Tag: Heavenly Recordings

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays The Orielles Release Trippy Visuals for Their Latest Single “Let Your Dogtooth Grow”

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site throughout this year, you’ve come across a handful of posts featuring the Halifax, UK-based indie rock trio and JOVM mainstays The Orielles. And as you may recall, the band comprised of 21-year Sidonie B. Hand-Halford (drums), her 18-year old sister Esmé Dee Hand-Halford (bass, vocals) and their 17-year-old best friend Henry Carlyle Wade (guitar, vocals) have established themselves as one of Northern England’s  “most exciting local bands of recent years,” and one of their hometown’s best-kept musical secrets. Not bad for a band, that can trace their origins to when the Hand-Halford sisters met Wade at a house party and bonded over a shared love of Stateside-based 90s alt rock and indie rock.

With a great deal of buzz surrounding them, Heavenly Recordings head Jeff Barrett caught the band opening for their new labelmates The Parrots in late 2016 and immediately signed them to the renowned indie label. And already this year has been a breakthrough year for the Halifax-based trio — they went on and finished a successful UK/EU tour and have released two, incredibly self-assured, attention-grabbing singles  —  The Mallard‘s Finding Meaning in Deference-like “Sugar Taste Like Salt,” and the psych rock-like “I Only Bought It For The Bottle.”

The Orielles’ latest single “Let Your Dogtooth Grow” continues their ongoing collaboration with producer Marta “Bueno” Salogni and interestingly enough, it finds the band mischievously expanding upon the socially conscious, shimmering guitar pop that first caught the attention of this site and the blogosphere with the use of an oscillating Mini Moog that appears during the last minute or so of the song, which the band says is “a melting-pot of our influences, combining guitar riffs reminiscent of Turkish psychedelic musician Mustafa Ozkent with the Moog Synth riff which is redolent of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love.‘” Thematically, the song is influenced by Yorgos Lanthimos’ feature film Dogtooth in which kids are brainwashed into thinking that they are confined within the boundaries of their household until their ‘Dogtooth’ falls out, the song lyrically discusses how in reality young people frequently face similar — although less bizarre — forms of oppression in their lives. The band adds:”Whilst we’re much more than a stones throw away from knocking our teeth out in order to break from the omnipresent restrictions us teenagers and young adults face, it’s still something that really bugs us as a ‘young band’! When are you gonna let us out of the house?”

Filmed and edited by Sam Boullier, the recently released video for “Let Your Dogtooth Grow” follows the band’s Esmé Dee Hand-Halford, as she goes to the dentist to have her dogtooth removed, and once under the influence of anesthesia has a surreal and menacing nightmare in which she encounters the dental office staff with red paint on their faces, juggling brains before they all perform the song together. When she leaves, and walks back home, some aspect of her dream linger, with her hallucinating — and it gives the video a creepy and uncertain vibe.  

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Mark Lanegan Band Releases Surreal Yet Cinematic Visuals for “Emperor”

Mark Lanegan is a Ellensburg, WA-born, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, best known as one of the founding members and frontman of renowned Seattle-based grunge rock pioneers Screaming Trees, and as a solo artist who has collaborated with an incredibly diverse array of artists and bands throughout his lengthy career including Nirvana‘s Kurt Cobain on an unreleased Lead Belly cover/tribute album recorded before the release of Nevermind. Along with that Lanegan is also known for being a member of the grunge rock, All-Star supergroup/side project Mad Season with Alice in Chains‘ Layne Staley and Pearl Jam‘s Mike McCready and for joining Queens of the Stone Age after the breakup of Screaming Trees, contributing on five of the band’s albums  — 2000’s Rated R, 2002’s Songs for the Deaf, 2005’s Lullabies to Paralyze, 2007’s Era Vulgaris and 2013’s . . . Like Clockwork. Lanegan has also collaborated with The Afghan Whigs‘ Greg Dulli in The Gutter Twins and has collaborated with former Belle and Sebastian vocalist Isobel Campbell on three albums. Additionally, he has contributed or guested on albums by Melisa Auf der Maur, Martina Topley-Bird, Creature with the Atom Brain, Moby, Bomb the Bass, Soulsavers, Greg Dulli’s The Twilight Singers, UNKLE and others. As a solo artist, Lanegan has released 10 studio albums that have been critically applauded and have seen a fair amount of commercial success. 

