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Tunng - Stars Like Fleas - Marnie Stern - Cap Pas Cap - Slowblow - Essie Jain - Silvarco - Le Loup - Andrew Broder / Fog - Justin Broadrick / Jesu



Tunng


tung


Hailing from East London, Tunng recently released their third opus 'Good Arrows' to critical acclaim in the UK and Europe and have now found a home in the US with Thrill Jockey. The seeds of the band originate back to 2003 when main songwriters Mike Lindsay and Sam Genders first started collaborating musically. Five years and three full albums down the line Tunng are firmly established artists plying their own unique blend on electronics, folk and pop (no folktronica tag – that never made an ounce of sense to anyone).

In their own edited words Tunng have described themselves with the following words -

‘All this might sound tangled, but it's an important illustration of the world which Tunng inhabit. They are every inch the *collective*, coming out of the fringes of scenes - fringes where people collaborate to survive. It's partly the post-rave soundsystem ethos where everyone contributes according to their skills and wishes. Partly it's the world of underground art music epitomised by SONAR festival where the idea of the band as singer-guitarist-bassist-drummer standing in a row simply seems an obsolete conceit. And partly it's the folk model where people play together as and when they want to and songs are reinterpreted as they want - the model which is currently inspiring such fertile workings as the Fence Collective, the Green Man festival, Homefires and The Earlies. But more than any of that, it's just six people who get on well pooling their collective cultural and personal resources to make pop music the way they always dreamed it could sound.’


Here on the Kissing Kin split they offer up the wondrous 'The Raven Flies' - another slice of fully fledged (if experimentally skewed) pop that marries Beach Boys vocal trickery to their own inimitable style .

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Stars Like Fleas


stars like fleas


What means should we use to describe Brooklyn’s Stars Like Fleas?? Perhaps mavericks or outsider artists of the highest order. They recently released their second opus ‘The Ken Burns Effect’ to critical acclaim (on Hometapes in the US and through Talitres in Europe). A sprawling work of grandeur that challenges the normal margins of music.


If you want to get a feel for how this band are to be reckoned with then here’s what Pitchfork had to say about their album, ‘one of the year's most ambitious and daring records…Sometimes, I think The Ken Burns Effect deserves a 10.0. Sometimes, it feels like a 2.0. You might hate it. You might love it. But you need to hear it’.


Elsewhere the following comments were posted, ‘Stars Like Fleas is the best band in New York…one of those rarest of albums that completely defies any comparison... They take more risks than is probably advisable, and sometimes their shows flirt with disaster, but more often than not they create something utterly captivating and closer to a religious experience than I'm even comfortable with’.


A band that can (as was once said) transform a dingy room into something as gorgeous and sweeping as the Great Plains, here they deliver the mini epic 'End Times (for Elis Regina).

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Marnie Stern


tung


Marnie Stern had to be the single most original artist to arrive in 2007. Signed to the definitive Kill Rock Stars label and recently described as 'the world's first female axe hero', Ms Stern brought us the huge genre defying slice of rock and pop that is 'In Advance of the Broken Arm'. It’s had been a while since writers gladly used the term shredding so liberally in reviews – but in the circumstances it was both irresistible and unavoidable.


Astonished!! It blew away allcomers before it – and was closely followed by live shows here in Europe that only added to the myth that she has become and further forged her collaboration with Zach Hill from Hella.


Her second full length, ‘this is it and I am it and you are it and so is that and he is it and she is it and it is it and that is that’ is due out as we speak.


Here we bring you the exclusive (as in unavailable anywhere else), 'The Alchemist', a raw gem that splices Marnie's unique style with bubblegum pop to irresistible effect.

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Cap Pas Cap


tung


Straight from Dublin come the perfect twin for Ms Stern - the very fine Cap Pas Cap. They released their debut EP on Skinny Wolves in 2007 and were described in the following glowing tones: 'This is not the raw sound of punk, it's more dispassionate, the spark of something more literate and experimental.' 


To give you a clue about where their musical heart might lie one reviewer claimed that they occupied the ‘awkward no-man's-land where Sonic Youth, Talking Heads and !!! might get it on at Frank Zappa's slumber party’.


To our ears they carry with them an air of krautrock and give a nod to the clean lines of new wave and bring it all together in their own inimitable style.


On this split they offer 'Not Not Got Made' a radical retelling of 'Not Not' that featured on the EP.

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Slowblow


tung


Slowblow hail from Reykjavik, Iceland. Built around the duo of Orri Jónsson Dagur Kari their self-titled debut was a work of staggering beauty. Their music was once aptly described as 'a sepia toned lullaby crackling from a vintage radio.' It’s a fitting description for music of such warmth; violins, harmonium, drum machines, whistles, cracking voices and harmony with all the static and hum left intact to capture every sound.


Dagur is also the acclaimed director behind the arthouse films ‘Noi Albinoi’ and ‘Dark Horse’. Slowblow provided the soundtrack for ‘Noi Albinoi’, music that perfectly fitted the feel and frame of this outsider world.


