Little Red Rabbit

Model Village

You Chose These Woes

Little Red Rabbit

Model Village return with their second album ‘You Chose These Woes’, though on a technicality this could really be their debut. 2012’s ‘A Solution To Everything’ was a compilation of early singles, which no less than The Line Of Best Fit described thus: “As deft as The Shins at their finest and completely ace with it”. That’s an accurate comparison because this new album features subtly brilliant indie-pop with nods toward folk and country. Unashamedly grown-up, the songwriting on these songs is mature, confident and, crucially, utterly memorable. It’s a terrible burden, but the band wear it with unpretentious dignity. Featuring no less than three lead singers, the Model Village line-up for ‘You Chose These Woes’ stabilised in their Cambridge hometown during writing and recording after a few months of personnel changes. (Did we mention the band are big Fleetwood Mac fans?) That consistency has reaped rewards in the little details. The easy way Rachel Duncan’s vocal melody shifts up into the chorus of ‘Sunday’, a song seemingly about trying to match up to a previous partner, and again when the ‘Rumours’-esque ‘Stockholm’ switches gears from winsome verse to casually soaring chorus. The steady group dynamic reaches a zenith in album standout ‘Oh My Sister’, a classic slice of folk-rock that encapsulates that hopeful sadness when summer moves imperceptibly into autumn. ‘You Chose These Woes’ is ultimately a superbly realised set of songs in which ordinary people search for connections and meaning through the power of great songs. Beautifully simple....

Model Village

Stockholm

Little Red Rabbit

Fuzzy Lights

Rule Of Twelfths (remixes)

Little Red Rabbit

Fuzzy Lights

Hour

Little Red Rabbit

Fuzzy Lights returned in February with their highly anticipated third album ‘Rule of Twelfths’, their first new material since the Mojo Underground Album of the Month ‘Twin Feathers’ in 2010. Since their near-instrumental debut album of 2008, the band have grown organically into a powerful and confident force weaving together elements of pastoral psych-folk and noise-rock. They now sit poised ready to reach a far wider audience with their most fully- realised and direct set of songs to date, hinting at elements of dream-pop. Their new single ‘The Hour’ encapsulates the positive changes in the music of Fuzzy Lights. Violinist/pianist Rachel Watkins takes lead vocals and she also scored the stunning string arrangement played by the Iskra Quartet, also heard on new albums by The xx and Jóhann Jóhansson. Where before the band were comfortable to stretch out, taking their time, with ‘The Hour’ they come straight to the point with a beautiful song, culminating in a scorching fuzz solo from guitarist Xavier Watkins. The parent album ‘Rule of Twelfths’ is a stunningly well realised work from a very special band who, on their third release, have reached that rare point where all influences are absorbed and what emerges is a coherent, unique statement that reflects only themselves.

Quiet Loner

Captain's Diseased

Little Red Rabbit

With the country deep in recession and austerity cuts hitting the poorest in our society, where are the artistic responses? Where are the protest singers? ‘Greedy Magicians’, singer-songwriter Matt Hill aka Quiet Loner’s third album, is such a response – a collection of contemporary protest songs seething with disgust and shot through with melancholy at the state of our coalition-led nation. It’s an album which reflects on recent events and rewrites them as chapters in a long and historic struggle of the many against the few. ‘The Captain's Diseased’ is the second single to be taken from the album. Picking up on the oftheard mantra that 'we're all in the same boat', this rollicking sea shanty casts David Cameron as a deranged and syphilitic sea captain. The captain decides the sick and frail aren't working hard enough and casts them overboard. The allegory isn't subtle, at a time when the coalition is cutting billions from the benefits of disabled people and carers. Despite the serious subject, it pokes fun in the long tradition of satire, with its boozy accordion and cries of "he's syphilltic and riddled with fleas". Nevertheless it makes a powerful point.

