Sad Day For Puppets/The Deer Tracks ~ Live at Somic Cathedral

It's not often these days that you can have a night out for a fiver. It is even rarer to get to see a decent band for a fiver either. Monday night was a treat then as there were two excellent bands to see at The Social a tiny venue situated off of Oxford Street in London.

The night was hosted by the rather excellent Sonic Cathedral who run nights with a distinctively Shoegazey feel to them. My mate Rob and I were extremely pleased to hear Loop being played by the DJ for example, which was the first time either of us had heard such a thing in a club.

The Deer Tracks and Sad Day For Puppets both hail from Sweden and had played the night before with The Deer Tracks headlining. Tonight it was the turn of Sad Day... to take the honours. The Deer Tracks play a lovely form of glitchy electronica with Elin Lindfors vocals floating above some truly gorgeous beats and music laid down by co-member David Lehnberg. The band are backed up by a keyboard player, bassist, trumpet and clarinet which although a tad unusual works extremely well. I bought there excellent album 'Aurora' after the show and can't recommend it highly enough. It is beautiful.

The reason we had gone along to Sonic Cathedral was to see Sad Day For Puppets. I fell in love with their music after hearing the wonderful 'Little Light' last year which turned out to be my favourite track of 2008. They are steeped in all the music that I love; as their Myspace page says "the music is all about shimmering layers of guitars, intertwined feedback melodies all dreamy and grand and sad, and ethereal harmony vocals" and in my view you that is just perfect.

Live (at least tonight) they were a little rockier. Vocalist Anna Eklund introduced several of the tracks as "a rock version" of the album. Stand out tracks for me were new single 'Marble Gods' which is as wonderful piece of jangly pop that you could wish to hear and the aforementioned 'Little Light'. I'm hoping that both of these excellent bands come back to the UK very soon as it would be a crime to miss either of them.


The Deer Tracks ~ Yes This Is my Broken Shield.



Sad Day For Puppets ~ Cherry Blossom.

My New Favourite Band.

I came across Sad Day For Puppets via Myspace and they have capture my heart. They are whimiscal sure but hell what's wrong with a bit of whimsy now and them. I',m off to see them in London on February 23rd and if it is a lovely as this tune, which was recorded live in a Stockholm library it will be rather splendid.

Lux Interior 1946 - 2009

There have been quite a few tributes to Erick Lee Purkhiser aka Lux Interior since his death on 4 February but I feel that I should also add mine.

The Cramps were a great band and first captured my heart in about 1982. I loved to dance about to them at my local nightclub 'Crocs' in Rayleigh with my blogging mate over at Planet Mondo. I was a Psychobilly for a while and whilst a lot of my mates rated the more violent bands like The Meteors and the Guana Batz it was always the Cramps for me.

Lux was a great showman and he shall be sadly missed.

Cramps - Garbage Man
Uploaded by baltanar

John Martyn 1948 - 2009

The death of British folk singer John Martyn has just been announced. John's music was some of the most inventive music of the genré and it is a very sad loss. It isn't the right time to regale many of the many fantastic stories about John's rather full life so I'll leave you with this, John and his partner in music and crime Danny Thompson performing the timeless 'Solid Air'.

Roy Steers

On 30 December one of the unsung heroes of British jazz died aged 83. Roy Steers presented a jazz programme on BBC Radio Cornwall for many years. His show was heard not only in Cornwall but in Devon, Somerset and Dorset as well and was therefore the voice of jazz in the South West. For seven years my Dad worked with Roy on the show and went from reading the gig news to co-hosting and over the last 20 years became very good friends with Roy.

He had many musicians on his show and he'd ask them to choose the records that week. I was very surprised one day when down in Cornwall visiting my folks when he asked me if I'd like to go on and choose my favourites. Now I am no musician (although my Dad is) and I was amazed to be asked. I think Roy asked me because I am a jazz fan and relatively young compared to most of the jazzers in the area. I had a ball and I went on the show three more times.Any music fan dreams of being asked to compile lists of their favourite music and I can never thank Roy enough for giving me the opportunity of fulfilling at least one dream

Roy liked all types of jazz but had a great affection for Count Basie. This clip of Basie and Oscar Peterson playing 'Jumpin' At The Woodside' is for you Roy.





You were a lovely man and you will be missed by many, many people.

Happy Winter Solstice

I'm not much of a one for Christmas records. Much of the nonsense we get thrown at us is utter shite in my opinion. There aree of course notable exceptions. The mighty collection from Sufjan Stevens (six albums worth) is excellent, Springsteen's 'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town' is brilliant too.

My favourite though is the Christmas album by Duluth Minnesota's finest (no not Bob Dylan). Low have been producing superb material for about 13 years now and in 1999 they released an album of Christmas songs. It included several of their own songs and several cover versions including this fabulous version of 'Little Drummer Boy' which was used by GAP in a Christmas advertising campaign. I think it is wonderful.





Have a great Christmas and New Year.

Beware Of Safety ~ Dogs

For all its faults sometimes Myspace is pretty bloody wonderful. I have been introduced to some wonderful music via its pages. Stephanie Casey, who plays under the moniker of Fall of Snow is one (I'll return to her at some point in the future) that blew me away with her beautifully fragile and sparse sound. My favourite though is a band who wrote to me asking me to have a listen to their stuff (presumably because I had listed such acts as Mogwai, God Is An Astronaut and Mono as favourites).

I was hooked from the start and that very evening sent away for their debut ep 'It Is Curtains'. I've said before that I don't really like the phrase 'Post Rock' it is meaningless to me and doesn't express what the music is about, but if there has to be such a genré then Beware of Safety are right at the top of the tree along with Mono for me. Their music is exhilarating, vibrant, loud and passionate and their second release 'Dogs' ticks all the boxes and although it was only released this month is my favourite album of the year.

The album kicks off with 'Nu Metal' which floats along with layered guitars and fabulous drumming and then explodes, in fine 'Post Rock' tradition, into a whirling dervish finish. It is quite breathtaking and is one of the best 10 minutes you could hope to spend.

'The Supposed Common' kicks off with a lovely pizzicato refrain. Too many bands in the genré use strings these days in a lazy way and in is refreshing to see them used in a different way. Here is an early version of the track from Youtube.




There is plenty of good old fashioned wig outs on the album which is great but Beware Of Safety are far more than that. They are thoughtful and melodic and carry you away with the beauty of their music.

Although they haven't toured the UK yet I know the band are keen to do so and I for one will be first in the queue for tickets.