The winner of our Xmas competition is Andrew Wilson
for this sterling UTR pun-marathon year review (see below)! Honourable
mentions to Saunativity Youth, Terry Christmas Everybody and Trash Kit’s
a Wonderful Life, you lot are TOO FUNNY! Thank you to everyone for
taking part! UTR x
YIKES, well that all went T.I.T.S. up.
THE
WORLD in lockdown and MONOTONY has meant that all plans have gone
KAPUTT. Nothing much to do other than to MUNCH MUNCH on lockdown snacks
and dream of FUTURE ISLAND travels.
There have been NO lockdown
BABIES to report on although my NAKED ROOMMATE did end up with a SOILED
MATRESS AND THE SPRINGS - less said the better!
At least Upset the Rhythm have kept us entertained with a VINTAGE CROP of new bands and music.
So,
as we reach this festive time PLEASE remember your HYGIENE, don't feed
the DOG CHOCOLATE, put on your festive GOWNS and HALO HALOs and head to
CLECKHUDDERSFAX you LUCKY DRAGONS!
Have a good Christmas, and a better music filled 2021!
I hope you’re becoming suitably
festive now! Well, 2020 certainly had its challenges, but somehow in the
midst of it all Upset The Rhythm still managed to release eight records this year! We are immeasurably proud to have eased some of the tedium/stress of 2020 with remarkable new music from Handle, Es, Primo!, Vintage Crop, Naked Roommate, Normil Hawaiians, Sleeper & Snake and The Green Child!
We wanted to thank you all so much for supporting us as a label throughout the year, it really has meant the world to us.
To celebrate this level of head-down steadfastness we wanted to host a jovial competition
to say well done on getting through this indifferent year. So, for your
chance of winning copies of all eight UTR 2020 releases just tell us
your favourite/funniest Xmas-pun relating to any of the artists on
Upset The Rhythm as a label or who’ve graced our stage since 2003. We're thinking of something of the overwhelming calibre of: Primo! Ho! Ho!, Gabriel Pink, Good King Wenc-ES-las etc.
Make us laugh the most and you will win. Send us over your best shot here:
upset_the_rhythm@yahoo.com
The winner will be announced on Monday 21st December on our socials.
Good luck!
Also, this week we were hailing Vintage Crop for their scorching album ‘Serve To Serve Again’
which was chosen by Steve Lamacq as his personal favourite record of
the year in BBC Radio 6music’s end of year list. Tracks from the album
peppered the station’s shows throughout Tuesday, so much so that we sold
out of the first pressing in our webshop. Never fear though, we have a
light-blue vinyl repress due in early Feb, and for the first time a CD
version coming out too, both are available to pre-order here now.
All that’s left to say is that we
wish you every happiness over the Xmas break and we hope you all keep
safe/sound and upbeat. Bring on 2021 when we hopefully can turn on the
live music tap again too (crosses fingers).
Thanks as ever for reading and for all your ongoing support!
The wondrous Steve Lamacq has chosen Vintage Crop's scorcher of an album 'Serve To Serve Again' as his favourite album of the year for BBC Radio 6 Music's end of year list. THANK you!
Tracks from the album will be featured today on BBC 6 music x
Available now in our shoppe: https://upsettherhythm.bigcartel.com/
Well, 2020 had its challenges, but somehow in the midst of it all Upset The Rhythm still managed to release 8 records this year! We are immeasurably proud to have eased some of the tedium/stress of 2020 with incredible new music from Handle, Es, Primo!, Vintage Crop, Naked Roommate, Normil Hawaiians, Sleeper & Snake and The Green Child! We wanted to thank you all so much for supporting us as a label throughout the year, it really has meant the world to us. Bring on 2021 when we hopefully can turn on the live music tap again too. All the best with the increasing merriment! UTR x
Here’s the trippy fx-laden video for Naked Roommate’s ‘Repeat’! All the colours of the disco-rainbow, handclaps aplenty and a bathtub full of tinsel!Thanks to Oceans Of Phantasy!
