Most musicians boast of exploding onto their local scene in a glittering blaze of media hype and spontaneous applause. The unassuming, unusual and enigmatic T.E. Yates, however, snuck in through an open window.
His name was not on the top line of event posters but rather a discreet artist signature in the bottom corner; his first gig flyers and album covers were ones he designed for other bands, not himself. He’s performed in front of huge crowds but always as a hired hand or supporting player, a multi-instrumentalist in the shadows – mandolin, banjo, harmonica, even musical saw – you may have heard him on the tracks of other artists without even knowing it. But now T.E. Yates has stepped out of the shadows, taking center-stage with a formidable backing band (both onstage and on record) comprising members of Victorian Dad, The Bedlam Six, Ottersgear, Gorilla Riot, and Honeyfeet.
Even when performing solo the man doesn’t travel light, his weird and wonderful drawings regularly making an appearance between songs, baffling and delighting audiences in equal measures.
His debut album “Silver Coins And White Feathers” is by turns moving, catchy and ambitious, brimming with influences from all across the genre spectrum, the subject matter ranging from astronomy to the Suffrage movement – a real treat for music lovers of all persuasions.
“Nick Drake’s ‘Hazy Jane’ with a touch of Roy Orbison”
– BBC Radio Manchester
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/T.E.Yates.Official
https://twitter.com/teyates
https://soundcloud.com/t-e-yates
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6vfksH96y3ZbDe6SLRX6mT
https://teyates.bandcamp.com
https://vimeo.com/user24745797
https://debtrecords.net
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrn1R2iL89k&index=1&list=PL–NzcS5ylP3JYe2k6gDEcqZQVsszD-Lp
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connect_icut – Simonson
In his music, connect_icut (real name Samuel Macklin) aims to remove the distinctions between instinct and intellect, chaos and order, organic and synthetic, analog and digital. This work may be deemed ‘glitch’ or ‘post-digital’, but one thing is for sure – this is a mixture of melodic elements and rarefied abstraction with intense modulations that flare up between the cracks of mysterious geometrical passages.
Releasing music since 2005, some of it has met with significant success. The Wire Magazine commented that it was “always involving – and easily rewarding enough to make getting up and turning the record over an anticipatory pleasure”. Thurston Moore and Byron Coley (via Arthur Magazine) also noted this music “takes a lot of standard ‘pretty’ electronic practices and flops them over on their sides… There’s pop crafting here, but it’s subtle and allowed to evolve in its own darkly idiosyncratic way”.
connect_icut released ‘Crow & Kittiwakes Wheel and Come Again’ (2013) and ‘Small Town by the Sea’ (2014), both via Aagoo Records, to wide acclaim, followed by ‘Rage Coma’ (2017). While those albums were mostly created using computer software, this new EP is essentially a test recording for a new all-hardware set-up.
Whereas other electronic music producers making the software/hardware switch have simultaneously adopted an analog-only approach, connect_icut remains firmly rooted in the digital realm. The six extended tracks collected here delve into the granular synthesis techniques developed by computer music pioneers like Curtis Roads, Barry Truax, and Guy Reibel – only without using a computer, as such.
This music also differs from that of the aforementioned pioneers in its rawness and spontaneity. The source sounds were created with whatever was at hand, which usually turned out to be a Casio SK-1 toy sampler. The finished tracks are both proof-of-concept test runs and seat-of-the-pants improvisations. Somewhere along the line, this resulted in surprisingly beautiful music.
It anchors all manner of chaotic abstraction in a solid foundation that is fundamentally grounded in hands-on performance and spontaneous composition. Live connect_icut appearances have included support slots for a number of notable electronic artists including Oneohtrix Point Never and Loscil.
In support of this new release, connect_icut also presents the video for ‘Simonson’, emphasizing radiant pixels and glowing digital abstraction.
‘Music for Granular Synthesizer’ will be released via Aagoo Records on November 24 on triple cassette and can be ordered on Aagoo’s website and also digitally via Bandcamp.
LINKS:
http://connect-icut.com
http://twitter.com/vinylscrobbler
http://soundcloud.com/connect_icut
http://www.youtube.com/user/CSAFrecords
http://connect-icut.tumblr.com
http://csaf-records.bandcamp.com
http://open.spotify.com/artist/1GWsn2g4Fy23GGTDtj882N -
Heart to Heart – Insufferable
Quiet is nice. Quiet is comfortable. But quiet is dangerous, too — because quiet is the perfect disguise for a revolution.
Nick Zoppo knows this. Zoppo is the frontman of Heart to Heart, an energetic California rock quintet that formed a decade ago and has toured North America countless times. Even though the band cultivated a dedicated following and released two stellar full-lengths, Heart to Heart slowly receded from the music scene, laying mostly dormant the past few years. What made Zoppo put his passion on hold? His other passion: professional wrestling.
“In 2015, I moved to Chicago to train with WWE Superstar Seth Rollins,” Zoppo explains, “and three months turned into three-and-a-half years. In that time period, we were still playing a few shows and were still sending music ideas back and forth, it was just a little more tough with me being in the Midwest. I inevitably had to move back to California, and once I came back, we started rocking and rolling again.”
Zoppo’s alter ego, the “Outlandish Zicky Dice”, took the independent wrestling scene by storm, landing him bookings all across the world. Inspired by his character, Zoppo returned to Heart to Heart with a renewed passion, and his fellow bandmates — guitarist/vocalists Johnathan Hayes and Alex Lulow, bassist Justin Bratcher, and drummer AJ Wright — were just as excited to get to work.
