Tag: South London

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Indie/Indie Rock Punk/Rock Reviews

Fucking Hallelujah: Children of the Pope

The Children of the Pope—judging from the band’s name alone, you know you’re in for something good. Taking “fucking hallelujah!” as their slogan, they describe themselves as a “…religious group from South America and Europe currently based in London.” The band’s intense love for “…dirty guitars, manic shouting, and surrealist melodies,” culminates in just the sort of sound that would have gone over big at the Troubadour in ’68, and holds audiences spellbound today. The band’s rise since their formation in 2018 (in the “grimiest parts of South London,”) has been meticulously documented on video and film by Lou Smith, and they’ve shared stages alongside the likes of Insecure Men, Brian Destiny, and Honkies.

Their latest single “Junkie Girlfriend” is out today on Isolar Records. At first listen, it’s a tune that manages to be simultaneously fresh and nostalgic. Opening with jangling guitar and backing vocals reminiscent of early Beatles stuff, the Parlophone sessions …but no, wait, breaking away in a sharp shout from the sha-la-las come lyrics to shatter the illusion of finding comfort in nostalgia because here we are again, in the same old narcotic mess, the girl with the golden arm and the needle sticking out of it.

Children of the Pope filmed live at Venue MOT by the South London scene’s documentarian-in-chief, Lou Smith.

Beneath the upbeat vocals, the neat, almost martial drums, the jangling tambourine and bright guitar trailing down like drops of mercury, it’s all fun and games until somebody shoots a mainline, as the narrator notes of his paramour’s coping mechanism: “the way you smile at me/when you find your vein again.” Rather than getting tangled up in typical romantic tropes, the lyrics offer a gritty perspective into a fraught relationship and all the vacillations and sadly unanswerable questions that go with it: “What can I do/Over you?”

Have a look at the band’s manifesto:

‘Manifesto!’ by the Children of the Pope.

Take it seriously or snap your fingers at it, react as you please, but, have a think. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle—are we still in the thick of it? Its plot still a daily truth for millions? Sure. It’s prescient as hell, always has been. Even before it was written it was true. We’ve been post-Eden longer than memory reaches; it gets a little tiring, out here in the moral desert. To find such substance, such brazen intention, in a rock n’ roll outfit during an era when minds have become so collectively warped that it’s somehow considered acceptable to call Maroon 5 a rock band, is a welcome oasis indeed. As Pete Townshend said: “All good art cannot help but confront denial on its way to the truth.” Denial is a real blood sport these days, and the Children of the Pope are confronting it head-on, in the quest for some kind of truth. It’s out there somewhere. We just gotta keep looking for it.

“Junkie Girlfriend” is out today on Isolar Records. You can listen to (and buy!) the single at the link below. https://childrenofthepope.bandcamp.com

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Why We Love

Why We Love: Rosy Mackinnon

Rosy Mackinnon has been writing songs since the tender age of 12. She joined her first band at 15 and by 16 had begun commandeering her dad’s computer to record her original tracks (she figured out how to mix them, using Logic, on her own). Her debut single, “Getting Home,” was released in December of 2021; her second release, “Kill Me Sarah,” is out today.

“Getting Home” and “Kill Me Sarah” are both misty, enveloping tunes; the sort of music that imparts a sense of tender nostalgia to anything it might end up sound-tracking. Add delicate instrumentation and a sense of self and humor that’s rare to find in any artist, especially in one so young, and you have a recipe for rapidly rising talent. Rosy Mackinnon’s one to watch.

Rosy Mackinnon performing at an event in Manchester.

She lists Jockstrap, Adrienne Lenker and Leonard Cohen among her recent musical influences—before the first lockdown she was heavily inspired by Weyes Blood and the Velvet Underground, but her tastes have since shifted somewhat. Most listeners consider her work to fall under the ambient or experimental indie genres, and Rosy agrees: “I think I make songs that people could listen to after a long day or a night out… I’m under the indie bracket somewhere.”

