In the summer of 2012, math rock/alt-metal act Wot Gorilla? really impressed us with their very technical third release ‘Kebnekaise’.
Many live shows followed the release of the album and the band really built up a following. With this in mind, we expected to hear more from them – maybe hints that a new album was imminent by the end of 2014, given that a new track ‘Joints’ was posted on their Bandcamp page in July.
Sometimes it can be easy to feel like the corporate giants are repeatedly flooding the market with expensive repackages of classic albums, hugely expensive box sets and the like. Truth is, while we all have our “classic albums”, music fans still need something completely new to discover and thankfully, we now live in a world where there’s more music than ever before at our disposal. So much, in fact, that much of it is in danger of being overlooked. There are literally thousands of underground bands and hundreds of DIY labels and you often have to put in some hard yards to find them, but we live in very exciting musical times. On the eve of the their first anniversary, a few faces from King Pizza Records – one of the US’s most no-nonsense DIY labels –met with Real Gone to give us the skinny…and, man, they had an impressive amount of enthusiasm!
***
Legendary keyboard player Ian ‘Mac’ McLagan passed away on 3rd December 2014 following a stroke. He was 69 years old.
Mac was a well loved musician throughout a career spanning several decades. He first came to prominence as a member of Small Faces, before becoming an integral member of the Rod Stewart fronted Faces. Later work saw Mac performing with The Bump Band, with Faces bandmate Ron Wood in The New Barbarians and as a full-time member of Billy Bragg’s backing band The Blokes.
Mac also lent his talents to many sessions including recordings by Frank Black and Izzy Stradlin.
We don’t know about you, but here at Real Gone Towers there’s a feeling that this year has disappeared far, far too quickly.
It’s December already and that can mean only one thing: it’s time for our countdown to xmas!
For the next three (and a bit) weeks, we’ll be bringing you a selection of hopefully entertaining clips in the build up to the big event. A new clip will be added each day, so don’t forget to keep checking back!
In 2010, an unexpected power pop gem appeared in the release schedules by an unknown band named Oranjuly. The release played almost like a history of power pop, pulling influence from Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, Jellyfish and Weezer on a strong set of songs. A year or so passed and we hadn’t heard much from the Oranjuly camp at all…until multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/songwriter Brian E. King re-appeared in a band named Parks. In the autumn of 2014, Real Gone caught up with Brian to find out what happened to the Oranjuly project and why they seemed destined to a be a one album deal.
***