Photo by Alex Vanderkooy
Some bands, even in their most embryonic stages, have a touch of something special about them. Florida trio Young Circles have barely taken their first breath but have already managed to craft a debut EP of such bold confidence that they fall firmly in to that category. Certainly several years of plying their trade in various psychedelic and garage punk bands has helped to strengthen their unit, but it’s a new found stylistic transgression which is now most striking. Across it’s five tracks Bones ebbs and flows seamlessly across sonic palettes, from blistering garage rock to hazy dream-pop, sparse Americana and even peripheral flashes of hauntology or trip-hop. Really, by all accounts, it ought to be a mess but this is one of those arguably too rare instances in which a blatant eclecticism has spurred a band on to create something far greater than the sum of it’s parts, rather than inhibit them. I spoke briefly with drummer Jeff Rose last month (NB: Uhm, this was actually done way back in November so some of the chronology or questions tenses may seem a bit off) about the genesis of the EP amongst all the other usual stuff.
So Young Circles is a fairly new project, how long have you been together under this name for?
Young Circles has only been official for about a month now.
From what I understand you have been in other bands together though (most notably under the names Blond Fuzz & StoneFox), why the fresh start?
We just felt like it was time to move in a more forward-thinking direction, and to challenge ourselves a little more.
Talvihorros is the moniker of Ben Chatwin, a London based composer making predominantly guitar based music which spills over in to various genres. His releases explore the crossover points between ambient, modern classical, drone and folk whilst maintaining a consistently recognisable aesthetic to his work over his relatively short career to date. Originally coming to attention with the release of his debut album Some Ambulance on the now defunct Electronica label Benbecula in 2009, that was a stirring hypnotic collection of tracks which incorporated elements of many of those styles into a quietly ambtious yet intimate record. This was followed up last year with the stunning Music In Four Movements released through Hibernate, an altogether more sombre and overtly epic affair which revels in long dissonant swelling drones entwined with more folk influenced guitar parts to form a fascinating intersection between what would generally be percieved as traditional and digital sounds. With a selection of releases further exploring these ideas scheduled for the upcoming year I took the chance to speak with Ben a little bit about what makes him tick.
When did you first start playing/writing music?
I learnt to play the guitar when I was about 15 or 16 and straight away found it much more enjoyable coming up with my own tunes than playing other peoples music. I played in bands throughout my teenage years where I mostly wrote the music and in my early 20’s started using computers and got interested in electronic equipment and production. It took a few years of recording my own music and learning the technical side of things before I developed my own identity as a composer.
Photo by Heidi Kuisma
For a band with only a couple of limited singles and an online mixtape under their belts Edinburgh duo Conquering Animal Sound are entering 2011 with a fair bit of attention coming their way. Warranted it is too, so with their debut album Kammerspiel due out on February 7th I got both Anneke and James to answer me a few questions about all things Conquering Animal Sound-y.
How did you meet and start writing together?
Anneke: I would like to say that we met as children, in the sandpit, discussing our mutual admiration for Stephan Bodzin but this is not true; we met at university where we both studied ‘popular music’, which is of course different from ‘unpopular music’.
Where did the name Conquering Animal Sound come from?
Anneke: Conquering Lion Sound were a rather unknown dub soundsystem group from the 80s. We once came across a picture of them and were rather enamoured with the various chaps who made up the group, so the name is some sort of homage to them. Still unsure as to whether or not our music does in fact resemble that of conquering animals.
