Words About Things

These New Puritans’ first album Beat Pyramid was released in January of 2008 and received a lot of positive reviews. It was Vice’s album of the month and was given a score of 7.5/10 by Pitchfork, even MOR dad rock magazines like Q and Mojo had good things to say about the band. Elements of cLOUDDEAD, The Fall, WU Tang Clan and Ikara Colt combined with a deadpan delivery and nonsensical lyrics such as ‘I am in the rain, I am in the rain. I am in the- sixteen seconds!’.

The band recently anouced that their second album Hidden will be released on the 18th of Janurary 2010:

“Produced by TNPS’s Jack Barnett and Graham Sutton (Bark Psychosis, Boymerang) and mixed by Dave Cooley (J Dilla, MF DOOM) the album draws equally on on the rhythmic lexicons of dancehall and 20th century post-minimalism, with instrumentation redolent of both the oceanic brass of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes and the plastic textures of modern U.S. pop. It is sometimes brutal, sometimes melancholy, and sounds like nothing else.

Hidden features six-foot Japanese Taiko drums, a thirteen piece brass and woodwind ensemble, sub-heavy beats, prepared piano, a children’s choir, Foley recording techniques (including a melon with cream crackers attached struck by a hammer, used to simulate the sound of a human head being smashed), and the ethereal voice of Heather Marlatt from dream-pop group Salem.”

The first single from the album is called We Want War and is over seven minutes long. The video was created by Daniel Askill and is as epic and hypnotic as the track itself. Check it out below.

People often proclaim their hatred of genres or more accurately bands being labeled as belonging to a particular genre. Whist some bands defy explanation and exist outside of genres most great bands clearly fit into a stylistic mode. Some genres like Dubstep seem to continually evolve whilst others are fixed and have clear boundaries and norms. Black Metal is a genre that seems to be both dynamic and fixed in stone.

Some would have you believe that to be Black Metal a band must adhere to some very specific rules and any experimentation is just a dilution. Thankfully there are bands like Wolves In The Throne Room and Tulus who experiment and push the boundaries. Some band are happy to pretend it is still the 80′s and thrash away in corpse paint, releasing albums that sound like they were recorded by putting the microphones in the building next-door to the studio. This isn’t a bad thing but it is interesting to see a genre that is so split down the middle.

Like Rats are a band who mix Black Metal with Hardcore. there seems to be to be more Hardcore in the mix than Metal, I’m reminded of old Gravity Records stuff like Antiock Arrow and Heroin. The drums are fast but not helicopter blades whirring fast like a lot of BM drummers. The vocals rasp and growl and yet fit the faster tempos well.

I don’t know much about Like Rats other than that their (first?) album is avaliable for free download via their website here. I found them via the highly reccomended Invisible Organges. Guitarist Todd Nief’s blog post about the album can be found here.

I’ve only known what Skweee is for the last half an hour so I’m hardly an expert but here is what I know so far: It’s a style of Electronic music emerging from Norway and Sweden that is very funky and simple. Skweee is normally referred to as electronic funk. It is minimalist yet unlike a lot of minimalist music it is fun and playful. The influences seem to be funk, soul, 8bit, and electro and there is some cross over between Skweee and Dubstep or more specifically Dubstep’s woozy, synthy offshoot Wonky. There also seems to be elements of Ragga, including a disregard for traditional instruments in favour of cheap sounding keyboards and anything that bleeps.

Beem is producer Fredrik Mjelle from Stockholm, Sweden who’s latest album The Future is available to download for free from his site (see below). I recommend you check it out if you are into electronic music or just interested in hearing something fresh. If like me you have been enjoying Joker and Zomby’s recent output you will probably be right at home amongst the beeps and synths.

Check out the video below for a taster.

More info on Skweee

Download the album from Beem’s site.