Fuzzy Lights

Rule Of Twelfths

Little Red Rabbit

Fuzzy Lights return with their highly anticipated third album ‘Rule of Twelfths’, their first new material since the Mojo Underground Album of the Month ‘Twin Feathers’ in 2010. Since their near-instrumental debut album of 2008, Fuzzy Lights have grown organically into a powerful and confident band weaving together elements of pastoral psych-folk and noise-rock. They now sit poised ready to reach a far wider audience with their most fully-realised and direct set of songs to date, hinting at elements of dream-pop. ‘Rule of Twelfths’ sees a number of positive changes in the music of Fuzzy Lights. Most noticeable is that violinist/pianist Rachel Watkins takes lead vocals on most songs, including lead- off single ‘Summer’s Tide’. The contrast between her delicate, melodious voice and soaring violin work is a huge strength. The lyrical imagery speaks of distance and closeness, but there are also hints at the intimacy of new life. Images of “skin”, “veins” and “breath” all fall from these songs. Noise and crescendo has been another element of Fuzzy Lights’ sound to change this time around. In contrast to the previous two albums, the emphasis now is on the short, sharp shock – witness the thrilling fuzz-guitar solo that erupts at the end of ‘The Hour’, or the way ‘Restless’ twists around itself with sudden changes in direction. Several songs also feature string arrangements by Watkins, courtesy of the Iskra quartet, also heard on new albums by The xx and Jóhann Jóhansson. They add a layer of bucolic beauty to...

Fuzzy Lights

Summer's Tide

Little Red Rabbit

Quiet Loner

Greedy Magicians

Little Red Rabbit

With the country deep in recession and austerity cuts hitting the poorest in our society, where are the artistic responses? Where are the protest singers? ‘Greedy Magicians’, singer-songwriter Matt Hill aka Quiet Loner’s third album, is such a response – a collection of contemporary protest songs seething with disgust and shot through with melancholy at the state of our coalition-led nation. It’s an album which responds both personally and politically, reflecting on recent events and rewriting them as chapters in a long and historic struggle of the many against the few. Rejecting the securities of a conventional recording studio, Hill instead recorded in an 18th century church in Salford, an area steeped in radicalism. Over a single evening in May 2012, Hill turned the recording process itself into a sixties style ‘happening’. Lit only by candles and fairy lights with around 100 people present to witness it, Hill and his fellow musicians (with members of Samson & Delilah and Last Harbour) recorded the songs totally live in single takes. These are songs of politics and protest. ‘Kneel and Comply’ is a satire on the excessive policing of protest and dissent and ‘The Captain’s Diseased’ a sea-shanty that casts David Cameron as a deranged syphilitic sea captain throwing the sick and disabled overboard. There are personal songs too. ‘The Ghost of Oswald Mosley’ laments the rise of the far right in the former coalfield communities where Hill grew up and ‘Unmarked grave’ is an anti-war song, a soldier’s tale inspired by...

Last Harbour

Your Heart, It Carries The Sound

Little Red Rabbit

Based in Manchester, Last Harbour are an expansive collective playing “swooning dustbowl baroque” (Plan B) that is “rich and foreboding” (Drowned in Sound). From dusty laments to doomfilled rock, from starkly beautiful duets to drifting clouds of looped noise, the only claims they make for their music are that it is honest and heartfelt. ‘Your Heart, It Carries The Sound’ was written in isolation in a small Northumbrian cottage in October 2010 and recorded in April 2011 in St Margaret’s Church, Manchester. The songs are recorded almost entirely live, with producer Sam Lench employing the church as a soundstage. His approach carefully uses the architecture of the building to sculpt and shape the music, creating a sense of the band within the space. This new album sees a different approach from their previous album ‘Volo’ (2010), a dense, textured album co-produced by Richard Formby (best known for his recent work with Wild Beasts). For ‘Your Heart, It Carries The Sound’, the band stripped back the arrangements and placed a mature, more direct concentration at the core of each song. The confident, intimate vocal of K Craig is at the centre, the instrumentation is sparser, and the band’s line-up has changed with piano, tenor guitar, heavily-processed guitar effects and organ to the fore. The addition of vintage analogue synths and waves of natural reverb give 'Your Heart, It Carries The Sound' a timeless, ephemeral aspect. Fans of Angels of Light / Tindersticks / Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds take note...