‘Repeat’ is taken from NR’s debut LP ‘Do The Duvet’ out now on Upset The Rhythm & Trouble In Mind!
The Green Child’s arresting new record ‘Shimmering Basset’ is released today on Upset The Rhythm! We’ve pressed this elegant album of electronic invention and ‘daydreams in a new home’ up as a special eco-minded edition: recycled card for the sleeve and inserts, natural dyes, compostible outer-sleeve and reclaimed 180g vinyl too, as green as it gets for The Green Child!
The Green Child is the once long-distance, now based in the same house recording project of Raven Mahon (furniture maker and former member of Grass Widow) and Mikey Young (recording engineer and band member of Total Control, Eddy Current Suppression Ring). The duo draw their spectral pop sound from an illusory past as much as they stalk into pastures new. Broadly retro-futuristic in scope, verdant acres of lushly evocative synthesizers and vintage drum machines underpin most of The Green Child’s upbeat yet decidedly uncanny songs. Raven's calmly scenic and measured vocal flits like a will-o'-the-wisp throughout the tracks, proffering a guiding hand as she walks us through the often eerie electronic concoctions. The Green Child have really climbed a ladder with ‘Shimmering Basset’, delivering a robust album of compelling melody, expanded vision and melancholic grandeur. These are songs that fully inhabit themselves, unfurling into a redolent dreamscape, subtly handled with poise and finesse. For our last UTR release of 2020 we’re going out on a high!
‘Shimmering Basset’ is available stream everywhere, whilst the LP can be bought in all the best records shops and our webstore here now!
With the advent of Raven moving from California to live with Mikey in Australia, The Green Child was reborn in the basement studio of their beachy, house on stilts in the seaside town of Rye, just an hour south of Melbourne on the Mornington Peninsula. This change of circumstances for the duo resulted in the band’s new album ’Shimmering Basset’ sounding more assured and auspicious than their self-titled debut of 2018. With ideas permitted the time to grow and develop close at hand, the group were able to realise the whole record as a body of work, tying together themes, meeting challenges. Raven explains further, “it feels more cohesive because over the year or so in which we wrote these songs I started to feel a desire to take the lyric writing part more seriously… my head is rooted in this new place now and that’s settled into the songwriting.” The songs collected on ‘Shimmering Basset’ are concerned with life after relocation and deal with distance and staying connected. ‘Shimmering Basset’ also concerns itself with the subjects of transport, escape, the centering of home, humanity in the performative news arena and the idea of time being a beast, animate and hungry.
‘Fashion Light’ conjures up a brilliance from the first few sparks of the album, spinning dizzy dots of synth melody into a classy slice of avant-pop. Rolling live drums (courtesy of Shaun Gionis throughout the album) and tuneful iridescence pan back and forth as Raven coolly intones “dark console, flashing lights, rigid stance, it’s alright to go on and on this way.” ‘Low Desk: High Shelf’ follows in likewise sprightly mode. Glancing synths criss-cross, worthy of OMD, echoing off the straight-up beat, allowing Raven’s collected vocal to stitch its haunted path: “see the face and feel your body sway, in voluntary walk, intoxicating view, take it home, a photograph, a file final form, a token for the shelf or wait…”
A floating kick drum sets off the shivery flurries of sound on ‘Witness’, featuring bristling electronic percussion from James Vinciguerra. ‘The Installation’ is a song about interacting with the dimensions of a new environment. Blossoming basslines and saxophone blushes sweep through its relaxed atmosphere. ‘Tony Bandana’ makes a break for it as a rock song with Arron Mawson lending his bass skills to the foray. Bestilled pauses and swirling breaks of beatpop psych however certainly shake up first impressions. Mikey even joins Raven singing plaintively here for a dip among the sawtooth waves.
