Crying Day Care Choir - Great Time - MF Tomlinson

Crying Day Care Choir - The Dreams Of Alice.

After a successful summer performing at festivals such Sziget Festival, Malmöfestivalen, Be Alternative and many more, Swedish alt-follk trio Crying Day Care Choir recently formed their own label ELZ Productions, with their first release an internationally groundbreaking EP with cover art by Damien Hirst and the art itself as source of inspiration.

CDCC’s new EP ‘Give Me Something Vol.1’, the first of three new collections released in the coming months, explores the relationship between art and music and challenges the idea of how music is created. The full album acts as a continuation of Damien Hirst's project ‘The Currency’, where he explores the concept of value through art and money. The Currency contains 10.000 unique pieces, with different titles produced by an AI generator that's been fed with some of the artist’s favourite music. The buyers of these different art pieces were left with the decision during the summer of 2022, to either keep their physical piece or to keep the NFT version of it and let the physical painting burn.

This project led to new artistic ideas for the musicians in CDCC, and the concept for the record ‘Give Me Something’ took shape. The idea is to take the titles from the burnt artworks and put them together as lyrics, thus giving them new life in a new art form -“Reborn, as songs”.

With Damien Hirst’s permission the work began in September. Damien Hirst’s artwork ‘Give Me Something’ will act as album cover for the release. The world famous artist however is no stranger to the concept of making album art with his latest involvement being in Drake’s ‘Certified Loverboy’ from 2021. CDCC is Jack, Sara and Bill Elz. A Swedish band always breaking new ground by exploring new sounds to mix with their patented brand of indie folk.

Crying Day Care Choir · The Dreams Of Alice

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Great Time - Feather - Live in Philadelphia.

Great Time doesn't want to fit in a box. Living up to their name, the band just wants to have a great time making music that they love. Tired of being advised to "pick a lane" by some of their industry peers, Great time set out to create music that celebrates their wide-ranging sound, incorporating genres from synth-pop and electronic to jazz, punk, rock and R&B.

Prior to the first single, 80z Slo Jam, on the upcoming album Live In Phildelphia, their most recent releases are a series of EPs titled “Sounds Like ____”. The band had the idea to turn the EP titles into a Mad Libs type of game "so that someone could put their own adjective or descriptor for the EP in the blank space," explains singer/multi-instrumentalist Jill Ryan. The projects explore some of the different sounds and styles that influence Great Time. “Some people thought [our 2018 debut LP] 'Great Album' was all over the place, so with the ‘Sounds Like’ series, we decided to lean even further into our multi-genre tendencies and place the option of categorizing or putting us in a box on the listener.”

True to their vision, each EP carries a different sound. On Vol. 1, Great Time create a blissed out atmosphere, with R&B and neo-soul melodies. For Vol. 2, the band zones in on its electronic and pop influences, creating a livelier soundscape that feels ripe for dancing. Whereas Vol. 3 shows a guitar-heavy, more traditionally rock-influenced side to the three-piece group, with individual tracks ranging from punk to acoustic folk.

With their "Sounds Like _____" EP series completed, Great Time's next project is a live album that features the new material, allowing existing fans and new listeners who haven't had the opportunity to see them perform yet enjoy how the band stunningly transforms their songs for live performances. Great Time are so excited to be sharing "Feather (Little Dragon Cover)" ,  the next single from this project is just out.

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MF Tomlinson - The End of the Road.

London-based, Brisbane/Meanjin-born singer-songwriter MF Tomlinson releases his new single "The End Of The Road" - the third track from his upcoming second album We Are Still Wild Horses, out 17th February 2023 via PRAH Recordings (Falle Nioke, the Umlauts, Pozi).

‘The End Of The Road’ is a magical realist hymn for the end of the world. A paean to community and culture - celebrating the hope of humanity in the face of the hopelessness of the human race.

Inspired by his memories of the Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion protests of 2019, Tomlinson’s song plays like a vivid dream in which all ‘the people like me and you’ (those who believe in justice for human beings and the rest of the natural world) convene to enjoy the apocalypse in unison – traveling from Trafalgar Square to the bucolic vista of End Of The Road festival in Dorset, one of the last transcendent communal experiences he had before the onset of the pandemic.

