Tusk - We Found Gold

Well, here I am again and it's with a really heavy heart that I make this post. Earlier this year my favourite wee record label Tiny Lights ceased to be - that was bad enough, because it followed on from the demise of one of my best kept little secrets Blank Maps. I'm still really really sore about it. I think my friends are getting a bit fed up of me going on and on. At the time they consoled me and said "Never mind, you've still got Tusk. It'll all be OK, you've still got Tusk". But after a while they got bored and went back to talking about nail varnish and Ryvita and stuff.

Gentle reader, I believed them. I carried that Tusk reassurance with me. It was the one flicker that kept me going.

A few weeks ago they announced that their lovely lead singer Tom (lovely lovely Tom) was leaving - but that they'd carry on as a three piece and some new material would be out soon.

So I was thrilled to bits to find out on Monday that it was finally released - in fact here's the link to their bandcamp page:

wearetusk.bandcamp.com/

But hark. Read on. What is THIS? OH GOD NO. It cannot BE. NO. SAY IT ISN'T TRUE.

It is.

Tusk are no more. "We Found Gold" is their final recording and they are no more. I'm afraid this was too much for me. I've been in bed with a fit of the vapours ever since.

OK, to be serious for a moment - I genuinely am very sad. These lads have been a big part of my musical life the last two and a bit years. I've truly loved their songs, their music and their sparky brilliance - not to mention their dry wit and urbane lyrics. Aside from that, they're a really lovely group, proper nice blokes - and I've felt really chuffed to have made their acquaintance and seen them develop.

It kind of feels a bit weird to be making my first full length review of their stuff, just as they're splitting - but at the time they had their last EP out, this blog was on hiatus and I wasn't writing. Now I'm back and in the groove, they're saying goodbye! Something's not right there somewhere!

"We Found Gold" is a really lovely way to bow out. I can't really say much more than that. It's two songs of chippy, chirpy, dubby aceness. Even if this is the first time you've heard of them, right now, this minute, you can't really have a better place to start - once you've listened, get their back catalogue. That's an order.

Whether they're just being bloody funny (you can't not love a band that has a song called "Chief Kegwin") or whether they're paying cheeky nods to their favourite dark comedies (see their last EP "Interrobang" and the Snuffbox song "Don't Wake Quickfinch") they always offered something that bit different. I think that was why I loved them so much. They didn't really bear comparison with anyone else - they mixed up their styles and it always worked. A little oasis of aceness in a big ocean of bland.

I hope that this isn't the end and that in some way, shape or form we'll see Tom, Jonathan, Andy and Sam carry on in music - but for now it just remains for me to thank them for some beautiful tunes and good laughs. Love and good vibes to you all. It's been ace getting to know you.

thegeneral's 2013 Round Up Award Ceremony With Optional Sausage On A Stick - Part One.

It's the night of the year literally none of you have been waiting for. Perhaps even fewer of you than that. The red carpet has been laid out (well, it's a purple rug from Ethel Austins), the champagne (PG Tips) is ready to be popped and the canapes (a bag of Morrison's own brand ready salted) have been organised in an attractive crescent on the table. 

Yes, that's right, it's thegeneral's 2013 Round Up Award Ceremony With Optional Sausage On A Stick. The reason the sausage is optional is that I only had six in my deep freeze, so it's on a first come, first served basis. I've also just realised I've no sticks - I've got a box of Swan Vestas in an old shoe box under the stairs though, so we'll make do. 

The glitz! The glamour! The high life! ...Are all somewhere else...so flick the kettle on, get settled and read on to find out what the musical highlights of the year for this little blog have been. Try and enjoy it, even if you don't, just lie. It'll make me feel much less inadequate than I already do. 

Award number one:

Gramaphone Recording Of The Year That Made thegeneral Squeal With Unbridled Pleasure:

Saint Max And The Fanatics - Saint Max Is Missing And The Fanatics Are Dead

There really was no way this was going to go to anyone else other than Saint Max and The Fanatics and their frankly beautiful album Saint Max Is Missing And The Fanatics Are Dead. I felt like I'd been waiting years for such an exciting, buzzing, thrilling collection of tracks to come my way and when they did it was everything I'd wanted and more. To read my original post, see here, but anyone that doesn't go and listen to it, and then buy after reading this is quite frankly a few scoops short of an Ice Cream tub. No contest for me, this was far and away the best long player I'd been presented with. 

Award number two:

Gramaphone Recording Of The Year That Wasn't Quite LP Length But Nearly Was And Also Made thegeneral Squeal With Unbridled Pleasure:

TUSK - Interrobang

This particular award goes to a band called TUSK. I've mentioned them before on the blog, and they continue to be a band I champion and want great things for. Their last EP, called Interrobang came out in April this year, and as the blog was on hiatus then I didn't get chance to review it - so this is by way of apology to them and also to you, because many of you may have missed out on just how brilliant it is. Click on the link above to listen to it and download it. It's a genius mix of witty, urbane lyrics, chippy, dubby music and dark humour. TUSK are effortless in their brilliance and this was definitely the EP of the year for me. You absolutely have to have them in your lives. 