The Green Child acknowledge an interesting array of musical cues from New Musik via Sade to Hot Chocolate, the latter most keenly felt on the slinky groove behind ‘Dreamcom’, a song about relying on memory as an anchor for intimacy. Clockwork sequencing, drawbar organ amid bouncing guitar spirals and a lightness of vocal touch make for a potent potion. The duo even cover ‘Resurrection’ by Canadian 60’s popsmith Andy Kim later on the record, turning his orchestral ‘hymn of searching’ into a grandiose tower of overlapping drones, languid vocal reverb and strummed chords. Meanwhile, ‘Health Farm’ is awash with questing keyboard melodies, its notes speeding into each other like Boards Of Canada with the legato ramped up.
‘Double Lines’ draws this fascinating album to an end, seeping into the room like an apparition. It slowly gathers itself into pools of notes and a rubbery bassline, letting Raven’s voice ebb and flow like a half-remembered desire book-ended in ambience. The Green Child have really climbed a ladder with ‘Shimmering Basset’, delivering a robust album of compelling melody, expanded vision and melancholic grandeur. These are songs that fully inhabit themselves, unfurling into a redolent dreamscape, subtly handled with poise and finesse. It’s an elegant album of electronic invention and wistful musing, a daydream in a new home, as alive as time.
‘Shimmering ‘Basset is due for release this October through Upset The Rhythm, accompanied by a spirited painting by Anna Savage on its cover.
Sleeper & Snake invite you through the door of their
‘Fresco Shed’! Upset The Rhythm released the Melbourne duo’s new album
today on popping blue vinyl. Sleeper & Snake are Amy Hill and Al
Montfort. As members of Terry and innumerable other vital acts from the
Aus-underground, you might be expecting some strummy pop slap from this
relatively new project, but Sleeper & Snake is a more subtle,
intriguing and experimental endeavour.
Homespun vignettes of warbled keyboards, fizzed improv interludes,
shifting layers of skewed harmony and wistful yet pointed lyrical pep is
their measure. The duo still lock into a mordant lo-fi mode but there’s
a delicacy at play here too with cello, harmonica and even sarangi
being employed in the foundation of these frothy concoctions of outsider
folk and post punk hodgepodge.
Available to stream everywhere now + buy from all the best shops and our webstore here too!
Following on from last year’s ‘Junction and High’ debut, new album
‘Fresco Shed’ unfurls with the same floating free atmosphere. The record
launches with an uncanny field recording before being drawn onward by
the coalescing alto and tenor saxophones of ‘Miracles’. ‘Flats Falling’
is a crystalline assembly of cello, drum machine and plucky bass which
freewheels around, curlicues of sax sparking off amid the duo’s
matter-of fact vocal parade: “Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The
place has a curse.” Deceptively catchy and barbed with hooks, Hill &
Montfort stick to their strengths with this first single from the
album. Comparably buoyant, ‘Shoot Through’ also conceals inner depths in
wraiths of wild melody and memory. It’s never as comfortable a listen
as you first think with Sleeper & Snake.
‘Rokeby’ is more of a serenade into the wind, showcasing the duo’s
love of alliterative wordplay: “wish I would wake, wake up in the wash,
wish for fail, wish for friends”. ‘Reach Out’ strolls down a similar
path, only pursued by bursts of Wurlitzer: “reach out for rent and
riddle more, riddle with rats, keep your cards racked.” Hill and
Montfort’s vocals are mirrored in unity but still retain their ability
to wrong-foot expectation. For instance, ‘Lock Up The Loose’ is
reminiscent of a cosmic, country ballad, only written for a children's
party. The song’s jejune delivery belying lyrical concerns around the
notion of incarceration.
‘Fresco Shed’ takes its title from a line in tremulous, keyboard
ponderance ‘Lady Painter’, a track that spins its ‘colour wheel’ around
‘paupers in palaces’ and ‘farmers full of feeling’. An acoustic guitar
and cello mark the decentred rhythm here, in contrast to the clustering
synth-lines and sax breezes that tangle throughout ‘Piles’. An interplay
of saxophones alone builds ‘New Togs’ heady ambience, with multiple
horns weaving through each other’s reverb trail, this is dauntless, spry
music, no resting on laurels allowed. ‘Declare’ closes the album with a
whirl of melodies that stretch to their limits before vanishing into
thin air. Like the best magic trick, it’s over in the wink of an eye and
you can’t see how they got there.
