We Aeronauts Take Flight

"Larger than life orchestral, hymnal masterpieces." - The Fly
"Dazzling" - Clickmusic
"Joyful" - Drowned In Sound
"A genuinely exciting find" - CMU Music Daily
"Fun, positive, uplifting... they leave the audience with smiles outside and inside." - Simon Raymonde, Bella Union

Oxford 8-piece folk arkestra We Aeronauts are pleased to announce their debut release on Brainlove, "The Chalon Valley EP", to come out on a beautifully artworked ltd. edition gatefold CD this April 4th.

The story of this EP began when the eight old friends piled all their instruments into a car and took off into the French countryside for a holiday together. Inspired by their blissful surroundings and the once-in-a-lifetime moment they found themselves in, they started writing songs about the area - from the endless bike-rides they took around the Chalon Valley, to the days spent in the sun down at the nearby lake, to the foothills of the Alps on the horizon.

The EP came together slowly over the two years since then, as the band's endlessly itchy feet dispersed them as far afield as Serbia, Spain, India, Mongolia and Canada; but recording sessions and rehearsals happened when the Aeronauts landed in the same place. The final piece of the puzzle was the addition of a choir to "Alpe d'Huez", recorded in Oxford's spectacular Christchurch Cathedral.

There have been other victories along the way: the band won the Green Man Poll in 2009 with over 90,000 votes cast, and a panel stage judged by industry luminaries including Simon Raymonde of Bella Union. As their prize, the band opened the festival's main stage, introduced by Huw Stephens of BBC Radio 1. The band played three times at the Iceland Airwaves festival in 2010, and brought down the roof with a headline performance at London's legendary Shunt Vaults. We Aeronauts are also the first band ever to be asked back to Oxford's BBC Introducing for a second live session after winning the "Best Track of the Year by a Local Artist" award.

This EP is where the story is up to just now: but as everyone who's engaged with this most special of bands knows, the past is prologue, and their story is just beginning.

Feb
15 The Social, London, Huw Stephens Introducing w/ Young Buffalo
24 Cellar, Oxford w/ Cat Matador

March
01 Purple Turtle, Reading w/ Cat Matador
04 Labour Club, Northampton w/ Cat Matador
19 Mr Wolf's, Bristol w/ Cat Matador
22 Dublin Castle, London w/ Cat Matador
25 Cellar, Oxford *EP Release Party*
26 Central, Nottingham w/ Cat Matador

April
22 Bullingdon Arms, Oxford w/ A Hawk and a Hacksaw

http://www.myspace.com/weaeronauts
http://www.facebook.com/pages/We-Aeronauts/13443086965
http://twitter.com/weaeronauts

Bastardgeist - Cabbageheads

Iceland Airwaves Festival, October 2010. We set out towards the lava plains from central Reykjavik to film a session, in the soaking rain. A friend had emailed us the bus route to take. There was an old American couple at the bus stop, going the other way. They seemed so relaxed and happy, absorbing everything around them - that unique, inexplicable feeling of peace that falls over you in Iceland. We were on the bus for an hour, watching the buildings come and go and the landscape distorting through the watery windows. Ours was the final stop, just past a row of low bungalows at a half-finished commercial park, piles of bricks and lean-to sheds sticking out of the mossy black lava. A small child on a bike weaved in and out of the spots of colour - this was his back yard. We walked for a couple of minutes, into the part of the map that is blank, and set up the camera. Joel and Ruth's voices sounded beautiful and vivid, with the rain getting heavier and crackling onto the ground around us. Afterwards, we saw the hourly return bus pull up on the gravel road, and ran towards it, waving wildly, like three soaked mad people running out of the wilderness towards civilisation.

http://www.brainloverecords.com/bastardgeist

Albums Of The Year 2010

2010 seemed to me like a year of cult bands, for me. The marquee releases didn't really shine. The Arcade Fire's third album was flabby and overwrought, underlining again their inability to properly follow up their classic debut. Kanye West? I didn't listen, and can barely bring myself to engage with it despite the critical frothing. But it was easy coming up with a list of twenty brilliant albums, several of which are debuts. Including Brainlove albums is unsporting; so no placing for Mat Riviere's Follow Your Heart, Napoleon IIIrd's Christiania or Pagan Wanderer Lu's European Monsoon, all of which would be in the top ten otherwise, of course.

