Jammerzine has an exclusive interview with the man himself, Hugh Reed from Hugh Reed and The Velvet Underpants. Hugh has a unique sense of humor all his own that makes him as endearing as it does just plain funny. But, he is also originally creative in many ways. His music has that outside-of-the-box thinking that makes it as original as you can get while still giving a nod to those influences that Hugh pays tribute to in his own way.
But wait, there’s more! There is the release of his new single titled ‘I’d Rather Have A Bottle In Front Of Me Than A Full Frontal Lobotomy’. And, if the title isn’t long enough to wrap your head around, the song will more than make up for that with an original style romp through the mind of a, well, mastermind. The song has as much personality as it does creativity.
About Hugh Reed and The Velvet Underpants
Hugh Reed, until recently was based in Beijing but has just returned to Glasgow his hometown. He’s a Scotsman with a long musical career, he’s toured with The Fall, Half Man Half Biscuit and has supported Mogwai, Simple Minds and Belle and Sebastian as well as many others.
Following local TV appearances his band The Velvet Underpants were invited by Deborah Harry of the band ‘Blondie’ to support her on 11 dates throughout Britain. This culminated in Hugh and Debs doing a live duet of Waiting for the Man, which can also be seen on YouTube should you wish to see it. Deborah also faxed Lou to tell him about Hugh who was happy to hear about him.
Hugh’s debut album Take a Walk on the Clydeside was released receiving a lot of radio play not just in UK but also throughout, Europe, America and Canada.
Hugh describes himself as “multi talentless” and can also be seen in a cameo role in the ‘coolest film of the nineties’ Trainspotting – More recently he acted in the Jackie Chan movie ’12 Zodiacs’ as a butler and has also appeared many times on CCTV – Chinese TV in many acting roles.
Hugh has toured extensively throughout the U.K., Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Ireland. Relocating to Beijing, he recorded his next album ‘Ni fa feng le ma?’ (R U Crazy? -in Chinese)
But for now, here’s the incredibly titled ‘I’d Rather Have A Bottle In Front Of Me Than A Full Frontal Lobotomy’
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010322434790
https://www.youtube.com/hughreed621
-
Secrecies Premiere ‘So Quickly’ Video (The Week in #Indie Segment)
With a solid start and a firm beat, Secrecies get to the musical point with their new video titled ‘So Quickly’. The duo, which met by chance at a concert, show they were meant to be with a solid song and vivid video with lush layers of originality and vocals akin to sheer sonic bliss. ‘So Quickly’ leisurely finds that aural high mark and gently reaches out to you to say ‘Join us’.
The new single titled ’So Quickly’, from Secrecies’ forthcoming new album ‘Secrecies’ dropped on June 7th, 2019 via Idol Records.
Exclusive quote from Secrecies:
“We are big fans of Black Mirror and for this video we wanted it to capture that modern sense of technological existentialism through an idyllic and peaceful setting – but then there is something just not quite right. It’s intentionally set up to feel more like a short film than a traditional music video of us playing and singing. To accomplish this we collaborated with filmmaker Courtney Ware who helped us develop the concept and direct the film. Having Courtney direct the film was a natural decision since Shawn had worked with Courtney before, composing the score of the full-length feature film and psychological thriller “Sunny In The Dark.”
Thematically, we wanted to explore the dichotomy of how clouded our lives are by technology and the parallel existences we live in real life and digitally – blurring the lines between what is real and not real. But what really makes us happy? We seek out fulfilling experiences to combat our loneliness, but can a digital experience be just as fulfilling and rewarding as a traditional physical experience? Is swiping for love online healthy? Can a video chat with a doctor really replace a real-life physical human assessment of health? In this video, we explore this idea, while actually posing more questions than answers. While we hope it makes people ponder the fleeting nature of life, we also hope it challenges viewers to savor those precious moments in life – no matter where they take place.”
About Secrecies
From the longing of synthetic fulfillment comes the self-titled debut album from American synth duo – SECRECIES on Idol Records. Find warmth in sweet bouncy melodies as they frame a revolt from the digital dots that connect modern society. Stacked layers of brilliant vocals descend into a gritty bed of rock sentiment, leaving you wanting more. Their sound has drawn comparisons to St Etienne, Sylvan Esso, Purity Ring, STRFKR, Glass Candy, Ladytron, Beach House, XX, and even Blondie’s more disco-leaning material.By complete happenstance, Shawn Magill and Joey Noga met at a Cashmere Cat concert in Deep Ellum (Dallas, TX). They instantly connected over their obsession with sexy, synth-heavy electro-pop and formed a new band, Secrecies. Together, their multi-layered chilling harmonies unite over playful pulses, evoking the heartaches and joys of passing youth. They have performed with Alice Merton, Handsome Ghost, Armors, Swimming With Bears, Wilsen, Geneva Jacuzzi, Bad Bad Hats, Night Drive, Nite Jewel and more. Their debut album, SECRECIES, was released on June 7th, 2019.