‘Fresco Shed’ is transportive, ludic, humane and homemade,
ruminative and resourceful. It’s an album that’s as light on its feet as
it’s heavy with meaning, a total triumph of substance over style from
an endlessly creative duo determined on surprising all (themselves
included) with each new song.
Read
on for the full scoop on next Tuesday's live streamed concert from Cafe
OTO with Bas Jan! Will be a real treat to hear the group perform the
fruits from their recent recording sessions there. Tickets are just £4
and are available from the link below, counting the days!
BAS JAN will be live streaming a
concert from Cafe Oto on October 27th. The performance is a culmination
of making the band’s second album (working title… ‘In The mood for Bas
Jan’) at Café Oto, recorded as live over a period of 3 days which have
generously been facilitated by Arts Council England Lottery Grant and
Lost Map Records. The record will be released in 2021.
Bas Jan are Rachel Horwood- drums
& vocals, Emma Smith- bass guitar, violin & vocals, Serafina
Steer- kbd, bass guitar & vocals, Charlotte Stock- electric violin
& vocals.
This live show will be streamed on this webpage
from 8:15pm on the day and the concert will begin at 8:30pm sharp.
Please note that it will be only be viewable to those who are logged in
and have purchased a ticket.
Amber Sermeno: We are bare
and in your room. You’re also pretty sure we took a bite out of that block of
cheese in the fridge.
Why should we
“'Do The Duvet”?
AS: It seems
like a lot of work, but it saves you time in the end
Andy Jordan: To prevent
sleepwalking.
What’s the
difference between “Mad Love” and Toxic Love?
AS: When it’s
mad you don’t care if it’s toxic. When it’s just toxic you’re traumatized I
guess
Your sound is
acid and sweet at the same time, can you explain to us why?
AJ: Probably
because we listen to acid music and eat chocolate.
AS: Maybe it’s my confusion between mad and toxic love
Tell us more
about the American subterranea?
AS: It’s so
underground now, it only exists in our bedrooms.
What's your
opinion about our current post-modern lives?
AJ: My opinion
is that we are discovering that our lives are perhaps more modern than we
thought. The return of meta-narratives in the form of renewed class struggle
and ideological warfare seems to disagree with the "end of history" perspective
that post-modernism supports. The pandemic has already forced us to adopt
post-capitalist strategies, the easiest example being the stimulus checks.
AS: This
invisible virus has been responsible for more praxis than any movement could’ve
ever organized. With illusions disrupted and made so clear, it’ll hopefully
shake us out of our post-modern nihilism and toward a return to more modernist
ideals.
Heaven or
Hell?
AS: Can I get a
mood board?
AJ: Both! Because, as you know, they were
married long ago.
Lots of crucial tracks from the past/present/future, plus insightful chat with Sleeper & Snake about Tudor buildings and Guy Smith from Normil Hawaiians on performing in Switzerland in the 80s. Also, we have The Green Child booked in to discuss extreme horticulture and their fave band Hot Chocolate, whilst Naked Roommate just do their own loopy dada cut and paste interview thing! Will be a fun one, hope you can join us.
Sticking with the ‘alive online’ theme, Upset The Rhythm have a
live streamed concert taking place this week too. Future Islands’ album
launch no less! It will be streamed live into your life on Friday
evening at 8pm (in the UK). What a brilliant way to remember 2020 can be
OK and to acquaint yourself with the Baltimore synth pop heroes new
album ‘As Long As You Are’. Tickets for this very special 1235th concert
available here now, bring it: https://noonchorus.com/fi-upset-the-rhythm/
You can read more about Friday’s album launch below, along with the listing for our newly announced Bas Jan live-streamed concert from Café OTO on October 27th too, a full on culmination of the album they recorded in the venue recently, total excitement!
