Kent, UK born, Jaz Mattu blends rock, pop, and funk with his music to create a truly unique sound. He sings, plays guitar, bass, synths, and drums – but is the first person in his family to pick up a musical instrument, which he did at the age of 13 after seeing Nirvana’s Smells like Teen Spirit video on MTV.
He pleaded with his mother to get him a guitar and for some reason she did. It seemed to keep him out of trouble and off the streets during those “difficult teen years!”
He took a break from music until finishing university and starting his “proper” job as a software engineer, where he sat at his desk on his first day and figured there was no way he could do that job for the next 40 years… and so he decided to get back into music again.
His 4 track Saachrine Times e.p. came out in January 2017 and was the starting point of the Sanguine Man album. The album is available now and contains 14 tracks of quirky pop, music to rock out to and music to reflect over.
Jaz played plenty of jam nights in Kent with his backing band from 2017 onwards and has now started playing in London at venues like The Fiddler’s Elbow, The Dublin Castle and The Water Rats. He’s currently booking more gigs as we speak.
LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/jazmattuofficial
https://twitter.com/jazmattusounds
https://www.facebook.com/JazMattuOfficial
http://jazmattu.com
-
Crooked Ghost – Sleepwalker
Dreamy post-punk rockers Crooked Ghost have announced that their new album ‘Skeleton House’ will be released on CD on November 23, followed by a limited edition 12″ vinyl release in February 2019. Ahead of this, the Asheville, NC outfit presents their ‘Sleepwalker’ single, accompanied by a video, directed by Rome Widenhouse.
“Skeleton House’ is the band’s sophomore long-play – a dark and hazy dreamscape of lush and angular melody, with a stark lyrical rawness touching upon such subjects as addiction, trauma, loss, superstition, and everything that gets left behind after a catastrophic event. The album consists of eight tracks, ranging from dreamy and playful to anguished and harrowing. Billowing vocal patterns weave intricate stories between shimmering guitar crescendos, cascading synths, and mathematical percussion.
This album follows up their debut LP ‘Strange Burial Rituals’, released in March 2017. This new offering has two distinct halves: the first is lighter, the second darker. The whole thing plays out like a story, or rather, two opposite stories that are intertwined.
“The song ‘Sleepwalker’ was one of the first written for the new album, and everything about it just worked. The song itself is in reference to addiction and a dissolution of one’s sense of self; self-medicating and numbness. I wanted to bring light to something dark, yet still tell an honest story. Something about this song has always stood out for us, says frontman Ray Clark.
“The music video was shot by Rome Widenhouse over a period of several weeks and includes shots of that eclipse everyone was so excited about. The video is a bit surreal and has a sort of Twin Peaks meets the X-Files vibe. It was a lot of fun to shoot, even the traipsing barefoot through the woods in nothing but a bedsheet and getting poison ivy part. At one point our director took a tumble down a cliffside and we thought he was done for!”
Formed in Seattle in 2013 as an acoustic side project by Ray Clark, Crooked Ghost was initially a channel for leftover songs that didn’t seem to fit in any of the other bands Clark was involved in, but quickly became the focal point of Ray’s creative energy. Ray soon fled the musically-saturated Seattle scene to find himself in the intensely creative heart of Asheville, North Carolina.
With a guitar case full of lyrics of songs never intended to be heard by anyone, somehow, something had begun to spark again. Intimidated by the idea of a solo project, Ray joined with Chris Saldin, who would play bass, and bought an electric guitar, set on bringing Crooked Ghost to life. Together with drummer Jon Wyatt, the songs came to life. A few months later, they entered the studio to record their debut album.
They were eventually joined by Charles Reed on guitar and Alex Cannon on keyboards before recording the heavily emotive and dreamily lush ‘Skeleton House’. With the power-pop punch of Catch Fire, the dark-disco punk breakdown of Roadkill, to the angular yet dreamy swoon of Sleepwalker, Skeleton House will impress and even haunt you.
“These songs were inspired by the loss of someone I loved to a fire. The idea that something like a fire could destroy so much, but still leave something behind was so enticing to me. I wanted these songs to represent resilience and strength, and to be able to process loss in a healthy way. I wanted to find a way to bring light to the darker things I was experiencing, and to arrange the pieces into something beautiful,” says Ray Clark.
“We recorded this album up in Black Mountain, NC in the dead of winter. The snowy and icy landscape definitely added to the album’s atmosphere. This is also our first release on vinyl, making it very special for all of us. As kaleidoscopic as it sounds, I feel we very much achieved the piece of art we were wanting to make.”
