Apparently it’s Rotherham season on Articlemagazine.co.uk. Today we interview the city’s finest, The Heebie Jeebies as they promote a free EP download, just in time for christmas.

Introduce yourselves preferably by making comparisons to historical figures (non-musical ones)

Thom: I’m pretty much the living memory of Jacques Anquetil, but hotter!
Del: Fuck knows, I’m my own man. Maybe Ghandi? Maybe Hitler?
Owen: Leigh Bowery. That guy had style out of this world! I heard he was a prick though! Perhaps a matter of Style over substance! Although I never believe rumours!

Rotherham born and bred. What’s the plan for a night out there?
Thom: Basically, a Fuck or a Fight? You decide.
Del: I’m from Swinton, where you start at the top of the hill and end up swimming in the canal at the bottom of the hill.
Owen: The Rotherham opera house for some neo opera and then a bag of chips from baz’s chippie in Clifton.

Is there any vocabulary/typical Rotherham idioms you can give to help us fit in with the locals?
Thom: Fruity! It’s my favourite local word.
Del: Reyt Gud! Works for every response.
Owen: what thy on abart thee scrubber toof!

Having done a fair bit of touring, have you ever found anywhere quite like home?
Thom: France is nice but too many red wine stained teeth down the west coast.
Del: Beighton Village, ￡20 all you can drink.
Owen: No where can compare to Rotherham! Not in a million years! The only way anywhere could remotely have an essence of Rotherham is if the Chuckle Brothers travel there.

Best and worst thing that’s ever happened to you on tour?
Thom: Best thing; having sex up a tree, worst thing; realising it wasn’t my girlfriend.
Del: Dressing like Freddy Mercury was both the best and worst thing I’ve ever one on tour.
Owen: Sleeping in the Knacker Attacker (our people carrier) in a posh area in Paris. The claustrophobic feeling of being so close to other peoples energy resulted in me been sick, which triggered tom to be sick. Leaving the vomit-less Del to wallow in the stink of it all. Poor Del.

What’s the most bad ass/rock star thing you’ve ever done?
Thom: Turning down a threesome whilst refusing to get drunk.
Del: Fitting my genitals into a tumbler, whilst riding a wardrobe.
Owen: I’m extremely anti alcohol and drugs, so the most true rock star moment was at a gig in Coventry. In which I managed to de cap 1000 bottles of Heineken and WKD blue, ruining them all… I like to see this as the yang to Keith Moon’s throwing the telly out of the window!  Long live sobriety! Death to those who cant handle it! And fuck all landlords who rely on alcoholism to fund their foreign holidays!

What about the least rock and roll thing that’s ever happened?

Thom: Did too much drugs and alcohol before a show and although played really well, felt like a Chris McClure, which is never a good thing. Nice kid though.
Del:  Nothing, I am the embodiment of rock and roll motherfucker!
Owen: Probably, been witness to Del and Thom get stoned with the great reggae superstars Skatalites in Bilbao in the Basque region of Spain whilst on tour. My hope that a great reggae act may just create music sober was shattered! Fuck all landlords.

Bangs & Works vol. 1 - Planet Mu

Some day in the future when your grandchildren are sitting round you and asking for another dubstep-based-night-out story, you’ll tell them that 2010 was the year that it started pretending to be other things. DJs have been disappointing ketted-up ravers everywhere by playing percussive house records, sparse techno, juke music you can’t dance to, and not enough Rusko. Right on cue, Planet Mu bring the latest mutation, in the form of ‘footwork.’ Read more ⇒

Formed in late 2007, the Hundred in the Hands are a Brooklyn based duo. Jason Friedma and Eleanore Everdell make a luscious noise combining intimate narrative vocals, tugable guitar riffs, knee-jerk disco beats and analogue synths. Their debut single released on Pure Groove records lead to them being snapped up and signed by Warp Records. Their self-titled album was released this September. We interviewed Jason drifting, music and the creative process.

Does accident play any part in your creative process? Do you ever arrive somewhere without meaning to, and how do you use it when this happens? Is it more original?

Yeah, it’s very important. Trying to merge accident and intention is probably the best way to think about what song writing/recording is. A lot of what we do live is controlling and building up sonic textures, letting them spill out and sopping it up again. The nice thing about digital recording is the ability to revisit accidents and respond to them. In a way, it’s a lot more like painting where you slowly build up layers, step back and then react. Read more ⇒

Read more ⇒

He would have put it on, he said, but it was really cold backstage in Manchester tonight. Oh, winter. Interview to follow soon.

At long last, Issue 0 is up on the web reader

Having subsisted for years on German minimal techno and cups of tea, producer Gold Panda emerged from his bedroom in Essex two years ago. His glitchy cut-ups have generated enough interest to allow him to cut loose from a string of unfulfilling jobs (hospital car park attendant, sex shop assistant, envelope sealer…) We spoke to him in the run up to the release of his debut LP about how it’s all been going so far, and where Gold Panda plans to tread next.

Much of your music has oriental tones, what’s the connection there?

I’ve always been obsessed with Japan. I did shows there recently with Simian Mobile Disco. It was my seventh time, but the first time doing something I actually wanted to do. I taught English for a year but hated it because I’m not very good at English. Here I’ve been called chillwave, but I don’t really know what that sounds like, and over there they call me post-dubstep. They seem to like me, though sales don’t reflect that. Foreign music is pretty dead in Japan now; though the western influence is huge, they have Japanese versions of everything and nobody wants to pay for bands to come over. Read more ⇒

Article is now a music blog….. Joke! That would be wank. But some record labels were like, “d’yer want some mp3s to put on yer site?” and we were like, “cool.” So we have some music reviewed and some mp3s to give away. Here’s some quality new releases we’ve picked that’ll be on shelves/amazon soon.

