Hey Nonny Oh No!

Gah! Tapestry Goes West is cancelled! I was looking forward to spending a weekend in Wales dressed as a Biba Robin Hood, waving a plastic sword around like a goon and for it to be perfectly acceptable, nay legitimate behaviour. Best just dream of mead and admire the sleeve for this long-lost acid-folk rarity - genius.

EDIT: Hurrah! Tapestry Goes West is back on in a miniaturised form. Thank you to the concerned folk (Delia, Simon) who contacted us to make sure we knew that sword-waving oportunities are still beckoning.
Also, that Subway album is great.

The Early Years - Like A Suicide (Sonic Cathedral)

Regular worshippers at Sonic Cathedral will surely have experienced glorious krautrock voyagers The Early Years, as they're frequently seen declaiming from the Cathedral's pulpit (is that enough ecclesiastical imagery now?). To celebrate Sonic Cathedral's tenth single release, the band have cranked a few levers and boosted themselves into electronica hyperdrive for 'Like A Suicide' (like Suicide the band - get it!) A mechanically churning intro spits out a factory-line groove that rumbles away throughout, becoming progressively more throbbing as the song powers its way through territory reminiscent of Death In Vegas' shoegaze-rockunroll-electro mishmashes. Electricity-comes-from-other-planets Neu-style skirls and loops twirl under some rather strident vocals which add a kind of, cripes! Numanoid feel to things. And then there's this unhinged scrabbling guitar making it all deliciously disorientated. It's sorta kosmiche electro space-drone glitch disco and I reckon it could sound ALMIGHTY live.

Driven by a monster authoritarian drumbeat, AA side The Computer Voice sounds like machines communicating, flickering static, glowing wires and more of those portentous vocals. Glowering.
An intriguing aperitif to the second album. More of this wibbling experimentation please.

http://www.soniccathedral.co.uk/
www.myspace.com/thesoundoftheearlyyears

The Lovely Eggs – I Like Birds But I like Other Animals Too (Filthy Little Angels)

Living up to their name (the ‘Lovely’ bit mainly), The Lovely Eggs sent me a charming letter along with their CD. It’s got drawings in different coloured felt-tips and everything. Like their letter, The Lovely Eggs music has a cracked-childhood deranged sweetness to it. On first listen, their record is a trifle startling, but then you get all endeared by the simple kid-fi honesty of their songs.

Lead track, ‘I Like Birds But I Like Other Animals Too’ has got the most ‘instrumentation’ going on, skittering along on trashy, thrashy guitar, twinkling glockenspiel and Holly’s Violet-Elizabeth brat vocals. “Cuck, cuckoo, cuck, cuckoo, cuck, cuckoo koo” they sing and the see-saw tune rams itself into your brain for good, like someone singing, “I know a song that’ll get on your nerves”, only without the getting on your nerves bit.

Next, set against the military patter of a drum and one-note recorder tootling, Holly sings a paean to the brill illustrator Jon Carling (www.myspace.com/ifeltthat), “I know an artist and he draws about owls”. It’s a fitting tribute; curious, a little twisted, fallen-down-a-rabbit-hole magical – like Carling’s work. The song is preceded by fellow Egg David (maybe?) listing different breeds of owl – soothing/unsettling.

Then there are assorted la la lo lo fi ravings, 'Dirty At Farms/I'm Having A Party/Cops And Robbers/Fade' which sound like the tapes we made as kids, singing earnestly but a bit stupidly, enjoying just making stuff, saying whatever; “I always get my shoes dirty at farms”; “Cops and robbers, crime and punishment, cops and robbers”.

‘I’m Having A Party’ has muffled vocals and a rattling drum that might not be a drum and is reminiscent of the first Beat Happening album – tracks recorded RIGHT HERE with 0 instruments – no production or layers of blah, just straight-up communication of songs and ideas, out of their mouths and into yr ears.

When The Lovely Eggs music comes to an end, you feel a bit bereft, like you’ve been playing with your mates all day, caught up in your own zig-zagging world and now they’ve gone home for tea and it’s just you and normalness again.

www.myspace.com/thelovelyeggs