Samson & Delilah

Silently

Little Red Rabbit

Last Harbour

Lights

Little Red Rabbit

The lead track on the new mini-album 'Lights' is one of the stand-out tracks on last years album release 'Volo'. There's also an alternate, earlier mix of that album's closing song 'If They're Right'. Beyond this are four new songs that throw a different slant on the band. Simpler and sparser, their drama is created through small detail. Where 'Volo' worked on a grand scale, a song like 'Boy In The Photograph' relates hazy, half-remembered childhood experiences, using a gentle build of instrumentation for accent. And there's 'Alone For The Winter', a bittersweet song of change and leaving, with delicate peels of violin and mandolin to thaw the frost. Written at the same time as 'Volo' yet never intended for that album, these undemonstrative new songs work together like Autumn fades into Winter - imperceptibly, quietly and with a little nostalgia. 'Lights', the film The release also includes a film made for the song 'Lights' by acclaimed photographer/film-maker Andrew Brooks. Renowned for his innovative approach to digital photography, Brooks frequently uses thousands of individual images to build up a single piece. A similar approach is used in this film, multiple shots segueing instantaneously into a seamless whole. Find out more about his work (with artists like The Ting-Tings and Magic Arm) and his past exhibitions (URBIS, MOSI) here: www.andrewbrooksphotography.com Sleeve information; 'Lights' comes in a recycled chipboard sleeve, each copy numbered and letterpressed by hand using vegetable-based inks at Hot Bed Press Studios in Salford.

Samson & Delilah

And Straight On Till Morning

Little Red Rabbit

Samson & Delilah's second album 'And Straight On Till Morning' is a beautiful record of psychedelic folk, immaculately recorded in a restored Victorian concert hall. Recorded almost totally live over a single week, the record uses the vast space of the concert hall to full effect, with natural reverb and multiple ambient microphones capturing the dynamics of a band totally at ease with each other and their songs. Often playing together in a circle, their music acts as direct folk songs that communicate truths between performer and listener. Starting with the spooked-out cover of a boy discovering a strange beast, an atmosphere of nocturnal psychedelia seeps through songs where physical and emotional distance intertwine. The title comes from Peter Pan; Lench's songs in particular capture the book's sense of escape and flight, be it literal or in dreams. His singing is rich and warm but with a vulnerability that complements that longing. Zweck's songs by contrast were written while suffering from a serious bout of RSI-related illness. Unable to move her right hand to create melodic elements, her piano-based songs were written around minimal chords, unconsciously referencing her interest in minimal composers like Arvo Part and Tord Gustavsen. When coupled with a full band and in particular Motown-style drums that bleed onto all the microphones, the effect is thrilling. This contrast between sparse, elemental writing and the full band arrangements is one of the features of the record, and one where producer Brendan Williams has played a key role. More...

Samson & Delilah

Black Dog

Little Red Rabbit

Quiet Loner

Spectrology

Little Red Rabbit

Quiet Loner is the pen-name of songwriter Matt Hill. His recording and live work as Quiet Loner has won him many accolades, including Americana UK Album of the Year 2004 for his debut LP 'Secret Ruler of the World', and he has played with kindred spirits like Lambchop, Joe Pernice, Neko Case and Chris Mills. Inspired by the storytelling traditions of American folk and country music, Hill's songs also have a distinctly British lyrical bite. His new album is a stark and honest collection of performances recorded deep in the English countryside during the big freeze of January 2010. Produced by Mat Martin (Kirsty McGee, The Brute Chorus) it contains eleven songs of experience and wisdom, and features contributions from Inge Thomson (Bonnie Prince Billy, Broken Family Band), Roy Dodds (Fairground Attraction, Hank Wangford) and long term collaborator Alan Cook (Jackie Leven). 'Spectrology' is, as the title suggests, an album filled with ghosts, but not the ghosts of childhood nightmares or gothic fantasy. They are simply the ghosts of the people (living and dead) and the experiences (joyous and scarring) that shape our lives. As the opening song 'As Precious As Life Gets' alludes, the album reflects on decay and death, ultimately shunning them in favour of hope. 'Spectrology' celebrates the cycle of life where renewal, and even redemption are found in the small simple intimacies of life - a morning lie-in, an evening stroll or a slow dance with a lover. Whilst some of the songs hint at darker...

