Hey and away we go on this tuneful Tuesday evening - and what a day it has been. I still have no proper chocolate and at tea time I realised there was no cake either. No cake? Unthinkable. So I obviously needed something to take my mind off my troubles. Here it is anyway.
I start with a small apology as I'd meant to do this post last week, but time ran away with me and I didn't get chance - better late than never and I hope you'll agree when you read (and listen, because if you don't listen, I'll find where you live and tell everyone what you REALLY keep in that tea caddy in your shed) that it was worth the wait.
So yes. Ahem.
I've long been a champion of all the new and emerging acts from the North East. At the moment, it really is the best place to be if you want to listen to really fresh, engaging music made my keen-as-mustard folks with genuine talent. Quite a few of the bands I've featured on this blog since its inception last year have been from there and although I'm from the North West myself, I feel a genuine affinity and affection for the great music being produced over t'wall.
Therefore I was quite excited when I heard that Hit The North (East) were getting together with one of my favourite wee record labels Tiny Lights Recordings to create The Tiny Lights Top 20 Records of the Year awards type thing. Tiny Lights have had some bloody fucking brilliant acts this year - in a few weeks time I'll be doing my own review of the year and there'll be lots of mentions of them again, so brace yourself, prepare for the emergency stop and don't forget to bang on the dashboard.
You can see the complete run down of the top 20 here - it includes some favourites of mine, By Toutatis, Lionhall and BLANK MAPS (sobsobsob RIP etc)
However, the focus of tonight's long, rambling meander (cos God knows this is making the Domesday Book look like a pamphlet on condoms) is going to feature the winners- Tissue Culture
Oh Tissue Culture. On their Facebook page they describe themselves as "shouty, stroppy, bairns" and it's funny, but it really does them a total injustice. The last while gone by I've been giving their EP "Saint Waleric" some serious whelley on the auld gramaphone and I've really grown to love it a great deal. Before we go any further, I'd like you to take a look at one of the tracks off it - "Satellites"
Now you've done that, you must go to their bandcamp page and take a look at their EP in full
http://tinylights.bandcamp.com/album/saint-waleric
It really is so very beguiling. It's discordant harmony played out to a backdrop of scuzzy guitars and there is a painful beauty to each of the tracks. The seven minute opener "Bleak Northern Beaches" is a push-me-pull-you kind of song - on first listen it might scare you a bit, but give it a few listens and you realise just how much depth it has. Satellites speaks for itself, but songs like "Safe, Safe, Safe" are real emotional rollercoasters. All of the tracks on here are aching paeans, filled with pathos and real intensity.
So whilst everyone on the list was a winner in their own right, Tissue Culture grabbed the top spot for the sheer forcefulness and heart stopping gorgeousity of their sound (yeah, I just made a word up, no, there's fuck all you can do about it...). They are a band that simply warrant investigating and are deserving of a friendly ear. thegeneral really does hope they come back in 2014 with something else. In the meantime we've got Saint Waleric and their EP of 2011, "Cling To The Nostalgia" (and not mastalgia as I just typed...that's something totally different for another blog)
Tiny Lights might say they're DIY as fuck but their acts are a shining example of everything that is fuckawesome about the North East music scene. Once you've checked out Tissue Culture, you might want to have a look at what else they have to offer:
http://tinylights.bandcamp.com/
I say this a lot, but you genuinely won't regret it. Now then...about that stuff you're hiding in the tea caddy at the back of the shed...?
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