1. The Hundred in The Hands - The Hundred in the Hands (Warp Records) - released 20th September

Really, I’m down with all the washy Balearic chillwave stuff that seems to be coming out of the States right now. But sometimes, you just want a beat. NYC’s The Hundred in the Hands self-titled debut is a luscious combination of intimate narrative vocals, huggable guitar riffs, knee-jerk disco beats and analogue synths. Leading in with Moroder-style arpeggiators, opening track ‘You Aren’t Young’ declares the album’s post-disco sensibility. Single ‘Pigeons’ is a pop gem, with chasms of synthesiser and driving bass. But it is the contrast of indie guitar riffs over four-four dance rhythms and synth fills on ‘Commotion’ that make it a candidate for the album’s best track. THITH are refreshing, sounding like little else right now. Dress it up as you will, this is pure pop.

9/10

2. Summer Camp - Young EP (Moshi Moshi Records) - released 6th September

Opening a release with oceanic swelling synths really seems to be the done thing lately. So the first track on Summer Camp’s Young EP, ‘Round the Moon,’ feels pretty on trend. Regardless of your preferences towards fashion, the song kicks off what is otherwise a marvellous EP. Fuzzy guitars, tambourines, vocal quivers, seaside organs and lo-fi drums come together in a dreamy end-of-summer six song cluster. The dull scenes and feelings of being lost at a boring hipster party described in ‘Veronica Sawyer’ are familiar experiences, with the beautifully sung bridge, ‘I’ve got so much more than this,’ voicing a sentiment no doubt recognisable to many of us. Perfect for leaving summer behind and heading back to school, the Young EP is full of woozy nostalgia for girls that were too good looking for you, memories of parties you don’t really remember, and general summer time romance.

7/10

Jake Ryan - Summer Camp

3. Tamaryn - The Waves (Mexican Summer) - released 14th September

In some ways, listening to this debut LP by San Franciscan singer-producer duo Tamaryn is like taking a ride through a reverberating cave of nineties nostalgia. Shoe-gazey haze and whispering drum beats, reminiscent of Slowdive, form its bedrock, particularly conspicuous on ‘Choirs of Winter.’  At the same time, Tamaryn’s vocals evoke those of Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval, perhaps if she were audacious enough to take a couple of steps out of the shadows of timidity and towards the sunlight of the cave mouth.  And ‘Love Fades,’ a dark and heady song, one of the LP’s poppier tracks, sounds like something from the soundtrack to that sordidly seductive late-nineties film Cruel Intentions. This isn’t to say Tamaryn are derivative throwbacks; it seems that here they’ve created an almost timeless atmosphere. Theirs is a sun-drenched desert landscape against which guitars gently lap, and at times crash, over one another in lulling layers. Living up to its title, The Waves provides fitting headphone fodder to float along on carefree… especially during late-night, post-pint commuter train rides home alone. At nine tracks in length, the risk of death by drowning is here limited; were it any longer you might never re-emerge from the depths.

7/10

4. El Guincho - Pop Negro (Young Turks) - released 13th September

Over recent months El Guincho has attracted countless comparisons to Animal Collective. These are valid to an extent: he’s into percussion and has a vocal likeness to Panda Bear. But Pop Negro, his second LP, is poppier, and more consistently bopper, than any Animal Collective, and doesn’t reach the same levels of psychedelic ambience or sonic build-up. And his lyrics are Spanish. Hailing from the Canary Islands, El Guincho creates a sun-drenched beach party atmosphere. I see tanned Europeans swaying around a BBQ, San Miguel in hand, to the jangly steel drums of ‘Bombay,’ and chanting in unison to the blissful ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ of ‘Ghetto Facil.’ Though the fusion of international styles and rhythms, from calypso to tribal chanting, makes for an interesting listen, El Guincho offers no respite at his party, and it is at times difficult to distinguish one track from another. Perhaps its failure to make more of a lasting impression on us is largely down to this uptempo beach party vibe feeling kind of irrelevant in our current context. Looking out at the backdrop of grey Yorkshire skies following an aborted summer, El Guincho’s positivity, unfortunately, is more envy-inducing than escapist.

5.5/10

5. How To Dress Well - Love Remains (Lefse) - released 21st September

It took me a while to get over my prejudice against silly stage names and give this a listen; when I did, my initial thought was that my speakers were broken. Somewhere within I could make out the sound of pop music, but, overcast as it is in a cloud of fuzz and crackle, not in any conventional sense of the term. This is an experimentation in super lo-fi, distorted r’n’b. With Tom Krell’s voice (to use his name proper) muffled on tracks like ‘Ready for the World,’ you wonder whether anyone conscious is present, or whether you’re hearing someone making sounds in their sleep next-door. This sense of distance and emptiness is mirrored in the lyrics, which, when deciphered, are mournful and longing. Take for example the recurring motif of rain: track names ‘Escape Before the Rain’ and ‘Endless Rain,’ and a rare sing-along moment with lyric ‘I was hoping for the rain, I was hoping for you,’ on ‘My Body.’ A potentially alienating record at first, this deserves perseverance. The vocals, though at times barely-there, really are beautiful (in a similar, pained vein as those of The Antlers or Bon Iver) and once you’ve checked your speakers and given it a few listens, that fuzziness seems less troublesome. Plus, featuring a song to the stripped-down tune of Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love,’ surely the worst it can be is intriguing.

8/10

You Won’t Need Me Where I’m Goin’