The result is Heartbreaker, a six-song release that’s as musically aggressive as it is inherently melodic. It’s the kind of stuff that would stop you in your tracks at Warped Tour, or would make you open Shazam on your phone to identify the song if you overheard it coming from someone’s car stereo.
“Heartbreaker is a new, completely different, mature sound for Heart To Heart,” Zoppo says. “This record means the most to me, especially lyrically. I think of real pain in my life that I connect to music, and that’s what I draw on when writing lyrics.”
Look no further than Heartbreaker’s opening track, “Ø Love,” which finds Zoppo keenly observing, “We all learn from loss and pain and suffering.” Or check out “Someone Else,” which includes a potent bit of dialogue from Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Or just press “play” on standout track “Insufferable,” which sounds like the dissolving of a relationship in real-time — and according to Zoppo, it was.
“It was literally what we were going through at the time,” he says. “I am telling the story as it happens — we were breaking up while I was in the studio. I’m speaking my mind and not holding anything back.”
It’s clear that Zoppo approaches each song as if it could be his last, using his lyrics as a way to directly speak his mind, no matter who may get caught in the crossfire. His approach may ruffle a few feathers (“I get texted from the subjects of songs sometimes,” he says with a chuckle), but it also allows for deeper bonds to be formed, as you can hear in the emotionally gripping “The (Q)uiet War,” a passionate song about mental health, which includes a real voicemail message from a musician friend of Zoppo’s who was near the point of ending his own life.
“You can just hear the true emotion and true pain in it,” he says of his friend’s confession, assuring that the friend is in a much better headspace now. “It’s a war inside your head daily. Even me — I play this character that’s full of himself in the wrestling ring, but I’m also trying to remember if I took my depression medication this morning. I like being a public figure that can talk about these things openly, and hopefully try to motivate someone else to remind them there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s completely okay to not be okay.”
Zoppo is not only constantly working on himself, he is also helping others — the singer/wrestler is currently working toward his master’s degree in special education, and he makes time in his busy schedule to work in a special ed class as well. All of this goes into making Zoppo a surprisingly vulnerable frontman — but while vulnerability might shine through in the studio, once he gets on stage, all bets are off.
“When I would go on stage, I would be this character that eventually turned into Zicky Dice,” he says. “Angus Young from AC/DC used to say he would black out on stage, and I feel that’s the same for me. I’m all about entertaining the crowd. Yeah, they’re there to listen to music. But this is a chance to give them a performance. I look forward to sharing these songs with the world as an older, more mature me and a more mature band.”
With Heartbreaker, Heart To Heart is ready to reintroduce themselves to the world. They’re older and wiser, sure; they all carry a few more scars, both physical and emotional; but their musicianship is more advanced than it’s ever been, and they’re ready to kick the listener in the face, sonically speaking.
“We really took our time and tried a lot of different things we haven’t done musically before,” Zoppo says. “New vocal techniques, harmonies, guitar overlays… We were in the studio for months, because we knew Heartbreaker had to be something incredible. Everyone here has a lot of shit on the line. We all really want to be our best.”
Quiet has ended. A revolution is about to begin. Heart to Heart is ready for you. Are you ready for them?
LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/zickydice
https://twitter.com/zickydice
https://facebook.com/zickydice
https://facebook.com/hearttoheartca -
Frankie Animal – Peaches
Frankie Animal has today released their new video for the track titled ‘Peaches’. Perfect pop sensibility combined with subdued sensuality is what is musically at the heart of ‘Peaches’. But you also get that layer of originality that is the hook and harmony of it all. And that is where the brilliance lay.
“The main idea in the lyrics was heavily drawn from Luca Guadagnino’s film, Call Me By Your Name,” the band said in a statement. “The idea was of a secret relationship and, not to sound cheesy here, but a forbidden love. Even the title was borrowed from the movies’ infamous peach scene.”
ABOUT FRANKIE ANIMAL
When quirky rawness meets the delicate nature of Feist and Jeff Buckley you get a certain something known as Frankie Animal.
Frankie Animal is an Estonian indie-rock act formed in 2012 by Marie M. Vaigla (vocals), Jonas Kaarnamets (guitar), and Jan-Christopher Soovik (bass). Within a year of forming, the band was earning praise from Radio 2, one of the most important radios in Estonia, who named the band a station and audience’s favorite in 2012.
Following their initial EP in 2013, Frankie Animal’s long-awaited debut album, The Backbeat, arrived in April 2016 to national praise. Kaspar Viilup of Estonian Public Broadcasting praised Vaigla’s vocals as “remarkably versatile, at one point as fragile as Karen O’s solo projects and the next moment screaming-roaring as The Kills’ lead vocalist Alison Mosshart.”
Placing in the Eurovision-adjacent Estonian Song Contest and continuing to steadily gain praise, Frankie Animal released a new single “Playful” in June 2019 under the Sony Music label Made in Baltics. The following month, “Playful” was the most played song on Radio 2. Next month, the band is set to release “Peaches,” a lounging slice of indie-pop that’s meant to sound like the peachy colors reflecting off windows during a midsummer sunset in the city.
LINKS:
http://www.frankieanimal.com
https://www.facebook.com/FrankieAnimal
https://www.instagram.com/frankieanimal
https://twitter.com/frankie_animal