She says that “Kill Me Sarah” was “… loosely based on a conversation I had with a friend. They wanted me to pretend to be someone else and I thought it could be an interesting narrative for a song. In the lyrics I made it more about an unhealthy relationship, not being enough for a person, even though they want more you put up with it for a time. I made the narrator murder their love interest at the end which I didn’t intend until I wrote the very last verse. I don’t think I fully realized until I read through it all again and I was like, ‘Holy shit!’ I called it “Kill Me Sarah” as a joke at first… it’s a Radiohead reference.”

“Kill Me Sarah,” is out today on Bandcamp and Spotify. You can follow Rosy Mackinnon on Instagram @rosymackinnon, on Spotify and on Bandcamp.

https://rosymackinnon.bandcamp.com/releases

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DISCOVER

Bishopskin: Lean Closer

As befits an unusual band, Bishopskin’s new release, “Lean Closer,” had an unusual beginning. After failing his driving test for the seventh time, lead singer Tiger Nicholson sat down in the grass alongside a busy road and watched the cars rush by until the sun set, half-singing and half-shouting what would become the song’s refrain over the roar of the traffic. “I then recorded a version of it on the top deck of the bus and sent it to James, who made this broken man’s worship into the song we have now,” Nicholson said.

The finished product is a tender little hymn, to which Nicholson’s warm, throaty, golden tones are well-suited. Its country-folk lilt led the band to label the track as less “primal,” than their recent single, “I Was Born on an Island,” but the injection of another genre ultimately serves to showcase the band’s impressive range.

The track features contributions from Seth Evans (Black Midi) Duc Peterman (HMLTD) and Alex White (Fat White Family and beyond—c’mon, the guy’s in so many bands, trying to keep track of them all is like trying to keep tabs on Warren Beatty at an Oscars afterparty, circa 1973).   

“Lean Closer,” is out today on Isolar Records. You can purchase the single at the link below. You can follow the further adventures of Bishopskin on Instagram @bishopskin and @isolar_records

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Why We Love

Why We Love: Decius

Their first single was released in anonymity, but today, the faces behind the music have been revealed. DECIUS have been all over the airwaves recently with a string of fresh releases and remixes. The South London-based acid house band’s mission statement keeps it honest: “Decius is when members of Trashmouth Records, Fat White Family & Paranoid London find themselves climbing out of a hole together at a disco after hours.”

With nine EPs to their credit, the group’s sound shifts lanes from marauding techno to acid-house punctuated with unnerving falsetto vocals and unusually intricate lyrics. It’s so rare to find a fresh take on dance music that when one finds it, they should grab it by the jugular and hang on like grim death. But Decius’s addictive rhythms will probably grab you, first.

The electronic duo Medicine 8, helmed by Trashmouth Records founders Liam and Luke May, was the precursor to Decius. (Medicine 8 did a cover of the Velvet Underground’s, “The Murder Mystery,” that Lou Reed liked more than the original. “They did it so much better than I did, and I love it when that happens,” Reed said gleefully.) Medicine 8 disbanded, but the Mays continued their voyage of electronic experimentation in the form of Decius, adding Paranoid London’s Quinn Whalley and Fat White Family frontman Lias Saoudi to their crew. 

They’re Iggy Pop’s house music of choice. He described their sound on his BBC6 radio show as: “Made by a loose amalgam of England’s most troublesome, wayward and wanton musicians, Decius gets the groove going in a different way, they kind of come at you out of the dark…” The hype surrounding the acid-house conglomerate doesn’t stop with accolades from the legendary Godfather of Punk: Decius’s recent EP U Instead of Thought was a featured highlight in the September 2021 print issue of DJ Magazine, and The Quietus recently did an in-depth interview with them, which coincided with the release of their ninth EP, Look like a Man. 

Their dark, danceable tracks have won the praises of DJs the world over, and if not for the unpleasantly sticky situation of the ongoing pandemic, they’d undoubtedly be playing a residency at the Panorama Bar in Berghain right now. Pre-pandemic, the group played gigs such as NYC Downlow at Glastonbury, Salon Renaate Sur Wilden in Berlin, and the infamous, much-missed World Unknown parties. Post-pandemic one can only imagine the sweaty glory that awaits.