Fuzzy Lights

Twin Feathers

Little Red Rabbit

Fuzzy Lights was born in 2004 and has since grown from a two-piece violin and electric guitar duo to a five-piece band. This gradual change in line-up has allowed them to build on their sound by weaving together elements of psych-folk, Americana and noise-rock. With their new album 'Twin Feathers' Fuzzy Lights have brought about a natural development of their sound. Vocals feature more prominently amongst the eerie melodies and meticulous arrangements, acting as strands threaded through the music. Never explicit or declamatory they paint subtle pictures, hinting at the quiet moments and open spaces that define the band's immediate environment at the edge of England's Fens. The opening instrumental 'Obscura' is like a half-remembered soundtrack to Eastern European cinema, caught accidentally late night on TV when you should be sleeping. The bewitching violin and bleakly melodic guitar dance around a deceptive arrangement that subtly bridges ‘Twin Feathers’ and the debut ‘A Distant Voice’. By contrast, 'Fallen Trees', which follows with its seasick guitar and otherworldly vocals, stands at the crossroads of 1960's British folk and haunted noise-rock. It is this unlikely intertwining which truly defines Fuzzy Lights' sound. Elsewhere, a subdued violence that is kept in check for much of the record makes its presence felt. In 'Shipwrecks’, a minimal droning opening develops into a pastoral hymn before giving way to a blast of overdriven slide guitar, thunderous drums and a violin on edge. Something in that tension describes 'Twin Feathers' as a whole: the record's delicate surface slowly...

Fuzzy Lights

Helm

Little Red Rabbit

Fuzzy Lights are a five piece band based in Cambridge led by husband and wife Xavier and Rachel Watkins. Combining both folk purity and psychedelic guitar noise, their reverb-soaked music found a dedicated following with the late-2008 release of debut album 'A Distant Voice'. After touring in the first half of 2009 and playing shows with the likes of Evangelista, Vetiver, Willard Grant Conspiracy and James Blackshaw, the band took the rest of the year out to work on new material. This new EP 'Helm' is the first fruit of those sessions and precedes their eagerly anticipated second album 'Twin Feathers', due in late summer. However, 'Helm' is something of an oddity, a companion piece to the new album created impulsively and frozen in time. Whilst studio work on the new album paused, Xavier and Rachel took off in winter 2009 to a remote converted barn in the Lake District with the aim of writing and recording new songs from scratch. The results, released as 'Helm', take Fuzzy Lights in unexpected directions - from the droning electro and delayed violin of 'Things We Left Behind' to 'Black Diamond's deft fingerpicking and echoed harmonies via the spooked-out vocal piece 'Burn With Light', Xavier and Rachel have found a new and somewhat bleaker place, but one that retains their trademark beauty.

Last Harbour

Volo

Little Red Rabbit

Based in Manchester, Last Harbour are an expansive collective featuring an array of classical instrumentation as well as guitar, bass and drums. Their new album ‘Volo’ was co-produced by the band and Richard Formby (Wild Beasts, Herman Dune, Spacemen 3, Dakota Suite). From dusty laments to doom-filled rock, from starkly beautiful duets to drifting clouds of looped noise, there’s always an intensity that strikes hard. It's a highly original record featuring the band’s strongest songs and most creative arrangements of their career to date. The band's previous album 'Dead Fires and the Lonely Spark' (2008) was recorded to tape in a week with the band in full control. In deliberate contrast, 'Volo' was recorded piece by piece over a year in various locations and an early decision was taken that Formby alone would mix the results. That freed up the band's songwriting process. Very few of the songs were fully formed before recording began and many took shape and direction through the process of multi-layering instruments, loop creation and shifting arrangements. The album’s title refers to a type of early 20th Century child's toy Ouija board and to the Latin word for 'a desire' or 'a will'. Both are a good fit. By relinquishing control of the record, Last Harbour have created a space for the unseen and unheard to become realised. Singer Kevin Craig may give form to those who populate his lyrics but it's unclear who is guiding the glass towards the letters that spell out the message....