Lanegan’s 10th and most recent album Gargoyle was released this past summer through Heavenly Recordings. And interestingly enough, the Ellensburg, WA, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter can take the origins of the album’s overall sound and aesthetic back to early last year. As the story goes, the grunge rock legend was working on ideas for what could be a new, solo album, when he received an email from his friend and collaborator, British-based musician Rob Marshall, who he met several years before when Marshall’s former band Exit Calm had supported Soulsavers, a band that Lanegan had been fronting. Marshall’s email thanked Lanegan for his participation on a Humanist album — and in the email, Marshall offered to write music for Lanegan, if he needed it to return the favor. As Lanegan recalled in press notes, his response was along the lines of “Hey man, I’m getting ready to make a record, if you’ve got anything? Three days later he sent me 10 things… !” 

Interestingly, the music Marshall had written had managed to fit perfectly with the direction Lanegan had been thinking of for some time — an expansion of the Krautrock-inspired electronic sounds and textures of his previous two albums Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio. Eventually Marshall wound up co-writing six of the album’s 10 songs with the remainder of the album being written and produced by Lanegan’s longtime collaborator Alain Johannes at 11AD Studios in West Hollywood. Gargoyle‘s second single “Beehive” pairs Lanegan’s imitable boozy, growling baritone vocals with a bluesy and swaggering production featuring shimmering guitar chords and enormous tweeter and woofer rattling beats, essentially pushing Lanegan’s recent forays into the blues into the 21st Century; but in a way that feels both warmly familiar and yet new.

Gargoyle’s latest single “Emperor” finds Lanegan and his backing band pairing Lanegan’s imitable, boozy and growling baritone with the sort of old-timey, bar room blues that brings to mind Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger,” complete with jangling and shimmering guitars and a propulsive backbeat; but much like its predecessor, the song possesses a weary and existential weariness just underneath the surface. 

The recently released video continues a string of cinematic yet surreal visuals — in this case, the viewer is thrown into a vaguely Russian styled dictatorship, full of state sanction violence upon innocent people while also nodding at Julius Caesar. While being fictional, the video manages to evoke our dangerously strange and uncertain times. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

If you’ve been frequenting this site throughout the course of this year, you would have come across a handful of posts featuring the up-and-coming, Halifax, UK-based indie rock trio The Orielles. Comprised of  21-year Sidonie B. Hand-Halford (drums), her 18-year old sister Esmé Dee Hand-Halford (bass, vocals) and their 17-year-old best friend Henry Carlyle Wade (guitar, vocals), the trio have quickly developed a reputation as being one of Northern England’s “most exciting local bands of recent years,” and one of their hometown’s best-kept musical secrets. And as you may recall, the British indie rock trio can trace their origins to when the Hand-Halford sisters met Wade at a house party and bonded over a shared love of Stateside-based 90s alt rock and indie rock.

With a great deal of buzz surrounding them, Heavenly Recordings head Jeff Barrett caught the band opening for their new labelmates The Parrots in late 2016 and immediately signed them to the renowned indie label. 2017 has proven to be one of the biggest years in the band’s history, as they finished their first UK/EU tour and have released two incredibly self-assured, attention-grabbing singles —  The Mallard‘s Finding Meaning in Deference-like “Sugar Taste Like Salt,” and the psych rock-like “I Only Bought It For The Bottle.”