Categories
Pop/Indie Pop Uncategorized

Maggie the Cat: Femme Fatale Extraordinaire

Today marks the release of Maggie the Cat’s second solo single, “I Love You and I’ve Got a Gun.” For those of you who are new to the work of this femme fatale extraordinaire, she’s formerly the lead singer of South London’s witchiest glam-rock group Madonnatron, and currently flying solo under the moniker, Maggie the Cat. 

Her new single, “I Love You and I’ve Got a Gun,” showcases her signature flair for film noir drama interwoven with deeper themes of power, baring the psychological struggles that so often accompany love affairs, and threading her work with a feminist undercurrent.

The impetus for the song occurred in 2019, when Maggie the Cat’s two-year old son, who’d just begun to speak, toddled up to her and announced: “I love you, and I’ve got a gun.”

“I thought, ‘Oh my God!’ ” Maggie remembers. “A: why’s he talking about guns? And B: that’s amazing. So I held onto that (phrase) as an idea, and I wrote the song.” Stefania (of Madonnatron) suggested that Maggie might find inspiration for the song’s lyrical content in the Italian B-movie, “The Girl with the Pistol,” starring Monica Vitti.

” …I watched the film and I loved it,” Maggie explains. “It went so well with the title, I just literally wrote the lyrics about the film, and about the character in the film: her madness, her obsession. Following on from Madonnatron, there’s nothing like a bit of amorous killing. I’ve worked on it from time to time over the last couple years and it’s morphed from being a guitar song into this kind of pop, arabesque thing, that now will grace the airwaves.”

A haunting, fretful ballad with gorgeous instrumentation influenced by both modern North African pop music and traditional rai, “I Love You and I’ve Got a Gun,” is ultimately a powerful blend of ‘a tale as old as time,’ with the strong left hook of a crime thriller.

You can follow Maggie’s adventures on Instagram @maggiethecatmusic and @trashmouthrecords. Her latest single, “I Love You and I’ve Got a Gun,” is available to stream on all platforms, and available for purchase on Bandcamp.

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Uncategorized Why We Love

Why We Love: Maggie the Cat

And just like that, summer’s over and it’s October, the month when spooks and ghouls roam the earth freely. Prime time for the debut solo release from a founding member of south London’s finest and freakiest gang of voodoo high priestesses, Madonnatron.

If you’ve heard Madonnatron, then you’ve heard Maggie. Her voice is the lynchpin of the band’s signature sound, the gathering force that holds it all together, powerful and hypnotic. She’s recently struck out on her own, embarking on a solo career under her Madonnatron moniker, “Maggie the Cat.”

With her Farrah Fawcett hair, glam rock eye makeup and brooding, melancholy, stare, she explained the evolution of her solo work thusly: “Maggie the Cat emerged over the last few years like the mutant love child of covid and my long running obsession with Elizabeth Taylor, most notably her character of that name from the Tennessee Williams play, ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.’

Her debut single, “I Think Last Night I Killed A Man,” is a definite shift from Madonnatron’s harsh, witch-punk sound. The production is more technically intricate: “… centered around a lot of quite dark, melancholic symphonic refrains juxtaposed with 80s synth sounds and disco drum patterns. The vocals are something of an id festival and may have ventured into other realms in places as I’m shamelessly emotional and the voice is a real channel for the soul, I think,” Maggie explains.

“Bianca Jagger rides in on a horse any second…” she teased on Instagram, days before the single’s release. A fitting comparison; the stylization is very Studio 54, albeit with a touch of what Maggie the Cat calls, “general murderous content,” a sinister speciality of supposed sweetness followed by violence, honed in the service of years of lyric writing for Madonnatron. Her blog describes the forthcoming album as “…simultaneously bewitching, erotic, menacing, and occasionally chilling (although never without mischief.)”

Trashmouth Records, the infamous New Malden-based independent record label that nurtured the raw, loose-cannon power of cult favorite rock n’ roll bands such as Warmduscher, the Fat White Family (and of course, Madonnatron) into musical adulthood, are backing Maggie the Cat’s solo efforts.

