Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit are introduced to us as the next folk sensation, so we plod along to Brighton’s Komedia which sees an excited crowd from far-a-field gushing to see him. Some have brought parents.

The focus is hardly on ‘the wit’ though. Watching, you can see why the audience is mostly female, and listening I can hear why they’ve done well. He’s got a teenage heart-throb haircut which doesn’t immediately tell of his grounding; actor, poet, songwriter, and theatre trouper (citing W.B. Yeats and Shakespeare among influences). His look swings between waistcoated artisan, paint smeared jumpers and as tonight brings, and more often to plain checkered shirts when not on a photo-shoot. But when he sings it’s out of the ordinary and barely fits his age.

When he plays it’s incredibly polished, coming across very much as a performance; speaking briefly to the audience and simply getting on and playing to the crowd. The cellist and Johhny hijack the show and whilst they’re all good, the rest of the band disappears into the orifices of our memory. I could vaguely tell you about the keyboardist’s haircut (mop like) and some languishing strokes from the drumer but I could tell you for longer about the cellist. Shining under stage lights by the all-too-loud speaker, he’s playing with thin strings of horsehair broken and floating about under the bow as it slides about. They steal the show together.

Towards the end Flynn’s enthusiasm ventures out from behind the polish. The second that sells him to me is when he falters and a bit of musician focus streams out. A couple of drunk fans bellow “Oh, Johnny!” and he smirks as he changes from guitar to banjo, and tunes it. Everyone stands politely, and he strums a couple of notes.

Stops, retunes. Looks out, unabashed – strums and stops. The crowd shuffles and they launch into song, playing upbeat notes. They stop seconds later. I grin my face off and squeak my enthusiasm to Elliott, whilst a couple of the crowd look vastly unimpressed. He ignores them and concentrates on tuning. He starts up again, and their enthusiasm’s dwindled, but three tunings and a focus on getting the sound right have made me watch a little closer. What follows is the best song, and is like a couple of their tunes is incredibly catchy.

He is good, and touted as “the next poster boy of the nu-folk scene” by the Times. However, whilst this might seem a frivolous complaint I leave feeling that some of the songs are almost too wholesome, and too easily slide by.

My parting thought is with the support.

My favourite band of the night comes in the form of Dry the River; a awkwardly delightful forerunner. The singer is a chap in a grey tshirt and skinny trousers who rotates about the stage in a silly arm-flailing and angular sort of way. They’re incredibly tight as a band, they’ve got a mandolin, and they’re really fucking fun. It’s upbeat, tuneful, clappy chanty sort of stuff and makes you smile outright. They make me feel at home, included in their well-formed music and jolly as hell.

I recommend you investigate them.

Johnny Flynn – Been Listening by cooperativemusic1
Of them all, I recommend Barnacled Warship

Despite Darwin Deez (aka Darwin Smith)’s New York twang appearing throughout his songs, I’m still surprised when it comes out of his mouth.

“Are you nervous?” I ask as he sidles about the crowd in typical vest, jeans, and bearably silly string-headband attachment.

“I was before, but not now” he admits, sloping off for a cupcake.

Soon to be playing as part of the NME Radar Tour, he’s playing at the sold out Black Heart in Camden organised by The Allotment, a small group of people I have more time for than the NME who work by the simple ethic of ‘we promote what we like’. It’s a gorgeous little venue; a box room where my hand’s greeted with a red pen smiley face drawn onto it. Naked orange filaments shine down and the squat stage is adorned with Orange amps, foam flowers and bendy rubber tube lights snaking about. The white-brick wall has 40s style up-turned lamps and balloons bundled about, and “Darwin Deez” in hand-made tissue paper letters plastered over it to the left of the stage. The whole thing reeks beautifully of home-craft and love.

We loiter and eat cupcakes.

The support, Extradition Order, starts and finishes; the singer belting into the mic with a habit of anxiously tearing his hair out as he sings, and the drummer pouting in the background.

