Very surprising and very sad news. They were
a wholehearted, perfervid and committed
rock-pop force getting better and better
with every album.
They’ll say goodbye soon with an EP,
named Machine Starts To Sing.
Margolin: “Porridge Radio are breaking up. The one-time Band To Watch announced the bummer news today while sharing “Don’t Want To Dance,” the lead single from one final EP. That project, titled Machine Starts To Sing, will be out in about a month, and Porridge Radio
will play out their final run of tour dates early this year.”
This is the last new music from Porridge Radio and marks the end of the band. The songs on this EP are an important part of Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me, and mean a lot to us. We are excited for you to hear them. This band has been our life, we’re family now. These tours will be our last. Thanks so much for listening.”
Along with the bad news comes the first track from that planned EP.
In the light of the split-up DON’T WANNA DANCE is a most gripping,
goosebumps pearl. A sorrowful power ballad. A heartbreaking tearjerker.
Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me
. I’m gonna miss you, very much, on record and on stage!
Band:THE SMILE Who: Sort of supergroup featuring 2 radioheads, Thom
Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and drummer Tom Skinner.
Album: CUTOUTS.
Their 3rd LP in just 2 years (Radiohead 8 in 31 years).
NME says: “The Smile return for more jazz-influenced,
experimental rock and they seem to be having more fun
than ever.”
TUTV: By far their best to my ears. On the previous 2 ones they tried too hard
to not sound like Radiohead (which they did frequently anyway) and did it with
too many redundant orchestrations, too many unnecessary layers and a bit of
arty farty structures here and there.
Mind you they are good LPs but on this one they keep it far more simple resulting
in 10 very arresting pieces of mesmerizing music. Trippy fast ones alternate with slow
musing ones and throughout the arrangements are subtle, direct and most entertaining with Thom Yorke sounding, yes, at ease, not forcing his compassionate voice/vocals. It all feels tremendously natural and blithely .
Margolin: “A lot of this album is about a more frenetic and desperate kind of love.
It is about completely losing my sense of self in a relationship, and the deep residue
of insecurity and pain that lingered and clouded a new relationship. There was a lot
of love and confusion, all interspersed with exhaustion and pain. All the songs started
out as poems. I wanted to challenge myself. ”
Uncut Magazine: “Sitting somewhere between alt.rock, indie-pop and a singer-songwriter album, it’s a neat balancing act that feels personal and intimate yet also sonically ambitious.”
TUTV: Spearhead Dana Margolin (guitar/vocals/songwriter) opens her heart and soul
again on this new longplayer. Following a toxic relationship, she recovered, rediscovered her own self, and looks to the future with confidence. As in the previous 3 albums she’s
as expressive and emotive about her turbulent personal life, even more explicit.
Sonically we get the by now familiar song structure. Slow start, building up the fervency, and finishing with haunting outbursts. But this time all pieces/tracks fall more into place than before. The songs have more body, are more elaborated and display Margolin‘s growing composing skills. Yes, it’s PR’s best effort yet.
An 8-track offering that traces the transformation of Long Island City, the part of Queens that Geni calls home. Situated across the East River from Manhattan with its stunning skyline views and now booming with skyscrapers, this place is haunted by its industrial past and friends who have moved on. These recordings explore themes of change, impermanence and loss amidst the city’s constant evolution.
Photo by Alice Teeple
TUTV: I really like the idea of Cities Built Upon Cities. An universal sign’ of the modern
times. Just google old photos of your own town and compare them with today’s views. Geni seems to have it done in detail with his beloved Long Island City and wrote eight
heavy-hearted songs about it.
Romantic reveries with real/surreal images of the past, present and future of LIC. Bittersweet, richly orchestrated, symphonies with his monumental voice – think of Perfume Genius, Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis and James Bay‘s bewitching vocality – taking them to sky-high heights, up there in the clouds, while floating over the city. This is the kind of record you listen best to with headphones on, dimmed lights and far away from our daily rat race. It’ll evoke mixed emotions about the place you love the most. Well, that’s what I experienced while listening.
