HECTOR AND THE LEAVES – Little Bee EP

little bee epLondon based singer-songwriter Tom Hector has an old spirit. On this, his third EP, his music has a dreamy quality, resurrecting sixties pop and sunny attitudes, replayed through a sort of nineties filter. It results in four tunes that might appeal to fans of the Beach Boys or The Feeling, yet at the same time he presents material that holds on to a slightly woozy attitude that might just catch the ear of those who’ve followed the solo career of The Bluetones’ Mark Morriss.

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¡VAMANOS! – ¡Vamanos! Presents A Ten Inch At 45RPMs

ten inches of noise by vamanosIn 2014, as one of the first batch of releases issued by cassette specialists King Pizza Records, Brooklyn’s ¡Vamanos! dropped a handful of tracks that truly set the pace with regard to two-man garage blues noise-making. The five tracks demonstrated a powerhouse performance, culminating with perhaps the filthiest rendition of ‘Death Letter’ committed to tape. The live shows, of course, were even more intense – “disgusting”, even, to quote their label boss. At the beginning of 2016, Alex (g/v) and Tyler (d/v) returned to Danny Rose’s studio – the location of prior recordings – to try and capture an even rawer and more intense representation of the band.

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JOYKILL COLLECTIVE – Joykill Collective EP

12615578_953951684642475_443248086336923773_oJoykill Collective are a collective in the genuine sense. Formed in the attic of a shared house, the band are not a band at all, but a gathering fronted by a man named Leif, whose primary interests appear to be music and left-wing politics. With friends, he created music, grew his own food in a rooftop garden and shared political ideals. This debut EP collects the Collective’s earliest recordings, four songs of heavy-ish, guitar driven indie rockers that often have a sinister edge, conveying the dark political times in which they were written.

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LADY JANE’S REVENGE – 1554 EP

lady jane's revenge epIt’s hard to believe that by the time of this release that there are people out there who still think pirates are cool. By the turn of 2016, The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is still coughing up dregs of adventure even though the pirate thing is, by this point, older and more tired than Keef Richards’s addled skeleton. Still, here we are, and Lady Jane’s Revenge make their entrance into the alternative rock sphere with a barrage of riffs and a somewhat pirate-y undertone (obviously, by that, it doesn’t insinuate any involvement from Fergal Sharkey with an eye patch, peg leg and parrot combo, though this EP would perhaps be more interesting if it did).

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