Thing of the Day
Hookedblog, Vandalog, Quiet Lights and Dreadnoughts
January 24th 2011
Today we shall mention a couple of rather useful streetart blogs that are always well worth keeping an eye on for our Thing of the Day.
London based HOOKEDBLOG
kicks in with daily news of street art flavoured work, events, news,
sightings and such. Nice little bit on MALARKY, some new foxes and such
painted on Brixton shop shutters. There was some nice coverage of the
SWEET TOOF show a couple of days ago, the Hookedblog street art
coverage is always worth a look…
Meanwhile,
VANDALOG is
another blog that has a habit of dropping interesting street art
related news, imagery and opinion (that we don’t always agree with)
into our mailbox on most days of the week. Nice strong image of a squat
wall in Madrid being pulled down posted on there yesterday, the work of
3TTMAN and
REMED coming down in a rather dramatic way (is that Case pulling it
down?). Worth putting your e.mail address on the mailing lists
of both blogs and seeing what comes into your
inbox..
hookedblog.co.uk/malarky-brixton
www.hookedblog.co.uk
blog.vandalog.com
Meanwhile, a rather gloriously hazy new band, well, new to us over here at Organ ...
QUIET
LIGHTS are from Brooklyn, New York. Their sound is a slow
moving creamy hazy luscious thing, a soothing thing - lush guitars,
seductive vocals, slow moving tidal waves of relaxed drum textures, a
beautifully blended lo-fi shoegazing set of atmospheres. A relaxed easy
effortless Sonic Youth via My Bloody Valentine sound, a fuzzy Cocteau
Twins with that slight edge of Come that’s all taken down and mellowed
out because there’s no need for Quiet Lights to rush anything or get
too loud about things. Quiet Lights is the perfect name, there’s five
of them quietly weaving their musical light, their lens flair and their
early morning sunny haze with their reverb, delay, chorus and vibrato
peddles. Soft voices, soft focus sound and gentle alternative musical
movements, all there weaving with their quiet hazy beauty. There’s a
free download to explore here:
Quiet_Lights/track/No_More_Canyons
There’s a couple more quiet Quiet Light delights to download via the
band’s own website and they have a sky blue vinyl 7” out in the U.S on
February 15th via Eastern Seaboard / Old Flame Records.
http://www.quietlights.com
And finally,
we know the idea of a sometimes West Country cider drinking, sometimes
Eastern European polka gypsy dancing punk rock crew from Vancouver,
Canada sounds ridiculously wrong but, we do kind of like these Dreadnoughts. Punk
rock with a drunken smile..
THE DREADNOUGHTS – Polka’s Not Dead
(Destiny) – What do we have here? - are they pirates or Eastern
European folk gypsies, oh hang on, they’ve switched from the polka
chaos and the French language bits to West Country cider and telling us
to listen to The Wurzels! (no, really, actually the Wurzels - this is
not some kind of post-irony ironic blah statement). And a couple of tracks
ago they were The Pogues - wonder where we’ll be for the next track?
Folk, gypsy dances, polkas, sea shanties and all delivered in a fast
drunkpunk reel of well played chaos…
They’re from Vancouver of course. Now, those bagpipe throwing
kilt wearing Real
Mckenzies being from Vancouver makes perfect sense: half
of Scotland went to either Canada or new Zealand after the Clearances.
These Dreadnoughts, on the other hand make no sense whatsoever. Sound
like a bunch of chancers who’ve worked out they can get paid to go play
loads of mainland European gigs, festivals and such and while they’re
doing it, get to drink gallons of beer every night. Got their punk rock
life sussed, have these Canadian chaps, whoever they may really be: we
don’t believe Squid Vicious is the bass player’s real name, and surely
the drummer's doting parents didn’t really christen him The
Stupid Swedish Bastard? Swedish? Thought you were from
Vancouver?
Whoever The Dread Pirate Druzil (mandolin, tenor banjo, tin
whistle, vocals) and his cutthroat band are... we like them.
Chaotically well played polka pirate streetpunk beer-spilling fun for
them moments when you don’t want to take your musical life too
seriously…
The album is released on January 24th (today, if you’re reading this on
the day this page goes up) there’s UK dates as part of a European tour
coming up in February - – www.thedreadnoughts.com
