New Music 2016 - Part 31 - On Dead Waves

This release has somehow blind-sided me but I'm very excited about it. On Dead Waves is a new act but it combines artists I am much in awe of. It consists of two artists with previous recording histories: James Chapman (as Maps) and Polly Scattergood (as herself).
This is what has happened since they met musically, by dint of performing each the songs of the other, at a showcase at The Roundhouse, Camden, London back in 2011.

On Dead Waves - On Dead Waves (Mute Records, 20 May 2016).

This is the track list:

• Blackbird 
• Never Over
• California
• Hollow
• Alice
• Dead Balloons
• Blue Inside
• Autumn Leaves
• Jupiter
• Winter's Child

The big question, and I'm not minded to make you wait until Friday to find out, is what does this synthesis sound like? I would have been terribly disappointed had the work been unremittingly cheerful.

On Dead Waves.

New Music 2015 - Part 28 - Du Blonde - Welcome Back To Milk

This artist has featured in these pages a few times before but not as Du Blonde. The new LP 'Welcome Back To Milk' is released on Mute Records on 18 May 2015 in the UK. It was always extremely unlikely that she, so therefore the album or its artwork, would become bland. Her pop-art illustrations and often black and white photography are quite something. She makes her own stage costumes too.

The music is heavier than heretofore but the artist Beth Jeans Houghton remains unmistakably herself, which is nothing but a good thing.
Here she is with 'The Hooves of Destiny' at End Of The Road 2011. Du Blonde is confirmed for End Of The Road 2015.
The first track released from the new LP is 'Black Flag'. 

  Du Blonde - Black Flag (Official Audio) from Mute on Vimeo.

"I Will Return I Promise" - Beth Jeans Houghton

It has been a couple of years since she first popped up on the scene with the EP 'Hot Toast - Volume 1'. I first heard (of) her, and then immediately bought the EP at the Rough Trade pop-up store, at End Of The Road 2009.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the toast is getting stale, and there certainly hasn't been a second round, but now things are moving fast. Here she is, in the then rather basic 'Local' tent, at EOTR 2009.

It is very easy to forget that this is actually not much more than eighteen months ago.

This may well have actually been her first festival performance but, due to The Horrors having to cancel due to illness, she did a slot on the very much larger Big Top stage later in the weekend, which I did not see, and again to much acclaim by all accounts. There is something very EOTR about all this (as Caitlin Rose proved in 2010)...

The début album has taken a while longer than anticipated, though it is now (May 2011) complete. Nevertheless she appeared again in the meantime with her band The Hooves of Destiny on the Lake Stage at Latitude 2010 on Sunday afternoon.

Both these photos do not however include an absolutely vital part of the live 'Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny' experience, so it is high time to put that right.

Rory Gibson on bass.
  

She is good on her promise too: on Monday it was confirmed that Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny are to appear at EOTR 2011 with, no doubt, the album to showcase.

Now signed to Mute Records the track Dodecahedron is available as a free, legal download in the meantime.

Yet more lyrics - Nitrogen Pink & Corridor

You will almost certainly have to click on the images below to enlarge and hopefully then make them readable but, since I can provide them thus, here are the lyrics from the 10" Nitrogen Pink by Polly Scattergood scanned straight from the fly-sheet provided with that release.

The surroundings here are urban, near industrial rather than sylvan, but then why should that be surprising?

Live at 'The Walpole', New Cross, London on 27/09/08.