Paul Richards from Scared To Dance has allowed us to use his interview with Standard Fare from his new Scared To Dance Summer Fanzine in the blog. Standard Fare released one of my favourite albums, “The Noyelle Beat” earlier this year, – a brilliant album.

As you see from the cover scan above, there are a lot of good stuff to read in the fanzine. Interviews with The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Allo Darlin, Betty and the Werewolves, Darren Hayman and Standard Fare + a feature on the indietracks festival, live reviews, “Best new bands” from the Brill Dream blog and profiles on the upcoming Sarah Records documentary, Odd Box Records, Twee Grrrls Club and Hissing Swans + much more.

The fanzine will be available at Indietracks and the next Scared To Dance night on Saturday 31st July at King’s Cross Social Club, London. Alternatively you can order it from their website http://www.scaredtodance.co.uk . Scared To Dance is also on Facebook  http://tinyurl.com/scaredtodance and on Twitter  http://twitter.com/scaredtodance

Now, the Standard Fare interview:

Your single “Dancing” caused quite a stir in London’s indie pop scene last year (making #3 in our Festive Fifty). Have you been surprised how things have taken off so quickly?

Emma: It’s been fantastic to be made to feel so welcome by such nice people in the indie pop scene, both across the country and abroad. We’ve been a band for quite a while; just over 5 years now and we’ve always enjoyed playing and writing together but in the last year it’s all moved up a level. Getting the chance to play so many gigs and having people like the album too has just made it all so exciting for us.

Tell us about your debut album The Noyelle Beat. What hopes do you have for it?

Dan: The album’s about romance and friendship and all those little things that come between the two. It was released back at the beginning of April and in two months it’s far surpassed all the hopes we had for it. When we recorded it, we didn’t think it would be heard by half the people it has, and for their reaction to be positive, is better than we could have imagined. It’s given us so much energy for what we’re doing.

How was your trip to the US and SXSW?

Andy: Yeah the US trip was incredible! Really enjoyed playing at SXSW, it was great being asked to play there. Everywhere we walked in Austin music was blaring out of every door we past, lots of people, lots of great bands, and the weather was good too.

What are your influences?Emma, did your mum’s previous band Poison Girls have a big impact on your writing?

Emma: They’re all quite varied really; my influences are bands like Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, Van Morrison and also stuff like the Be Good Tanyas. Yes I remember really liking the way the Poison Girls wrote their songs – always quite upbeat happy music and then more uncompromising lyrics.

Dan: I guess I’m influenced mainly by bands like The Lemonheads, the 100 Broken Windows era Idlewild, and early Green Day. It’s generally something that has that urgency about it but that still has a melody tucked away somewhere

Andy: American pop punk was what made me want to start playing the drums, really enjoy Britpop, and just recently been listening to a lot of dance music, which has given me influence on a couple of our new songs.

Who are you looking forward to see play at Indietracks?
Emma: None of us have been to Indietracks before although we wanted to get there last year. We’re really looking forward to it.

Dan: I don’t want to build anything up but I’m sure we’ll think about doing something a little different. It’s a great line-up; I can see us rushing round all weekend trying not to miss anyone! I heard the Mexican Kids at Home are playing, I love their stuff and I’ve not seen them play for a while, so that’ll be really cool.

Andy: Yeah there are loads of bands I’m looking forward to seeing! Really excited about Allo Darlin’, I really enjoy their music.

You’ve got a UK tour lined-up for July. What else have you got planned for the rest of the year?

Emma: Indeed we are, July is going be fun and especially with the festivals we are doing! We are also doing another US tour down the east coast in August and then we are hoping to record the new material we’ve been working on and we’ll just keep playing anywhere we can.

For a few weeks now, I have been listening to and loving the debut-album from The Consulate General, “Person Number”. The album is released today on Circle Into Square records, and it’s a record you should spend both your money and your time on. Well worth it!

The man behind The Consulate General is no debutant in the music industry. This is the new project from Boy In Static‘s Alexander Chen, a Taiwanese-American multi-instrumentalist who is currently living in Gothenburg, Sweden. The album is full of lovely, warm melodies, thoughtful lyrics, very interesting arrangements and creative instrumentation. Chen has a playful attitude towards composing, and I am fascinated by the way he builds his rhythms and harmonies. Often, I get those “wow, how did he think of that!?”-experiences, – even after numerous listens.

“Person Number” is a beautiful journey in sound and words.

Chen is accompanied on the album by several of my own favourite artists, which makes this even more interesting for me. Antoine Bedard of Montag, Simon Scott of Slowdive/The Charlottes/Televise/Seavault, John Chao of Misha and Ryan Fritch of Sole & The Skyrider Band have all added musical elements to Chen’s music.