Darwin Deez dive into ‘Hot Nights’ and ‘Up in the Clouds’, tunes pulled from outside their debut album. Three tracks later and the crowd is thick and stocky until the back wall. Jumpy, noisy notes blare out, crammed into the small space. They are long, pleasing five minute deals which keep and demand attention.

“I want to get drunk. On beer! Hah!” he says into the mic, laughing at the seemingly impossible task.

My research on Darwin Deez has extended to repeated watching of Radar Detector and a short listen to a couple of other tracks. Until I am saving face in a conversation, it does not strike me that they are in fact, a band. He’s joined by sister Michelle, without a string headband but with a penchant for diving into guitar beats with almost grungy grooving, and second guitarist Cole with a red and white striped top, rocking a faded denim jacket, backwards baseball hat and jeans rolled up around his ankles, teal socks pooling. The drummer beats zebra-striped drums. It’s a little bit indie alright.

The gig is infectious, fantastic fun and gets the first three rows dancing, unashamedly breaking the indie past-time of toe-tapping.

“I can’t see,” complains the fourth row, and when Darwin launches into the middle of the crowd with his madcap dancing they look shocked, and happily terrified. There’s a shriek and a pileup as they throw themselves at the floor before launching back into happy, greedy notes of Radar Detector.

The lights point down at the Allotment sign hanging over the drummer, leaving Darwin mostly in the dark. The crowd keep him lit with hectic, repetitive white camera flashes. The guitarists bop in and out of the light. They pull out great renditions of Deep Sea Divers, though throughout the gig no song sags.

They hit hidden pop hearts as Beyonce’s Single Ladies streams out for choreographed dancing which all four launch into with smiles. Hands waves and arms wield in silly choreographed routines similar to what, with a bit of effort, I could have hoped to make part of a Spice Girls routine aged 9.

“Thank you for the cake!” he shouts before heading off to return for an encore.

It’s playful, confidently happy lo-fi pop, it’s got people dancing and it’s entirely lovable.  We filter out pleased, keen to play Darwin Deez at loud volumes with smiles on our faces.

MySpace – Spotify – Last.fm
Flickr photos

This is really cool!

A steampunk musician called Yoshi Akai has made a magical lego music-making machine. It’s called the “Sequencer MR II” and turns coloured lego blocks into sound:

“A contraption that uses three-dimensional Lego structures to emulate a three-channel, eight-step sequencer, where each differently colored plastic brick produces a different sound and complex combinations (including tremolo and overdrive) are possible when the blocks are stacked. Akai tells us it works using resistors embedded in each and every block, with parallel networks of resistors formed as the bricks pile up, equalling lower resistance and thus a higher frequency sound generated by the contraption. Akai says he’s building sound more than playing sound.” – engadget

I want a play..

I am a rhythm-deaf ginger kid with sausage fingers. We are not famed for our musical prowess (save perhaps Johnny Rotten and Florence). I borrowed a Ukulele last week and have been eagerly practicing chords. “What is a bar?” I keep asking.

I have been learning Noah and the Whale’s 5 Years Time. Wholly unoriginal. Today I have been also learning Ben Kweller’s On My Way which may not be a most fantastic song but means I am learning rhythm (in some capacity) which makes me very happy. Soon I might sing along garishly.

To use basic pop culture analogies, Darwin Deez’s Radar Detector is essentially many fun things crossed with Napoleon Dynamite. This man’s hair terrifies me a little bit, but luckily no clip is longer than 3 seconds so my eyes don’t have a chance to fidget, so it all works – even him. Perhaps it’s easy to win people over with upside-down umbrellas too. Any home made gadget in a music video and I’m sold basically.

