I’m going to go out on a limb and say something really uncool…it feels as though there’s never been a worse time to be a fan of alternative guitar music. I’d firstly like to point out that this is coming from a purely Plymouth perspective and secondly that my opinion is probably worth as much as a bag of Iceland chicken wings.
Considering Plymouth is the biggest city in the Southwest and has a student population of well over 30,000 it seems completely absurd that there isn’t any sort of attempt to celebrate alternative guitar music. When was the last time a touring band actually decided Plymouth was worth visiting? Or an alternative clubnight lasted longer than a month or two? I can only really think of two conclusions, guitar music really is dead (atleast to the residents of Plymouth) OR the exodus to brostep is far worse than ever could be predicted.
Obviously the thing to do in such a situation is to stop bitching on the internet at 1.30am and start a scene yourself. Maybe that’s just what I’ll do, however in the meantime the Student Union Radio have decided to put on a giant free gig this Saturday and it just so happens to feature a number of aih affiliated bands. They’ve got local Oberst’esque duo (Broken Boat), twee indie pop from Torquay (Big Wave), wall of jangle (Fire Island Pines) and garage surf punks (The Black Tambourines). If that sounds like anything less than an amazing evening, then I probably haven’t described it quite right.
So please Plymouth, restore my faith, avert me from ever typing trash like this on the internet ever again, attend in your droves (and maybe we can all head to OUF afterwards for a little jiggle). If this is asking a little too much, I’ve heard you can stream the gig online on the Union Radio website, from 7.30pm.
n.b. This post means no disrespect to people in Plymouth doing great things such as Nom De Strip, Opposite Number, Ouf, Eat Music, Onec, Clan Destine, those new nights at Bbar and anything else I’ve forgotten
Incase you missed the annoucement two weeks ago, or you’re new around here (hi!) we’re going to be putting out a free release every other week in 2012 (crazy new years resolution). Two weeks ago we released Bos Angeles covering KEEL HER, and when we didn’t think aih affiliated bands covering each other could get much better…this dropped into our inbox.
Firstly let’s just get this straight, the pizza club is not specifically for covers but when one as blindingly good as this turns up, it’s hard to let it pass. There’s just something about one person reimagining another’s work that really hooks me in; particularly when it’s a rainy Thursday morning and the cover comes in the form of an anon covering The Black Tambourines ‘Youth’.
Nothing against the original ‘Youth’, but this cover by Fruschian Void and Thee Headfolks is completely beautiful. Whereas the original almost risked drowning in its own sea of fuzz the cover almost verges over into shoegaze territory with haunting girl/boy vocals that wouldn’t be out of place on a Slumberland release. Having spent a couple of days getting madly excited over the prospects of this new band, Thomas Crang of Gorgeous Bully revealed it was just him and Fruschian ‘messing around’. Good gag Thom. Listen/download for free below, the one physical copy of this release will go live at 1pm today, last weeks sold in literally 5 seconds.
We asked Thomas what he thought this weeks pizza should be and he said ‘Chinese Buffet’, so Chinese Buffet it is - Duck, Sweet Chilli Sauce and Seaweed.
Although the whole process has made us feel like an evil major (we’ve been sitting on this great EP since September) we’re very proud to finally announce the release of Gorgeous Bully’s first physical EP - packaged in a completely unique cigarette box format.
For any not aware of the prolific output of Gorgeous Bully aka Plymouth’s Thomas Crang, he crafts heart-on-sleeve bedroom grunge pop at a prolific rate. As well as featuring on our latest compilation back in 2011, he has also made frequent appearances on the super-spot-on music blogger collective Lostx3 and featured on TLOBF’s track of the day.
Lo-fi is a term bandied around far too often, but in ‘The Young Obese’ each minuscule of fuzz does nothing but add to the warmness of the recordings. From the opener ‘Never Cry’ to the shoegaze’esque outro of ‘Adjusting to Change’ the EP is full of tumultuous grunge pop tales of misery, heartbreak and hating your hometown.
The 5 track EP is set to be released on ltd edition cassette, packaged in a custom designed cigarette packet. The pictures really do not do it justice, it’s a complete thing of beauty in the flesh. We worked with Tom at ACDSleeve, who has previously designed some great releases for Big Scary Monsters, Holy Roar and many others. We will also chuck in some Gorgeous Bully/AIH pin badges and if you preorder now, we’ll send you the mp3’s ahead of the release date on the 20th February.