The Orielles’ latest single “Let Your Dogtooth Grow” continues their ongoing collaboration with producer Marta “Bueno” Salogni and interestingly enough, it finds the band mischievously expanding upon the socially conscious, shimmering guitar pop that first caught the attention of this site and the blogosphere with the use of an oscillating Mini Moog that appears during the last minute or so of the song, which the band says is “a melting-pot of our influences, combining guitar riffs reminiscent of Turkish psychedelic musician Mustafa Ozkent with the Moog Synth riff which is redolent of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love.‘” Thematically, the song is influenced by Yorgos Lanthimos’ feature film Dogtooth in which kids are brainwashed into thinking that they are confined within the boundaries of their household until their ‘Dogtooth’ falls out, the song lyrically discusses how in reality young people frequently face similar — although less bizarre — forms of oppression in their lives. The band adds:”Whilst we’re much more than a stones throw away from knocking our teeth out in order to break from the omnipresent restrictions us teenagers and young adults face, it’s still something that really bugs us as a ‘young band’! When are you gonna let us out of the house?”

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Over the past couple of months, I’ve written about the up-and-coming, Halifax, UK-based indie rock trio The Orielles. Comprised of 21-year Sidonie B. Hand-Halford (drums), her 18-year old sister Esmé Dee Hand-Halford (bass, vocals) and their 17-year-old best friend Henry Carlyle Wade (guitar, vocals), the trio have quickly developed a reputation as being one of Northern England’s “most exciting local bands of recent years,” and one of their hometown’s best-kept musical secrets — and interestingly enough, the trio can trace their origins to when the Hand-Halford sisters met Wade at a house party and bonded over a shared love of Stateside-based 90s alt rock and indie rock.

With a growing reputation and profile preceding them, Heavenly Recordings head Jeff Barrett caught the band opening for their new labelmates The Parrots in late 2016 and immediately signed them to the label. And this year looks to be a hug year for the British upstarts as they just recently finished their first UK/EU tour, and their epic, 8 plus minute track “Sugar Taste Like Salt,” which draws from psych rock, New Wave and post-punk with lyrics that reference Quentin Tarantino’s Deathproof captured both the attention of the blogosphere and this site as it reminded me quite a bit of The Mallard‘s Finding Meaning in Deference, complete with the self-assuredness and confidence of a bunch of seasoned pros.

The Halifax, UK-based trio’s latest single “I Only Bought It For The Bottle” continues in a similar vein as its predecessor as it finds the band pairing ironically delivered vocals with a psych rock and indie rock-leaning arrangement featuring swirling and shimmering guitar chords played through effects pedals, a persistent and propulsive rhythm section consisting of a boom-bap-like drumming and a tight bass line to hold it all together. Interestingly enough, lyrically speaking, the song reveals a hilarious yet astute sense of cultural and critical observation that belies their relative youth. As the band’s Esmé Dee Hand-Halford explained in press notes “The track is loosely based upon [the] Nicolas Winding Refn film The Neon Demon as it talks about the idea of how beauty has become a currency and that we no longer desire substance, yet seek things based on appearance and face value. The microcosm of this idea comes through the lyrics, which explain a story of how the subject bought a bottle because it looked really nice and tasty, but it actually tasted like shit.” Certainly, in an age where the crude, ostentatious, ignorant know-nothings have the power of over millions of lives and yet repeatedly remind everyone of their idiocy, greed and selfishness, the song is absolutely fitting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Cinematic and Mournful Visuals for Mark Lanegan Band’s “Beehive”

Mark Lanegan is a Ellensburg, WA-born, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, best known as the frontman, and founding member of Seattle-based grunge rock pioneers Screaming Trees, and for collaborating with an incredibly diverse array of artists and bands throughout his lengthy career including Nirvana‘s Kurt Cobain on an unreleased Lead Belly cover/tribute album recorded before the release of Nevermind. The Ellensburg-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter was also a member of renowned grunge rock All-Star supergroup/side project Mad Season with Alice in Chains‘ Layne Staley and Pearl Jam‘s Mike McCready. After Screaming Trees broke up in 2000, Lanegan joined Queens of the Stone Age and is featured on the band’s last five albums — 2000’s Rated R, 2002’s Songs for the Deaf, 2005’s Lullabies to Paralyze, 2007’s Era Vulgaris and 2013’s . . . Like Clockwork. He’s also collaborated with The Afghan Whigs‘ Greg Dulli in The Gutter Twins and has collaborated with former Belle and Sebastian vocalist Isobel Campbell on three albums. Additionally, he has contributed or guested on albums by Melisa Auf der Maur, Martina Topley-Bird, Creature with the Atom Brain, Moby, Bomb the Bass, Soulsavers, Greg Dulli’s The Twilight Singers, UNKLE and others. And although he’s managed to be rather busy throughout the years, Lanegan has also developed a low-key solo career in which he’s released nine studio albums that have been critically applauded and have seen a fair amount of commercial success.