SOURCE: Official Bio
CREDITS:
- Video directed by Courtney Ware
- Starring Cooper Thomson
- DoP: Andrew Ryan Shepherd
- Key Grip: Allan Thompson
- Projection: Camron Ware
LINKS:
http://secrecies.net
https://www.instagram.com/secreciesmusic
https://www.facebook.com/secrecies
https://twitter.com/secreciesmusic -
I Like Trains Premiere ‘The Truth’ Video (The Week in #Indie Segment)
I Like Trains drops their new video for the track titled ‘The Truth’. Almost in a style set in its own noir, I Like Trains begs the question ‘Is that the best you can do?’. Set in these unique and trying times, I like Trains gives that tell-all to the truth with a hard-hitting ode to social questioning in a time of social distancing. And it works.
While the single is available across digital platforms now, the full ‘KOMPROMAT’ album will be released on August 21 on black vinyl LP, limited edition silver vinyl LP and CD, as well as digitally.
Click HERE to watch Season 6 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.
Click HERE to watch Season 5 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.
Click HERE to watch Season 4 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.
Click HERE to watch Season 3 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.
Click HERE to watch Season 2 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.
Click HERE to watch Season 1 of Jammerzine’s ‘The Week in #Indie’.ABOUT I LIKE TRAINS & ‘THE TRUTH’
Leeds-based trailblazers, I LIKE TRAINS present ‘The Truth’, an eye-opening lead track that forebodes their potent, hard-hitting new album ‘KOMPROMAT’, written as an instinctive gut reaction to a world that has changed beyond all recognition. This is a record that digs beneath populism’s rise, from the divide and conquers tactics that caused Brexit in the UK, to Trump’s ascent in America and the subsequent reign of lies and misinformation, to discover the grubby hands that have engineered it all.
The British quintet will release their fourth studio album via Schubert Music’s newly founded Atlantic Curve label in late summer. This is the band’s first record since 2012’s ‘The Shallows’, which focused on how the internet and smart technology is re-wiring the human mind and affecting our concentration spans. Now, with ‘KOMPROMAT’, it’s clear that this same technology, in the wrong hands, has taken an even more sinister turn. The game has changed – and I LIKE TRAINS have changed with it.
The accompanying deep-fake karaoke video was directed by the previous co-conspirator Michael Connolly, a Leeds born artist and designer. “The track is relentless and I wanted the film to feel the same. Claustrophobia and confusion were my watchwords. I combined deep-fakes, distorted visuals, and digital cut-up techniques to create an intense level of disorientation. It sums up the last four years in geopolitics for me,” says Connolly.
‘The Truth’ was the last track to come together during the group’s recording sessions – a summation of the way in which facts are bent and, in many cases, utterly dismantled. Over a burring build of disco-inflected post-punk that recalls LCD Soundsystem and early DFA Records, “The truth is no longer concerned with the facts”.
“I’d been writing this list on my phone for a couple of months, adding a couple of lines
to it every so often. I’d read a news article or a tweet and I’d make reference to it. I decided to dig out this list in the last couple of days in the studio [for this track]. It’s pretty much the order I wrote it in – it came together on the fifth take and it was a pretty cathartic process,” says the group’s vocalist and lyricist David Martin.Formed in 2004, I LIKE TRAINS is made up of David Martin (vocals/guitar), Alistair Bowis (bass), Guy Bannister (guitar/synths), Simon Fogal (drums) and Ian Jarrold (guitar). They have never shied away from confronting the possibility of humanity’s collapse. Earlier records, like the towering Godspeed-influenced ‘Progress Reform’ (2006) and ‘Elegies to Lessons Learnt’ (2007) took tales of tragic characters and events from history and applied them to the modern-day, while ‘He Who Saw The Deep’ (2010) looked uneasily ahead to the climate change battle we are on the verge of losing.
While ‘KOMPROMAT’ sounds like none of those records, it contains DNA from all of them. I LIKE TRAINS has essentially gone back to go forwards in some ways, returning to some of the primary influences that inspired the band’s formation: Joy Division, The Birthday Party, Gang of Four, Television and The Velvet Underground.