Award number three:

The One Single Track That Made thegeneral Want To Yell In The Street "WHY IS NOBODY TAKING NOTICE OF THIS BAND???"

By Toutatis - You Need To Know When It's Time To Leave

Easy. Easy easy easy. This accolade is presented to the stellar By Toutatis. I'm listening to the track in question as I type this (I mean of course, as I stand at the podium in my dashing evening frock...) and I'm reminded of its painful beauty and the genuine emotion in it. Click the link to listen to: You Need To Know When It's Time To Leave. It is quite simply one of the loveliest songs I think I've ever heard and I can't say anything other than that; You need to hear it yourself to appreciate what I'm talking about and it really rankles with me that more people don't know just how talented they are. 

Award number four: 

The Most Blinding Bit Of Electronica You'll Hear All Year - That Even Made thegeneral Put Down Her Kraftwerk Records For A Bit

Discopolis - Falling (Committed To Sparkle Motion)

Oh this record. This was the soundtrack to my summer. Discopolis had the dubious honour of being the first band I wrote about on this blog way back last year. Over the last twelve months they've developed, matured and grown in their sound and this track felt, to me, like the cumulative effort of all the hard work. From the moment I heard it I was blown away and even now, all these months on it continues to be a staple of my regular playlists. You must also watch the Donnie Darko-esque video for it:

Which is beautifully intense. They are worthy winners of this award and I hope they come back in 2014 with more bleepy excellence. 

Award number five:

The "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo DON'T LEAVE, I'm Totes Emosh" Gong.

Blank Maps 

You remember in the mid 90s when Take That split up? They had to set up counselling lines to cope with the numbers of screaming girls who were bereft at the passing of a boy band institution. I never batted an eyelid. Didn't affect me at all. Got through the whole thing without chipping my nail polish. I couldn't understand why there was so much knicker wetting going on over a few lads who'd decided not to make records anymore. I LAUGHED IN THE FACE OF THEIR SADNESS. Then, just last month, I heard that Blank Maps were to play their final gig and afterward split. Frankly, I was bereft. I had an adolescent hissy fit and Queeny strop and picked all my nail polish off. Incredibly gutted they've gone, but also extremely glad they've left us with a brilliant back catalogue of stuff to keep with us. You can download their hits here and love them as much as me, albeit retrospectively

Tissue Culture and Hit The North (East)

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...?

Blank Maps - Thousands

It's with a really heavy heart thegeneral makes this post. In fact I almost feel like laying on a funeral tea and donning a mourning veil to write it (I look proper good in black though, so y'know, it's got it's compensations and all that).

You know how much I love and champion Blank Maps. Their last release, "Lucky Dip" has been without doubt one of my most played and obsessed over tracks of the year. Therefore I was wearing a massively sad face yesterday when I found out that the band were playing their last ever gig and as of today, are no more.

They're going out on a real high though and "Thousands" is their last, perfect release as a band - out today and available from their bandcamp page here:

http://blankmaps.bandcamp.com/album/thousands

So you've got to listen to it, support them for one last time and then buy. They leave behind them a really brilliant back catalogue of music which is so deserving of your time and attention and it would be criminal for you to ignore their brilliant sound just because they've shuffled off this musical coil.

Both tracks on "Thousands" offer ambient, trippy delicacy. They're alive, wide open and full of spacy charm. They are songs to lie back and dream to. You could actually dream that they WEREN'T BREAKING MY HEART BY SPLITTING UP. But that's not going to happen. I know that now. I've calmly accepted it and just have to try and move on.

Hopefully we haven't heard the last from Thom, Ben, David and Jake - hopefully in their own ways they'll come back and do something else. In the meantime, they've left us with a unique sound to treasure. So treasure it you must. Thanks for everything Blank Maps, it's been a blast hearing you and getting to know your music. You babes xox.

Blank Maps - Lucky Dip

Alright? Yeah, course you are, it's nice to see you looking so well. I LOVE what you've done to your hair. It's Tuesday and time to introduce to you yet another brilliant band. Today it's the turn of Blank Maps.

This is their latest EP type thing and it's going to be released properly on October 14th through the frankly brilliant Tiny Lights Recordings (tagline: DIY as fuck...).

Lucky Dip is just wonderful. It's chippy, tingly and it makes you want to move. It's beautifully multi-layered and there's a real feeling of space juxtaposed with tightness in the song. Vocalist Thom Piddock has a really great feel to his voice and his slightly falsetto style seems to marry perfectly with the staccato nature of the beat.

Here's a little look at one of their previous efforts. The sparkly Everything Ends

As always I direct you to their bandcamp page to have a look at this EP and their other stuff. Previous releases are the aforementioned Everything Ends and Blank Maps. I urge you to give them a listen. thegeneral really rather likes them a lot and hopes you do too.

blankmaps.bandcamp.com/