Holy State / Pulled Apart By Horses / Rolo Tomassi @ The Faversham, Leeds. 19th April 2009

This is a big line up for a gig on a Sunday night Holy State’s EP on Holy Roar is a cracker (See my review here), Pulled Apart By Horses are a force to be reckoned with in the live setting they just rock the fuck out like new skool grunge legends or something. Then there is the always intense and mesmerising stop start free-jazz-spazz-hardcore of Sheffield’s young guns Rolo Tomassi. I for one was pretty excited.

Holy State took the stage to a really dead and spares crowd unfortunately this put a bit of a damper on things but they still played their harts out. They tore out tracks from their debut EP in a short live wire set with riffs, screaming and the all important quality tracks. I’d love to see them play a livelier gig as the crowed was proper lame.

Pulled Apart By Horses are local hero’s / loons in Leeds they play everywhere and anytime it seems, I think I’ve caught them accidentally as much as I have on purpose as they crop up as support quite a bit. The band were having troubles this time mind as not only had the crowd only slightly grown and still felt dead out (I blame Sundays) but member James Brown injured himself somehow previously and wasn’t playing. He was apparently having his leg taken off and replaced with a horses, which will defiantly give them an extra kick when he rejoins the tour soon in Glasgow. They played some wicked stuff though, my highlights have to be the anthem Swan Dive High Five and E=MC Hammer they really shredded it up.

Now for the main event Rolo Tomassi took the stage with M83 setting the scene as intro music before doing their thing. Again the crowd was a little fuller but still dead, which was a really shame as I thought this would be a hype gig for Leeds on this tour. The sound was a bit muddy and muddled as well which didn’t help too much, this has been the case for all Faversham gigs I’ve been to mind so I wasn’t really surprised. Rolo played a set full of album material and only included one or two from the first EP this kind of gave the gig a really samey vibe, I’ve seen them mix it up a lot more and kill it. Highlights included the epic Gary Numan meats Hardcore ‘Nine’ and the brilliant ‘Digital History’ from the one sided 7” on Holy Roar, I’m pretty sure they played ‘Film Noir’ as well which always gets the gameboy-scream-core crew going.

All in all it was a nice gig but I kind of expected a bit more energy in the room, I wouldn’t blame the bands for that mind I blame the sleepy Sunday vibes and sound quality. Go and catch the rest of the tour where Grammatics also feature it will probably rock loads more.

http://www.myspace.com/holystate

http://www.myspace.com/pulledapartbyhorses

http://www.myspace.com/rolotomassi

BSM 09 Collection

News from one of my favourite labels:

Big Scary Monsters have launched their our '2009 Collection', a series of four compilation CDs featuring new, rare, unreleased, live and remixed tracks from the BSM roster. Each CD is limited to just 365 date stamped copies and will be released seasonally, with the Spring Collection kicking things off in February. The compilations will be sold separately for £5 each or you can subscribe (via www.bsmrocks.com) to the whole series for £15 and receive a free collectors edition tin to hold all of the discs (photos coming soon), as well as other gifts and promotions through the course of the year.

Spring, The first in the series, is now available to pre-order and features 14 tracks including Mimas performing a wonderful cover of This Town Needs Guns hit, '26 Is Dancier Than 4', who return with 'Japanese Ultra Violence', a track which is previously unreleased in the UK. Other highlights include a massive dance remix of Pulled Apart By Horses, an exclusive album demo from Blakfish (as well as a track featuring members of the band singing a 'lounge' medley of Tubelord songs down the phone!), a brilliant old demo recording from Meet Me In St Louis, album/EP tracks from new boys Copy Haho, Wintermute and The Tupolev Ghost and loads more. As an added bonus, there are also two live videos including PABH and Blakfish playing some massive covers at a house party back in December. Most of these recordings won't be found anywhere else.

When purchasing/subscribing, let us know your preferred date and we'll do our best to stamp your CD(s) accordingly. The 'Summer Collection' will be released in May so look out for news and tracklistings for that one nearer the time at www.bsmrocks.com

Sounds a bit cool huh?

Big Scary Monsters Autumn Collection Sampler

The Monsters spank out another one of their excellent samplers for the Autumnal season this time. Get yourself over to http://www.bsmrocks.com/ and get it on the download it’s totally free and features some awesome artists.

