#gigseen

Wilful Missing

First in Gigseen's series of 'New Band' profiles (which should be out regularly every Thursday) is an up and coming bunch of chaps from Bradford: Wilful Missing.

Style? Genre? ... Hmm .. I always hate having to put my finger on definitions like that, but if someone held a gun to my head and demanded an answer: 'nu-folk'? - does that exist?. Of course anyone who has listened to more a couple of records in their lifetime will hear influences in anyone's music - this is after all the 21st century. Nothing wrong really with just saying that in the case of Wilful Missing that they write pretty damn decent songs that will more than likely make you smile. For example, the latest single Constitution Failed.

Composed of Sam Kipling, Sam Lawrence, Albert Freeman, Ruth Viqeuira and Rhys Kelly, the 5-piece have started to be picked up on muso radar - primarily from having a number of their tracks featured on BBC show Waterloo Road (also hailing from Bradford - nice local touch). I heard the song DIY this way, from another room of course, I'm not a habitual soap/drama person ... Then spent a while googling the chorus lyrics till I found out the whos and whats. Promptly bought all available recordings too of course.

So far, all Wilful Missing's material has been made available for download via Bandcamp as either 'pay as much as you like' or 'pay at least XXX'. A great scheme, and one that I wonder why more bands don't take advantage of. Aside from the single Constitution Failed there are also two EPs, DIY appearing on the latest offering Vast Atlantic.

<a href="http://music.wilfulmissing.co.uk/album/vast-atlantic-ep" data-mce-href="http://music.wilfulmissing.co.uk/album/vast-atlantic-ep">Vast Atlantic EP by Wilful Missing</a>

Me personally, I can see the band doing rather well in the near future especially when considering the way other artists of a similar sound (Stornoway spring to mind) have taken off in the last twelve months or so ... Perhaps a campaign could be started to get W.M. onto a Jools Holland show. C'mon BBC - get those connections networking.

wilful missing links

Warpaint 'Yours Truly' Sessions

I must be slacking ... It's taken me over a week to spot these two videos of Warpaint performing Undertow and Bees via the basement of the folks at Yours Truly.

Vent 414

Of recent weeks in my frequent trawling around the dusty corners of the Internet looking for music both new and old, there's been a few instances where something I remember from years back simply cannot be found for neither love nor money to buy and download in digital format.

Leaving aside the issue of 'free' downloading for now, 'Option 2' has finally been reached and I have submitted to the very 20th century practice of buying those shiny circular things called CDs - but in order to keep things in a modern, online kind of way, acquired via Amazon of course.

But I digress, top of my list of music to be found in one way or another was the only released album by Vent 414 - which was back in 1996. Last week my letterbox was made happy by the arrival of one of the aforementioned shiny round things, which quite unsurprisingly is a pretty cracking LP.

Vent 414 - Vent 414 by Grim Styles on Grooveshark

And now for the History Lesson: Vent 414 were formed when Miles Hunt split from The Wonder Stuff and teamed up with Morgan Nicholls, the utterly exceptional bass player from the Senseless Things and Pete Howard, powerhouse drummer from EAT and at times, The Clash. As a three-piece, the only album was recorded at Abbey Road with Steve Albini at the desk. Just to ratchet up the uber-alt/indie credentials, live gigs would see the band getting filled out with the guitarwork of Billy Duffy from The Cult... Yes, Ladles and Gentlespoons, back in '96 it honestly couldn't get much better than that.

My opinion after a week of having it stuck on repeat? Much of the album really puts me in mind of Foo Fighters, or Queens of the Stone Age but oddly, the Foo's how they sound now, not how they sounded back in 1996... The only thing that lets it down slightly is the mix levels, Nicholls is an absolutely genius bassplayer - why is he not up higher in the mix?

Cloud Control - Gold Canary

Australian band Cloud Control yesterday unveiled a new video for their latest single Gold Canary which as I understand it is a re-release, having first been put out back in 2009 before they became quite as popular as they now seem to be.

Cloud Control are one of those indie/pop bands that I pretty much came across by accident a few months ago and are somewhat less electronic than the swathe of australian pop bands currently shooting up like mushrooms recently. If I was forced to describe them then I'd have to say they lie somewhere on a spectrum between Paul Simon and The Bluetones - no bad thing at all.

So, as for the new video:

"Jeremy [Kelshaw] was the only one out the band who had previously sky-dived so the terror for the rest of us was very real," singer Heidi Lenffer told Spinner.

"My tandem instructor had the bad habit of making unwelcome gags throughout the safety briefing but I managed to keep it together throughout take off and even the thrilling 35 seconds of free-fall, after which unfortunately my body decided to reject the experience and I threw up mid-air, very discreetly."

Well, far be it for me to criticise the wonder that is hurtling towards England's 'Green and Pleasant Land' at 9.8 m per s2, but as a fun video for Gold Canary? Hmm ... not sure. As a first alternative, here's the original video from back in the day, which seems to imply recreational pursuits of a very different kind ...

And finally, my own favourite - an acoustic/acapella version from director Dave Tree's Watch Listen Tell sessions recorded under a bridge somewhere in London.

A Farewell to The Bluetones

Tuesday night at the Shepherd's Bush Empire saw what was billed as The Bluetones' final ever performance. I thought at first that I had missed my opportunity to see the band but luckily a new final date had been added for the 27th to top the tour. In a bit of a last minute panic, I of course HAD to get a ticket or two, having seen the 'tones play 3 or 4 times before over their 17 year career and never been let down.

The impending end of the band was announced to cries of dismay back in March:

"After 17 years of touring and 6 studio albums, The Bluetones have decided that this Autumn’s tour will be our last. We will be playing a career spanning set of songs as a way to say thank you to our loyal supporters and hopefully signing off with a bit of a bang"

True to form, and as expected for a 'final' gig, the venue was packed to the rafters with fans both old and new - the numbers there, to be honest, were quite a surprise to me, as I'd only previously seen them at smaller venues. The sound however was great, and even from near the back (where old farts like me hang out) the experience was superbly enjoyable for myself and comrade/co-fan 'Doctor Steel'.

Things did however take a little while to warm up to the event, the crowd and band suddenly clicking into sync for the 2006 single Autophilia (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Car) and arms were up in the air from that point onwards. As promised, all the hits were in there. Bluetonic, Slight Return (see rather dodgy mobile footage below) and Solomon Bites The Wormnostalgically replayed as the soundtrack to my life of 15 years ago.

Interspersed of course were a few more recent from A New Athens and the preceding eponymous album such as Surrendered(see below for decent footage) and the last single Golden Soul.If... provided the truly epic moment for the end of the first encore and my two personal faves Never Going Nowhere and Slack Jawspanned the first interval of calling the guys back on stage.

"Arbor Lights have a great sound (and great taste - lots ofMogwai-respect on their site) and have made their debut with an excellently realised set of cracking tunes that can only serve to propel them further onto the radar of a wide swathe of potential fans. Give it a spin."