Hysterical Injury's 'Maths' video

First posted on Drunken Werewolf, Hysterical Injury's new video for 'Maths' is an homage to the Shangri Las, and in particular their performance of 'Out in the Streets' on 1960s tv show 'Shindig!'. Annie plays the part of all three Shangri La singers at once.



You can still download the track itself for free, courtesy of Strummerville, from http://bit.ly/himaths.

The album, Dead Wolf Situation, is finally out on Monday - read some suitably excited reviews here, here and here.

Tour dates confirmed, starting this Saturday!

UK
4th February - Olives, Norwich with The Broken Seas and DIY Hammer DJs
9th February - The Rolleston, Swindon
11th February - Official Album Launch - free entry at Green Park Tavern, Bath with Thought Forms, She Makes War, Klad Hest
14th February - Brixton Windmill, London with Lilies on Mars and She Makes War
16th February - 10 Feet Tall, Cardiff with The Joy Collective DJs
17th February - The Cube, Bristol with High Places and Hesomagari
18th February - The Bell by the Green, Devizes with I Am Designer, Crash and the Bandicoots

IRELAND
22nd February - Crane Lane Theatre, Cork
23rd February - Whelans, Dublin
24th February - Pine Lodge, Myrtleville
25th February - Roisin Dubh, Galway

Big Joan - The Long Slow Death of Big Joan

"There's no... there is no need... there is no need for alarm, alarm..." insists Annette Berlin on Noah's Farm, the second track on Big Joan's latest album, The Long Slow Death Of....

Those of us who've been following the Bristol fourpiece for any length of time are hoping the stress is on the "long, slow" part of that title rather than the "death". No-one who cares wants to see Big Joan set down any time soon.

The whole album shrieks, wails and punches against that phrase, "there's no need for alarm" (a shrill noise in the middle of 888 even sounds like a siren). It's a thrill ride. The overriding image I have listening to it is of a musical tank, rolling destructively down tight urban streets, in some apocalyptic future war film. A tank ridden by the band, with Annette atop it as a kind of visionary tank girl, of course. Her voice sometimes echoing off metal sheets; sometimes raving like a late night evangelist on a transistor radio the caterpillar tracks will drive into the ground. Noah's Farm is explicitly inspired by the book of Genesis, but the album is all Revelation.

Sorry, I can get carried away with imaginary visuals (though I challenge anyone not to think of a battering ram when listening to Morel's Sleep). The point is it's exciting. And threatening, and portentous, and above all confident. I've been trying to work out what this confidence is, because you feel when you first hear the songs as if they belong to a band used to playing them to huge crowds, and in (unjust) reality, Big Joan are relatively unknown outside of the Bristol rock scene. Of course the key to that sense of assurance and assertiveness is that they're not doing it for the sake of untold masses at all; they know exactly what they want the music to be regardless of whether very many other people are going to be shelling out for tickets to see them play it or not. The result is a sound which embodies an aggressive rejection of compromise, and it's a joy to listen in on if you're sick of bands making music the way they think you want to hear it. Paradoxically there surely is a crowd out there hungry for this, listening in on the last working radio sets in the world from behind metal sheets in zombie shelters, if only they can get the right point on the dial and hear Big Joan's call out to those still living.

Closing track Bin 1, a highly dramatic version of an instrumental long-term live favourite involving an actual bin, says everything I'm trying to say here about the album and the band, for itself, in no words at all.



Buy the album and a limited edition copy of the CD can be yours, while stocks last:

Madvent Chokalendar 2011

Every year, the denizens of Bristol music forum Choke produce an mp3 advent calendar, with a new track up for free download every day. It goes by the name of Madvent Chokalendar.

Visit the calendar page once a day to claim your free mp3. To find out who each track is by, you'll want to right click on the day in question on the page, choose 'save link as', and open it in your music player (they might remain a mystery if you're using a phone!)

You can also join in and chat about the tracks on the forum or the Facebook event .

Here's what's come up so far on December 3rd 4th 8th. They're all well worth downloading, but day one in particular, apparently inspired by the 1914 Christmas Truce, is quite unmissable -

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8

Long may the Madvent Chokalendar last - a seasonal gift from the musicians of Bristol.