“An I LIKE TRAINS record doesn’t really start to take shape until there’s a theme. That point came following Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks in 2013,” says David Martin.
“We didn’t set out to write a record about current affairs, but the path we set out on converged drastically with that daily discourse. The album inadvertently became about populist politics across the world. Brexit, Trump, Cambridge Analytics and covert Russian influence ended up at the centre of it all”.
At the time, Martin started writing about low-key, insidious intrusions on our privacy. As global events unfolded, however, so did the importance of those themes: the perception of what is true and what isn’t truly being challenged on a daily basis and how that confusion could be used to manipulate populations into thinking and voting in certain ways.
Several years ago, British filmmakers Ben Lankester and Matt Hopkins released the feature documentary ‘A Divorce Before Marriage’, which follows the band members over three years, capturing their struggles first-hand. Then, as now, one thing is for sure – while I LIKE TRAINS often look back and also to the future, ‘The Truth’ speaks very much of the here and now.
LINKS:
https://iliketrains.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/iLiKETRAiNSmusic
https://twitter.com/iLiKETRAiNS
https://www.instagram.com/iLiKETRAiNSmusic
https://soundcloud.com/iliketrains
https://music.iliketrains.co.uk
https://www.youtube.com/user/iLiKETRAiNSofficial -
An Interview With A Shoreline Dream
Talking with Shoreline Dream was a complete joy. I have to start this out by saying that. As a musician myself, Ryan and Eric epitomize the namesake of musician in the truest sense of the term. They are not out to impress anyone, they are out to connect. They don’t label their music for anyone, they leave their music up for your interpretation. As far as music itself goes, this is how classics are made. And today we talk to both of the main components that is A Shoreline Dream, and in turn, get a glimpse into the minds behind the music. Enjoy!
Check out our review of their latest single ‘Room For The Others’, which was released July 14th, 2017. Buy links below.
About A Shoreline Dream
‘Room For The Others’is the fourth single from their ever-evolving new album, which is being released digitally one track at a time, before the full vinyl-only album is finally ready. After fine tuning the song over the winter months, it has become a favorite for the duo to play, partially due to the resonance of the song’s message.The song deals with the struggle to come to terms with, and attempting to overcome, the biggest fear in life…change. With the recent loss of close family and friends, A Shoreline Dream frontman Ryan Policky has instead taken those potential negatives and turned them into a message of personal reflection.
“Given the nature of all the amazingly overwhelming things going on these days politically, socially, etc., this track became a personal reflection on it all. Both the good and the bad. The love and the sadness,” says Ryan Policky. “I found myself feeling emotions from all sides of the spectrum, and room for the others is just that… a spectrum of emotions. This song goes out to those who may have ever felt just a little bit of place… who just wanted to stand in line with the rest.”
While the original wave of shoegazers chose textures and otherworldliness over conventional clarity and 90’s post-rockers opted for progressive and fluid structures rather than traditional form, A Shoreline Dream are the keepers of both of those flames. Delivering a heady cocktail of dream-pop, shoegaze, neo-psychedelia, goth and progressive rock, the new single also brings a gothic undertone set against a pulsing, energetic rhythm and is, on the whole, more in keeping with northern European atmosphere than the warm sidewalks of Denver’s suburbs.
A Shoreline Dream, comprised of Ryan Policky and Erik Jeffries, originate from Barnum, Colorado. Their music is often referred to as “progressive shoegaze,” indicating their blending of lush sampled textures, organic instrumentation and vocals layered like a synth. But it is the studio’s final treatment of the song that is the real joy, affecting a cavernous production style, and haunting and ethereal resonance in keeping with the semi-lucid and sonorous nature of this music.
While A Shoreline Dream have not re-invented this particular musical wheel, they have certainly re-treaded it, painted it interesting colors, and added some shimmering gloss before taking it out for a spin, ultimately leaving multi-colored vapor trails throughout the neighborhood.
Over the past 10 years, A Shoreline Dream has churned out numerous acclaimed releases under their own label (Latenight Weeknight Records), working with legends such as Ulrich Schnauss, Mark Kramer and The Engineers (for whom they remixed a song for progressive label gods K-Scope). They also opened for Chapterhouse for their final appearance.
“Room for the Others” by A Shoreline Dream is available through iTunes and can be ordered via Bandcamp.
Featured image credit Ryan Policky.
LINKS:
http://www.ashorelinedream.com
http://www.facebook.com/A-Shoreline-Dream-173485236012279
http://ashorelinedream.bandcamp.com/
http://twitter.com/ashorelinedream
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3hfpwdCJzLO3epBifJcBSA