You can purchase “Last Night I Think I Killed A Man,” via Bandcamp at the link provided below. It is available to stream on all platforms.

Categories
Indie/Indie Rock Punk/Rock

Trashmouth Records Remix Release: Meatraffle’s ‘The Horseshoe’

Meatraffle shot by Lou Smith (@lousmithphoto)

The latest installment in Trashmouth Record’s 10th anniversary celebratory series of releases is a remix of Meatraffle’s ‘The Horseshoe.’

Trashmouth Records, an independent label run by brothers Liam and Luke May, is South London’s equivalent of Muscle Shoals’ Fame Studios. The Mays recorded, engineered and produced the debut records of incendiary artists such as Madonnatron, Warmduscher and the Fat White Family. In the label’s own words: “Trashmouth produced and released records by bands that no one else would touch with a 10-foot pole and not only lived to tell the tale but proved to have been visionary in their blind faith.”

“Trashmouth Records – 10 Years Still Not Dead” marks the 10th Anniversary of the inception of the Trashmouth Experiment and features remixes of some of the label’s favourite tracks and artists…”

Meatraffle, photographed by Lou Smith (@lousmithphoto)

In the words of Meatraffle ringleader Zsa Zsa Sapien: “Happy anniversary to Trashmouth, the label that gave birth to Fat White Family, Madonnatron, and most importantly, Meatraffle. The magic of Trashmouth is its vision and ideology and that ideas always prevail over ability and craft, that’s why they saw something in us that we didn’t even see!”

“You gotta love Trashmouth…the greatest small label out there, shamefully written out of the South London scene history books by bandwagonist music journos.”

“Trashmouth is run by Liam and Luke (The May Twins) who are free from any nasty sexual diseases, really softly spoken and polite…and will be permanently saluted by us, forever grateful. All hail the cult! Death to false indie!”  

Join the infamous label in celebrating ten years of “Blood, Booze and Tears in Equal Measure…” by purchasing their 10th anniversary record, featuring remixes from their top artists, available on Bandcamp and beyond.

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Punk/Rock Uncategorized

Trashmouth Records Remix Release: Heaven On Earth

New Malden-based, cult favorite, indie label Trashmouth Records have released the second track from their tenth anniversary compilation album. It’s a remix of “Heaven on Earth,” a deliciously chaotic, sonically schizophrenic rocker from Fat White Family’s incendiary debut, Champagne Holocaust.

A statement from Trashmouth Records explains the concept behind the remix album and offers a preview into its contents: “The remixes see the brothers Liam & Luke May, who not only run the label, but have recorded, produced and mixed all of their releases at Trashmouth Studios in New Malden, exploiting their long-standing Acid-House roots (see Decius/Medicine 8).”

“The LP will of course be pressed on the finest affordable, luxurious fake-gold vinyl & encompass a visual history of the label within its artwork, featuring photographs of the now legendary Trashmouth nights at the Brixton Windmill, where bands bitched & bonded, where blood, booze & tears were spilled in almost equal measure & where the seeds of a small corner of modern musical history were inadvertently sewn.”

Fat White Family ringleader Lias Saoudi eloquently explains the incredible importance that Trashmouth Records holds for him: “Where does mediocrity go to die? Simple: New Malden…Trashmouth Records are the only positive energy left in South London, all else is just a congregation of fashionable dust. The only way I can get to sleep at night nowadays is by telling myself over and over again that it was real, that I really did cut a few records with those grand masters, those brothers sonic oracular – Liam and Luke May. That no matter how bad it all gets, they can never take that away from me. That is my truth. THE truth. OUR TRUTH.”

Over the next few months, we can look forward to remix releases from other Trashmouth Records signings such as Madonnatron and Meatraffle, before the release of the album in full.