Megan Wright reviews Hysterical Injury

Telling you how awesome I think Hysterical Injury's debut album is would be fairly meaningless, being as I am their manager.

So instead I sat my octogenarian grandmother down with a pen and paper and put it on, and this is what we got. The album was released on 6th February 2012 and was one of the first people to hear it. A typed transcription follows the notepad scans.

Hysterical Injury - Dead Wolf Situation

"Hysterical Injury!!

1.) Halo Alkanes

Rhythm - very good start!!
Voice clear & musical
Foot tapping, encouraging one to find someone to partner, dance & hum along with.
Heavy, - then too heavy for most folks' pleasure but excellent for carnival parades.

Ice Break

If they are hoping to break ice with this one, they will find themselves knee deep in water!!

Patrolling, singing along!

Good voice good tempo
Guitar sound good

It keeps the drum movement swinging along!

Cycle One!!

Diction on music, non understandable, trilling good: improves as music swings along.

Vex!!

Very good rhythm.
Voice with music super!!
It makes one swing along with it.
In a small part it feels as if the needle has got stuck - only for a short while.

Track 5 Rosetta's Waves
A slightly rough sea!
PLEASE DO NOT DROWN!!
Trying to swim through the sea AND SING! Very difficult but well activated.

It sounds a bit like someone wanting to go back to save folk from THE TITANIC.

The Works Track 6

They seem to be working against the clock so as to have no overtime to work!

Very swingy!! Electrifying

Track 7 Visions of Trees

The wind is blowing the trees in an interesting fashion
One wants to dance along with friends who will hold one.

These musicians will go far, because they are super."

We don't yet have my gran's views on the remaining 5 tracks of the album, but if I get a chance to sit her down to listen to them, I'll share those with you too.

You now can hear the whole thing for yourself below. (and buy. Buy! BUY!!!)

Three amazing female choral works

Back in the distant past (and doesn't it really feel that way?) of 2005, I reviewed a copy of the "Bitpop EP" by Bishi for the now-defunct Decode magazine. I described it as "Bouncy theatrical madpop" ... "like getting trapped in Trafalgar Square on a fairground carousel that’s going at several wrong speeds at once". A couple of years back I finally saw her live at Glastonbury doing something like ::this:: on stage, complete with Union-flag head-t0-toe smothered dancers, which rather proved my point!

When you get past the theatrics, though, what is really pinning down the hold on your attention is Bishi's obvious intelligence and her voice, and both are at the fore in the work she commissioned work she made for Brooklyn's Youth Chorus earlier this year, Dia Ti Maria. Bishi recorded all 50 voices on this recording herself, and you can read more about its themes and origins on her Soundcloud.

Bishi - Dia Ti Maria

Dia Ti Maria by Bishi_World

Hazlitt is another artist who has moved from making often-bouncy pop/rock in bands like the brilliant Tiger Force (I saw them once at Bridgwater Arts Centre! Which is badly affected by the cuts, grrr) to embrace a classical style. You can pledge for the forthcoming Hazlitt album ::here:: and raise money for good causes including riot relief funds at the same time. Here is the beautiful video for Introit.

Hazlitt - Introit

Making up a trio of women-you-might-otherwise-have-heard-on-6music, doing-stuff-you-could-hear-on-Radio-3, are the majestic Gaggle, who earlier in the year produced a reworked version of a piece commissioned by the Women's Institute in 1969 called The Brilliant and the Dark. They say "The libretto approaches history from the Middle Ages to WWII through the eyes of women, via characters including witch-hunters, embroiderers, crusaders’ wives, plague stricken women, mourners and war workers". Their version mixes the kind of chorus you'd hear soundtracking enchanted forests in early Disney films with skittery drum-and-bass percussion, and the almost-spoken-word incantations that are typical Gaggle fare. You can get a flavour of it on this Vimeo clip, and download the whole work if you subscribe to their website.

The Brilliant and The Dark from Open Music Archive on Vimeo.