You can stream the full EP below, as well as download the opening track ‘Never Cry’, it’s a good’un!
As well as being ferociously DIY, Thom of Gorgeous Bully is also a prolific song writer and the cassette features a ‘secret’ bside filled with Gorgeous Bully demos dating back to 2009 (we’ll send you the mp3’s of these demos with your preorder too!). Limited to 50, so get your preorder in before the release date of February 20th as I doubt these will stick around long!
I’m not sure whether it came from wanting to conceive the most ridiculous new years resolution ever or reading too much of the Alan Partridge biography but we have decided for the duration of 2012 we will put out a release every other week.
Yes you did read that correctly, 26 releases over the course of the year. Where’s the quality control I hear you cry. Well that’s the thing, although standard releases are great (and we will continue to put them out) I can’t keep up with the amount of times I hear a song I completely love, but its just not suitable for a full release. It doesn’t take a genius to see the conventional model for releasing music is fucked and it with this in mind that we have decided to launch the AIH 5” Pizza Club.
We have decided to combine three of our favourite things: Friday afternoons, coming home and making pizza whilst listening to the latest hypeworthy mp3’s (the latter might not be totally true). Every other Friday afternoon we will release a new single available for free download from our blog and bandcamp. Accompanying each release will be a 5” pizza box, containing a 5” pizza CD that pertains to the single that is released that week. Oh did we mention that each release will be limited to one, and the first person to order gets the one and only copy. Exciting right?
With all the details out of the way, we’ll move straight onto PIZZAIH01. Bos Angeles have spent the last couple of days shacked up in a church hall attempting to record their debut EP. In between days frontman Rich managed to find time to put together this cover of (I hate it) When you Look at Me originally by prolific Winchester songstress KEEL HER. It sees a departure from their standard tropical beach jams into something a lot more grungy but loses none of the brattiness contained in the original version.
We have named PIZZAIH01 ‘Bratty Doom’ and it’s made up of birds eye chilli’s and grizzly ground beef. The ONE physical copy of this release will go live at 3pm today (UK time) on our bandcamp. The first person to buy it will be the owner of something very special indeed. For the rest of you, enjoy your free download below and see you in two weeks time for PIZZAIH02.
Considering this time last year we were just two releases (and 3/4 months old), it’s been a pretty great year! We’ve now fully recovered from an excessive Christmas in all departments, and on this note, sorry if you placed any orders in the last couple of weeks! With all the excitement of Christmas I totally forgot to mention AIH HQ was closing down for the holidays, but if you’re waiting for anything it will be sent out this week (with a couple of apology gifts!)
2011 has seen us release a photobook EP that contained one of my favourite songs of the year, a monthly cassette ‘Man Club’, an EP that referenced Curb and the Office and not forgetting our second compilation which we released as a map back in September. As we consider ourselves nice guys (but also because we want to get in on the crazy sales action) we have decided to reduce all of these releases on our bandcamp shop (some are even half price), fill your boots.
If this wasn’t enough we also put out the Black Tambourines third EP Chica, right at the end of the year on cassette. I’m delighted to say the first run has almost completely sold out, we won’t be doing a cassette rerun, so don’t miss out!
There’s almost too many highlights to pick, but getting to talk to Huw Stephens about the label on Radio1 was pretty exciting. Other high points included weekends spent in London, pulling strange all nighters at bankers flat’s and then getting the train back to Weymouth at 9am, after a 6am Boris bike ride.
So what does 2012 hold, well we have a pretty interesting new years resolution involving 26 pizzas, but we’ll tell you more about that on Friday. We’ve also got lots of other exciting things lined up, that I genuinely can’t wait to share and I’m still overly excited about the fact we released Jack Cooper (from Mazes) Art is Cheap project this week. As we announced it at the height of Christmas it was one of those ‘blink and miss it’ sort of things, but it’s definitely worth a listen.
Thanks to everyone who has supported us in any way in the past 12 months, it has been an unhealthy amount of fun and we just hope we can spend 2012 in much the same way - putting out the music we love. Stay healthy
d&r xx
DRY ROUTE TO DEVON COMPILATION
BREATHE OUT
MY NAME
THE BLACK TAMBOURINES / NEW YEARS EVIL
BRINK OF THE CLOUDS