With ‘Last Waltz’ arrangements and luminous vocal imbuements from frequent collaborator Connie Chatwin, Tomlinson verbally paints this paradise under silvery starlight. Protesters and friends all gathered together, crooning with open hearts - at peace with the coming darkness that they know will sweep them away to whatever awaits on the other side. It’s a breathtaking vision of the human spirit, filled with love, compassion and beauty until the very last breath. In that same breath, it's an impassioned protest song - a statement of defiance from a crowd of people to those in power:

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Wylderness - MF Tomlinson

Wylderness - Chet Chat.

Arriving as a third and final glimpse into their upcoming sophomore album,  Wylderness have unleashed a scintillating new shoegaze cut: “Chet Chat”.  Boasting their knack for creating sprawling soundscapes and deeply textured instrumentals, Wylderness’ latest offering arrives as the band gear up to release their long-awaited second album ‘Big Plans For A Blue World’ (out 15th July, via Succulent Recordings).

Written when Marz of Wylderness experienced the full, frightening force of an earthquake while on a trip to Greece some years ago, the new track finds the singer and guitarist reflecting on what was a life-changing event and seeking to emulate the force of nature that reverberated through him that day. As Marz remembers: 

“I was on the balcony of an apartment in Athens writing lyrics for this song when all of a sudden there was this enormous roar and the building started shaking. The earthquake lasted about 15 seconds but seemed like it went on forever. Everyone was fine thankfully and I wanted to write something about what had happened, but not make it too obvious and clunky, so it ended up being a bit cryptic.” 

Echoing the raw sonic energy of a tectonic shift, “Chet Chat” ripples like an agitated seismic wave impacting the earth’s surface. From its sparse and seemingly tranquil beginnings, the track builds towards an immense crescendo as towering electric guitars, warped organ grindings and distorted rhythmic pulses stretch-out into a six-minute shoegaze epic that evokes the likes of DIIV, Spacemen 3 or Sonic Youth at their climactic heights. 

Recorded at Giant Wafer Studios on a farm in rural Wales, and with wonky organ sounds added in by producer Rory Atwell, the enigmatic new track sees Wylderness further find themselves in their sound as they deftly forge their own cataclysmic and confident path on their second studio outing.

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MF Tomlinson - A Cloud.

London-based, Brisbane/Meanjin-born singer-songwriter MF Tomlinson returns today with news of his signing to PRAH Recordings (the Umlauts, Pozi, Group Listening) and the release of a new single "A Cloud" - the first music to be heard from from his much-anticipated second album, which will come out on PRAH early 2023.

The album’s lead single and opening track "A Cloud" is accompanied by the first part of a theatre, dance, and film work conceived, directed and choreographed by MF’s collaborator Daisy JT Smith. The album, and the film, will be unveiled piece by piece throughout the year. MF Tomlinson's return today follows his debut full length ‘Strange Time’, self-released in 2021 to critical acclaim from publications including Mojo, NME, Clash, bandcamp, Gigwise and more.

Inarguably his finest work to date as a songwriter and producer, "A Cloud" sets the scene of what’s to come. Marrying elements of 60's folk, folk-rock and psychedelia to thrilling effect - complex, dramatic, intimate, delicate and breathing, Tomlinson’s words are carried away by finger-picked guitars, double bass and soaring flutes that float effortlessly before a canopy of foreboding atmospherics and lush-turned-sinister string arrangements descend on the track with crushing weight.

A curious, dream-like snapshot into Tomlinson's psyche; "A Cloud is about how painful it is to live without your innermost desires," MF Tomlinson explains. "It is, in the same breath, about how beautiful life is despite all of its sadness, and how even the smallest moments can satisfy your spirit. It begins where Strange Time leaves off. In my apartment, from my window we move through scenes of the street, through memories and hallucinations."

Though it would seem we have come back down to earth by the song’s close, it is not the same world - drifting out of sync with reality, we find ourselves on a new trajectory that could be transcendence or a descent into madness.

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Jitensha - ElectroBluesSociety feat Boo Boo Davis - MF Tomlinson - Ana Egge

Jitensha - Sojourn.

Jitensha is the garage rock love child of Erin Rose Hubbard and David Martinez. Their sound is a silvery union of honey sweet proto-punkiness and modern indie that is harmonically reminiscent of 1950s rock & roll. 

With just vocals, electric guitar and drums, stealing a niche somewhere between the White Stripes and the Civil Wars, Jitensha nestles catchy, poignant melodies into hard hitting rock grooves. 