Trashmouth Records 10th Anniversary Commemorative Photo Collage by Lou Smith.
@lousmithphoto

The track listing is as follows:

  1. Fat White Family – Heaven On Earth (Trashmouth Remix)
  2. Peter Harris & Lee Scratch Perry – Nothing & Then Nothing (Trashmouth Remix)
  3. Warmduscher – Yolk Buns USA (Trashmouth Remix)
  4. Meatraffle – The Horseshoe (Trashmouth Remix)
  5. Madonnatron – Venus & Rahu (Trashmouth Remix)
  6. Taman Shud – The Hex Inverted (Trashmouth Remix)
  7. Weston Decker – Lazy (Trashmouth Remix)
  8. Bat-Bike – Drag & Drop (Trashmouth Remix)
  9. Pit Ponies – Arrogant & Sad (Trashmouth Remix)
  10. Chupa Cabra – Violent Urges (Trashmouth Remix)

Individual remix singles, digital downloads and of course, the limited edition gold vinyls, will all be available on Bandcamp.

Join the label in celebrating their landmark accomplishment of surviving a decade navigating the shark-infested waters of the music biz and emerging as South London’s shining knights of sonic expression by purchasing a copy for your record collection.

Imagine dropping the needle down and having Madonnatron, Meatraffle, the Fat White Family and Warmduscher all in your flat at the same time (only without the possible threats of property damage, hearing loss, and the worst hangover you’ve had since that girl back during freshers week convinced you to drink something called Satan Comes for Pope John XII.) Heaven, right? What could be better?

May the place “where mediocrity goes to die,” celebrate many more anniversaries, and may their signings continue to bless us with their sonic dreams and nightmares alike.

Categories
Punk/Rock Reviews Uncategorized

Trashmouth Records: 10 Years Still Not Dead!

Trashmouth Records, an independent label run by brothers Liam and Luke May, is the New Malden equivalent of Muscle Shoals’ Fame Studios.

The Mays recorded, engineered and produced the debut albums of bands such as Madonnatron, Warmduscher and the Fat White Family. “Trashmouth produced and released records by bands that no one else would touch with a 10-foot pole and not only lived to tell the tale but proved to have been visionary in their blind faith.”

As scouts of raw talent and miners of sonic gold Trashmouth Records are unequalled by any in their contribution to recording some of the best music of our era…

Clams Baker, the inimitable front man of Warmduscher (the best boogie band in London, and that bass, my God) spoke lovingly of Trashmouth: “When I think of the South London music scene, I immediately think Windmill, Fat White Family, and Trashmouth Records, then I forget what I was thinking about thanks to the last 10 years they are celebrating! Very blessed and honored to be a part of it. Long live the hustle, I can’t wait to see what they think of next.”

Clams Baker III, Benjamin Romans-Hopcraft and Saul Adamczewski of Warmduscher (and friends) at the Windmill. Photo by Lou Smith @lousmithphoto.

The label is soon to release a celebratory album of remixes. “Trashmouth Records – 10 Years Still Not Dead” marks the 10th Anniversary of the inception of the Trashmouth Experiment & features remixes of some of the label’s favourite tracks and artists…”

Thus far one remix has been dropped, a Trashmouth redux of “Yolk Buns USA,” from Warmduscher’s infamous debut album Khaki Tears (an album which was recorded in a mere three days if the rumors are true.) 

Other remixes which will be included on the album are a Trashmouth redux of “Heaven on Earth,” a sonically schizophrenic rocker from Fat White Family’s scorching debut, Champagne Holocaust, and other auditory delights from Madonnatron and Meatraffle among others. 

Brothers Luke and and Liam May, who founded and continue to operate Trashmouth Records.

In the label’s own words: “The LP will…encompass a visual history of the label within its artwork, featuring photographs of the now legendary Trashmouth nights at the Brixton Windmill, where bands bitched and bonded, where blood, booze and tears were spilled in almost equal measure and where the seeds of a small corner of modern musical history were inadvertently sewn.”

Join the infamous label in celebrating ten years of “Blood, Booze and Tears in Equal Measure…” by purchasing their 10th anniversary record featuring remixes from their top artists, available May 17th on Bandcamp and beyond.