Pulse: New Music You Need #2

I told you I’d be back, but you didn’t believe me did you? Well, here I am, and here I’ll be again. For those of you who have no idea what I’m on about. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!? I’m sorry, I’m just very passionate about these things – these things being gifts of music to you, from me.

Last week, Cultured Vultures kick-started Pulse, our newest new music feature. If you did miss it, have a look HERE and then go listen. You have my personal guarantee on the quality of the included, the same guarantee I swear by for this second volume of Pulse. So, dive on in, and hasta la vista, baby. I’ll be back.

 

Ume

Prunus mume, an East Asian deciduous tree that usually flowers around mid-winter. The petals themselves are in various shades of white, pink, and red. The prunus mume is known by a wide range of names in a number of languages, though it is often called ume – derived from the Japanese ‘mume’ of its scientific name. Whilst the ume produces fruit in the summer months, it is the mid-winter flowering that Austin, Texas trio Ume have most in common with.

What is winter but a sparse yet idyllic ice-land, or the raging of the weather’s winds and rains? Picture that, then picture those white, pink, and red petals just visible through all the chaos or the emptiness. That picture is how Ume sound. The weather represented by the heavy grooves, the fuzzy riffs, the dreamlike shoegaze, and the punk thrashing. The flowering prunus mume represented by Lauren Larson vocals.

How can I make this a more pretentious description? I know! The palette used to paint this painting? Why, it’s the colours of Blood Red Shoes, Jucifer, Boris, PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, Warpaint, and Queens of the Stone Age.

 

Flyying Colours

Shoegaze, so named on account of its most predominant figures’ tendency to, well, shoegaze during live performances. Mostly it was more a pedalgaze than anything, all those pedals, making all that noise – you’ve just gotta keep an eye on it from time to time. However, whilst that is the basis for the genre’s name, the genre’s listeners have a far more sky-based line of sight, thanks to a lot of drugs.

Though, I mean you don’t have to be on drugs to be drawn skywards with shoegaze; the waves of distortion, the ethereal vocals, the implied colours of the many hazy layers making their magic meet your ears – it’s lie back and stare to the heavens music, even if there’s a ceiling in the way. That’s why, extra ‘y’ aside, Flyying Colours are so appropriately named. This band’s brand of shoegaze and psychedelia is particularly colourful, riddled with more of an uplifting push than anything with a downward momentum. Think My Bloody Valentine by way of Ride and a touch of The Horrors.

 

The Black Angels

When I was a wee nip of a boy, frequenting the Iron Maiden bulletin board, writing gothic, gory, angsty, and pubescent poetry in its Creation Corner, I used to go by ‘The Black Angel’. Well, actually, Black Angel M – I think it had already been taken by an inactive member – which got shortened to BAM by my poetic fellows. Still, black angels were a predominant feature, and then here we are, years down the line with my musical horizons broadened (my poetry a whole load better one would hope) and black angels are in my life again.

Specifically The Black Angels, a four piece who have us back in Austin, Texas for some ‘Bad Vibrations’. Dark, fuzzy, psychedelic, groovy, yes, but a whole different kettle of those fishes than Ume. What we’ve got here is a bad, yet hypnotic, trip that stems right back to your Jefferson Airplanes, Syd Barrett’s, and The Doors. This is no retro affair, as there’s been a long line of psychedelia and garage since then with their fair shares of darkness; The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Spacemen 3, and The Jesus & Mary Chain.

There’s a little bit of everything scattered about this kaleidoscope.

 

Flamingods

I think the band describe their music best;

‘We like to make noise with instruments collected from around the world.’

You can’t fairer than that, really. Though, I should probably embellish a little bit more, or else I wouldn’t really be doing my job properly. So, without further ado, here I go. The Mount Olympus, so to speak, for these Flamingods is South East London, though their sound –as their mission statement dictates – could pretty call the world its home, if not its playground/jam-room. When listening to Flamingods, it really is an everything and the kitchen sink of global instrument and musical influences.

It’s a truly internationally psychedelic experience; tribal rhythms, religious drones, eastern melodies, Latin grooves, and plenty more to create layers of sound as dense as the rainforest.