Help Ma Boab, It's The 62 Word Review

Hi folks

A wee bit different this week. Every so often I include a few non-Scottish bands (because I get loads of submissions from outwith Scotland every week) in the reviews. Scotland is represented this week by Edinburgh's Birdhead, with England represented by Santiago Street Machine (Manchester) and Church School (London).

Keep your submissions coming in, no matter where you're from!

Boab x

Birdhead - Tourist

Tourist is a relentless and continually evolving beast, which appears to climax numerous times before surprising you with yet another crescendo. The pounding drums, the siren-like Moogs and a filthy driving bassline bring to mind some Krautrock greats (think Neu! with the brain of Iggy Pop). Stick Jonny Greenwood on guitar and Johnny Thunders on vocals and you've got Birdhead. Excellent stuff.

 

Available now from the usual digital outlets

Santiago Street Machine – Face Your Fear

The orchestral intro belies the true nature of this song: a well put together piece of trance-house which sits somewhere in between Tiesto and Faithless. The breakbeat works perfectly with the choppy synth-strings, and the numerous breakdowns lead off into slight variations of the original theme in every instance, keeping things from going stale. It's not truly original, but worth a listen.

Church School – Settle EP

I was going to say this reminds me of Belle & Sebastian, only for Church School to go and throw in a reference to B&S themselves in standout This Year We'll Do Better. Another highlight is opener Denning Point, the sound enriched by its understated banjo. It sounds a bit like that Richmond sausages advert but it's actually acceptable to listen to.

 

Settle is available now from Bandcamp.

Fin.

Fresh Meat Monday - Birdhead

Would you care to introduce yourself?

We are David Nicklen and Stephen Donkin, sometimes known as Birdhead.


How would you describe the music you make?

We are loathe to use genre tags, so we will say that we use drums, guitars, synths, laptops, loops and vocals to make a propulsive, primal and hypnotic noise.


How did you start out making music?

We met each other playing in a psychobilly band about five years ago, called The Rohypsters. Once that disintegrated, we decided to continue together, and after a couple of aborted bands, we decided to jettison the extra members and go forth as a duo, which has worked out pretty well so far!


What process goes into the way you write songs?

We often start with an idea for a loop, and then just jam with it in the rehearsal room until we find some parts that we like. From there, we will try and make some sort of structure out of the parts and then usually the vocals will come last, because neither of us are natural singers... However, we have recently changed our setup with our laptop etc we think it might have an impact on our songwriting process, which should be quite interesting.


What can people expect from your live shows?

We are often commended on our live shows, partly because I think people expect less from a duo than from a full band, and we produce a pretty big sound and energetic performance for just the two of us. As for the music, you can expect everything from drones, bluesy guitar riffs, electro synth lines, barked vocals, lots of lyrics about space and that....


What are you all listening to at the moment?

Stephen - I’ve been listening to a lot of Suuns and there is a Pilooski remix of a Tame Impala track that I’ve been listening to. But to be honest, I can’t stop listening to these two OFWGKTA albums, by Tyler, The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt.

Dave - A fair bit of 50’s and 60’s transatlantic soul, Captain Beefheart has also been on the play-list recently. The new PJ Harvey album has been spun a few times recently along with the last Wooden Shjips album.


What can we expect to see/hear from you in 2011?

We released our first EP in March, so we hope to follow that up with another release of some kind, we have a few remixes in the pipeline too, so we are looking forward to getting them out there. Other than that, we just hope to play some more good shows and hopefully play in some other cities around Scotland!

Solar Plexus by Birdhead

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