Anna Kashfi

Survival

Little Red Rabbit

"I was born when you kissed me, I died when you left." So begins the new album from Anna Kashfi, the Manchester based band named after Marlon Brando's first wife. She was presumed to be an exotic Indian beauty who was later revealed as the daughter of a Welsh steelworker and the duality and tragedy of the real life Anna Kashfi is a recurring feature of "Survival". The sense of characters being vulnerable to the whims of the world and circumstance, of the thin-line between existing and being wiped out forever. Sian Webley is the voice behind these characters and she gives them life, a sadness and a wit that speaks volumes. Theres also a duet of sorts with Robert Fisher of kindred spirits WIllard Grant Conspiracy, a song relating a story of how the townsfolk of a Tuscan town tricked the Devil into building their bridge for free. Musically "Survival" is Anna Kashfi in widescreen, where their previous album "Procurement" moved in slow motion through late night laments and droning psychedelic folk, on "Survival" you can really feel prodcuer / arranger James Younjohns testing how far he can push Webley's vocals. So, yes, for fans of Alt Country, fans of Willard Grant Conspiracy etc, the Bad Seeds, strong songsmithery, this could almost sound track Steinbeck.

Samson & Delilah

S/t

Little Red Rabbit

Sam Lench and Anna Zweck are partners in life as well as in song and this is their debut album under their creative nom de plume Samson & Delilah. Influenced by stories and traditions new and old, the duo write songs of love and longing, truth and deceit, beauty and decay. The album tells the story not of their relationship per se but rather of where their lives intertwine. Lench has a background in indie-rock whilst Zweck is classically trained and this difference comes together to lend the album a rare breadth of style. From transcendental drone-folk ('Crystallised Sand') and room-silencing a capella ('And When The Rose') to uplifting songs of love across distance ('Angels Said'), 'Samson & Delilah' locates the exact point where Lench and Zweck's unspoken truths find a voice. ‘Samson & Delilah’ is structured as a loose day cycle, reflected in the album’s stunning artwork depicting dawn and dusk. This concept takes on a greater resonance when you learn that many of the songs were written while Zweck (who is Australian) and Lench (who grew up by a river in rural Somerset) were apart, on opposite sides of the world. “Starlight in your afternoon/Dusk in your dawn”, as Zweck sings on ‘Starlight In Your Afternoon’. Throughout the album, Zweck reveals a turn of phrase at once beautiful and curious - “Take to the moon/On a kerosene broom” from ‘Crystallised Sand’ takes Vashti Bunyan’s wideeyed wonder and adds a poetic longing for escape. Lench, for his part, provides...

Kalbakken

Then I Saw Summer & Sun On The Earth

Little Red Rabbit

Formed in 2005 and based in Manchester, Kalbakken are half Norwegian sibling duo Kirsty and David Nyhuus Birchall. They have a background in punk and improv styles but, as Kalbakken, they play their own readings of Scandinavian folk melodies, building new arrangements around old tunes. The group started with one Norwegian song their mother had sung to them as children and spiralled from there, learning melodies passed down through their family and making exhaustive trips to Norwegian libraries to trawl the archives. What emerges on their debut album is a pure, raw distillation of those songs. It's clear this is not part of any polite, nostalgic folk revival. This is the real deal - musicians connecting to the blood and guts, fear and dread of centuries-old storytelling.

