Tracks of the Week – 15 October 2011

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Matthew Britton is our human blog-music aggregator, kind of like Hype Machine but with feelings and shit. Every week he goes, puts on his rubber gloves and trawls the darkest sewers of Soundcloud, reporting back to TLOBF with his findings. Sometimes he strikes gold, sometimes just faeces, but one day, maybe, just maybe, a band covered here will play an actual gig in front of human people. We continue to live in hope.

As these words are being typed, there is an event going on in London that makes this whole piece entirely irrelevant. This weekend is Binnacle at the Old Blue Last, an event so filled with blog favourites that to not turn up is enough to see you cast aside as irrelevant for the foreseeable. Some bloggers are going to have to shut down their wordpress and actually get a job, such will be the hounding for preferring to stay at home and watch Leicester versus Birmingham on BBC1 – such is the life of the bedroom writer.

For those out of the loop, or simply those unable to justify spending a load of time and money on trains to see bands that are barely viable outside of their Soundcloud account, these are the tracks that will keep you just relevant enough to claim that you didn’t even want to go to see Sun Glitters anyway.

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Young British Artists – Everything in front of you

They did nothing for ages, and it kind of felt that after a couple of bright releases on Red Deer Club records a while back, Young British Artists may have lost their way. Far from it – Everything in front of you is the sound of a band who’ve got far too much pent up energy, ripping through a track that others might have tried to make pretty or charming. Still, it’s a rawness honed to near perfection, and for all those who caught their boundless set at The Great Escape earlier in the year, it’s a welcome return to excellence.

Everything in Front of You by youngbritishartists

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Kai Fish – My Anima (Regal Safari remix)

Best to get the pain out of the way, then: making their live debut at Binnacle are Regal Safari, a three-piece from Brighton that have been making bloggers froth at the mouth for the online equivalent of eternity (real-life terms: 6 months). Kai Fish has been about for a while longer, taking time off from his work with Mystery Jets to make a track that is turned barely recognisable with this stark rework.

Kai Fish – My Anima (Regal Safari Remix) by Regal Safari

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Old Forest – Ralph

Okay, alright: this track has been knocking about for a little while now, Old Forest having put a cassette out through Italian Beach Babes a couple of weeks ago, but come on: look at this video. Is there anything that isn’t completely – and forgive the 13 year old, American boy from 1992 slang here – rad about this? Simultaneously reminding the viewer that life is worthless and awesome, god know what they’re trying to achieve, but it’s great, if a bit grungey.

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ABADABAD – Indiana

If indie is ever going to come back (and we are praying nightly that it never, ever will) then it’s going to have to be more inventive. The cataclysmic failings of Brother/Viva Brother/Whatever over the course of this past year has shown that people don’t want music that sounds like Britpop, they just want to turn up to a concert featuring one of Oasis and get pissed to forget how old they’ve become. ABADABAD don’t see themselves as part of the same canon, and their twanging of guitar is more suited to playing some mid-sized venue in Brooklyn rather than filling stadia, but that sounds infinitely more beautiful anyway.

Indiana by ABADABAD

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Sunless ‘97 - Illuminations

Easily the big track of the week, covered here and countless other places. Having caught the attention of superblog Abeano a while back, they’ve cut a deal where Sunless ‘97 put out an EP on the site’s imprint, and the reaction from the myriad bloggers that feed off such news has been nothing short of ecstatic. This track first surfaced a while back, though in a much less polished form – whatever slim amount of time they’ve spent in the studio has only increased the majesty, begging for repeat listens as it continually slips through your grasp

Illuminations (Making Waves EP) by SUNLESS ’97

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Dreams. – 4Runner

Star Slinger is selling out venues the length and breadth of the U.S., reportedly having to go on to do upwards of three encores just to satisfy those beat-starved American fans who’ve turned up to vibe, so it makes sense there should be a copycat or two springing up. Dreams. doesn’t fit quite so neatly into that category, but there is certainly more than a hint of Volume 1 era Slinger about this effort. Absent Fever are putting out the EP.

4Runner by Dreams.

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Warm Thighs – Hallways

Hallways seems to nick aspects from Star Slinger as well, but more in method that aesthetic. A hallmark of early Slinger shows was excessive chopping of the beats, to the point where it was almost unbearable – Warm Thighs turns it into an artform, having a pretty sexy, standard beat and mashing it up over and over and over again. Seven Legged Face are doing the honours for the release.

WARM THIGHS – Hallways (from Warm Thighs 2, out on SLF tapes) by lostx3

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Matthew Britton runs a blog called The Pigeon Post and contributes to the music-blogger supergroup Lost Lost Lost.