This Town Needs Guns: Well I have talked alot about these guys recently after seeing them live and reviewing their album Animals for this very blog and 3barfire. All you need to know is they have to be heard…

Tubelord: They are a wicked band that just keep getting better with every release and the new tracks I heard them play live not so long ago where crackers. BSM are releasing a tasty 7” of theirs. Oh yeah they make a mad punky, poppy, deranged sound that makes you want to move in strange ways.

Pulled Apart By Horses: I was thinking just the other month when I saw these guys supporting That Fucking Tank and Dananananaykroyd in Leeds that I wish someone would pick them up and release some stuff. Then low and behold I find out one of my favourite labels Big Scary Monsters did just that; the new 7” is going to drop soon it’s called Meat Balloon and the artwork looks pretty damn hot too.

Mimas: I’m not very well versed on what Mimas are like apart from the excellent video I got hooked up with not long ago that featured some sexy sock puppet action along with a wicked song.

Native: I’ve really not heard of these guys but they are apparently BSM’s new favourite band so I will have to give them a good listen hey after that endorsement.

Grab it now for free and check out the rest of the stuff on BSMrocks too they have a wicked set of podcasts to download along with a nice roster of artists to check out. I do enjoy reading the blog too...

Dananananaykroyd, That Fucking Tank, Pulled Apart By Horses & Cow Town @ Brudnell Social Club, Leeds, 29th July 2008

Back to the Brudnell for another brilliant gig this line up looks like a good’un. The doors opened a little later than expected so some drinks in the ye olde men’s section where in order, before slinking into the main hall. I love this room it looks like something from Phoenix Nights but with better entertainment, I’m just a little disappointed they don’t have a mirror ball…

Cow Town are a local Leeds band who are on Chinchilla Tone I hadn’t seen them before but was looking forward to it as I had heard good things and I love that little label. They play some kind of rocking spazz jazz but in the best way possible with funky ass synths, disjointed guitars and some beastly drumming. They reminded me of Fulborn Teversham but with a guitar and less sax. Enjoyed their set ever so much.

Pulled Apart By Horses are another local Leeds band I have heard a lot about and only seen at the very back of a crowed room where the sound was far to bad to appreciate at Nasty Fest earlier in the year. This time the swine’s where right in front of me and very excitable. They are bringing Grunge back with style my mate said they were a bit Screamo too so we decided to call them Sgrunge. Much riffage and hard ass rockin’ later everyone was into it pretty much and they had some infectious energy.

That Fucking Tank are a drum’n’bass outfit… well in that they are just a drummer and a bassist. They sound a bit like a post-rock battles with more straight forward and rocking tunes, or Death From Above gone post-rock. When they get into a groove the tunes where damn nice and danceable, when they were smashing out disjointed stuff I don’t think they quite pulled it off. They had some ace ideas and got a lot of people into it and grooving. Again pretty damn enjoyable band.

Dananananaykroyd are the headliners for tonight I have been gagging to see these guys ever since I heard about them a while back. Sissy Hits is an ace EP and they now have a record coming out by the end of the year, which should be nice and special. The live experience is an energy filled lightning bolt of joy filled noise with joking around with the audience and running about to join them. They had a few technical difficulties as they bust a string on the first tune but they got a guy from the audience to be a guitar tech for them for the evening. When they banged there way into One After One one guy in the audience tried to make a one-man moshpit and got well over excited. He ended up getting punched in the face by some one and a fight almost proper kicking off. After Dananan… calmed down that little incident and everyone backed off the bad vibes soon dissipated. The lead singer I think the dudes called Kyle? Was near me at the time of the fight in the crowd and we exchanged looks of confusion. They continued with some high energy beastly tunes with their awesome two drummer set-up they got the heat going so much so that. Duncan AKA ‘Land Wolf’ apparently got his top off which made the ladies swoon I can tell you right now it was pure sex. Each tune was a cracker and probably one of the most energetic and fun bands I have seen since The Mae Shi. The stuff I hadn’t heard before sounded brilliant, which gives me high hopes for an album. A bit of ramshackle audience participation with people coming up to play drums and guitar for a bit in the middle of a tune was a laugh. This was followed by more stonking tunes and then we had to go home…

Brilliant gig with many inspired bands. I think Dana went off into town for an after party later. There were flyers around saying as much any way. I would go see these bands again they rocked it all night long.