Some people have the ability to take themselves to heights that others can only dream of. And still others have the uncanny ability to take themselves to heights that others can only dream of, after taking themselves to the edge of the abyss. And that gives some of us not only the ability to strive even harder still, but the reflection in which to appreciate the scope of such and achievement. Simon Mason is the later, to say the least. Just read his 2013 autobiography “Too High, Too Far, Too Soon”and you will see what I am talking about.
Fast forward to 2017. Simon, in record time, forms Hightown Pirates, writes and records a very solid album (review HERE), and generates a name for the band as one of the freshest in indie for 2017. That talent only comes with a deep personal reflection. And today we talk about that talent, and so much more with Simon Mason. Enjoy!
Hightown Pirates’ debut album, “Dry and High”, was released June 16th on Strike-Back Records.
Check out our news piece on Hightown Pirates on our TV show “Jammerzine’s The Week in #Indie” HERE and on Amazon Prime.
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/TheHightownPirates
https://hightownpirates.com
https://twitter.com/hightownpirates
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An Interview with Gone Sugar Die (The Week in #Indie Segment)
Rarely does a band so young accomplish so much in as little a time span as the new Canadian/American super duo known as Gone Sugar Die. With their new upcoming EP titled ‘Blaack Heaart’ and their new lead single titled ‘Heartbreak Jewelry’, Gone Sugar Die have already cemented themselves as an act to follow.
Today I get to talk with both members of Gone Sugar Die Mike Hindert (The Bravery) and Patrick McWilliams (ex-The Cut Losses) about the odds of meeting and working together and their origins in earnest as well as their new music and where they are headed and much more. This interview captures this band at just the right moment because their future is secure. Enjoy!
About Gone Sugar Die
Gone Sugar Die is a smart but explosive dark romance between synth punk and indie pop. It’s the kind of collision that can inspire ethereal transcendence or ignite a disco. The guiding principle for Gone Sugar Die, aka Mike Hindert (The Bravery) and Patrick McWilliams (ex-The Cut Losses), is to make music the world can dance to.These are pop songs built on a foundation of authenticity, energized garage rock style vitality, and genuine passion, all of it shot through with high-minded ambition. Imagine Crystal Castles and The Weeknd, in the pit together, watching The Sex Pistols. The duo’s debut recording includes the work of producer/guitarist Marshall Gallagher (Teenage Wrist, 3OH!3) and drummer Anthony Burulcich (Weezer, Morrissey, The Bravery). There’s enough imagination, adventurousness, and experience between the pair at Gone Sugar Die’s center to ensure enthralling offerings of dirt pop for many years to come.
Hindert is best known as the stylish and savvy bassist of indie darlings The Bravery, a band championed by The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, MTV, and the BBC. They were responsible for anthems like “An Honest Mistake” and “Believe,” songs that still resonate today.
As lead singer and keyboardist for The Cut Losses, McWilliams had an underground hit with “Spending Time On My Own,” which garnered 100,000 Spotify streams in 72 hours. The pair connected on their mutual love of darker new-wave icons like The Cure, The Smiths, and Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark. With Gone Sugar Die, they’ve created something new with a proper nod to the past and fresh urgency.
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/gonesugardie
https://twitter.com/GoneSugarDie
https://www.artisthq.com/gone-sugar-die
https://www.instagram.com/gonesugardie
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpYwyLqt97_QPsFC5rvzyCw? -
An Interview with We Are Scientists
Jammerzine has an exclusive interview with Keith Murray, frontman for the multi-faceted rock juggernaut known as We Are Scientists. And, on this day (which I call year 1 Anno Dominance) we have the release of their latest outing ‘Lobes‘.
To listen to ‘Lobes’ is to listen to an experience. That timestamp in your mind that just let you know you listened to something meaningful. Dashes of snark and feelings of fucking awesome mixed with moments of clarity.
How else can you describe ‘Lobes’? Or We Are Scientists, for that matter? How can I even say that this is where ‘Huffy‘ left off? I can’t because, well, it isn’t. Does this band live in linear time? You get that original W.A.S. sound, of course. But you get that personality. Everyone involved is mentally represented. And the result? We get subtle rebels of raucous dropping ten tracks of immersive attitude done in such a way that, after you read that last part, you wonder if they could tour with Pantera, but no. Not all rebellion is done with the guitar. Sometimes it’s done with personality and feeling. Just know this; when We Are Scientists give you the musical finger with that charm-boy smile, remember to smell that finger to find out where it’s been.