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10. Darwin Deez
NYC guitar-pop, like a doe-eyed Strokes with a drum machine, a sweet disposition and a sense of fun. Lightweight stuff, but done so perfectly that you can't help but adore it.

9. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
Bradford Cox dips into his songwriting memory box and pulls out a series of songs that read like a muso's tribute to his favourite music of the previous 5 decades. HIs body of work keeps getting better. Bradford Cox is a musical icon developing before our eyes.

8. Caribou - Swim
Caribou went electronic, exploring the ground between the mechanical rhythms of dance music and the organic, shimmery analogue sound of Andorra. Cropped down from hundreds of contenders, each song became an artefact, the set characterised by a scholarly attention to detail.

7. Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me
Following up her iconic album "Ys." was never going to be easy, but Joanna Newsom pulled it off with this sprawling collection of kindly, poetic melodies.

6. Field Music - Measure
A brilliant accomplishment of a record that sounded like a lost AOR classic. Inventive, engaging, sprawling, and practically perfect in every way. So good, I'm freshly surprised on each listen on the sheer musical quality on display.

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5. Trouble Books - Gathered Tones
Radiating sonic warmth and character, Trouble Books' second was another engaging and endlessly likeable series of heartstring-tugging short stories and reassuringly familiar everyday scenes. The polar opposite of punk rock.
Trouble Books - Parking by snipelondon

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4. Meursault - All Creatures Will Make Merry
Lo-fi emotional folk (lolemolk) music with electronic flourishes, autobiographical lyrics and spellbinding vocals.

Meursault - Crank Resolutions by snipelondon

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3. Beach House- Teen Dream
A caring, understated record full of mild poetry and enticing melodies, made great by the seam of human warmth that runs through every song.

Beach House - Norway by sxeseis

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2. Future Islands - In Evening Air
A theatrical, histrionic vocal delivery fronts songs that cover the ground between Joy Division's tense basslines and Xiu Xiu's cracked keyboard sounds. A singularly odd and brilliant band who've pulled off something really special with this album.

Future Islands - Walking Through That Door by snipelondon

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1. Sam Amidon - I See A Sign
American folk songs and murder ballads made humbly brilliant by Amidon's inimitable, reedy, cracked voice. Arrangements and accompaniment by Valgeir Sigurðsson and Nico Muhly certainly don't do any harm, and the curveball R. Kelly cover is a stroke of genius, bringing the past-and-present element into sharp focus. Like Future Islands, Amidon mixes a healthy sense of absurdity with subject matter of gravity, and in doing so manages to bring to bear the perfect everyday heartaches of the great American blues singers.

Daily MPfree: Sam Amidon - How Come That Blood by snipelondon

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Honourable mentions

Yeasayer - Odd Blood
One of the alt-pop records of the year from the contrivedly on-trend NYC quartet.
Ariel Pink - Before Today
More acid-fried retro oddness.
Jonsí - Go
An Inspiring collection from Jonsí, much of which is in Nico Muhly's handwriting.
Everything Everything - Man Alive
Most of the catchiest songs of the year were on this tightly written indie album.
Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
A mature album from a very young band. Great songs in the surf & shoegaze mould.
Zola Jesus - Stridulum II
Alt-pop queen in waiting with a huge voice and an artistic sensibility.
Best Coast - Crazy For You
Loveable, fuzzy, feel-good guitar-pop from Beth Cosentino.
Liars - Sisterworld
Now veterans, Liars latest is a tense, explosive record.
SALEM - King Night
Epic, oppressive, gothic dance music.
Marnie Stern - Marnie Stern
I somehow haven't listened to this yet. I bet it's gonna be awesome though.
Warpaint - The Fool
A grower. Low key, minimal, post-XX tunes.
Perfume Genius - Learning
A beautiful, vulnerable autobiography of a debut record.
Sufjan Stevens
Mind-bending, disorientating brilliance shot through with memorable moments.
The National - High Violet
Sometimes sublime, sometimes drab as hell, the National's high points are worth the perseverance.

Napoleon IIIrd - MTFU / Rough Music Session / Koko Shot

Napoleon IIIrd - MTFU by brainlove

Bastardgeist album Airwaves release on Gogoyoko

Get it exclusively from the Icelandic download site.