Lanegan’s 10th full-length effort Gargoyle is slated for release next week through Heavenly Recordings and interestingly enough, Lanegan can trace the origins of the album’s material and sound back to early 2016. At the time, the renowned grunge rocker and singer/songwriter was working on some ideas for material, which could possibly be a new, solo album, when he received an email from a friend and collaborator, the British based musician Rob Marshall, who he had first met several years before when Marshall’s former band Exit Calm had supported Soulsavers, a band that Lanegan had been fronting. The email thanked Lanegan for his participation on an album that Marshall had recorded with his newest project, Humanist while offering to write music for Lanegan to return a favor to the grunge pioneer. As Lanegan recalls in press notes, his response was along the lines of “Hey man, I’m getting ready to make a record, if you’ve got anything? Three days later he sent me 10 things… !”

Early on in the writing process, Lanegan had written “Blue Blue Sea,” a rippling mood peice that he thought and felt would be more fruitful direction for the songs on the album. “It’s almost always how my records start,” the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter explains in press notes. “I let the first couple of songs tell me what the next couple should sound like, and it’s really the same process when I’m writing words. Whatever my first couple of lines are, tell me what the next couple should be. I’ve always built things like that, sort of like making a sculpture I guess.” Within about an hour, Lanegan and written words and recorded vocals for two of the instrumental tracks Marshall had written and recorded at Mount Sion Studios in Kent UK. Interestingly, the music Marshall had written had managed to fit perfectly with the direction Lanegan had been thinking of for some time — an expansion of the Krautrock-inspired electronic sounds and textures of his previous two albums Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio. Eventually Marshall wound up co-writing six of the album’s 10 songs with the remainder of the album being written and produced by Lanegan’s longtime collaborator Alain Johannes at 11AD Studios in West Hollywood.

As the story goes, everything was polished and finished within a month, which has been unusually fast by Lanegan’s recent standards. “I definitely feel like I’m a better songwriter than I was 15 years ago,” Lanegan stays in press notes. “I don’t know if I’m just kidding myself or what, but it’s definitely easier now to make something that is satisfying to me. Maybe I’m just easier on myself these days, but it’s definitely not as painful a process, and therefore I feel I’m better at it now. But part of the way that I stay interested in making music is by collaborating with other people. When I see things through somebody else’s perspective it’s more exciting than if I’m left to my own devices.”

Gargoyle‘s second and latest single “Beehive” pairs Lanegan’s imitable boozy, growling baritone vocals with a bluesy and swaggering production featuring shimmering guitar chords and enormous tweeter and woofer rattling beats, essentially pushing Lanegan’s recent forays into the blues into the 21st Century; but in a way that feels both warmly familiar and yet new.

Directed by Zhang + Kang and produced by Agile Flims, the recently released video for “Beehive” follows two young lovers — two vampires, actually, who are desperately trying to kick their craving for blood. Before presumably deciding to kill themselves, they spend a sad yet beautiful romantic night together — and at the core of the video is a heavy, world-weary and fatalistic ache.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Up-and-coming British Band The Orielles Poke Fun at Celebrity Culture in Visuals for “Sugar Tastes Like Salt”

Comprised of 21-year-old Sidonie B Hand-Halford, her 18-year-old sister Esmé Dee Hand-Halford and their 17-year-old best friend Henry Carlyle Wade, the Halifax, UK-based indie rock trio The Orielles have developed a reputation as one of Northern England’s “most exciting local bands of recent years” and their hometown’s best-kept musical secrets, the trio can trace their origins to when the Hand-Halford sisters met Wade at a house party and bonded over their shared love of Stateside 90s alt rock and indie rock.