And, in today’s interview, we get a hint at where that’s been with this fun conversation/interview with Keith as we talk about ‘Lobes’, We Are Scientists, where it came from, where it’s been, and where it’s going.
Check out our other features with We Are Scientists HERE.
About We Are Scientists & ‘Lobes’
American rock band We Are Scientists debuted in the early aughts with the angular post-punk edge of With Love and Squalor, later evolving to incorporate polished synths and expanded atmospherics on efforts like 2016’s Helter Seltzer, 2018’s Megaplex, and 2021’s Huffy. Although modestly popular in America, they were a hit in the U.K., where the group’s sound — part post-punk revival and part indie rock with a touch of ’80s synth pop — drew parallels to contemporaries like Editors, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, and the Killers.
Formed on the West Coast by three California-based college students, We Are Scientists officially took flight after frontman and guitar Keith Murray, bass player Chris Cain, and drummer Michael Tapper (who replaced founding drummer/vocalist Scott Lamb) relocated to Brooklyn and began building a small but devoted following. After releasing three EPs and one independent album — Safety, Fun, and Learning (In That Order) — the group signed with Virgin Records and released their major-label debut, With Love and Squalor, in early 2006. The effort peaked at ten on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and eventually was certified gold in the U.K.
In 2008, We Are Scientists — reduced to a duo comprising Cain and Murray after Tapper parted ways with the group — put out their second full-length album, Brain Thrust Mastery. Produced by Ariel Rechtshaid, the set included the singles “After Hours” and “Chick Lit.” As before, the record found popularity in the U.K., where it debuted at number 11 on the albums chart. The band toured heavily in support, playing a number of European festivals and opening shows in America for Kings of Leon. As We Are Scientists prepared to record a third album, former Razorlight drummer Andy Burrows joined the lineup, and the revised band unveiled itself with the release of 2010’s Barbara. That year, founding members Cain and Murray also appeared in their own series of comedy shorts, Steve Wants His Money, which aired on the Internet and ran in segments on MTV.
In late 2012, the band entered the studio in New York with producer Chris Coady (Beach House, Gang Gang Dance, Blonde Redhead) to record sessions for their fourth record. Burrows relocated to the city from England while he worked with Murray and Cain to write and record tracks for the album. Titled TV en Français, it arrived in early 2014 on 100%/Dine Alone Records and featured appearances by Rose Elinor Dougall (Mark Ronson) and Tim Wheeler (Ash).
In 2016, We Are Scientists returned with their fifth studio album, Helter Seltzer, produced by Max Hart (of Katy Perry’s band). The effort charted in the Top 50 of the U.K. and Scottish charts. Two years later, they delivered their sixth effort, the polished Megaplex, also produced by Hart. The album featured the singles “Heart Is a Weapon,” “Not Another Word,” and “Your Light Has Changed.”
Following the 2020 launch of their own Dumpster Dive podcast, the group returned with the full-length Huffy in 2021. Although 2021’s Huffy returned to a guitar-driven sound, forthcoming Lobes, the band’s eighth studio album (out January 20th), is their synthiest, electronic beatiest collection yet. So, really, who even is We Are Scientists?
Founding We Are Scientists members Keith Murray (guitar) and Chris Cain (bass) have played with guys like Adam, Michael, Andy, Danny, Chris, Matt, and Gary on drums, but for over five years now have had Keith Carne, who looks like he isn’t going anywhere.
The band’s previous singles “After Hours,” “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt,” “The Great Escape,” “It’s a Hit” and “Chick Lit” all have charted in the US/UK and the band have appeared on US late night talk shows, The Late Show with David Letterman, Conan and Carson Daly and performed at Coachella, Sasquatch, and All Points West festivals. In the UK, the band played the Reading and Leeds main stage and Glastonbury Festivals among other world-wide touring.
The release of Lobes will be celebrated with a very special hometown show at Brooklyn Made on January 20, 2023, followed by touring in the U.K. and Europe beginning in February.
LINKS:
https://wearescientists.com
https://twitter.com/wearescientists
https://www.facebook.com/wearescientists
https://www.instagram.com/wearescientists -
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