Lyrically, the duo toes the line between realism and optimism, focusing on social justice, environment and psychology, bringing you on a winsome journey of the human experience. 

Jitensha has released two full length studio albums, Buck Moon and Periscope. Their single “Sojourn” dropped on March 19th 2021.

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ElectroBluesSociety feat Boo Boo Davis - You Better Watch Yourself

Third single release from the 'transatlantic quarantaine sessions'. Between 1998 and 2020 Boo Boo Davis used to tour in Europe several times each year and we recorded a lot of his music during these tours. Because of Covid 19 this is not possible at the moment. There for the guys from ElectroBluesSociety (based in he Netherlands) started to exchange idea's and demo tapes with Boo Boo in East St Louis (special thanks to Chris Brown).

ElectroBluesSociety;  Two guys and a bunch of junk with a broad taste and an open mind mixing the old with the new. Modern technologies combined with 30+ years of live stage experience in the European blues / roots music scene.

Boo Boo Davis;  Born and raised in Drew, Mississippi. He's a survivor and belongs to the last generations of musicians that write and play the blues based on first hand experience of a hard life in the Delta.

Black and Tan Records · You Better Watch Yourself - ElectroBluesSociety feat Boo Boo Davis

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MF Tomlinson - A Long Day.

MF Tomlinson, the project of London-based Australian singer-songwriter Michael Tomlinson, today releases new single "A Long Day" – the final taster of his upcoming debut album Strange Time, out April 9th, self-released.

Quickly following his debut EP 'Last Days of Rome', debut album Strange Time was written slap-bang in the middle of 2020; confined to his home, Tomlinson created a stripped-back home studio set up and the songs immediately began to flow.

Born out of this strange liminal space of constant uncertainty that we’ve been living in, his candid poetry and expansive sonic caress capture a true-life portrait of a world in turmoil – sonically taking in elements of acid-folk, chamber-pop, progressive rock and contemplative indie-folk.

Latest single "A Long Day" is perhaps the prime example of the latter. Following previous album singles "Strange Time" and "Them Apples" which have been widely praised across the board by NME, DIY Magazine, The Line Of Best Fit, The Independent, Clash Magazine, Secret Meeting, Beats Per Minute and more – "A Long Day" is a soothing meditation on the vastness of experience. It finds Tomlinson rising early to work in a bakery - “at the end of a long day / it’s just gone lunch,” he opines while Ami Koda’s flute flits all around. Cyclical and breathing, it's heartrending and uplifting all at once.

Speaking on the new single, MF Tomlinson said: “I feel like it [A Long Day] takes me on a journey from the beginning of a normal day to the end of the day. It doesn’t really have a chorus - it kind of flows in quite a cyclical way, so by the time I hit the last notes I feel like it’s transported me personally through all the experiences that directly inspired the song. It essentially deals with the big and the small things that exist in our everyday mundane experiences – no matter how significant or insignificant they might appear at the time – how it all feeds into our concept of memory and the idea of 'living in the moment'."

In essence, MF Tomlinson is the solo work of Michael Tomlinson. Dig a little deeper though and you uncover an intriguing new layer to the project. Calling upon a global network of collaborators and musical friends to bring Strange Time to life (a network he refers to as his "MF's"), across its 6 tracks and 32 minute run time Tomlinson and his MF's explore a rich tapestry of sounds and influences.

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Ana Egge - The Ship.

Sometimes a sea shanty isn’t just a sea shanty. With “The Ship,” the heralded singer/songwriter Ana Egge has taken the traditional shanty and transformed it into a modern-day parable. Soft but still clearly defiant, “The Ship” portrays sailors, fed-up with being robbed of their personal power, realizing they have been complicit in their captain’s greedy, ruinous ways, so they stand together against him and stop participating in burning, to quote the song, “the sides of our own ship.”

A reflection of our times, the single was written during the pandemic by Egge with her friend, Irish troubadour Mick Flannery. “2020 stopped us in our tracks,” Egge explains. “We had more time than ever to consider our priorities and confront the results of our actions, personally and collectively. It is in our hands to put this ship on a new course. We can and we will."

To Egge and Flannery, the ship is the Earth and the captain represents greed and waste. The song speaks to the need of the sailors (and, in 2021, working people of all types) to do the right thing, not only for themselves and each other but also for the future of their children.