With a reputation that had preceded them, Heavenly Recordings head Jeff Barrett caught the band opening for their new labelmates The Parrots in late 2016 and immediately signed them to the label. This year may be a huge year for the young British indie rockers as they played at the Heavenly Weekender Festival at Hebden Bridge last year, and they will be embarking on their first UK/EU tour next month; but in the mean time, the trio’s Heavenly Recordings debut single “Sugar Tastes Like Salt” is an expansive 8 minute track that draws influence from psych rock, New Wave and post-punk while lyrically the band makes references to several Quentin Tarantino movies including Deathproof. And the whole thing is held together by a sinuous and funky bass line that sonically reminds me of The Mallard’s incredible Finding Meaning in Deference. And much like The Mallard‘s last album, “Sugar Tastes Like Salt” possesses a surprising self-assuredness that belies their youth. It’s an impressive and forceful release that has me excited to hear more from them.

Based on a concept by the members of The Orielles, the recently released music video for “Sugar Tastes Like Salt” was filmed and edited by Josh Bentley and stars the members of the band, along with Thomas Walmsley, Sam Frost and others in what the band describes as “a tale of hedonism, glamour and deceit . . . ” And as they do so, the band poke some sadistic fun at pop culture, the adulation and pretense of fame for the sake of fame, shitty talk shows, and even themselves.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of 21-year-old Sidonie B Hand-Halford, her 18-year-old sister Esmé Dee Hand-Halford and their 17-year-old best friend Henry Carlyle Wade, the Halifax, UK-based indie rock trio The Orielles have developed a reputation as one of Northern England’s “most exciting local bands of recent years” and their hometown’s best-kept musical secrets, the trio can trace their origins to when the Hand-Halford sisters met Wade at a house party and bonded over their shared love of Stateside 90s alt rock and indie rock.

With a reputation that had preceded them, Heavenly Recordings head Jeff Barrett caught the band opening for their new labelmates The Parrots in late 2016 and immediately signed them to the label. This year may be a huge year for the young British indie rockers as they played at the Heavenly Weekender Festival at Hebden Bridge last year, and they will be embarking on their first UK/EU tour next month; but in the mean time, the trio’s Heavenly Recordings debut single “Sugar Tastes Like Salt” is an expansive 8 minute track that draws influence from psych rock,  New Wave and post-punk while lyrically the band makes references to several Quentin Tarantino movies including Deathproof and the whole thing is held together by a sinuous and funky bass line that sonically reminds me of The Mallard’s incredible Finding Meaning in Deference. And much like The Mallard‘s last album, “Sugar Tastes Like Salt” possesses a surprising self-assuredness that belies their youth. It’s an impressive and forceful release that has me excited to hear more from them.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Mark Lanegan is a Ellensburg, WA-born, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, best known as the frontman, and founding member of  Seattle-based grunge rock pioneers Screaming Trees, and for collaborating with an incredibly diverse array of artists and bands throughout his lengthy career including Nirvana‘s Kurt Cobain on an unreleased Lead Belly cover/tribute album recorded before the release of Nevermind. The Ellensburg-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter was also a member of renowned grunge rock All-Star supergroup/side project Mad Season with Alice in Chains‘ Layne Staley and Pearl Jam‘s Mike McCready. After Screaming Trees broke up in 2000, Lanegan joined Queens of the Stone Age and is featured on the band’s last five albums — 2000’s Rated R, 2002’s Songs for the Deaf, 2005’s Lullabies to Paralyze, 2007’s Era Vulgaris and 2013’s . . . Like Clockwork. He’s also collaborated with The Afghan Whigs‘ Greg Dulli in The Gutter Twins and has collaborated with former Belle and Sebastian vocalist Isobel Campbell on three albums. Additionally, he has contributed or guested on albums by Melisa Auf der Maur, Martina Topley-Bird, Creature with the Atom Brain, Moby, Bomb the Bass, Soulsavers, Greg Dulli’s The Twilight Singers, UNKLE and others. And although he’s managed to be rather busy throughout the years, Lanegan has also developed a low-key solo career in which he’s released nine studio albums that have been critically applauded and have seen a fair amount of commercial success.

