Zeel & Dr. Johnstone
The mighty pen of Zeel introducing the good Dr. Johnstone.
Bears From Labrador: El Cantar De Mio Cid EP
What the press said…….read full reviews here.
Bearded Magazine
“A riotous blast of gloriously taut blues aceness.”
Fairhearing
“If you dig Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Mr Soul’, have a listen to this.”
Clickmusic 4/5
“Armfuls of snake-hipped rhythm that shamelessly nip at your undercarriage like a flustered terrier.”
Record Box 4/5
“I’m not sitting on the fence anymore, I like this group and El Cantar De Mio Cid is the turning point in this.”
Call Upon The Author
“Finding the perfect matching points for elements of blues, country and folk, they craft songs of exquisite beauty.”
Allgigs
“A great EP from start to finish.”
IndieLondon 4/5
“Bears From Labrador are very definitely worth seeking out and shouting about.”
Sounds XP
“The sort of punchy swagger that Nick Cave might have if he were a New rather than Old Testament kinda guy, on the side of the angels rather than battling his demons.”
The Music Fix
“Chop It Down could be easily mistaken for Queens of the Stone Age (no bad thing, obviously).”
Cheap Hotel – New York
Bears From Labrador: Wilderness
Sounds like 1970’s Beatles may have done had they discovered Mexico instead of India. Read the original press release by Kelvin Goodson 2008.
What the press had to say…read full reviews here.
The Mag
“Every so often that sacred padded envelope, sent from The Mag and stuffed full of CDs, is kind enough to bestow upon me a band with real talent.The whole of Wilderness has been structured perfectly 9/10”
Clickmusic
“Bears From Labrador have produced a beautiful classic rock EP designed to endure the test of time.”
Sonic Dice
“The pace picks up with the star-turn, ‘Trees’, as a vibrating latin trumpet hails its arrival. The warping guitar riff and papery vocal hark back to the “summer of love“; think Kings Of Leon covering The Beatles. 5/6”
The Music Magazine
“A full offering could be incredibly exciting but right now I’m too busy to contemplate this. A lazy Sunday afternoon drifting off to Wilderness EP is certainly the way forward. 8/10”
Allgigs
“Trees is simply a tremendous tune! Give this EP the time that it deserves and you’ll be loving those Bears.”
Q – “Rearview” Track Of The Day and review
“Delightful changes of pace and touches of Midlake and early 70’s Neil Young….”
The Times – “God” Track Of The Day and review
“God’s delicate intro lures you in then leads into a thumping, stoner rock-style verse that’s hard to resist.”
Altsounds
“God…it’s Crazy Horse-era Neil Young meets The Rolling Stones, yet sounding even more like Raconteurs meets Ambulance Ltd……..fizzing rather than fizzling with crackling distorted feedback. Trees sounds like 1970’s Beatles may have done had they discovered Mexico instead of India.”
Cheap Hotel – NEW YORK Vinyl 7″ Limited Edition
This limited edition 7″ single was Hero Rhymes With Zero’s first release (earlier recordings came to us via Diablo Fuel). We are extremely proud of it. Richard Brown writing for Culture Deluxe praised the single as “without doubt the dirtiest, filthiest garage rock you’ll hear this week”. ‘New York’ and the flip-side ‘High’ were produced by Pritpal Soor who went on to co-write much of Anna Calvi’s brilliant debut for Domino Records. Kelvin Goodson wrote the original press release……
“New York, New York, she’s in New York”. And so are we as Cheap Hotel’s debut single achieves what so many have failed to do in capturing the brutality and all-embracing clamour of the city that never sleeps. A fleeting, yet beguiling, encounter on the East River, amidst the never- ceasing bustle, is introduced with a metal-plated monster of a riff that could cause The Big Apple’s trademark skyscrapers to quiver to their foundations. In a climate where women in bands are more about the duds than the depth, Anna Calvi’s voice is at once delicately detached yet aggressively passionate. Intense insistence gives way to a seductive sirens call as she sighs “We met in Brooklyn, we met on Brooklyn Bridge”. It is this encapsulation of the sleazy and the sophisticated, the furious and the fragile which has seen word of the London trio spread far and wide, with their elegant yet electrifying live performances captivating all who witness them. This energy and attitude has found its way into ‘New York’, through the unvarnished hostility of Gregg Braden’s drumming and the swaggering belligerence of Ulli Mattsson’s bass that could total “the steel constructions above the street lights”. Breaking down into a hypnotic haze that reflects the neon glare of the big city in the dead of night, Cheap Hotel reveal an imagination and inspiration almost devoid from music in 2008, as they build to a haunting, howling finale that is part tribal chant, part sonic assault and part bloody-minded banshee wail that will leave ‘New York’ seared into your synapses.
All 500 copies of the 7″ vinyl are sold out – the single has now been deleted.
WA Wa Punx: Football Chevrolet Colt 45
Dylan Rippon: Rocks And Sands
In early 2003 Northern Sky Records released ‘Rocks And Sands’ as a limited edition 7″. There was an exclusive gig at the launch of the Carbon Music store in Soho with DJ sets from Sasha and Simian. The song was described as being “like the Beta Band at their best, but with an added intensity and classic rock foundations” (Indielondon). It entered Rough Trade’s list of “the top ten platters that matter” finally reaching no. 7 in the store’s single’s chart. The BBC went on to comment that the song was ‘upbeat and catchy in the Ed Harcourt frame of mind”, while The Guardian stated that Rippon is “a songwriter who is advertising nothing more than his own enthusiasm for peace in a world which appears to have gone entirely insane”. Some were quick to view the song as a knee-jerk protest against the Iraq invasion. There was a desire to define the song as ‘political’ with Rippon responding, ‘like most young people, I don’t care about politics – Rocks And Sands is anti-politics”. It was difficult explaining that the song had been written before the events of 9/11, inspired by a ‘smaller’ atrocity and that Rippon’s previous band Grand Union had already recorded the song in 2001 only to have the Twin Towers make its release impossible. We regard ‘Rocks And Sands’ with its unflinching gaze, visceral reality and visions of Baudrillard and McLuhan to be a very fine piece of pop music indeed. And it rocks! Suicide bombers, occupations, voyeurism, tourism, the medium is the message and withering criticism of the mainstream media (“and you’re just checking out the scenery”) was always going to be a tough sell to the mainstream media. As the Guardian signed off in its review the release of the single at the moment the Allied forces invaded Iraq was “like trying to flog scuba equipment in Chad, but it would be churlish not to wish him well”. Ten years after the initial release the sense that ‘Rocks And Sands’ captures the hypocrisy and distractions of our times has increased. The song’s relevance and stature continues to grow in a world of drones, censorship and mass surveillance, where the ‘War on Terror’ has achieved totality, we sit at home watching it all on ‘The News’, “and the jeeps roll on and on and on”.
Bears From Labrador: Paradise Lost
Dylan Rippon: Jack Morrow Hills
Dylan Rippon: Tigershark
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