ELEFANT Is Dead! Long Live ELEFANT! Here’s Their New Smashing Stomper ‘ULTRA PLUS ULTRA’…

21 January 2020

About a year after their eccentric debut album Konark Und Bonark Belgian metallic sludge noisemakers ELEFANT will launch their second longplayer called BEHAJUNG
on 24 January, this Friday. A press statement learns us that the new LP sounds like
it’s made by a new spirited, reborn band. Read the reincarnation story right there…

“The band intended to create a truly ugly, dissonant, senseless, distorted cacophony as the successor to ‘Konark und Bonark’. But instead all these beautiful, kind of normal, sometimes happy, sometimes sad songs came out. Life can be funny that way. Where previous releases focused on alienation, this ended up being about coming together. Saying yes to life (but still with an edge and a few loose screws) and thus ‘Bejahung’ was created’.”

Lead single ‘Water Flowns Down, a mantra-like chant already revealed a new direction and brand new cut/clip ‘ULTRA PLUS ULTRA’ confirms that the former alien dressed and unorthodox foursome have taken another, more accessible, yet still a hair-raising sonic course. The new piece is an ongoing motorik-like stomper, a smashing sledgehammer
with a wall-of-bloodthirsty-guitars and scary synths. It is a motherfucking killer blast. ELEFANT is dead! Long live ELEFANT!.

Feel the full steam ahead electricity right here…

ELEFANT: Facebook

New album BEHAJUNG out 24 January – You can order the LP here

Magnetic And Dark Groove ‘WHITE CAR IN GERMANY’ By THE ASSOCIATES (1981)

21 January 2020

Band: The Asscoiates (1979–1990, reunion in 1993)
Song: White Car In Germany
B-side: The Associate
Who: Scottish singer/songwriter Billy Mackenzie (who
committed suicide in 1997, R.I.P.) and guitarist Alan Rankin.
Released: 1981
Album: Fourth Drawer Down – compilation album

Here’s a TV performance of the song…

THE ASSOCIATES: Bio

Discover The Captivating New Album ‘THE GOOD SOLDIER’ By Guitar Dream Pop Trio POSTCARDS From Beirut…

21 January 2020

Band: POSTCARDS
Who: “Postcards is a dream pop trio formed in 2012 in Beirut, Lebanon. Their music is
defined by hushed vocals floating over expansive soundscapes that shift between harsh
noise and dreamy atmospheres.”

Album: The Good Soldier – the band’s second LP
Released: 3 January 2020
Sound: “The new album extends the range of their jangly dream-pop sound into slowcore,
post-punk and surf rock territory. Two-minute pop gems sit beside epic slow-burners. And Julia Sabra’s captivating wispy voice floats atop it all, guiding you through an immaculately-crafted sonic world of crashing guitars, melodic bass lines, slithering drums, buzzing synthesizers and ambient passages, co-courtesy of bandmates Marwan Tohme and Pascal Semerdjian.”

For fans of: Yo La Tengo, Slowdive, Françoise Hardy and Broadcast…

Here’s the album in full…


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POSTCARDS: Facebook


You can purchase THE GOOD SOLDIER via iTunes & Bandcamp  and stream via Spotify

Up And Coming Slacker Pop Queen LAURAN HIBBERD Scores Big Time With New Single ‘BANG BANG BANG’

New sonic impulses…

20 January 2020

Branded as the new slacker pop queen LAURAN HIBBERD from the Isle Of Wight (UK) starts the New Year with a swirling steamroller called ‘BANG BANG BANG‘. A dazzling fireball, a speedy rocker spiced with a red-hot scream along chorus. Bingo Bingo Bingo!

The song is “my ode to the teenage girl. It’s built for the prom scene in ’10 Things I Hate About You’. It’s the cycle of going back to the same person even when you know you shouldn’t and I guess the fallout of all of that” says Hibberd about her new blistering stunner.

Catch her flaming drift right here…


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LAUREN HIBBERD: Facebook

The Best Band In The World PORRIDGE RADIO Shares New Single ‘SWEET’ From Upcoming Album…

Daily fuel to load your sonic batteries…

20 January 2020

Fast rising Brighton band PORRIDGE RADIO, led by charismatic singer-songwriter Dana Margolin, release their second album ‘EVERY BAD‘ on 13 March via Secretly Canadian. The famous former British journalist Everett True (real name: Jeremy Andrew Thackray) who wrote for two legendary UK magazines Melody Maker and NME and who played in various bands himself called Porridge Radio the best band in the world after seeing them play for only 40 seconds a couple of years ago.

