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.

Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose

The début album, which also has one of the most astonishingly curious titles of recent times, is finally released on Mute Records on January 24, 2012. If you were not lucky enough to be at EOTR watching this set then let me say something: I had long ago worked out that she was good at what she does but then this was quite something.

Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny....

  

Live on the Garden Stage at End Of The Road Festival 2011, Saturday 3 September.  This is the third time I have seen the whole band live and it just gets better and better. For 2009/2010 coverage of Beth Jeans Houghton and The Hooves of Destiny see 'I Will Return, I Promise'.
It is strange, in a very good kind of way, and I trust Mute Records with that.

If you wonder why that is, go listen to Polly Scattergood's 2009 self-titled début album that was also released by Mute. And, by the way, she's busy with the next one and I can't wait for that either.

Recording pains - Beth Jeans Houghton

I've never recorded anything original myself, let alone an album, so here are some thoughts by one - who I saw live at EOTR 2009 - about the process of recording her soon-to-be-released first album. The album from, should you have forgotten, the artist who claims she appeared from the depths of Buttermere, simply has to have been worth the wait. Recording it has however not been without some trials and tribulations...

"Frantically finishing recording for the forthcoming album with Ben Hillier.

On Thursday we invited a lot of my friends down to be recorded as a BIG BAD CHOIR on 'Golden' and 'I Will Return, I Promise'. Twenty three people came, including the Hooves, half of Stornoway, Mike Lindsay from Tunng, the boy who sells me coffee in the morning, Dr. S. Tud Luvcub, Jessica Rabbit and Kola, a man I met on the street that morning. The punk song we recorded is called 'Prick AKA Sean' and it's about a drunk Glaswegian man who had a fight with our tour manager in a Travel Lodge in Coventry when we were on tour with Stornoway. The prize line being 'Goodnight, sweet dreams and f**k off'. He [Kola] was lovely, he really was."

If you think that the foregoing sounds improbable in the extreme consider this, the text on the inner sleeve of 2009 EP 'Hot Toast - Volume 1'.