Making a furious racket are Bristol punk quartet Van Zeller and their voices are being heard loud and clear on their high-octane new single ‘The Coward’.
Working with Tarek Musa from MIMR faves Spring King, the foursome burst into life with shredding riffs and vocals that strike straight through your bones, a track that won’t leave your mind anytime soon for sure.
The guys head out on their own headline tour in a few weeks including a much anticipated Manchester date at The Castle Hotel, more info on this will appear on MIMR Gig Guide out this week.
Burst a move or two and get on down to Van Zeller, dancing shoes required!
We head to Philadelphia, USA for some eye-catching psych pop sounds from a quartet talked about as one of the most colourful and carefully honed indie rock acts around, MIMR introduces you to Carroll
This stand-alone single showcases their engaging sound to another level, cool and groovy, psychedelic tones and vocals that have been beautifully captured in a breezy 3 minute track.
Carroll have proved that they can create a woozy, easily digestable pop song and here at MIMR we think thats a pretty hard thing to find, job done!
Heavy Rock trio Esprit D’Air explode and excite with their latest single taken from their recently released new album ‘Constellations’, it shoots from both barrels and some!
The london based threesome follow a strong DIY ethos which endears them to many within the music community including here at MIMR and their latest album was created under their own record label ‘Starstorm Records’
If you like thrashy, quick-fire riffs and a crusendo of pounding beats then you are kept very satisfied throughout, ignition well and truly burning bright.
You can check the track out here:
They head out on tour early next year including a well antcipated Manchester date, check here for full details:
Coming out all guns blazing with the release of their blistering latest single are All-girl punk rock quartet Young States who look all set to deliver a power-punch to leave you forever reeling.
Hailing from Norwich, the four-piece unleash this monster track, taken from their upcoming EP ‘Past Truths/Present Lies’ out Sept 29th and the explosion of noise it creates as already ensured the whole record will be well worth waiting for.
Pounding beats ignite into spiralling guitars and bellowing vocals kick in to great effect leading to a addictive and powerful tonic which leaves you in a daze.
Young States are certainly not a band to take lightly, immerse yourself and feel the passion.
One of the breakthrough bands to make MIMR purr this year are rock 4 piece Waste and we were lucky enough to catch a few words with Jak (vocals/guitars) about their beginnings as a band and their brilliant new single.
MIMR: Great to have Waste on the blog, how did the band come about and was it clear from the start what musical direction the band would take?
Jak: Cheers for having us! The band formed after we went on a pretty eventful work trip together to Musikmesse in Frankfurt. Max, Lawrence and myself had recently started working for the same music company, we were staying together and decided to explore Frankfurt’s night life together.
Things escalated quickly and during the evening I was kidnapped by a wicked duo made up of a bouncer and a toothless old stripper – after being held for what seemed like a lifetime I eventually made my escape and was reunited with the boys only to find our hotel had been locked up for the night. We had to scale up the building and break into our window on the second floor…well at least we thought it was our window.
After such a lively night we decided that when we got back home we should start playing music together as a bit of fun after work, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The nice thing about how we started playing together was that there was never a conversation about what we should do, what should we try and sound like etc. We just got in a room and played. We spent a long time with lots of songs that didn’t have lyrics, we’d just play these instrumentals tracks over and over, but looking back I think that kind of worked in our favour. We would just play, come up with riffs, get to know each other and at the same time become a really tight band – it was all very natural I think.
MIMR: Tell us about the new single ‘Bullet’ and can we expect more new tracks before the year is out?
Jak: Bullet is our heaviest track to date, not only tonally but also lyrically it’s the darkest track we’ve written. This song came about in a very different way to how we usually would write. Lawrence and myself where down at London Road Studios late one night, there was a drum kit in the live room with just a couple of room microphones up that had been left over from a session. I’d had a recent obsession with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and I wanted to mess around on the drums and try and get a similar sound that they have on their records so Lawrence put a load of distortion plug ins on these room mic channels and I was playing a straight beat (I’m no drummer by any stretch of the imagination!) and just enjoying this lovely distorted sound coming through the headphones. All of a sudden Lawrence plays the riff that you hear throughout Bullet and I just said “What’s that?! It’s great!”. He records a take of it and then told me to get off the drums and let him play something along to the riff (a nice way of saying you’re shit at drums please stop!) Anyway before you know it we had a structure to a song and a demo down. I took it away and wrote the lyrics and then showed it to Max and Josh, they did their thing and the track just became this whole other beast.
Maybe it’s something we’ll do again in the future but it’s not the usual way that we do things. We’ve been writing again recently and are definitely hoping to release something before the year is up.
MIMR: What’s your favourite part about playing live?
Jak: Playing live is the best thing about being in a band! Our live show is something we work very hard at, you want people to come to your shows and have an amazing time and enjoy the night. When you discover a new band, fall in love with their story and their songs there is then no greater disappointment than going to see them play and the live show is just not up to scratch.
The biggest buzz and the best part about playing live is definitely seeing people get into it and enjoy themselves – fans give you so much – coming to the shows, buying merch, etc. that it’s only right that you make sure you put on a show for them.
MIMR: There’s been a constant buzz about the band from pretty early on in your journey, what’s been the most pleasing thing you’ve had said about the band and why?