Fuzzy Lights

A Distant Voice

Little Red Rabbit

Formed in 2004, Fuzzy Lights create haunted, visceral music that pulls and tugs at its moorings. As well as touring the UK as guests of Young God Record's Mi & L'au, they have shared the stage with Jack Rose, Vetiver and MV&EE amongst others. Hard to pigeonhole as they combine both folk purity and psychedelic noise with echoes of more traditional blues/ Americana, their reverb-soaked, semiimprovised music is now collected on their debut album 'A Distant Voice'. Fans of Dirty Three, Grails, Neil Young and Molasses will find much to love here. Perfectly recorded direct to tape in the Fuzzy house, 'A Distant Voice' is a slowly surging storm of a record. Mournful, pure violin lines and intertwining golden guitars phase into clamour and discord, blissful drones torn apart by screes of guitar violence and thundering percussion. Vocals appear through the haze only occasionally but when they do they serve to heighten the tension and not to provide a simple narrative. 'Colour Of The Sun' (track 5) is typical of this reverse technique - a slow western ballad featuring raw, dusty guitars evocative of Neil Young's electrified 'Weld' album. With 'A Distant Voice', Fuzzy Lights have created a beautiful yet crooked canvas. They won't be rushed and won't take the easy route, but will gradually get inside your heart and memory, taking up residence until you wonder how you ever lived without them.

Anna Kashfi

Procurement

Little Red Rabbit

Anna Kashfi take their name from Marlon Brando's tragic wife from 1957, they also play dreamy, melancholic music that crackles with memomries of past mistakes, missed oppurtunities and the emotional games played by lovers in battle. "Procurement" is a stunning album that moves from stately ballads through late-night laments to droning psychedelic folk is eerie and gentle in equal measure: This is the point at which English folk, modern Americana, and Klezmer traditions come together to create a sound that is familiar and comforting yet opaque and elusive. Contains a simply killer version of the Bad Seeds' "The Mercy Seat". For fans of Sparklehorse, Mazzy Star, Giant Sand, Tarnation etc... Central to the bands sound are the vocals of Sian Webley which capture the fragility and poise of a modern day Beth Gibbons and Hope Sandoval. The songs are underpinned by elegant and textural arrangements by co-writer James Younjohns, shunning modern isntrumentation in favour of an array of the antique, unusual and just plain bizarre. Violins rest against washes of feedback, peda lsteel wraps itself around mellotron tape loops, a baroque viola d'amore floats alongside sampled electric guitar sounds.

Last Harbour

Dead Fires & The Lonely Spark

Little Red Rabbit

‘Dead Fires & the Lonely Spark’ is the third album from Manchester-based collective Last Harbour, following previous highly-acclaimed releases and recent tours with Willard Grant Conspiracy and Mark Mulcahy. The seven-piece have returned with their most ambitious record yet, which veers from elegantly orchestrated soundscapes to full-blown electric dramas, encompassing birth, marriage and death along the way. Working with producer Richard Formby (Spacemen 3, Herman Dune, Dakota Suite), Last Harbour have turned their backs on the digital revolution, instead using antique equipment to record in glorious analogue onto 2” tape, creating a warm and atmospheric record.  At first, ‘Dead Fires & the Lonely Spark’ might appear to be concerned primarily with the quiet disintegration of relationships, and it certainly focuses on the violence and tenderness of simple human fallibility. There are riotous and drunken weddings (‘Saint Luminous Bride’, ‘No-one Ever Said’) and lives torn apart by things done and those unsaid (‘The Further Field’). And, whilst there is no central narrative or character and each song inhabits its own environment, this collection of songs could thematically be considered a modern ‘play for today’, concerned as it is with social and moral conscience. But, it is also about how people are dwarfed by things beyond their control, and how they can be held prisoner or set free by circumstance. Primarily using instrumentation that might traditionally be associated with folk music, Last Harbour hammer and sculpt their sound into unusual and beguiling forms. Understated string arrangements (‘Broken Nail’) and wheeling pedal...