Tag: Dance to the Radio Records

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Rising British Post Punk Act Low Hummer Releases a Seething Anthem

Rising Hull, UK-based post-punk act Low Hummer — Daniel, Aimee, Steph, Jack, John and Joe — can trace their origins through the individual members’ connections to their hometown’s DIY scene. After meeting and bonding over mutual interests, the sextet quickly established a regular rehearsal home at the DIY venue The New Adelphi Club, where they were able to develop and hone their own danceable take on post-punk that thematically focuses on their lives in East Yorkshire, their place in a consumerist world and bad news stories sold as gospel.

September 2019 saw the release of the their debut single “Don’t You Ever Sleep” through Leeds-based label Dance To The Radio. The members of Low Hummer quickly followed that up with their second single “I Choose Live News” that October. Both singles were released to praise from the likes of Clash, Dork, Gigwise and BBC 6 Music Recommends — with airplay on BBC 6. Building upon a rapidly growing national profile their subsequent singles “The Real Thing,” “Picture Bliss” and “Sometimes I Wish (I Was A Different Person) received praise from NME, Gigwise and Under The Radar Magazine and were championed by BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders and Huw Stephens, BBC 6’s Steve Lamacq, Marc Riley, and Tom Robinson.

The Hull-based act’s highly-anticipated full-length debut Modern Tricks For Living is slated for a September release through Dance To The Radio, and the album’s first single “The People, This Place” is an angular post punk anthem that’s danceable yet full of seething disgust and frustration that makes the song a spiritual mix of The Clash and Wire– while voicing, the sort of frustration felt when you live in a dead-end town, with dead-end people and no real options or opportunities.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Joel Johnston (vocals, guitar), Jof Cabedo (drums) and Alessio Scozzaro (bass), the Leeds, UK-based indie trio Far Caspian exploded into the national and international scene with the release of their debut EP Between Days, an effort that established a lo-fi sound and aesthetic that the band has dubbed melanjolly. Interestingly, the band’s latest single, the self-produced “Astoria” manages to continue their on-going melanjolly approach, centered around shimmering guitars, a slow-burning, wistful groove and soaring hooks — but paired with a subtle 80s production sheen, as a result of the addition of atmospheric synths that find the band pushing their sound in a direction that recalls JOVM mainstays Yumi Zouma. 

The band’s forthcoming and highly-anticipated sophomore EP, The Heights is slated for a June 11, 2019 release through Dance To The Radio Records, and as the band’s Joel Johnston says of the song,  “‘Astoria’ is the song on the EP that kind of sums up the feeling we wanted to put across, embracing the good things in your life when things aren’t so good. 

“Before we had started writing any of the songs I had already decided that there would be a track with this name. It’s a town in Oregon where The Goonies was shot. The Goonies has been my favourite movie since I was no age, and I’ve always wished I lived in that neighbourhood – this is me trying to emulate what I heard in my head when I pictured the town.

“Me and Alessio were lying in the living room hungover when we wrote the chorus for the song. It came from nowhere and we just went with it.”