Review: Akron/Family – Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free

[By Jamie Halliday]

Artist: Akron / Family

Album: Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free

Label: Crammed Discs

It’s nice when this happens. Having risen fast to the absolute top of my profession, it can be easy to become jaded and tired; my worn, greying eyes seeing nothing but bottom lines and tax deductions – but sometimes this happens, sometimes something truly inspiring and exciting falls onto our desks and rocks our worlds*. In this instance it happened with a Crammed Discs release (coming through our friends in Proper Note) by the name of SET ‘EM WILD, SET ‘EM FREE. The offending artist? AKRON/FAMILY.

Akron/Family - Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free

Charlie Winston – Wed 01/07/09, Pigalle

[By Jamie Halliday]

Real World Round Up:

Charlie Winston – Hobo album launch.

The Pigalle, Piccadilly. July 1^st 2009.

Charlie Winston (by Jon Roffey)

Having convinced the French that he’s the single best thing Euros can buy (racking up a platinum album and a no.1 single), Suffolk songster Charlie Winston made his much anticipated return to London for the UK launch of his debut album proper Hobo. Mon Dieu!

Hitting the stage one by one, his band, The Oxymorons, arrive with an every-man-for-himself urgency – fighting one another to open the set. It was very novel. When the trio finally found themselves united, they worked seamlessly, creating a grand enough backing to lure the night’s star onto the stage. Dancing his way into the opening lines of excellent new single In Your Hands and thrashing at his keyboard like a dandy (and digital) Jerry Lee Lewis – Charlie Winston had officially arrived in London Town.

Baddies!

Baddies seem to be making a lot of waves recently, earning such fans as Louis Mills of our good friends at Proper Records. Here’s what he has to say about the up-and-coming wonk-indie pop-rock band…

Baddies, yesterday.

Baddies are here… and they’re on a mission to make you listen.

Breaking out at last year’s music expo ‘In The City’, Baddies quickly got swept up by the curse of the so-called “hype machine”. Careful not to get too carried away, they took a step back and decided to set up their own label, Medical, which meant that they would have total control of their music.

Dengue Fever on the BBC!

At some point (i’m not sure when) Dengue Fever were on the BBC News. I have proof:

The feature shows BBC reporter Guy De Launey commentating on the bands antics as they film Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, a documentry about the band visiting Cambodia and providing a rare injection of Westernised music to Cambodians.

I imagine the feature was timed to relate to the ongoing Khmer Rouge Tribunal. For those of you unfamiliar with the Khmer Rouge, they were a communist party that governed Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. As the film says, during their reign recorded music was destroyed and musicians were murdered; this gives us a good reason to be grateful for the vibrant, diverse music scene we have in Britain today.

Find out more about the documentry on the website.

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Win Tickets To See Amy LaVere!!

Regular readers of this blog might have noticed that we have a habit of thoroughly recommending Memphis-based singer & upright bassist Amy LaVere (scroll down for related posts).

Well now’s your chance to check her out for yourself, as we’re offering 3 lucky people the chance to win pairs of tickets for shows on her UK tour starting next week!

The dates are:
December
Mon 1st – Academy, Birmingham
Tue 2nd – King Tut’s, Glasgow
Wed 3rd – Crawdaddy, Dublin
Thu 4th – The Stock Room, Sheffield (£4 on the door)
Fri 5th – Cooler, Bristol
Sat 6th – The Maze, Nottingham
Sun 7th – Borderline, London

Competition lines are now closed – winners to be announced shortly…

If you missed Amy on Jools Holland and still haven’t heard her do her stuff, head over to her myspace page for a taster.

Both her albums are currently available through Archer Records:

Anchors and Anvils

This World Is Not My Home

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Dengue Fever! Videos and stuff!

Everyone’s favourite Californian psychedelic surf-rock band with a Cambodian singer who are named after a tropical disease were recently featured on the rather excellent site balconytv.co.uk. For the education of those of you who are uneducated in the ways of this site it features artists playing on an outside balcony.

Due to the restrictive size of the balcony, this performance is remarkable amongst Dengue Fever performances in that:

a) they have an acoustic guitar instead of an electric,
b) they have a shaker instead of a drum kit and
c) they’re not jumping around like nutters.

Nevertheless it is a very performance. Look!

Previous Proper artist appearances on the show include the talented and lovey Zoe Conway, although this was the Irish version.

Fortunately for some of us here at Proper we got to see Dengue Fever at the ICA in London the other day. They were great! So great that i felt compelled to film a couple of tunes on my phone. The quality isn’t fantastic but it’s not too bad considering. You’ll also have to excuse the wobbly picture; i couldn’t help having a bop whilst filming!

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Win Dengue Fever Tickets AND a night in a swanky hotel!

That’s right, our pals at Real World Records have teamed up with Red Carnation Hotels (who aren’t our pals but only because we’ve never met them) to offer you a fantastic prize!

Cambodian pop / West-coast surf rock party band Dengue Fever are playing the ICA on Thursday 20th November 2008. You could win a pair of tickets to the event as well as a night in the 4-Star Rubens Hotel along Buckingham Palace Road.

For more details, visit Real World’s news page.

What Dengue Fever would look like if they were in The Rubens

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Dengue Fever! Live Review!

Dengue Fever, Tuesday 27th May 2008, The Borderline, London.

There was an excellent turnout for Dengue Fever’s first ever UK gig, a great start to their forthcoming European tour which includes big festivals like WOMAD, Glastonbury and Roskilde. An enthusiastic crowd warmly welcomed them to the stage, many of them familiar with their material over their last three albums.

The band’s enthusiasm and charisma jump out the stage at the audience with sporadic synchronized dancing and enough energy to power Milton Keynes; one of their dancing moves involves each musician slinking towards the floor as the music descends in pitch, resulting in the keyboard player (Ethan Holtzman) playing his keyboard whilst crouching on the floor without being able to see what he’s doing. At points bass player Senon Williams jumps out into the crowd, nearly bangs his head on the ceiling whilst jumping up and down and plays on his knees whilst still being about the same height as lead singer Chhom Nimol (the latter two are a result of him being at least six-and-a-half foot tall). Chhom is also sporting what I can only describe as the most interesting shiny, silver dress I’ve ever seen.

Sound-wise everything is great out front, clearly audible and nicely mixed, with the occasional exception that Zac Holtzman, guitarist and singer (also student of obscure music legend Trey Spruance), is too busy jumping and dancing around that he doesn’t quite make it to the microphone. This however hardly detracts from the excellent musical performance which almost acts as a backdrop behind the visual spectacle, despite the fact there are so many people singing along.

In conclusion, it was a great delight to see them in such an intimate venue given that they are pretty much only playing festivals for the rest of their tour. But for those of you attending Wychwood, Glastonbury, Larmer Tree, WOMAD, Summer Sundae and/or Beautiful Days they will blow your socks off. For full tour details, click here.

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Live Review! JD & the Longfellows, Stuart O’Connor

Fri 22^nd February 2008, The Fox and Firkin, Lewisham.

The event is the launch of JD and the Longfellows‘ second album Happy Hour Again, a suitably entitled venture from the booze-fuelled folk-rock party band.

Stuart O’ Connor plays the role of main support tonight but comes dangerously close to upstaging the headlining act. He has been playing solo for about two and a half years, having been the frontman for avant-garde prog-indie band My Pet Junkie for about eight years. Armed with his acoustic guitar and legged with a loop pedal he starts to play.