Because both Egge and Flannery are parents to young daughters, the song’s concern for the future and future generations is a very personal one for each of them. The video for “The Ship” further reinforces this theme as director Ingrid Weise has constructed it by utilizing beautiful and haunting imagery of her own daughter in nature.

Egge and Flannery composed “The Ship” in a uniquely COVID-era fashion — via Facetime. During the quarantine, the two friends starting doing nightly songwriting sessions, even though Egge is based in Brooklyn while Flannery lives across the ocean in Ireland. “The Ship” stands as one of the earliest results of this transatlantic collaboration, which they have continued into this year.

“I loved writing this song with Ana, as I have with all our collaborations,” shares Flannery. “I’m proud to have been a part of it.” Egge likewise raved, “co-writing with Mick has been so much fun and such a mind meld. Sometimes it feels like we’re finishing each other’s melodic sentences."

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Sweet Crude - Swansea Sound - MF Tomlinson - Eric Bolander

Sweet Crude - La Rêveuse / Under New Moons.

The New Orleans-based six-piece band Sweet Crude announced Dualité: have a new double A-side singles series where the group will release pairs of songs where one is sung in Louisiana French and the other in English. In celebration of Mardi Gras, the band released the first installment today with two brand new songs “La Rêveuse” and “Under New Moons.”

“Tours? Nope. Money? Broke. Launch a blitz of bilingual bangers in 2021 because we can? Putain ouais (hell yeah, and pardon our Louisiana French),” explains singer Sam Craft. “Through confinement and a lack of gigs, we’ve steadily built up a loyal Patreon following with whom we’ve been streaming and chatting on a regular basis. They’ve been inspiring us to keep going and to write like crazy. We show them brand new ideas, they give us feedback, and we are now self-producing and self-recording a whole new body of work for approximately zero dollars. Dualité is the result, or really the start, of this new frontier. The first two tracks to kick things off showcase our French and our English sides. We remain dedicated as ever to creating new avenues to celebrate our Louisiana roots.”

“‘La Rêveuse’ (The Dreamer) is an all-French song and carries the premise that we are all living in someone else's dream. In the song, our dreamer is likened to a little kid playing on the beach, building sandcastles and romping around. Unbeknownst to our baby-god, we are actually all denizens of her temporary sand creations and are at the mercy of all her arbitrary whims. It could kinda explain why everything is so dang weird all the time. Not exactly being conspiracy theorists, we wanted the music to have a certain tongue-in-cheek bounce to it, while maintaining the drama of COVID-induced desperation.”

“Meanwhile, ‘Under New Moons’ is a reality check. On a stream one day, our fans offered us the prompt to write a song about self-care during lockdown. We narrowed that idea down to the moments in life when the best self-care is to disengage from that person (place or thing) that provokes all your worst habits. This moody, minor-key bop takes you on a push-and-pull emotional journey.”

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Swansea Sound - Indies Of The World.

‘Indies of the World’, the new single by SWANSEA SOUND, is a call to arms. Its aim is to revitalise the Global Pop Underground, making it strong enough to vanquish the corporate behemoth. OK, it’s just a limited release 7” single.  But the revolution has to start somewhere.

Hue Williams and Amelia Fletcher of the Pooh Sticks were reunited a few months ago on the first SWANSEA SOUND single, ‘Corporate Indie Band’.  It attracted lots of interest and airplay and sold out in a few hours.  Since then, second single ‘I Sold My Soul on eBay’ has been released as a one-off (on eBay) and played on many radio stations.

‘Indies of the World’ will be released simultaneously on four different Indie Labels of the World.  There’s no need to buy an expensive import: It will not be released on Spotify, Apple Music or other corporate streamers.

‘Indies of the World’ is for record-lovers, indie dancefloors, non-corporate radio shows, and the flourishing online indie DJ/blogging scene. Flipside ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ is a duet in which feckless male Hue is berated by nonplussed female partner Amelia.  It’s like ‘C is the Heavenly Option’ after a lovers’ tiff.

From Rob & Amelia - The song and the video are a celebration of ‘indie’ in its most meaningful sense, i.e. independence from corporate control, with a DIY attitude to playing, recording, releasing records and making videos.

The video was made by Amelia and Rob, using the 7” single sleeve art by Welsh artist Catrin Saran James.  Swansea Sound started during lockdown, so the band are used to sending each other bits of music, ideas for songs and video footage.  It will be a strange and disconcerting moment when they are finally able to meet.

