Stop Press... New Releases!!
Pickled Egg are pleased to announce the release of 'The Absence of Birds', a four song EP by Oddfellows Casino, combined with a short film by Brighton-based film maker Toby Amies, which features an original soundtrack by the group. ‘The Absence of Birds’ showcases four new David Bramwell compositions, exuding lush orchestral arrangements with a nod towards late-period Talk Talk, and featuring Oddfellows’ usual eclectic array of guests, including Stereolab's Simon Johns on bass, Giant Leap guitarist and composer Andrew Philips on guitar and percussion, Clearlake's Jason Pegg on organ, and Bevis Frond guitarist Paul Simmons on bass and guitar. The CD comes complete with a twenty minute film 'The Ballad of Oddfellow', which stars Drako Oho Zarhazar - former Salvador Dali model, a ctor in films by Andy Warhol and Derek Jarman, and the recent subject of a Radio 4 documentary, ‘The Man Whose Mind Exploded.' This sepia-tinted curio follows the demise of legendary Victorian freakshow host, Ambrose Oddfellow, as drink, tragedy and the advent of picture-houses force him to host phoney seances for the gullible aristocracy of Brighton. But who knows what can happen when dabbling with the forces of darkness... The cast also includes Michael Attree (former world moustache championship holder), Dave Mounfield (portly comedian and nice chap) and the legendary Heidi Heels. The film features an original soundtrack of Oddfellows Casino songs, and was directed by filmmaker and MTV/ Lonely Planet host Toby Amies. 'The Absense of Birds' won’t be available in the shops until July 14th, but is available now from Pickled Egg. Click here for details.
Chandeliers are a Chicago-based quartet that represent a phenomenon of unclassifiable modern music. Comprised of multi-instumentalists from Chicago's blossoming young avant-rock scene, they have created a unique, and live, electronic sound. Adopting the collective spirit of krautrock bands like Can and Faust, the Chandeliers function as a unified whole, with no dominant members. This approach gives the band a more intuitive and unpredictable approach to composing. The sessions for The Thrush were overseen by Bablicon's Diminisher and Blue Hawaii at the Shape Shoppe and at Mahjongg's west-side studio in Chicago. Its nine songs feature guests musicians from Bablicon, Icy Demons, and Mahjongg and includes 3 videos by filmmaker TJ Hellmuth. Believing that colour can exist in harmony with timbre, the Chandeliers pride themselves on their synaesthetic live performances: a non-stop high-energy show, augmented with dual projections of Brakhage-esqe visual rhythm. Chandeliers bring the energy of a super-live party to their cerebral synth interplay. An obvious reference is Kraftwerk, but with influences ranging from Burmese and Arabic melody, to the sonically dirty rhythmic propulsion of Konono no.1, and the crunked-out psychedelic hip-hop of J-Dilla, Chandeliers always keep the listener on their toes. An album with the flow of a mix-tape, the Thrush is at home bangin' in your trunk or hypnotizing on your headphones. 'The Thrush' is available now from Pickled Egg. Click here for details.
The Doozer The Doozer builds. He has previously built stone houses and wooden ships. He is currently building music. Raised around the Fenlands of Cambridgeshire, in the arse end of nowhere, the city drew closer and closer, the lights brighter and the time shorter. The city informs his music. His music informs the city. Songs evolve around watching and talking, buying and borrowing. Characters pass by, situations are imagined, colours are added and the resultant is a forming song. His debut album, 'Sheet Music', was recorded mainly on Saturday mornings, bright and early. The songs weren’t complete until the recordings were complete. The spaces always changed. Instruments and voices were layered. Pop music was the aim; pop music isn’t quite the result. Pop music is The Doozer’s music, only filtered through all of the colours and sounds you’ve imagined when walking through the street or down your lane or when your batteries died. 'Sheet Music' is available now from Pickled Egg. Click here for details.