BRNLV article in Reykjavik Grapevine

On The Stereo

Written for The Music Magazine



Future Islands
Post-The Wire, Baltimore is probably more famous for heroin and corruption than it's alternative music scene, but Dan Deacon's Wham City Collective (of which Future Islands are a part) are putting the city on the map for other reasons. Their 2010 album 'In Evening Air' is one of the records of the year; broody, simmering art-pop that nods to Joy Division and Xiu Xiu, but with a histrionic vocalist that come across like a desperately heartbroken cabaret singer. Brilliantly strange, and UK-bound this month.

Future Islands - Walking Through That Door by snipelondon

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Sam Amidon
NYC folk singer Sam Amidon released an album of timeworn American folk songs this year named "I See The Sign". Appalachian murder ballads, ruminations on life and death and unusual takes on the love song are all present, and in Amidon's hands seem to take on extra dimensions, partly due to some fantastic production and arrangements by Bedroom Community's Valgeir Sigurðsson and US composer Nico Muhly. But, as always with Amidon, there's a gleam in the eye and a spanner in the works - "Relief" turns out to be an R.Kelly cover, plucked out of context and made just as beautiful as the rest.

Sam Amidon - Saro by snipelondon

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Active Child
One of those acts ubiquitous in the blogosphere but pretty much unknown elsewhere, ex-choirboy Pat Grossi creates a rich mixture of 80s-derived synth-pop with shimmering production and live harp and keyboard. But the main event is his voice - a high falsetto that manages to be both camp and other-worldly. His Curtis Lane EP is doing the rounds now, available on MP3 or as a handsome 10" record.

Active Child - She Was a Vision by snipelondon

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Former Ghosts
An underground supergroup of sorts, Former Ghosts consist of Xiu Xiu frontman Jamie Stewart, Zola Jesus originator Nika Roza and former This Song Is a Mess But So Am I member Freddy Ruppert. You can probably imagine what it sounds like from that: dark, harrowing, minimal electronic backdrops with a lead vocal that borders on hysterical. Brilliant.

Former Ghosts - In Earth's Palm by snipelondon

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Darwin Deez
Darwin Deez are an implausibly fun NYC indie-pop four-piece fronted by one Darwin Smith - a gangly, good-natured party dude with an ear for a catchy melody and a gift for endearing, simply-crafted pop songs. The debut album seems to consist entirely of potential hits - you want to cheer each time another song begins. Live, the band take breaks to have dance battles and carry out routines to disco classics, making each performance half live and half DJ set. Great stuff, and mainstream-bound.

Darwin Deez - Deep Sea Divers by LuckyNumberMusic

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Bastardgeist
I've been glued to the (as yet unreleased) debut album by our newest siging at Brainlove, Chicago-based Bastardgeist. Spooky chimes float around heavy, pulsing bass, with Midden's spectral falsetto in the foreground. Some songs are built around orchestral loops, but layered up and echoing with live accompaniment to magical effect. He's playing at Iceland Airwaves this year, and hopefully we'll have him heading to the UK soon.

Bastardgeist - COPS by brainlove

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Fang Island
Yet another NYC-based band, Fang Island perhaps fill the space left by recently split funcore merchants The Mae Shi, presenting technicolour, anthemic rock-slash-pop fun with electronic squiggles and plenty of breathless shouting and ridiculous harmonized guitar noodling. Euphoric.

Fang Island - Daisy by snipelondon

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Zola Jesus
I wrote about Former Ghosts, but I have to cover Zola Jesus as a solo entity. Mercurial 21-year-old Nika Rosa Danilova sttarted to learn opera singing as a kid, which might go some way to explaining her explosively emotional voice - seeming channeling more than she knows what to do with, Nika paces the stage relentlessly during live performances, barely looking up from beneath her mop of bleach-blonde hair. Her gothy art-pop sounds oddly familiar, like a collection of lost 80s number ones. Entitled Stridulum II, a collection of her newer songs is out now.

Zola Jesus - Night by snipelondon

Introducing: Bastardgeist

INTRODUCING: BASTARDGEIST

New Napoleon IIIrd Album

Hear a snippet from Napoleon IIIrd's new album "Christiania" and sign up to get the opening track for free here.

BRNLV MPfrees!