Indies of the World is the first release on new UK label Skep Wax, but it’s also coming out on sister labels Formosa Punk in Japan, HHBTM in the USA and Lavender Sweep in Wales.  It’s available digitally on Bandcamp, but isn’t on Spotify or Apple or any the other corporate streamers because they aren’t sisters, they are ogres.

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MF Tomlinson - Them Apples.

MF Tomlinson, the project of London-based Australian singer-songwriter Michael Tomlinson, today releases new single "Them Apples" – the second track to be heard from Tomlinson's upcoming debut album Strange Time, out April 9th.

Quickly following his debut EP 'Last Days of Rome', Strange Time was written slap-bang in the middle of 2020; Tomlinson, confined to his home, created a stripped-back home studio set up and the songs immediately began to flow.

Central to the album is new single "Them Apples" – a psychedelic seven-minute treatise on modern paranoia and social media addiction, taking in elements of acid-folk, chamber-pop and progressive rock along the way.

The song floats on glistening organ and bluesy guitars as Tomlinson contemplates how “even when we’re really here, half of us hangs in the air.” Guest vocalist Connie Chatwin (Sam Smith, dodie) takes up the choric role, playing the voices of morbid-yet-irresistible headlines, singing sweetly to him about SOS notes found in cheap clothes from Bangladesh, and the Venetians losing their city to rising tides, dragging him deeper into the doomscroll. As the opus descends into a beautiful clutter of flute, sax and noodling guitar that mirror his overwhelmed mind, Chatwin’s mellifluous tones turn into cackles as Tomlinson finds himself powerless to resist the screen, begging “talk to me world, tell me everything.”

At almost 8 minutes long, it's the album's undeniable centrepiece, both stylistically and thematically. Speaking on the themes behind the song, Tomlinson explains: "Originally it was because Viljam (Nybacka, co-writer of the song) asked me, what have you been doing? I said 'I can't remember, I've been so busy'. I thought that was intriguing - the intensity of life rendering each day featureless. Then the pandemic hit and everyday really was the same! I knew then that this was one of those - a song about EVERYTHING all at once, a real rabbit hole."

Adding further context to Connie Chatwin's Greek Chorus-inspired backing vocals, Tomlinson explains: "They are tweets, feeds, stories from phones and various other devices. They are the voices in our heads that only we can hear as we go about our daily lives, inaudible to others outside of our personalised versions of reality on our screens. The meditative chorus lyric is the reason for the season, the compulsion and anxiety to find the answers and validations that we want from the world through the portals that we carry around with us."

The track's video is "a reflection of the hyperreality of 2020" – according to director Tomas Jef. Shot on a digital camera and then processed through analogue video equipment; custom-built video effects machines and redundant BBC Studios-salvaged broadcasting equipment, Jef went on to say: "All this time we spent indoors staring at screens, the whole year was like one blurry memory with a weird sense of time passing slow and fast at the same time. Different scenes in the video suggest the contrasting worlds between imagination and reality."

"Them Apples" also features contributions from guitarist Angus James and clarinet from Joe Connor. Its sound palette is part-inspired by seminal British folk band Trees' second album On The Shore, and Tomlinson's time playing in the On The Shore Band alongside members of Trees, Metronomy and Friendly Fires.

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Eric Bolander - Cold Men.

Eric Bolander has officially released the music video for “Cold Men” -- chronicling the Blackjewel Miners protests in Harlan County, Kentucky in response to owed back pay.

This new single, produced by regular Bolander collaborator Duane Lundy (Sturgill Simpson, Ringo Starr) in Lexington, Kentucky, is a natural transition in Bolander’s catalog as a deeply-emotional protest song in an ever-tumultuous world. While it is based in the realities of a specific event, it serves as a cathartic microcosm of the pain so many have felt in the past year.

Sonically, Bolander’s music gallops through the crossroads of John Moreland and Bruce Springsteen (circa Devils & Dust), from rollicking explorations of struggle and its broken remnants to bitter, cynical prayers.

Bolander’s sensitivity to the human condition stems primarily from humble roots in the small eastern Kentucky town of Garrison, stretching at the edge of the Appalachian foothills and running along the Ohio River Valley. Growing up in a low income household instilled within him a sense of hard work and fighting for what he wanted in life. His mother was a homemaker (whose family had ties to several bluegrass legends) and his father a union carpenter and construction worker, both pivotal forces behind his early development.

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