Friday 6 January 2012

Two from Aagoo...


FATHER MURPHY
release new album
‘Anyway Your Children Will Deny It’
- out 5 March 2012 on Aagoo -


“…truly, this Italian bunch inhabit an extravagant and rich musical landscape indeed, their Robert Wyatt keyboards, their Samla Mamas Manna vocals, their This Heat-meets-Canterbury drumming” Julian Cope

After excellent reviews and endless touring all over the world, supporting bands like Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu and Sic Alps, the Italian weirdos Father Murphy are back with a brand new album titled “Anyway Your Children Will Deny It”. It is the latest, boldest installation of an ongoing series of albums investigating the band’s favorite themes: life, death, love, religion and even more death.

For this album, the Italian trio comprised of Reverend Freddie (vocals, guitar), Chiara Lee (vocals, keyboards, percussion) and Vittorio De Marin (vocals, drums, strings), took some time to craft and expand their sonic palette to almost epic proportions, unleashing an LP that is their most personal, sophisticated and—dare I say—accessible work to date.

The opener “How we ended up with feeling of Guilt” sets the tone with a distant rumble of crashing waves, introducing the desolate chanting of Reverend Freddie. Father Murphy’s amalgamation of noise and pop instincts collide with echoes of Henry Cow, Jacula and far-out contemporary classical music. “It is funny, it is restful. Both came quickly” is another sonic surprise. It’s Father Murphy at their most black metal-ish—a fuzzy aural slab reeking of fury and desperation. “In praise of our doubts” continues with big, menacing orchestral stabs and tortured vocals.

But it is not all madness and desolation in Father Murphyland. The last two tracks are the band’s most hopeful moments. “In the flood, with the flood” tackles celestial drones and ecstatic buzz while the closer “Don't let yourself be hurt this time” is a subdued call-to-arms, a hymn to personal responsibility sung and performed with a ‘Young Marble Giants simplicity.’

Recorded by the band and mixed by Greg Saunier of Deerhoof (who added an extra beautifully psychedelic shade to the songs), “Anyway, your children will deny it” is the group’s definitive album: dark, uncompromising, yet still open to the future and its possibilities.

The dead-eyed chants, keyboard drones and bone-dry rhythms of Italian trio Father Murphy's second album conjure up a funereal atmosphere somewhere between homemade Morricone and toytown Goblin… That ol'devil Dario would surely approve.
– Joseph Standard, The Wire

Kelvox1
release debut album
‘Grazed Red’
- out 12 March 2012 on Aagoo -


“Haunted underwater glitchstep from Cambridge. Burial meets David Lynch meets “Let’s Dance” meets Sega Megadrive. Crushing Death and Grief

Kelvox1 are a three-piece group from Cambridge, UK who use synths, sampler, voice, guitar, bass and other useful objects that happen to be at hand. Over the past year and a half they have played with bands including Gary War, Braids and Conquering Animal Sound.

A Kelvox1 recording is as much an exploration or an account of the location it is recorded in as it is a document of a song. The texture of the space is only revealed by the sounds produced in it, which are like matches being lit in a darkened room. In these circumstances, the band relinquish mastery over the sounds they record, they can only use their equipment to harness and perhaps direct the properties of the environment. The lack of complete control is the condition of being in this world; what emerges is an expression of the group's attempt to create something meaningful within it.

In 'Grazed Red' there is also an idea that songs themselves are environments to be inhabited, by both the band and the listener. 'Grazed Red' is Kelvox1's first physical release.

People have said:
“Cambridge seems to be quite the unlikely hive of outsider musical activity right now, what with the hauntological techno of Nochexxx and his gang. Elsewhere on the Cambridge fringe, we have Kelvox1 – absolutely the finest new British post-rock band this here blog has heard in quite a few years.
This sense of organically expanded song-form immediately brings to mind Bark Psychosis’s classic 'Scum' single. Kelvox1 certainly have the slow-burning moodiness to justify that comparison but nothing here is quite as dank and nocturnal as 'Scum'. That is to say, the arrangements are colourful and vivid, in a fashion that recalls the electronically-enhanced-chaos-in-a-jam-room ambiance of Disco Inferno’s DI Go Pop. The sullen vocals certainly add to this.
Obviously, these comparisons put Kelvox1 very much in the UK post-rock continuum. However, where other bands with the same influences (Epic45 and Hood spring to mind) don’t really add much to the mix, Kelvox1 clearly have their own thing going on.” Bubblegum Cage III

"Post-everything, their sound brings to mind instrumental dubstep visionaries Mount Kimbie, as well as the dark, expansive spaces created by the likes of Zola Jesus." We Like Wildlife

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