodlights ‘From A View’
(woo me!/spunk) Album/28th August 2020
Americana from Australia – shall we call it Australiana -, which is the sound of Billy Bragg playing the near hits and misses of the Go Betweens or vice versa if you like, either way what we have here are ten very well written songs of heartache and its many varieties. Guitars that jangle and solos like an escaped riff from Primal Screams Velocity Girl whilst twirling with gay abandon with the dark wistfulness of the well composed lyrics. I also love the boy girl vocal interaction on the album; they do it very well, it fits together with a charm like a forced in piece of a jigsaw puzzle that does not mean to go there but looks better anyhow and gives it a unique look of its own. Oh I do like this album it reminds me of a down at heel Triffids and one cannot pay a higher compliment than that believe me.
Our Daily Bread 395: Bróna McVittie ‘The Man In The Mountain’
September 1, 2020
Review/Dominic Valvona
Bróna McVittie ‘The Man In The Mountain’
(Company Of Corkbots) Album/2nd September 2020
The diaphanous voiced and ephemeral harpist Bróna McVittie once again beckons us into her imaginary gossamer world of alternative Celtic fables and mystery with a second album of poetic imbued brilliance. Following on from the much-admired trip-folk cinematic debut We Are Wildlife (which evidently made our choice albums of that year), the Northern Irish enchantress roams a similar gauzy landscape of lingering, lightly-touched evocations; a place in which giants fight over causeways and warrior suitors declare chaste love for the chieftain’s “flower of the hazel glade” daughter.
Though the cover interpretations of old have been “dialed back” for more original songs, the evergreen Man In The Mountain album is heavy with references and inspirational threads from such gifted luminaries as Siegfried Sassoon, Pablo Neruda, William Wordsworth and Henry Williamson. The music is pretty timeless too; a misty shrouded soundtrack based more on the hushed cadence of Bróna’s voice and the subtle trails and wafted semblance of instrumentation than rhythm or the traditional perimeters of folk music.
Yet there’s a modern touch to those both pining and woodland sprite entranced folklores with collaborations from both the electronic duo Isan and Nordic avant-garde composer Arve Henriksen. The former provides an understated ripple of incipient bobbing and skimming percussive Techno for, and co-arranges, the nuclear fusion updated vision of the Greek tragedy, ‘Falling For Icarus’, and the cantering Bert Jansch-breaks-bread-with-Curved Air swoon ‘Eileen Aroun’ – a peaceable, softly-plucked take on Carroll O’Daly’s 14th century declaration of love. Henriksen, for his part, helps entice Bróna towards the airy amorphous soundscape visions of Jon Hassell and Eno’s ‘fourth world’ ambient jazz traverses, Dingo era Miles Davis and a lulled Don Cherry on her transformation of Samuel Ferguson’s famous ballad, ‘The Lark In The Clean Air’.
Legendary Irish mythological figures, ill-fated sacrificial souls and even the “green man” are placed in less familiar settings: a sort of resonance from a banjo sounding instrument takes us away from the Emerald Isle towards the waning drift of Miles Cochran’s alternative Americana soundscapes. It’s a sound inspired as much by the Boards Of Canada as it is the Incredible String Band.
Despite being so softly sung, it’s Bróna’s vocals that seem to be the highlight; improving all the time; holding notes so breathlessly long and yearned, and almost raspingly, dreamily emerging from the ether of some ancient headland to lull pursed lip sonnets and tales.
Beautifully conceived and imaginative, Bróna McVittie and her subtle foils on this eloquent lush songbook push Celtic imbued folk gently towards electronica and experimental jazz. This is done with such ease and grace that those seeking the traditional will find little in the way of discourse or friction, or even anything approaching radicalism. The Man In The Mountain is rather a caressed, vaporuos doorway into an alternative musical tapestry of folk that isn’t afraid to expand into the synthesized and modern.
See also…
Bróna McVittie ‘The Green Man’ (Here)
‘We Are Wildlife’ Album Review (Here)
Monolith Cocktail Blog 