I’ve just bought tickets to the album launch party next month. It sounds like silly, fun and ridiculous music.

via Matthew

New from OK GO – move over Honda. Bright colours and simple things for my eyes seem to be a keen trend in music videos. “No doubt an intern that did the dominoes” was my first thought, although I can’t imagine any dominoes I’d be happier stacking. I love the glasses that make up a musical part of it, although wonder if that was done separately. Ideally in a magical word each glass would contain a small microphone and sound would be directly recorded from the video filming. Perhaps not.

“Filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Synn Labs over the course of several months.

“This is the Rube Goldberg machine version. In other words, a video depicting complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways.” – hellokinsella

Beth Jeans Houghton played at Komedia on Wednesday. I wouldn’t have found this gig without Jonathan writing an entry for Bored of Brighton which is good because she was fantastic. She’s like Gaga’s outfit, but wonderful and singing excellent music. I can’t think of a better description than his really:

“Her songs – and Beth herself, if you take her interviews as evidence – inhabits a creative world which is winningly magical. It isn’t the wistful, wide-eyed universe of a Bat For Lashes, but rather an arch, colourful terrain which seems to owe more to Cindy Sherman or Tony Hancock than it does Kate Bush.

Her musical palette – she is a young, female, folk singer – may seem familiar at first glance, but she has practically nothing in common with the likes of Laura Marling, Emmy The Great, Florence Welsh et al. First, her voice is more interesting – an effortless, husky hum which recalls 70s icon Bobbie Gentry, and her music is informed by deeper, darker, more esoteric strains of folk, country and progressive rock; by the likes of Tunng, Pentangle and Melanie.”

Here’s my hand-held video from the gig (new E-P1 cam does far better recordings than my point and shoot, unsurprisingly, though I wasn’t expecting sound to pick it up as much as it did). Stornaway, the main band, were less exciting but Beth J Houghton & The Hooves of Destiny (her band) were fantastic.

I’ve finally got round to sorting my videos. My Mac has become sluggish because I need to restart it. It’s a terrible habit, along with my ability to accumulate 20 tabs and corresponding open notepads for each.

There’s an independent record store in Brighton called Resident. It seems very pleased with its status, very into new bands, folk and good things, and is good at sending out newsletters/blog posts with their record of the week and such, all in a lovely enthusiastic tone. They also have in-store gigs which are free and tend to be promoting real gigs taking place later in the evening at more serious venues. I’d never been to until last week (actually last Friday – this is horribly late) when I went to see Jesca Hoop in an acoustic set.

“Her music is like going swimming in a lake at night” – says Tom Waits.

It was lovely – not a ‘one man and his guitar’ acoustic sort of way, but Hoop and a guitar, two very harmonious backing singers, and er.. yes, a bloke with a guitar nipped in for a bit. It’s a small store and twenty or thirty people stood very politely. Really intimate, really nice.

And a video, of course. Taken on zoom, and I got heavy arms whilst doing an impression of an army drill with the camera, but it’s a taste:

In appealing to my love of vile cheesy music, I love this mix up. But I’m also pleased that I don’t know half of the songs. DJ Earworm (yes), the author, recommends ‘Ableton Live‘ music software, which I might trial but I’m abundantly terrible with music and suspect there’s not enough software in the world that’ll help this.

It wasn’t all bad in 2009 though. I suddenly leapt on the Cat Stevens band wagon and got stuck into the Harold and Maude soundtrack (a film I love) for a long time. I heard some fantastic live sessions via BBC 2 I need to hunt down. Brilliant recordings, and he’s such a damn hippy.

I saw this today and ooh ooh it’s very good. It’s made solely of music segments from Disney’s ‘Up’. The music’s all made by Pogo. Unfortunately with a library of songs made of copyrighted material he’s not on Spotify (just last.fm instead…).

It reminded me of Alice, a similar track that cuts Alice in Wonderland in the same way which turns out to be by the same guy. This made sense when I found out. I saw Alice on yoooooooooutube.com – a site which delayed and tiled Youtube videos to make strange and hypnotic patterns – and made it all look mad. Yoooooooooutube seems to be gone now though, which is sad because it was silly and nice.