When Suzy Mangion Suzy split up the acclaimed duo George in 2006, she loaded her Yamaha keyboards onto her percussion trolley, and went over the mountain, to see what she could see. And all that she could see was... The Other Side Of The Mountain. A solo album of old-fashioned length and unfashionable feeling. Suzy has carried over her distinctively intimate production and melancholic song-writing, which charged the George albums The Magic Lantern (Pickled Egg, 2003) and A Week of Kindness (Pickled Egg, 2005), and created a record even more intense, even more charming. From the gospel-choir reverie of “Evenings at Home” to the stark, primitive folk-frenzy of “Ohio the Homeland”, from 50’s-tinged Italian dream-pop in “Il Mondo è Qui” to the restrained anger of simple piano prayer “The Deliverers of their Country”, Suzy’s songs drift from style to style, but always unified by her trademark haunting vocals and complex harmonies. Suzy pushes herself further vocally on this album than on any of her work to date, and the freedom of working solo has allowed even more experimentation with her sound and songs, a harmonious noise of electronics old and new mixing with the bricolage of beats, banjos and beat-up pianos. Click here for details.
Some bands are just damned impossible to classify: a.P.A.t.T. ' are a (usually) 6-peice amalgamation of all that has come before & all that will slowly catch up in the end. Beyond genre defying: every instrument and style you can think of, mashed up together in jaw-dropping performances. Exploring similar landscapes to Frank Zappa - minus the virtuoso elements - Liverpool-based a.P.A.t.T. in are a bewildering and completely original two to seven piece band, utilising all available genres to create a daft and beautiful music. 'Black and White Mass' sets a new standard in home entertainment, featuring some of a.P.A.t.T.'s most accessible compositions to date, whilst still retaining an element of surprise. Click here for details.
Recent Releases:
"Mass Shivers' full-length debut, 'Ecstatic Eyes Glow Glossy' is awfully, awfully good. This Chicago trio captures the spirit of the best out-rock of the 70s: Can's free-form tribal-Teutonic drums, Beefheart's stomping junkyard riffs and unhinged harmonic imagination, Faust's cerebral jams, Eno's expansive pop palette. In less capable hands, this kind of ambition often results in little more than a self-conscious statement about the band members' LP collections, but Mass Shivers skirt that pitfall with their discipline and devotion to detail. Standouts like 'Womanizing Metal Studs', 'Downwind of Amour', and 'Mossy Nethers' are dense and complex, with meticulously organized, counterintuitive guitar lines, but the substantial vocal melodies and playful backup harmonies make the tunes not only approachable but memorable" [Chicago Reader]. 'Ecstatic Eyes Glow Glossy' won't be in the shops until Sept 17th, but is available now from Pickled Egg. Click here for details.
'I See a Sign Defined' is unique and very special 7" vinyl release by Phosphene and Friends, the electronic/acoustic music project created by Glasgow-based John Cavanagh, after four years as a member of the duo Electroscope. John has collaborated with some very special friends indeed on this record. "Bridget St John's voice has long held a special place in my life, so it was a great thrill when she said she wanted to sing one of my songs. Her voice has lost none of the quality it possessed when her first LP appeared on John Peel's Dandelion label in 1969, and working with her was a joy. Fellow Bridget fans Isobel Campbell and Bill Wells added cello and Farfisa compact duo organ parts, respectively, to 'See a Sign Defined'. 'Ask Me No Questions' is the title track of Bridget St John's debut album, and the version which you find here features three of my favourite people – Hanna Tuulikki, Chris Hladowski and Aby Vulliamy – who unite to form one of my favourite bands, Nalle. I suggested that this side would be more accurately billed as 'Nalle and Friends', but they generously said it should appear as another 'Phosphene and Friends' release... and so it does!" [John Cavanagh]. Click here for details.
Pickled Egg have a limited supply of 'Say it in Slang', the new album from Marshmallow Coast, now known simply as M Coast. Expanded to a five-piece, including former collaborator Derek Almstead and new vocalist Emily Growden, the album celebrates the group's shared love of 60's psyche-pop, together with more diverse influences, such as composers Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, and Ravel, the jazz of Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Eric Dolphy, and the funk of Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, and Stevie Wonder, not to mention the more abstract pop songs of Brian Eno, The Moles, and Brian Wilson. Click here for details.
‘Count Herbert II’ is the debut album from Fulborn Teversham, the mindblowing new group of Seb Rochford, the extraordinarily in-demand and prolific drummer/composer, leader of Mercury Music prize nominees Polar Bear, and winner of BBC Jazz award for Rising Star 2004. Fulborn Teversham pursue a more eclectic, and less overtly jazz direction than Polar Bear, or indeed Rochford’s other acclaimed group, Acoustic Ladyland, incorporating elements of electronica, Henry Cow-style prog and post punk. With clever balancing of cosmic and acoustic sounds, Seb Rochford (drums), Nick Ramm (Nord synthesizer), Pete Wareham (saxophones), and Alice Grant (vocals), set up an intimate and thrilling improvisational punk jazz chamber music for the future. ‘Count Herbert II’ won’t be available in the shops until February 5th, but is available now from Pickled Egg. Click here for details.
