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snakebite city eleven - release 27 January 2003
Here's a brief look and links to some of the acts who have tracks on Snakebite City Eleven:
For the first time since the 1st vol of Snakebite City, this volume features not one,but two tracks
some bands.
Available from most record shops or www.oxfordmusic.net or www.roughtrade.com or £4.99 to Bluefiremusic,PO Box 16, Aldershot. GU12 5XY inc P&P!
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Independent on Sunday
Live Review of Riviera, Bull and Gate, London
“…Tracks such as "International Lover", "Kiss No.38" ("in the back of a limousine", indeed) and "Now We've Got Europe" display an acute appreciation of continental romance and ageless glamour, and Russian singer Alexa's deader-than-deadpan delivery, unsmiling aloofness and Helsinki-blonde locks are reminiscent of Debbie Harry in the "Atomic" video. The presence of an unmanned drumkit behind them is deliciously ironic. All of Riviera's beats come from a drum machine christened RT-123. "It doesn't sweat," they explain, "and it never takes its shirt off." With the right producer, Riviera could go all the way”.
In fact during Dec 02 the band have recorded some tracks with Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran) producing.
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MEANWHILE BACK IN COMMUNIST RUSSIA
Independent - Old Vic, London
Meanwhile, Back in Communist Russia... provide a taste of their own sordid emotional underworld. This British band's impressive debut album Indian Ink suggests a heavy debt to the seedy sexual monologues of Arab Strap, this time with a girl, Emily Gray, blankly and exhaustively confessing. Her slightly posh voice and cool demeanour recall Black Box Recorder's cut-glass nastiness, too, the voice at its best when it dominates the music's scraped synthetics. When the band's boys self-consciously fall to the floor to smash climactic drill noises, she swings her handbag and leaves. It's too forced, but the talent is clear.
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Although drawing many of their musical influences from classic eighties synthpop sources, the Macondo sound is tailor made for the present. The songs tackle localised angst and suburbia-induced nausea with a begrudging dark humour, often revelling in the Great British tradition of complaining about one's surroundings whilst simultaneously doing nothing to change them.
Asked how the band would describe themselves they reply, "21st Century Reality Pop!"
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no musical reference points to describe this lot, which is a good thing. There’s electronic blurps and bleeps, lovely guitars, one or two bass guitars, keyboards and someone playing a theremin at the back. Add to this a TV screen that changes colour and no singer and there you have it. While the sound at previous gigs has been a bit hit or miss, tonight it’s just the right balance of electronic wizardry and organic noodlings. The tall frontman jerks like a demented spider hunched over his keyboard, and the only break we get is called 'Cow', when the theremin comes into its own, sounding like a distant Yeti screaming. They are powerful, jagged and not easy listening, like having root canal work at the dentist. Music that is truly original is hard to come by these days, but Sunnyvale tread this territory with increasing confidence.
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Ex-Rental are a London pop group.
Currently, we play four kinds of music:
1. pop music
2. disco music
3. loud music
4. stupid music
Some of our songs are all of these things.
Leave now if your head hurts and you need the one-dimensional solace of Coldplay.
If there's anything that defines Ex-Rental, it's our refusal to play safe; we embrace all forms of pop - disco, new wave, electronica, R&B, glam, Motown.... even the avant-garde. You'll find all this and more in our record collections, so why shouldn't we use all of those sounds?
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CARMEL MORRIS
The track on SC11 is from Carmel's album "Another Number" of all new music inspired by The Prisoner, with special guest voice of David Nettheim, who appeared in the episode, The Schizoid Man.
"Another Number is an entertaining and imaginative musical interpretation of The Prisoner, using modern techniques but forsaking the usual series samples for a more individualistic outlook. It mixes dance instrumentals, thought-provoking vocal performances and incidental music, ensuring that there are plenty of surprises and detail to reward repeated listening."
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Drowned in Sound Review
Named after obsolete hardware, kitted out with miniature synths and matching microphones, they’re cuter than a kitten stalking down the piano and much more harmonious to listen to. One boy, note-perfect, and one girl, earnest grin plastered to her face, who appear to dance in synchrony by pure dancefloor-learned instinct rather than the more self-conscious Riviera’s choreography. Their first number is called “Return to Synthpop”, the last “Eight Bit Hit”... we stray as far as the Nineties for a zeitgeisty song about breaking up by text message (“I’m sorry / I faked it / I’m sorry / I faked it”) but mostly this is brazen nostalgia wrapped up as futurism. And all the better for it, really. The unapologetic manner in which Vic 20 present music and lyrics which stray close to novelty, and their pixellised version of “The Joker” complete with theremin, may not fit the bill of 21st Century Cool... but they do make for half an hour or so of uncensored fun.
