If what you want is a 21 gunned salute to bands so new they’re pre-new. HUW STEPHEN’S, he with voice of a warming Horlicks & vodka cocktail & pre-new musoic affcianado has put together a compilation of some of his favourite bands of the moment with a lot of the tracks being exclusive to the comp which is out now on Wichita.
Expect to see some of the names probably appearing on a Rough Trade counter culture compilation some time next year or the year after, pretty much all the names being championed by those who know whats good for you & them now and for the foreseeable future, a lot of the bands appearing at HUW STEPHEN’S ‘INTRODUCING’ night @ THE SOCIAL (2nd Tuesday of the month), his festival stages @ SWN, Reading/Leeds, Glastonbury & Lattitude at which the Heavenly Jukebox will Djing in between bands on the Friday. They will all be getting regular spins on Huw’s essential new music show on Radio 1 & they can all appear in your itunes for an entirely reasonable £4.49 – Check what that gets you;
1. Calories – Adventuring
2. Copy Haho – You Are My Coal Mine
3. Wax Fang – World War II (Pt. 2)
4. We Have Band – Oh! (Plugs Remix)
5. Pulled Apart By Horses – The Crapsons
6. Hjaltalin – Suitcase Man
7. Sweet Baboo – Woe Unto Me to Get High
8. Swanton Bombs – Sorrysayer
9. Cyclones – See If I Float
10. Banjo or Freakout – Eighty-Eight
11. Gentle Friendly – Clean Break
12. Young Fathers – Bring It Home
13. Stricken City – Pull The House Down
14. Holy State – Solid State Messiah (vs the Valve Viking)
15. Gallops! – Lasers
16. Tubelord – Somewhere Out There A Dog Is On Fire
17. Dinosaur Pile-up – Opposites Attract
18. Portasound – 4 Minute Warning
19. Colorama – Oyasumi Baby
20. Gold Teeth – Everybody
21. Gold Panda – Like, Totally
To hear all the tracks from the
compilation and see more information about the bands, including a Q
+A with Huw and comments on each track, visit:
www.musicsoundsbetterwithhuw.com
So in honour of Huw & his sonic assemblage we went down to The Social this week for the launch party & caught our first glimpse of the mighty GALLOPS, whose drummer bust up 4 sticks in as many songs & the excellent STICKEN CITY, an in house favourite of ours. Keep your ears & eyes open for ‘Songs about People I Know’ their debut album, it’s ace & especially charming is the track ‘Pull The House Down’ (link below) in which 
Rebekah Raa’s vocal & synth line warbles & accents post art pop at it’s finest. There’s also a link below to the GALLOPS! track LASERS which is on Huw’s compilation, tiz juicy & fuggy, fizzy & thuggy as it interlaces some E-lektonik bounce with some incremental post-rock escalation.
STRICKEN CITY – PULL THE HOUSE DOWN
Check their websites for more details.
www.myspace.com/thegallopsband
LEGEND ALERT/LEGEND ALERT:
While I was there at The Social I was lucky enough to capture on film a rare picture of Tall Paul our soundman actually sitting still manning the desk. If you’ve been down to The Social to see a band anytime in the last 3 years chances are you will have seen Paul bobbing around like a mentalist behind the bands, sometime detracting attention from the act – the guy’s a legend & anyone who’s had him do their sound will I’m sure agree, I think he’s even up there with Rhona, (currently running the desk @ the Fandango nights) who any band worth an indie 7″ will have encountered along they’re path to here, there or right, right, right over where . . .?, she can shoot an ego down in an instant if you want to play at bobby big bollocks knows best about sound, I mean, who needs a cock of all trades bleeting on about their amp when there’s 4 bands to check in an hour. Anyway back to Paul, the reason he was sitting still was he sometimes suffers from chronic back pain due to being slumped all day & night over a desk, being bloody massive tall & spending weekday nights sleeping on the floor of his studio, which is called TREACLE in Old St. Anyway’s wanted to post this pic cause its well good & he looks like a smokin’ head in a studio in the Seventies, which isn’t far from the truth.
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TALL PAUL - Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
HEAVENLY JUKEBOX 