Lanegan’s 10th full-length effort Gargoyle is slated for an April 28, 2017 release through Heavenly Recordings and interestingly enough, Lanegan can trace the origins of the album’s material and sound back to early 2016. At the time, the renowned grunge rocker was working on some ideas for what might be a new solo album, when he received an email from a friend and collaborator, the British based musician Rob Marshall, who he had first met several years before when Marshall’s former band Exit Calm had supported Soulsavers, a band that Lanegan had been fronting. The email thanked Lanegan for his participation on an album that Marshall had recorded with his newest project, Humanist while offering to write music for Lanegan to return a favor to the grunge pioneer. As Lanegan recalls in press notes, his response was along the lines of “Hey man, I’m getting ready to make a record, if you’ve got anything? Three days later he sent me 10 things… !”

Early on in the writing process, Lanegan had written “Blue Blue Sea,” a rippling mood peice that he thought and felt would be more fruitful direction for the songs on the album. “It’s almost always how my records start,” the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter explains in press notes. “I let the first couple of songs tell me what the next couple should sound like, and it’s really the same process when I’m writing words. Whatever my first couple of lines are, tell me what the next couple should be. I’ve always built things like that, sort of like making a sculpture I guess.” Within about an hour, Lanegan and written words and recorded vocals for two of the instrumental tracks Marshall had written and recorded at Mount Sion Studios in Kent UK. Interestingly, the music Marshall had written had managed to fit perfectly with the direction Lanegan had been thinking of for some time — an expansion of the Krautrock-inspired electronic sounds and textures of his previous two albums Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio. Eventually Marshall wound up co-writing six of the album’s 10 songs with the remainder of the album being written and produced by Lanegan’s longtime collaborator Alain Johannes at 11AD Studios in West Hollywood.

As the story goes, everything was polished and finished within a month, which has been unusually fast by Lanegan’s recent standards. “I definitely feel like I’m a better songwriter than I was 15 years ago,” Lanegan stays in press notes. “I don’t know if I’m just kidding myself or what, but it’s definitely easier now to make something that is satisfying to me. Maybe I’m just easier on myself these days, but it’s definitely not as painful a process, and therefore I feel I’m better at it now. But part of the way that I stay interested in making music is by collaborating with other people. When I see things through somebody else’s perspective it’s more exciting than if I’m left to my own devices.”

Gargoyle‘s second and latest single “Beehive” pairs Lanegan’s imitable boozy, growling baritone vocals with a bluesy and swaggering production featuring shimmering guitar chords and enormous tweeter and woofer rattling beats, essentially pushing Lanegan’s recent forays into the blues into the 21st Century; but in a way that feels both warmly familiar and yet new.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Psychedelic Imagery for Toy’s “I’m Still Believing”

As you’ll hear on “I’m Still Believing,” Clear Shot’s second and latest single, the band’s sound has began to lean more towards lush, guitar pop territory as layers of shimmering and jangling acoustic guitar chords (with gentle amounts of reverb) are paired with soaring synths, an anthemic hook and Tom Dougall’s introspective lyrics, all while nodding at Nick Drakeand Wish You Were Here-era Pink Floyd.

The recently released music video employs a pretty basic concept of having the extremely British looking band performing the song in a variety of strobe lights and Super 8-like filters, sequences of the individual band members broodingly hanging out, brief bursts of animation and Japanese commercials and it gives the entire proceeding a trippy vibe reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s The Wall but with a playful air.