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funked out sub bass, electro bleeps and 60s drums, girl group vocals, opera and mondo-exotica. Hip-Hop beats Vs Rhodes .Very fast. Hard House drums and Shangri-Las disco basslines and thrashed out guitars.
Motormark are a Scottish boy-girl duo who play bouncy agit-bubblegum techno-pop. I imagine they're dead sick of being compared to Bis, but the comparison is pretty much justified. Their "Jetset" is a rabble-rousing wonder -- a twiddly, ultra-low-tech Xevious-style keyboard melody up front and bristling beats 'round the back, all structured around a pumping-thumping anthem that'll inspire anyone under forty to demonstrate the sort of profoundly embarrassing caucasian dance moves that involve vigorous jumping in place.
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schmoof
having done the guitar band thing with a bunch of indie kids who never wash,Lloyd decided that he was simply going to have to give in to his pop dream and work with singer Sarah. Today, Sarah & Lloyd write effervescent synth-pop about those things that matter the most - boys,nail varnish & chocolate.
Schmoof attract mush attention at live shows because of their quirky live animations (generated by a zx spectrum for you nerds out there) and their love of all things pink, leather & pvc.
Schmoof are all about having fun and they just want you to join in.....
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ciccone
Think the New York sass of Blondie having a catfight with the Pistols,Rezillos or Buzzcocks with maybe a lo-fi or Elastica slant and you won't go far wrong.
"Punk rock played with synthesizers; a giddy bundle of fun and lots of shouting"
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THEY WERE THE brightest hopes of the late 90's, a truly breathtaking marriage of magic, music hall, and tightly crafted nu-Bowie songs. Hidden behind pseudonyms, interviews that would leave journalists in a state of bewildered euphoria, and the particularly difficult skill of managing to inject humour into pop without being twee and infuriating, they were a badly-kept secret with a swelling, devotional cult following. Their live shows were nothing less than an overwhelmingly multimedia spray of hilarious ideas, their records winked and sparkled and made everyone else look very dull indeed.Unfortunately, major record co. problems contributed to a fairly inactive time for the band. However David Devant & his Spirit Wife are back now and release a new album in early 2003 and are doing a few doing promo gigs
The track on Snakebite City "Oh No" is unreleased
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CARFAX
Following on from David Devant & His Spirit Wife (who HAVE NOT split!) this is Mikey's (The Vessel) other project. The track on SC11"My Fallen Angel" is a totally new track specially recorded for this snakebite album.
Expect a Carfax album later the new year.
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SCARLET SOHO
Plugged into their instruments and trapped in restrictive black suits Scarlet soho are buzzing and bleeping with kinetic energy.
Upfront and downtrodden, frozen images are carved out in the eyes of others through brittle guitars and the sound of some kind of neo-futuristic metropolis.
Deliberate outsiders screaming a detached social commentary - desperate, yet unemotional - pulling you in only so you can collapse again.
Scarlet Soho are a sterile red against the grey backdrop of British suburban monotony: hospital cleanliness with a pulse
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GUSSET
formed in early 2000 when Flavius da Vinci met Vis the Spoon. Vis had spent his entire life bashing out various rockist slants on punk in traditional Bass, Drums, 2 Guitars - type bands, while Flavius had spent 7 years in a drum&bass breakbeat wilderness. Following a 2 year abortive flirtation with making techno in the two-blokes-in-a-bedroom format, Vis was ready to meld the experience of this and his previous love, punk rock. Flavius was bored of the straight ahead moodiness of d&b and was ready to branch out. A project was born. With a deliberate intention to avoid travelling down tried and tested musical roads, GUSSET hopefully take aspects of punk, d&b, techno, funk, pop, baggy and bigbeat and create something individual while also managing to avoid anything as crass as Fusion of any ilk...
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DEADBEAT RADICALS, certainly have their own postmodernist eclectic style. Using drum loops, toy sounding guitars out & out thrashy-ish rock with a mad sprinkle of synths over the top. And it has been said that this young sounding, sub-surf thing has a commercial vibe, but is dark humoured and edgy. Its good time, headbang if you want but, sing to the catchy bits if your pissed music.Party on down, but beware of the lyrics because underneath it all healthy skepticism about the world around us pervades.
The message beneath the gloss is quite simple. Don't be an air headed, couch potato who is aimless, dreamless and screwed up on drugs, accept at the weekend. And enjoy music, love and freedom because thats all there really is.
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