I saw the group myself in Amsterdam in 2018 in a small club. I witnessed four young, nervous people who looked and sounded like lo-fi romantic indie punks. Hard and soft, anarchic and sweet, chaotic and intense, passionate and plainspoken with frontwoman Dana Margolin trying to connect with the audience. To be honest I didn’t get Everett True‘s statement, although I felt an intriguing attraction because of the band’s zestful sonority and charming enthusiasm. After their try and error DIY debut LP Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers of 2016 the foursome took time to prepare for their next step.

Based on the tracks they have already shared, new LP ‘EVERY BAD’ is definitely a whole other experience. Although Margolin says that the longplayer is about “figuring out how I want to exist in relation to others, and how to process my own feelings, how to be vulnerable, how to show people how I feel” you’ll hear a reborn band with a fuller and more vehement sound, with more confidence, with forceful panache and most important of all with killer songs.

Here’s the newest cut. ‘SWEET‘ is an overwhelming loudQUIETloud crackerjack with Margolin‘s repeating frequently ‘I’m charming, I’m sweet and she will loves me when she
meets me
‘. PORRIDGE RADIO will be big soon. FACT!

– SWEET –

Here are the other three tracks the band already dropped…

– LILAC –

– GIVE/TAKE –

– DON’T ASK ME TWICE –

PORRIDGE RADIO: Facebook

BOB DYLAN Released One Of His Most Memorable Albums ‘BLOOD ON THE TRACKS’ 45 Years Ago Today…

Old and new albums to make your day…

20 January 2020

Artist: Bob Dylan
Album: Blood On The Tracks

His fifteenth and one of his most memorable longplayers ever. One critic called it “the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape” as several songs dealt with Dylan‘s divorce from his first wife Sara Lownds. In 2003, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked the LP on #16 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Released: 20 January 1975 – 45 years ago today
Score: The LP topped the charts in the US, Canada, New Zealand
and several European countries. In the UK it peaked at #4

Here’s ‘Tangled In Blue‘ the only single from the LP…

Album in full…

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BOB DYLAN: Facebook


Back sleeve

Here’s L.A.’s Dream Pop Duo HIGHLAND KITES And Their New Sorrowful Ballad ‘A THOUSAND REASONS’…

Reveries for the laziest day of the week…

19 January 2020

Turn Up The Volume featured Los Angeles made/Nashville bound duo HIGHLAND KITES before, the brainchild of splendid singer-songwriter Marissa Lamar, who teamed up
with drummer, Neil Briggs a few years ago. They’ve already released four EPs (check
them on Bandcamp). And now the pair is back with a somber, heartbreaking love song.

‘A THOUSAND REASONS’ is a sorrowful and honest ballad about a doomed relationship Lamar had with an ex-lover. “We both know this was meant to turn into nothing / we both know we were meant to be free / me from, me from you and you from me”

Wonderful voice Marissa Lamar unveiled the overall sentiment behind this new tune: “You don’t have to dwell in crappy emotions, but pretending they don’t exist doesn’t make them go away. Life is life and it has ALL emotions, and we can experience every single one of them in any given day, and that’s ok. I have never been able to “just not care” about people or things and I don’t want to feel numb, because turning all this emotion into art is one of my greatest joys in life.”

Here’s the painful reverie…

HIGHLAND KITES: Facebook

‘Gulag Orkestar’ – Debut LP By BEIRUT Released In 2006

Old and new albums to make your day…

19 January 2020

Band: Beirut (band of Santa Fe native and singer/songwriter Zach Condon)
Album: Gulag Orkestar – debut LP
Note: The Gulag was a Soviet government agency administering forced
labor camps, while orkestar is the Serbo-Croatian word for ‘orchestra’.
Released: 9 May 2006
AllMusic wrote: “Condon is an unexpectedly appealing singer with a rich,
mellifluous voice that, no kidding, recalls the great bel canto crooners of
the pre-rock era (along with a little Nick Cave) and Gulag Orkestar is
an infinitely appealing album.”

Album in full…

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BEIRUT: Facebook


Back sleeve…