Posts tagged Times New Viking

Internet Forever – Break Bones

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3 years ago
in

A band without any pictures at all. Not the greatest of starts when you want to blog about them.

That said, it’s hard not to take notice when you get an email claiming “equal love for , , ! and .” Seeing as I love three and a half of those, I’m inclined to have a listen.

This is the kind of music that makes the likes of Casiotone sound overproduced, which is no mean feat. Everything is incredibly rudimentary, and covered in distortion, yet it’s ultimately adorable for the two minutes that it lasts. Despite the limitations, boy-girl vocals, handclaps and glockenspiels all manage to put in an appearance, giving us a sense of what Los Campesinos! perhaps would have sounded like with only two people.

The ethos of the band seems to be built around the idea of making music in the now rather than thinking it over too much. The band’s first gig will is coming up in a couple of months. Hopefully they won’t rehearse too much.

will play their first gig on December 11 at the The Lexington in Angel. Which is in London.

Website / Myspace

No Age – Eraser

1
3 years ago
in ,
No Age

A few years ago, if Pitchfork had given an album a 9.2 rating, I’d be all over it in no time. I wouldn’t necessarily like it, but a high score at least meant it was worth trying. Now I drop in on Pitchfork about once a week, skim read the reviews of bands I already know, and leave it at that. Which meant that slipped entirely under my radar. That is until they were announced as part as Los Campesino’s Shred Yr Face tour.

For some reason, I expected No Age to sound like The Thermals. I have no logical reason to think that, given I had never heard them, or even read anything about them until a couple of weeks ago. Maybe their name suggests a certain urgency or something. Whatever the reason, I wasn’t really prepared for the wall of noise I was hit by. During the first minute of Eraser, it sounds as if it is something big. By the second minute, you start to wonder if it’s little more than an interesting instrumental piece. When the vocals finally kick in, we’re already in the final moments of the song, making us desperate to hear some more. Which I suppose is what makes it so perfect as a promo mp3.

Times New Viking – Call & Respond

0
3 years ago
in
Times New Viking

I’ve always thought that I should like . People whom I trust to have good taste seem to rave about them. They get compared to bands like Pavement all the time. Their songs come across as something akin to a lo-fi mess. The only thing is that I always found them to be too much of a mess. Ramshackle is one thing. Ramshackle to the point of having nothing to grab onto is quite another.

As such, I almost consigned this song straight to the bin when it arrived in my inbox. Lucky for me it had a title that made me press play though, as it’s really rather wonderful. I can’t tell what about is different from the previous TNV songs I heard, but for some reason this one clicked for me. The sound is still utterly shambolic, but it certainly has some charm, in the same way those early records from Malkmus & co. did way back when.

Times New Viking will release a new EP on 7″ and download only (boo!) on October 22. In the days leading up to that, they will be touring the UK and Ireland with ! and as part of the Shred Yr Face tour:

14-Oct – Komedia, Brighton (£12/14 – 14+)
15-Oct – Carling Academy 2, LIverpool (£12/14 – All ages)
16-Oct – Irish Centre, Leeds (£10/12)
17-Oct – Whelans, Dublin (€13 – 18+)
18-Oct – School Of Arts, Glasgow (£10/12)
20-Oct – Electric Ballroom, London (£10 – All ages)
21-Oct – Fleece, Bristol (£10 – 18+)
22-Oct – Academy 3, Manchester (£10 – 14+)

Website / Myspace
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