Where have the Guillemots been recently? The British avant-garde beat combo absconded from the UK scene to write and record a new album in a mere fortnight. In Norway.
Completely unannounced till just a couple of days ago, Hello Land! has been made available for instantaneous free streaming via the marvel that is Soundcloud. And here it is…
Oh, and did you know that this is planned to be the first of four LPs in 2012? They’re going to be loosely based around the seasons.
No pressure then. I mean, hey, the Beatles chucked out 2 albums a year at peak.
Away from the limiting and highly-structured commercial music industry of the big labels, it seems to me they’ve rediscovered their experimental roots. Initial impressions of Hello Land! are of a luscious but not unsophisticated lightness.
It is a departure from the hit-single focused efforts that has perhaps held Guillemots back in recent years (in this writer’s humble opinion). They’re not trying too hard to be something they’re plainly not. Not until they’re ready to take over the world.
(What a horribly cynical reason to make music. But baby needs shoes, right?)
Looking back on Guillemots’ output, following an erupting romantic rush of excitement felt within debut Through The Windowpane, its successors Red and Walk The River were somewhat staid affairs overall and never quite met up to the delirious bombast of their first release.
Fyfe Dangerfield has explained the rationale behind the departure from the traditional music biz mould as follows:
I was just a bit lost in the music industry, you can get very lost in the music business. It’s not like I hate the music industry. I think it’s just you can get very immersed in it without even realising and there are so many patterns and waves that you expect to do things. I think we were just used to playing the line without realising. The one thing we were really getting frustrated by was this album cycle.
You generally spend a few months at a time making a record and then you kind of sit on them for a time. It’s very hard to be creative, I think we started realising we don’t need to do this. We thought why not put out loads of music and do it ourselves!
You can support the band by giving them your money and buying their CD or MP3/WAV downloads by clicking this link:
What’s that you say? A fiver for a whole album? I remember when non-chart CDs were £16.99 in the Rock ‘n’ Pop section of HMV back in the mid 1990s, when I were a teenager.
Oh, just whilst I remember, Guillemots are also headlining our pals’ festival 2000 Trees this year.
I’m the kind of moaning little cunt who despises other people’s happiness. When I’m not trying to earn more money than my friends I take the high ground at every opportunity.
I consider myself and my values better than those around me. I feel guilty about the ice caps and the rainforests and the ozone.
You’ll hear me say: “I’m the way I am because I’ve never had to go to war.”
When the war that is going to end this financial mess kicks off, you’ll find me under my bed. Drunk. Shitting it.
Mystery Jets / Count & Sinden – After Dark
The reliably hyper-melodic Mystery Jets play through a set of perversely powerful euphoric hooks, whilst filtered through Count & Sinden‘s production, beats and mixing, defines the potential for what a new era of true indie disco could sound like. Utterly unparalleled right now, I want more of this material and if I don’t get it, I’ll have to make it myself. Wonderful Strictly Come Prancing dance competition video. A lot of fun.
Young Knives – The Decision
Taking matters into your own hands takes an absurd and intense turn in this track. Daft but at the same time intensely serious:
“I’m the Prince of Wales / And if all else fails / I am the Prince of Wales / That decision was mine”
…is still perhaps the best vocal hook I’ve ever heard as we hear the views of someone descending steadily into psychosis, perhaps as a result of a nervous breakdown induced by middle management in an office environment. And how on Earth would I know anything about that? Such power in the face of powerlessness. Talk about defining your own reality.
LCD Soundsystem – Daft Punk Is Playing My House
An indie punk rock band playing dance music about a dance band playing at their house. Which also SOUNDS as if it’s a live band playing Daft Punk. It’s a brilliantly self-aware crossover of genres. It’s postmodern and ironic but it’s still a cracking tune irrespective of ignorant critical slurs like those. Like me. Like those. Like me. Like those.
Bombay Bicycle Club – Shuffle
As a bassist I love the understated but precise lock of the groove. It’s a demonstration of rather mature songwriting with all manner of subtleties throughout the track. And lyrically it’s a celebration of loving music. Not just listening to music passively but actively engaging within it, acknowledging the temporal limitation of a song (i.e. music captures and replicates a mood but for only as long as it plays) coupled with the very human reality of any artist’s self-doubt in the face of the drive to create and engage.
Justice Vs Simian – We Are Your Friends
This cross-pollination of Simian and Justice – respectively an established indie band and a relatively-new French dance act – propelled not only these two artists to a whole new paradigm of success, but also culminated in the evolution of Simian into Simian Mobile Disco. Everyone’s a winner, especially the listener.
Anyone who actually reads the irrelevant dross published on this website might be aware that a character who only semi-pretentiously named himself as The Main Protagonist – well, aren’t we all the main protagonist in the story of our own lives? – has a chance of being conscious of his, or, er, my love for radio, music and in particular the best radio station on the planet: BBC Radio 6 Music.
And 6 Music is ten years old. I only started listening to 6 in 2003, when my employer (coincidentally the BBC) happened to permit me to listen to it whilst working.