‘Dragon or Emperor’ is the self-titled debut album from Leicester's finest, er, Dragon or Emperor, the awesome two-piece lightning-bolt drum & bass assault of Aaron Moore (Volcano the Bear, Songs of Norway) on drums/vocals, and Stewart Brackley (Black Carrot, Songs of Norway) on bass guitar/vocals. Somewhat akin to a geeky Lightning Bolt in charity shop suits loosening up and playing jazz-metal, with additional manic Pere Ubu-style vocalisations, Moore beats absolute hell out of his drumkit, whilst Brackley embarks on daring fretless excursions to the absolute edges of what constitutes a rhythm. An enormous sound that marries their intense mixture of fun and chaos. ‘Dragon or Emperor’ won’t be available in the shops until February 5th, but is available now from Pickled Egg. Click here for details.
‘Frisbee Hot Pot’ is the debut album from London-based ensemble, Now. The group fuse elements of krautrock, free jazz, lo-fi, synth pop and music from various ethnic sources, to create their own unique, highly inventive sound. Now could be described as catchy, contemporary, inventive, exotic, melodious and harmonious 21st century pop music. "My soul, my ears and my dancing shoes thank Now, who haven’t so much as made an album as created an antidote for musical apathy. Inspired and inspiring" [Drowned in Sound]
‘Horse Republic’ is the debut full-length album from Liverpool-based Zukanican, and the follow up to 2004's 10", E5number (also on Pickled Egg). Zukanican have been described as an unholy hardcore collision between Can, The Soft Machine and Art Ensemble of Chicago. "The latest album by sonic manipulators Zukanican is a sprawling and dynamic work, that builds on the atmosphere created by their 'E 5number' EP, taking it one step further to produce a wholly satisfying and genre-defying collection of music, that takes in elements of Sun Ra, Rollerball, Funkadelic, and early Gong, mixing all together in an exhilarating musical stew, full of goodness and incredibly tasty. Just as you start thinking "Can it get any Better?", it does" [Ptolemaic Terrascope]
‘Do the Musiking’ is an album curated and created by Big Eyes captain James Green, along with his co-pilot David Jaycock over the past 3 years. After the last Big Eyes album, 'We Have No Need for Voices...', they decided to call it a day with the 'group' dynamic, and plough their interests into experimenting with classical/folk arrangements and collaborating with artists they admire. The new album, under the moniker 'The Big Eyes Family Players', is a 29-track epic, featuring contributions from numerous musical talents including James Yorkston, James William Hindle, Rachel Grimes (Rachel’s) and Jeremy Barnes (A Hawk and A Hacksaw, Bablicon) and Suzy Mangion (George), in addition to many others. "This pool of talent allows the songs to really take-off and become fully realised, often taking on a classical persona" [Ptolemaic Terrascope]. "An album so sprawling, it makes the Beatles 'White Album' sound downright cohesive; but it’s also got something else in common with that album - it’s all excellent" [George Parsons, Dream magazine]
‘By Chance Upon Waking’ is the wonderful debut album by Nalle. The band was formed in Glasgow in the summer of 2004, and features Hanna Tuulikki (vocals, kantele, flutes), Aby Vulliamy (viola) and Chris Hladowski (bouzouki, clarinet). All three group members also perform with Scatter, and Chris and Aby play in The One Ensemble of Daniel Padden. “Everything comes together on Nalle's debut to produce some of the best music I've heard in years. The instrumentation is wonderful and Tuulikki's voice, which falls somewhere between Bjork and Austria's Gustav, are absolute perfection. I can't get over just how amazing this record is. Nalle's debut is easily the best thing I've heard in 2006 thus far, and I reckon it's going to be hard for anything to come close to it. The highest of recommendations” [Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis]
Forthcoming Releases:
New releases coming up in the autumn from Zukanican , Now. and The Big Eyes Family Players.
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Last updated: 28th May 2008.