Currently working on their follow up album here they offer up ‘Brothers in Arms’, the first cover to appear in the Kissing Kin series, an unlikely meeting between themselves and this Dire Straits song. 

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Essie Jain


tung


In 2007 Essie Jain, an English exile now based in New York, offered up the astonishing  'We Made This Ourselves' on Ba da Bing, an album which has subsequently been picked up by Leaf Records.  Showcasing her magnificent voice amidst stripped and stark folk songs she produced a record that was suffused with stately, delicate somber understatement


One reviewer wrote that ‘she builds stark miniatures out of a few light strums of guitar and her haunting alto’, whilst elsewhere her music was described as a sophisticated blend of the timeless and the contemporary.


Leaf are shortly due to release her second album ‘The Inbetween’.


On this split we feature the song ‘Stop’ – a stripped version of the track from taken from the new record, and a version that (in our opinion) far surpasses the album version.

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Silvarco


tung


Sometime back in 2007 we heard rumours of a strange kind of music being crafted by a maverick genius in the welsh hills. When we finally got to hear the first half remembered thoughts we were totally blown away by music that was crammed full of ideas and impossible to pin down to any one reference point. Densely laden song cycles that ignore all the common boundaries of structure.


We still don’t know if this is the work of one or many men – what we do know is that when the debut record ‘Waxing Gibbous’ eventually sees the light of day it’s gonna steal your ears away to a different place.


Crossing dark folk sounds with beautiful layered harmonies, creaking banjos and inspired banks of guitars here we present  'Lack of Moral Fibre' - the first gentle salvo from this incredible band.

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Le Loup


tung


Between the July of 2006 and the January of 2007, Sam Simkoff spent countless hours holed up in whatever house or apartment he was living in at the time, recording songs and sounds into his laptop computer. He didn't have the money for studio time, or many instruments other than a smattering of toy glockenspiels and an old banjo, or even a better microphone or recording software than that which was already in the computer. Once a band was convened around Sam’s initial song ideas the road was set towards the production of their fantastic debut ‘The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly’.

Signing to Sub Pop’s new spin off label Hardly Art, the album was later released here on Memphis Industries and in Europe on Talitres.

Le Loup say of themselves ‘Le Loup creates music heavily laden with intricate patterns and swells, edging towards dramatic, sweeping movements. Everybody in the live band sings, and all instruments work together to weave an overall sonic tapestry; some voices surface and shine occasionally and briefly, but ultimately sink back into the larger schemes of the songs; thus, each voice supports the other, and each player is vital.’

Other people stated ‘Free of the rehashing and genre splicing that draws so much of our attention these days, The Throne… is a record quietly aiming for heights far above anything dared by the majority of young musicians currently making the rounds. It’s the sound of a singular vision coming into focus, taking bits of the everyday and creating something all together familiar yet eerily alien in the manner with which it looks towards the future’.

Featured here is 'To The Stars! To The Night', a lilting and harmonious refrain for banjo and vocals.

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Andrew Broder / Fog


tung


Fog are currently on hiatus but to give you a little picture of where Andrew’s musical history lies.


Fog is a band from Minneapolis USA that plays experimental rock and roll music. It was started by Andrew Broder in 1999, and has undergone many changes. After the release of their debut self titled album they gave us ‘Ether Teeth’ and ‘10th Avenue Freakout’ and then with the current line-up of Broder, Tim Glenn and Mark Erickson established in 2007 they released the marvelous ‘Ditherer’ on Lex Records. The record included contributions from a cast of fine alt music stars including Low, Why?, Phil Elverum, and Andrew Bird.

Here’s a previous take on Andrew’s music, ‘Andrew Broder firmly establishes himself as the head of the “Keep Indie Rock Weird” contingent, and God bless him for it. He's as comfortable building tracks from steady Neutral Milk acoustics (not to mention slide guitar and percussive brass) as he is working with the wild electronics of what sounds like howler monkey robot-sex. A Notwist guest spot and mammoth vacuum-cleaner guitars don't hurt either. Direct, delightful, bizarre and dynamic.’


Who knows what this collaboration will result in, rumours so far are that it may feature a cover of an Idaho track and one complete original. Whatever it brings it will surely be outstanding.

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Justin Broadrick / Jesu


tung


Jesu first appeared in 2004 when they released the Heart Ache Ep and shortly afterwards they found a home on US label Hydrahead who released the debut self titled album. However Justin has been pushing the boundaries of experimental music way back beyond that with stints in the influential Napalm Death and Head of David before forming Godflesh.

Prolific in the extreme Justin has never been a man to limit himself to any one musical project and he currently records and collaborates under many different guises. Justin also runs his own label Avalanche Inc.

Here’s one persons take on the masterstroke Silver Ep - ‘Gleaming brilliantly, the music keeps withdrawing into itself, returning to a dirge-like state: despite its fleeting incandescence, this is grinding and hypnotic… however we choose to define Jesu’s music, I think it’s quite gorgeous and arresting.’

Justin and Andrew first worked together when Justin re-mixed tracks from Fog’s ‘Ditherer’.

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