So here is the first ever Fokkawolfe Mixtape. I don't know why I hadn't got around to making one before but anyway here it is, a curated selected of some great new guitar bands spanning new shoegaze, britpop, punk, grunge, extreme garage and whatever, all from the last three years, most from the last six months and a lot from bands local to Brighton or London.
Download the 50 plus minutes of constant brilliance from mediafire here.
Track Listing:
Peers are a great guitar band already getting hit up by the NME for their ace demo single Night Driving, a rip roaring anthemic roar of mournful exaltation. Download it while you can from their Soundcloud here.
The duo that is Feature make a great fuzzed out garage sound that is more about harmonies, tone, energy and bass heavy scrunching guitar sounds than it is about flat out garage surf tunes. This is textural and complex, garage extremists if you will similar to The Sticks if The Sticks had singing as a focus point.
Feature crash and sway through tracks, it should be minimal but like other great guitar/drum duos like The White Stripes or such, they turn their two piece into something larger than themselves.
This EP called Memory came out in October last year.
All I know about JC Satan is that they're brilliant and they're from Bordeaux in France. Insane garage punk thrash with a huge convoluted sound of intense all-or-nothing power that makes you feel this is some kind of therapy based art experiment. The album Faraway Land has song after song of genius-ness in sonic ear blending form. The album is €5 to download from their Bandcamp. In never lets up. Oh and the album cover..!!
Tropical Popsicle another great name for a band. These guys make modern garage, surf, psych stuff, with great pop harmonies and upbeat mood its no real surprise they hail from California. Their Ghost Becons EP is available to download from Bandcamp for $2.
The Vivids, energetic angular post punk feelings channelled through full on garage psych noise and 80s discord. Brilliant and hard to listen to like Gang Of Four or The Fall sounded like at times. Download their five track Drunk Bridge Burning And Saturday Night Bedlam EP at Bandcamp for free now!
Of the many of the new wave of lo-fi garage post punk bands gracing any and every gig across the more discerning venues of the land Dignan Porch are one of the more genius editions to the roster and a band that I can really listen to more than just a couple of times.
They have a album just come out called "Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen". It slays. It can be downloaded from Bandcamp here.
Full on garage surf punk with an almost rockabilly vibe from Portland with a brilliant name if ever there was one... Guantanamo Baywatch. Its pricey but their album Chest Crawl is out on Dirtnap Records for $12.. download from Bandcamp here.
With a cacophonous punk attitude and awesome garage sound Le Secte du Futur crash through a series of lo-fi psychedelic beauties on their eponymously titled LP release out on Eighteen Records. It only €5 to download from Bandcamp and it's well worth it.
TRAAMS are a trio from Brighton/Chichester making really great guitar driving garage, drone and roll. Check out their Soundcloud for more tracks, though there's nothing to download for free as of yet.
Honeyblood, to girls who play songs about stuff, all lo-fi and grungey in a Scottish post punk style and I bloody love it. With crunched guitars and vocals far off in a large hall somewhere, the live and shody style recordings are just brilliant. Taking the White Stripes set up of guitar and drums this band kick ass in a melancholy way.
There's nothing to download as of yet and there cassette release is sold out but go like them on Facebook here and check out their Tumblr for loads of live videos and stuff.
Strange Hands make guitar punk-pop all lo-fi and jangled up, the trio strumming eagerly at the strings of life, garage with psychedelic intentions, relatively timeless and more then awesome, oh and they have an organ playing pretty much throughout like a 60s mental psych band on full throttle. They have an album out called Dead Flowers, it came out in May. Go buy it here for €7. The single Love Illusion is free to download.
"Yankee Bang Bang is Psycho-Sexual-Garage-Pop-Meets-Classical-Indian tunes, with lyrics broaching any and every topic from recreational sex to the pending nuclear holocaust to werewolves."
With an intro like that this could either be really bad or really good... well its not really bad. Yankee Bang Bang make quirky incessant garage pop and have an EP coming out in June called "Color Me". The single Lets Dance can be downloaded for free from Bandcamp.
Only Real's sound is a slow low guitar whisper of promised dreams to come, echoing and shimmering 80s guitar through cartoon wonderlands and summer parties from teen bedrooms. Shoe gaze for people with cool sneakers, London times, dream pop with grime raps, new, good, listen and learn, upbeat future anthems. No downloads as of yet. Keep a look out.
Blue Jungle who originally went by the name Lately Blue Blue create a psychedelic garage candy pop all fuzzed out and dreamy sick. Both mournful and wistful like the kid who thought about things to much and at beach parties stood looking out to sea while everyone else got wasted on cheap wine.. And slow and sultry like the girl who inevitably comes up to him to tempt him back into the world.
They have an EP out now on Burger Records called Loveless Youth.
The EP is a "demo compilation of spooky oldies but goodies and originals that are translucently charming for any bewitched, bothered and bewildered heart."
Go buy the cassette here.
And go like them on Facebook here.
THE PHARMACY - DIG YOUR GRAVE taken from the upcoming album "Stoned & Alone" out on Seayou Records
What the hell do you mean guitar bands are dead, no one you have heard in a while sounds as vital and energized as they were when you were younger, you haven't heard anyone that kicks it like The Libertines, BRMC, The Pixies etc etc yawn. Well you just haven't been looking hard enough have you. Blam! Here's a band for you, Jesuslesfilles, they've been hanging out for a year or so, they have guitars and energy and they're French speaking to boot, these guys are from Montreal and they kick ass all over the place! They've just released a split record with The Peelies which you can get from Bandcamp for $5. Do it.
Like some of modern Austrian Bat For Lashes, Monsterheart powers into place with a killer 6 track EP called S/T thats some incessant childlike magic land of darkness, lo-fi garage pop and feral wild girl feelings, like some kind of fairy tale character on speed doing 60s girl group produced by an 80s goth, ..that's Monsterheart. Signed to Seayou Entertainment her EP is available from Bandcamp for 4 euros. Get it. There's also a free download to get from Soundcloud.