Band: AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS Who: The punk rock whirlwind from down
under fronted by the utterly cool Amyl Tylor.
Kerrang! writes: “Added together, it makes for an instantly irresistible album
that – just like its opening line – is frank, fearless, funny and fucking fantastic.”
Turn Up The Volume: Old skool punk ‘n’ roll? Absolutely. Any good? You betcha! Amyl and her loud buddies made another roasting riff-manic-monster of a hell fucking
hell yeah record. Pogo madness is back. Sturm un drang from start to finish. HOLY MOLY!
TUYV: Never change a winning sound. As on their previous album DA keep on
drawing your aural attention with slow/mid-tempo/fast trip-hop tunes. But this time embedded in layers of distortion and feedback, creating an eerie and at times sinister ambiance.
Massive Attack, Tricky, Arab Strap and Mike Skinner’s The Streets
and Laurie Anderson‘s latest opus Amelia.
DA resonates as EBM for people who come alive when the darkness sets in, far away
from the suffocating day life and the world’s destructive nature as we experience now, again.
Kate Arnold‘s spoken word stories evolve on waves of chilling synth soundscapes that actually relax one’s confused mind (mine, for sure) and transfer you to your space of fantasies. Trance massage it is. You’ll feel alive anyway.
Margolin: “A lot of this album is about a more frenetic and desperate kind of love.
It is about completely losing my sense of self in a relationship, and the deep residue
of insecurity and pain that lingered and clouded a new relationship. There was a lot
of love and confusion, all interspersed with exhaustion and pain. All the songs started
out as poems. I wanted to challenge myself. ”
Uncut Magazine: “Sitting somewhere between alt.rock, indie-pop and a singer-songwriter album, it’s a neat balancing act that feels personal and intimate yet also sonically ambitious.”
TUTV: Spearhead Dana Margolin (guitar/vocals/songwriter) opens her heart and soul
again on this new longplayer. Following a toxic relationship, she recovered, rediscovered her own self, and looks to the future with confidence. As in the previous 3 albums she’s
as expressive and emotive about her turbulent personal life, even more explicit.
Sonically we get the by now familiar song structure. Slow start, building up the fervency, and finishing with haunting outbursts. But this times all pieces/tracks fall more into place than before. The songs have more body, are more elaborated and display Margolin‘s growing composing skills. Yes, it’s PR’s best effort yet.
Margolin: “After a horrible relationship I felt like a piece of shit on someone’s shoe,
like I was so unimportant and completely drained of any power I once had. Lying to
myself in order to get that power back. You did this to me, but I’m the god of everything
else. Fuck you.
It’s also a song about femininity, wondering how to be a woman, watching someone else
do it so effortlessly, wondering if I could be like her would it be easier. Of course not.”
Margolin: “This is a song about not knowing, being trapped in a haunted fairytale or a horrible nightmare and running and running and predicting horrible futures that come true and self-fulfill. It’s a gentle lullaby but it’s also a folktale with a tragic ending. This is a song about knowing what you don’t know yet. Seeing the future by guessing, being right.”
Dana Margolin (singer/songwriter): “A lot of this album is about a more frenetic and desperate kind of love. It is about completely losing my sense of self in one relationship,
and the deep residue of insecurity and pain that lingered and clouded a new relationship.”
Margolin: “After being messed around enough, you just want to take back control. I just wanted to let it go, stop letting it consume me. I wanted simplicity, to have fun and remember everything good that could possibly happen. To love wholly, to not take anything too seriously. To have fun with my friends, to remove the tunnel vision and fall in love with my life again.”
When you hear the heart-rending tension and the impactful vocals it feels rather as if Margolin is in pain and feels depressed, but as we known from previous heart-and-soul thrills Margolin canalises negative as well as positive feelings with her natural zeal and devotedness the same she does.
“I’m sick of the blues,
I’m in love with my life again”