Since we last caught up, we’ve also had a bunch of videos from upcoming UTR releases emerge into the interwebs.Sleeper & Snake treated us to ‘Shoot Through’,
recorded live in Melbourne lockdown from the Fresco Shed! The trains
were filmed between Richmond and Flinders Street stations and the
layering fx in the video were inspired by those gracing the Granada TV
footage of Joy Division performing Shadowplay from 1978. ‘Shoot Through’
is taken from the band’s forthcoming ‘Fresco Shed’ album, out soon on
Upset The Rhythm.
The Green Child also released two video clips this month too.The 'Double Lines' video was just unveiled yesterday courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan! 'Double Lines' is the dreamlike closing track from the band's forthcoming album 'Shimmering Basset', also out this month.
Gorilla Vs Bear
also helped us premiere The Green Child's new single 'Fashion Light'.
Showcasing the avant-pop duo's incredible knack for melodies that pull
at your memory with uncanny glee.
Both forthcoming albums by The Green Child & Sleeper & Snake can be pre-ordered now from our webshop hither.
FUTURE ISLANDS return this
autumn, when we need them most! In the twelve years since we shared
Future Islands' magnificent debut album with the world, the Baltimore
lords of synth pop have grown into one of the most successful acts out
there, icons of indie no less. Back at the start of 2020 we were working
on our largest concert to date for Future Islands in London, but then
the pandemic came along with other ideas, so this October 9th we're
supporting Future Islands launch their new album 'As Long As You Are'
(4AD) with a special livestream one-off performance from their hometown.
This will be the band's only show of 2020 and your only chance to see
the band on stage this year playing tracks from the new record alongside
that back catalogue of classic epics.
'A Stream of You and Me' will be
filmed in Maryland and feature a bespoke one-off light show created by
light artist Pierre Claude (The Strokes, Phoenix, Gesaffelstein). The
broadcast will be directed by Michael Garber (Phoenix, Bon Iver, Kamasi
Washington).
BAS JAN will be live streaming a
concert from Cafe Oto on October 27th. The performance is a culmination
of making the band’s second album (working title… ‘In The mood for Bas
Jan’) at Café Oto, recorded as live over a period of 3 days which have
generously been facilitated by Arts Council England Lottery Grant and
Lost Map Records. The record will be released in 2021.
Bas Jan are Rachel Horwood- drums
& vocals, Emma Smith- bass guitar, violin & vocals, Serafina
Steer- kbd, bass guitar & vocals, Charlotte Stock- electric violin
& vocals.
This live show will be streamed on this webpage
from 8:15pm on the day and the concert will begin at 8:30pm sharp.
Please note that it will be only be viewable to those who are logged in
and have purchased a ticket.
The 'Double Lines' video from The Green Child has just been unveiled courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan! 'Double Lines' is the dreamlike closing track from the Australian band's forthcoming second album 'Shimmering Basset', out this month on Upset the Rhythm!
BAS JAN will be live streaming a concert from Cafe Oto on October 27th. The performance is a culmination of making the band’s second album (working title… ‘In The mood for Bas Jan’) at Café Oto, recorded as live over a period of 3 days which have generously been facilitated by Arts Council England Lottery Grant and Lost Map Records. The record will be released in 2021.
Bas Jan are Rachel Horwood- drums & vocals, Emma Smith- bass guitar, violin & vocals, Serafina Steer- kbd, bass guitar & vocals, Charlotte Stock- electric violin & vocals.
This live show will be streamed on this webpage: https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/bas-jan/ from 8:15pm on the day and the concert will begin at 8:30pm sharp. Please note that it will be only be viewable to those who are logged in and have purchased a ticket.
Reviews for Bas Jan’s debut album ‘Yes I Jan’:
“MESSY MAJESTY”, UNCUT 9/10
“BEAUTIFULLY FRACTURED ART-POP”, MOJO 4*
“DAY-TO-DAY STORIES FULL OF UNCANNY POP PUNK MAGIC” , THE QUIETUS