(Short interview with Alexander Chen below the cover-art)

Fascinated by the project and the idea of it all, I sent over some questions to The Consulate General himself. Here are the answers.

The title, – what is the story behind “Person number”, and what’s the story behind “The Consulate General”?

Could you please tell me a bit about the process of making the album, why you chose Bedard/Scott/Chao/Fritch as your collaboration partners and how you have collaborated?

There seem to be a lot of travelling and places mentioned in almost every song. Is there a theme on the album? How much is influenced by your move to Sweden?

Here is a new video for The Consulate General’s song YWCA Trixie:

If you want to check out more of the label behind Alexander Chen and The Consulate General, you should download their free compilation, where you can listen to another of The Consulate General’s songs, “Halfday Honeymoon”. You can find it here:

http://www.circleintosquare.com/item/cis-compilation-vol-1

"Self-taught magic from a book" is the debut album from two Norwegian girls and two English boys in a band with a French name, Je Suis Animal. The album is released today, and I must say I’ve waited a long time for this record. in fact, I’ve waited for it for about as long as I’ve run this blog.

I think I heard Je Suis Animal for the first time in 2005, and their sound was so different from everything other Norwegian bands did at the time. Their sound is still different, and the album has become a wonderful collection of dreamy, sharp-edged pop songs with influences from several decades of alternative music.

Before we let the band tell us more about the album, and how it was to record in the middle of the woods with a bear lurking around, we just have to look at their new video for one of the songs on the new album. "The Mystery of Marie Roget" is directed by Amund Hesbøl, and obviously inspired by the Bunuel/Dali classic "Un Chien Andalou" from 1929.

[youtube -MELudipdt4]

Before you start reading our interview with the band, I advice you to open their myspace in a separate window and press play on the music player. Then come back here and read the rest while listening!

READ THE REST OF THIS POST »

(Cryptacize: Chris, Nedelle and Michael. Photo by John Ringhofer)

Cryptacize is what happens when two of the people that have given me some of my best musical moments in the last couple of years join forces. Chris Cohen  and Nedelle Torrisi . When they in addition get together with an amazing percussionist, Michael Carreira, incredible things must happen.

Their debut album is called "Dig That Treasure" and will be released through Asthmatic Kitty on February 19. The album includes 11 beautiful, playful, interesting, harmonic, weird, sweet and most of all unpredictable songs, and I must say it has become even better than I dared to hope for. It is so refreshing to hear pop music that can surprise you with its unexpected turns, key- and rhythm changes and unusual harmonies. Cryptacize is definitely unpredictable and unusual in their way of making music, but the result is not what some will call "difficult music". This is "interesting music", but also very friendly to the ears.

For those of you who are not familiar with these people, Chris Cohen has previously released several albums with The Curtains, and he was also a member of Deerhof for several years. The multiinstrumentalist Nedelle Torrisi has released several solo-albums as Nedelle, including last years wonderful "The Locksmith Cometh". She has also recorded an album called "Summerland" with The Moore Brothers’ Thom Moore as "Nedelle & Thom" in 2004. Michael Carreira is the third member of Cryptacize, – a percussionist Nedelle and Chris "found" via an amazing cowbell-video he had made on YouTube. 

Chris and Nedelle has played together, lived together and been almost neighbours before they started Cryptacize.  She joined The Curtains on their last album "Calamity", and he played on her latest album. The title track on "The Locksmith Cometh" is co-written by Chris Cohen.

I just HAD to send over some questions to Chris and Nedelle, and while you are reading their answers, you can have a listen to some songs from the new album + some of the things they have done before Cryptacize:

Cryptacize – No Coins | Cryptacize – Cosmic Sing-a-long |
Nedelle – Ex-Priest | The Curtains – Go Lucky | The Cryptacize and Curtains songs are from Asthmatic Kitty, and the Nedelle track is from Tangram7s website.

So, here’s the Q&A…

READ THE REST OF THIS POST »

Part 2 of 2 of the Dublab interview series here at Eardrums: after chatting with beat wizard Nobody, I had the chance to ask Mr. Jimmy Tamborello a couple of questions on the occasion of his participation in the Sous La Plage festival on September 2. I don’t think I can list all the bands and projects he’s been involved with in the past decade, but let’s say that if you’ve ever seen Dntel, The Postal Service, Figurine, James Figurine, or Headset on a record cover, he was part of that. His latest album as Dntel, Dumb Luck, was released this spring; it is full of guest performances by high-profile indie artists from around the world (Lali Puna, Conor Oberst, Jenny Lewis, indie-folk newcomers Arthur & Yu, etc.)

Cameraphone pic, though "it’s hard to keep the dirt and grease off the lens"

In this interview, Jimmy talks about the highly anticipated new Postal Service record, his M.O. for live performances, and being on the road with the Dublab crew.

READ THE REST OF THIS POST »