As of November 23, ‘Skeleton House’ will be available on CD. It can already be ordered via Bandcamp and is also available across music stores and streaming platforms such as iTunes and Spotify.
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/CrookedGhost
https://crookedghost.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/crookedghost
https://twitter.com/thecrookedghost
https://soundcloud.com/crookedghost
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIgVwlr638HsQbVuTZGH6EQ
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/skeleton-house/1394361906
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1dQla5TZY6h1hmDyAIDtrF?si=5Qufr3YuSmGi_5FdwECCPA -
I Am A Rocketship – Face Off
I Am a Rocketship, a Swedish-American electronic rock duo based in Georgia, announces the release of their second album ‘Mind Grafitti’. As a taster ahead of that, they present the first single ‘Face Off’, which a tribute to Led Zeppelin’s album ‘Physical Graffiti’.
I Am a Rocketship merges cool Scandinavian vocals, pop hooks and a dash of experimental sounds. They write, record and create art and videos without other contributors. Layering dark lyricism and fuzz guitars over pop grooves, they create a notably attractive hybrid sound. Their music is ideal for dancing the night away on an ancient sailboat manned by robots, lost at sea. The ‘Mind Grafitti’ album follows their debut long-play ‘Mission Control’, released in 2016.
On this sophomore release, the Atlanta duo blends classic rock, psychedelia and trip-hop sounds. This 13-song collection features 12 original compositions, as well as the distinctive cover of the Rammstein classic ‘Du Hast’. ‘Mind Grafitti’ was recorded on a notebook computer over the course a year in various locations.
“While physical graffiti is tagged by the artist, mind graffiti is tagged to infect our minds via lies and misdirection sprayed across glowing screens,” says guitarist and principal songwriter Eric Weissinger. “The songs on this album are about confusion and reinvention – as individuals and as a society – in the era of mind graffiti.”
As a bassist, guitarist, and singer, Eric Weissinger had opened for bands such as The Wedding Present, The Black Crowes, James, Cracker, and Portastatic. After playing on an Anne Richmond Boston album featuring Syd Straw, Marti Jones, Don Dixon, and Terry Adams, he took a break from music until a chance meeting with L E Kippner changed everything.
“We’re also going to make a few videos,” says singer, keyboardist and co-writer L E Kippner. “Since we can’t abandon our jobs to tour much, we put a lot of that energy into those, and I think they help share what the band is really about.”
A college radio DJ, choir member, cellist and singer for Swedish synth-pop duo Neobox, L E Kippner’s musical background could hardly have been more different than Eric’s. Nonetheless, their shared love of Rammstein and Bob Dylan led them to form Hitchcock Blondes in Cleveland, Ohio. They then moved to Atlanta, creating I Am a Rocketship to free themselves from the restrictions of conventional bands.
Their Influences are many, including the lyricism of Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt, soundscapes of Sigur Ros and Massive Attack, rhythms and adventurism of Run the Jewels and M.I.A., and the melodicism of Depeche Mode and Curve.
Mind Grafitti will be released on February 21, 2019, via the band’s own My Long Wknd imprint. It will be available across leading digital sales and streaming platforms. The album, which will be supported by local and regional live performances, will also be available for pre-order via Bandcamp.
“This is bound to please fans of The Kills, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The White Stripes, Evanescence, and the Ting Tings. That’s one zinger of a list of comparable bands, yet the I Am A Rocketship sits perfectly amidst them. This is catchy as hell, seductively drawing you in and leaving you hanging on every note right to the last fadng guitar”
– Big Takeover MagazineSOURCE: Official Bio
LINKS:
https://iamarocketship.com
https://iamarocketship.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/iamarocketship
https://soundcloud.com/iamarocketship_band
https://twitter.com/Iamarocketship1
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UiGnrf13zMV3BPYrPAddw/videos
https://www.instagram.com/iamarocketship_band
https://open.spotify.com/artist/772e03CWP0SSfAbbsMbCHd
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/i-am-a-rocketship/1212140750 -
Aisles – Clouds Motion (Live from Estudio del Sur)
Aisles have been regarded as Neo-Prog, but their approach to music goes far beyond. Their soulfully crafted combination of rock, progressive rock, art rock, fusion, world music and other styles illustrates the band’s unique liberal and eclectic music vision, reaching their own sound by forming an identity which makes it unmistakably unique to anyone’s ear, and a spirit in which prevails above all, the desire to create.
SOURCE: Official Bio