I had neither a DAB radio of my own, nor broadband internet. It was a different era. It was like the 1950s of the Internet compared to now. Social media hadn’t been invented. There was no Facebook or Twitter.
As a recent graduate of an arts-based degree I wasn’t hugely employable, so whilst I was working at the BBC, it was in the highly confidential and sensitive “Scanning Room”, document managing high profile employee paperwork and seeing all sorts of naughtiness.
My favourite memory perhaps being the opportunity to read about a disciplinary for one member of staff who’d been having an affair with another and doing all sorts of sneaky, saucy, kinky devilry whilst in the office/studio. Names are forgotten so the Data Protection Act is null and void in writing this. I think. I hope.
I’d always adored music and had been rather fond of radio for years. I loved John Peel’s shows. I never knew I’d get the chance to hear an entire radio station inspired by his ethos of openness, going mostly against the grain of commerciality.
Vic McGlynn‘s afternoon show was a revelation. Hearing Daft Punk Is Playing In My House for the first time was a glimpse into genius. An indie punk rock band playing dance music about a dance band playing at their house. Which also SOUNDS as if it’s a live band playing Daft Punk.
Unfortunately a lot of our time working in our jobs at the BBC was spent “on standby” as opposed to doing actual “stuff”, so we were told to listen to the radio and watch telly and generally chat to kill time. We weren’t allowed out of the Scanning Room. We were guards of the dark information, in a dark place. No windows. Literally no windows.
As for us BBC scanners – myself, Vanessa and Bonnie (later of Electricity In Our Homes infamy) – we became fast friends before the management realised how much money they could save by selling off the entire HR dept to a third party, albeit a third party which would run it really quite terribly (Capita, aka BBC HR Direct), and thus give the management lovely big bonuses to buy big houses in Holland Park and Notting Hill.
6 Music is very much a part of this writer’s present, and remains one aspect of the BBC he adores. And so he felt compelled to respond to this challenge:
As part of 6 Music’s Birthday celebrations we want to hear 6 Of The Best from you.
Just select six songs that most represent 6 Music to you by filling out the form below.
You’ll be able to hear a different listeners’ selection each week on the Liz Kershaw show on Saturdays, 13:00-16:00. We’ll also be compiling a chart of all the entries that are sent in.
I’ve replied. I bit on the bait. Here’s my first of the 6:
Guillemots – Made Up Love Song #43
The wife and I played this at our wedding for the first dance. Our Auntie Pam in a broad Manchester accent is on video yelling, “WHAT THE BLOOMIN’ HECK IS THIS?” in response to the wonky Hammond intro to which my newlywed wife and I did a close dance. We pulled some delightful dancey twirls out of the bag in the song’s climactic second part, much to the surprised cheers of onlookers who hitherto had only ever seen me raving sketchily in muddy fields.
If you’re available in London this Saturday, 28th January, 2012, the Main Protagonist has a cheeky little recommendation if you fancy a GIG:
Sonic Astronic meld electronic soundscapes and live humans.
It’s been suggested they sound like Four Tet – albeit with Mick Jagger on vocals, Hooky on bass, and with a world music percussion section.
Sonic Astronic bathe their audience in audio: shimmering guitars; delicate but intense hypnotic rhythms; a fusion of electronica, earthy beats, tremendous crescendos and tender moments.
The best way to spend the last weekend of the summer!
Meantime, ohcheers.com image geezer beak has taken a day out of his busy regime of “giving up” on all matters pertaining to creativity in order to furnish us with some draft images…
Edinburgh Fringe Postcard (beak says: "click to see details - love from beak xx")
When visiting the Fringe, you have to let it wash over you, accepting it for the disorienting wave of human brain-detritus that it is. There is simply too much to take in from all the various hilariants and infinite, unstoppable untertainment.
Such visceral wonders; those unerring wits; and thy hyper-hypheny-pretentious types too – the irredeemables – and my, how they shall pay.
Whatever. This post attempts to capture the Main Protagonist’s 4-day visit at the Festival‘s tail end.
Image man beak has helpfully provided a delicious photographical compilation/complication above, in the form of a tastefully-concocted mashup postcard, although since giving up he personally neglected to join us this time (cheers beak – Ed).
There were allegedly something like 2500 shows on offer throughout August, and whilst it’s a good idea to book some stuff in advance, for some of it you just need to go with the buzz.
Below is a brief run-through from memory of what happened (hover over links to see comments if you like; don’t bother if you can’t be bothered)…
Comedy Manifesto (hosted by Kate Smurthwaite, with various guests partaking. Actually Stu Privett was invited to perform in this three times this year)
Questionable and pseudonaked Seth Ifrican busker (he was neither naked nor a busker)
Nick Sun (most exciting comedian this writer has seen for yonks)
Curry and catchup with mates
Long journey down from Edinburgh
Kips
More kips
Write painfully-constructed nonsense in a blog post
Of course a lot of other stuff happened in those four days, but if it were committed to publication we only lay ourselves open to litigation, don’t we? And we don’t want that, do we? No. (Yes.)
Oh Cheers
beak
ednamakepeace
Top quality 