Free downloads - Glastonbury Festival Competition Alumni: Liz Green, Yusuf Azak, Emily Barker

I'm so excited to see Liz Green (a) still making music, and (b) being picked up by bloggers everywhere! I remember listening to the demo she sent in for the Glastonbury emerging talent competition non-stop in the weeks leading up to the finalists' selection back in 2007, and was almost as delighted as I think she was shocked when she won a slot on the Pyramid stage that year through it. Things were quiet for a while, then last year a collection of those early recordings was put out - and now the long-awaited debut album is finally to be released next week.

'O, Devotion' is going to feature several of the same tracks I had on repeat on that demo all the way back then, but to judge from the version of opening track 'Hey Joe' she's giving away, these are going to be new and thoroughly enriched recordings.

So many early reviews have focused, understandably, on her remarkable voice; but she's also a powerful songwriter, and has never been afraid to sing about political as well as personal situations. If you haven't seen it yet, don't miss the video for Displacement Song, which plays on the shadow-puppet aesthetic Liz uses on her self-designed album covers (and even sometimes to my knowledge in her shows)!



Free download: Liz Green - Hey Joe

Yusuf Azak's was another demo we had the same year. We weren't able to secure a slot for him at the festival, but I've been following him ever since, and have had the honour of working on a track with him as well as featuring his music in an issue of Attack!!!!.

Yusuf Azak - The Key Underground by Song, by Toad

Here's Yusuf performing another standout track from Turn on the Long Wire, live:



Yusuf currently has his whole new EP up for free download - I'd grab it before he changes his mind, if I were you, and then buy the album.

Free downloads:
Yusuf Azak - Prizefighter EP
Yusuf Azak and Wes White - The Key Underground

Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo - another 2007 finalist (god it was a good year)... will also be known to anyone who followed the crazy Storm the Charts project I did. A little while after, Emily invited me up to one of her Folk in a Box performances, which is where a performer is sat in a little shed and you go in and they perform to you as an audience of one!! Being so close to that beautiful voice was pretty intense. If Folk in a Box is ever on tour again and you get the chance, put yourself down to be an audience! The song Emily played me is one of those she is offering as a free download from her wonderful album Almanac.

It has to be said Emily does seem to particularly like performing in sheds:

Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo - Ropes by emilybarker

Free download: Emily Barker - Ropes

Top 10 versions of Darth Vader's Star Wars theme

I'm a sucker for a good silly chart campaign. Yes, I know, you're sick of them. And to be fair, fatigue and the law of diminishing returns was making any kind of Rage-style Christmas effort look unlikely this year, until X-Factor apparently told a charity whose name they ripped off to 'get a lawyer', which could be enough to make anyone arbitrarily download Smells Like Teen Spirit again, frankly.

Meanwhile I find myself drawn to the dark side... or specifically a group with (at the time of writing) fewer than 50 members, trying to get Lord Vader to the festive top spot by means of downloading the Imperial March. Well, you can't deny it's catchy. And "I find your lack of faith disturbing" is proving a very handy phrase for silencing the inevitable tedious doubters.

In honour of the valiance of the attempt (and the fact I've been constantly distracted by YouTube for the last 36 hours since the page went up and I want to get it out of my system), here are 10 variously curious interpretations of the splendid John Williams theme.


Disclaimer: Yes, I know there's a dubstep version. And I know No Doubt and Daft Punk and someone-who-isn't-Metallica have done them. These are more fun:

1. Kuricorder Quartet



For anyone who thought the Imperial March could never possibly sound cute...

2. Ukulele Duet



Use the force, Uke.

3. Floppy Disk Drive Duet



4. 8bit



5. On a Grand Piano



Lord Vader specifically ordered the piano be shiny and black.

6. Presbytarian Handbell Choir



From 1:41...

7. A Better Dubstep Version



So don't say I don't wub you.

8. Funked Up

The Death Star is a discoball.

9. A Cockatiel.



10. And finally, played on what I can only assume must be actual Sith technology.




If you want to help the campaign to get the original to number one this Christmas (because, come on, it would sound wonderful on Radio 1, would it not?) - join the Facebook group, spread the word, and most importantly download from 18th December!