Jak: Yes it’s been really nice, the reaction we’ve had from all the tracks we’ve put out there since the beginning. The most pleasing thing for me was one of the first ever reviews we had for our debut track Blow. It simply said “Waste sound more Rancho De La Luna than Stevenage”. For me that was a massive complement as even before we started the band the Rancho is somewhere I would and still do dream about recording. Some great albums have come out of that magical place in the Californian Desert and it was a real honour that someone felt that four lads from Stevenage in a Studio in Baldock had been able to capture something that was reminiscent of the sound and style achieved there.
MIMR: Thanks for dropping by on the blog – festival season is in full swing, if you had to pick one to play which one would it be and why?
Jak: Thanks very much for having us. For me it would probably be a toss-up between two festivals – the obvious one is Glastonbury. I’ve never had the pleasure of being there myself but I feel that to play Glastonbury on the Pyramid stage would be the pinnacle of any bands career. The line-up was also pretty great this year.
Personally though it would have to be latitude festival in Suffolk. I went a few years back in 2012, the line-up was fantastic, the weather was unexpectedly great – I’ve never been so sun burned in my entire life – and just the whole vibe and atmosphere was very friendly, the whole weekend was just amazing.
There are stages tucked away in the woods, a stage in a lake and they even have colourful sheep…what more could you want from a festival! Like with lots of things in life though, if something was good first time around maybe you shouldn’t go back (although I bloody well will if I’m asked…) so for that reason I guess I’m going with Glastonbury.
One of the Manchester acts that has really caught MIMR’s attention this year are noise-rock duo Pool Art and we are thrilled that their joyous efforts are now being unleashed in their debut EP ‘Chamber Piece’ released this friday (August 11th)
We spoke to Scott, one half of the dynamic twosome ahead of the EP release to share his thoughts and to delve deeper into the record
MIMR: How’s this year been so far for the band and how did the making of the new EP happen?
Scott: It’s been an interesting year to say the least. We did our first live streamed gig for Pirate Studios, which was a thrilling experience, we played our first show at Gullivers, which is a venue we’ve always loved, we’ve had lots of overwhelmingly positive stuff written about us and we’ve played with some incredible bands including Vulgarians and Lord Kesseli & the Drums. There’s been some tougher times though as Lee had a pretty horrible accident and managed to dislocate his knee, he’s on the mend now though.
The EP was recorded over two sessions and, as it’s our first, it’s been a process of working out our identity and allowing things space and time to progress naturally. It’s taken a while for these songs to materialise in this form, which seems sort of necessary in hindsight, but I think we’d like to work quicker from now on and release stuff more often. We’d love to be more prolific with output but in truth it is very tough whilst working and studying.
Here is the track by track lowdown on the new EP
Misery Porn – I’d never heard this term before, I picked it up from a film/TV podcast I listen to. One of the hosts used it to describe a TV show called The Leftovers and basically defined it as deliberately watching something that makes you feel depressed. It reminded me of that great lyric from Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle “I miss the comfort in being sad”, I suppose I interpret that as: allowing yourself to be consumed by something that you know isn’t good for you, simply because it’s familiar, which in fucked up way provides some sort of solace.
It’s A Hatewatch – It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that lots of our songs are influenced by film and TV and terminology related to them. Hatewatching is watching stuff that sucks just to sit there hating it and then talking shit about it with people, which can be very satisfying for a short time. The fact that this is our shortest song is sort of a reflection of how fickle audiences can be too. It’s also probably our most aggressive sound, I know it’s really pissed people off at some of our gigs. Succinctly it’s us, trying to get close to the genius of early HEALTH or Agata from Melt Banana.
Died Off Screen – This one’s a bit sillier so I’ll just say that it’s the song we enjoy most live. It’s definitely a signal of the darker direction that the lyrics are headed in too. There’s still plenty of humour though, it was sort of inspired by a joke about Schrödinger’s cat.
Gender Balance – Sometimes I just write about articles I read and bits from everywhere end up referenced in the lyrics so its not always about one thing. I think this is probably our most “pop” song, which we kind of realised at the time and so we ended up putting a long musical section at the end to try and fix that.
Don’t Feed Me To Them – This one is special. We were writing lots of grunge influenced tracks at the start that felt a little dated and unoriginal, then one night I sat in my lounge with all the pedals I owned and just started tweaking and changing the order and messing with the volume and tone on my guitar, which interacts very strangely with some of the pedals. The result was this song and it ended up influencing the sound of everything we’ve done since. I mentioned humour before, the vocal is sort of creepy in this song but I actually think the lyrics are quite funny.
MIMR: Great to have you on the blog and thanks for giving us a insight into the new EP, wish you all the best with it. How can people listen to it?
Scott: When it’s released on August 11th you can listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Google Play and Deezer
Making a big impression on MIMR lately are Pop-rock quartet Glass Hour with a upbeat cut from their upcoming album out later this month.
‘Burn’ is a departure from the Montreal foursome’s usual piano and guitars arrangement, with a more electro feel consuming this latest effort. Packed full of joyous vocals and a well rounded, catchy tune has certainly wetted the appetite for their LP titled ‘Minute Hand’
The record is described as a break up one, pointing out the different, emotional stages of this process. It may not always be the happiest topic of discussion but Glass Hour leave you with a smile and full of hope, the album is essential listening!
