Freakaholics Anonymous - Fen Invasion

Cambridge duo and former radio show guests Freakaholics Anonymous release their debut album which is as random and kitsch as the Tron inspired artwork. There are tales of love between and eagle and trout, bus driver and passenger and possibly the first disco track on the subject of keeping tropical fish. A lo-fi synth fest with a healthy disrespect for convention.

Have a listen to their Headstand interview here and look out for their freaky multimedia stage show.

Headsound: Korean Drama - Jimmy

 Toronto band Korean Drama deliver a rousing 1 minute punk song full of passion and energy that some how comes from a simple arrangement of drum, guitars and vocals. According to the band: "It imagines a world where Drake takes revenge on a world who won't stop confusing him with his character from Degrassi: The Next Generation." It's a great tune whether you get that reference or not. It has the same vitality as the Girl Band track featured a couple of weeks ago.

The band is led by Justin Kinch with a rotating live line-up and that's about as much as I know. I look forward to hearing more.

Headsound: Girl Band - Lawman

The four lads in Dublin's Girl Band confound expectation with their distortion drenched lo-fi rock. The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Jesus and Mary Chain and many more can be heard on their debut release Lawman. The band can deliver hardcore mayhem as well as a sharp lyric to a steady beat. They never go into overdrive just for the sake of it.
The summer is already looking busy with tour dates and festivals including a gig at The Portland on June 10th.
A limited edition 7" of Lawman has already sold out but the single is available as a free download from Bandcamp. Your new favourite girl band comes with added testosterone.

Headsound: Tom Adams - Migration

Migration is the first track to released from Tom Adams' new EP: In The Constant Noise. Ambient sounds, delicate piano and Tom's tender vocals building to a powerful crescendo create a spectacular cathedral of sound which gently dissolves into a silent void. Impressive results for a late night session with a hand-held recorder.

All the new songs on the EP were recorded this way. Tom explains:

"This brings an intentionally imperfect and intimate feel to each track as every recorded layer features the sounds of birds, wind, rustling leaves and other natural sounds unique to the recording location.
By emphasising and celebrating these imperfections, the EP explores the idea of silence in a world where high levels of background noise are the the norm.
The result is a highly emotional set of new songs that invite you to listen to music and the sounds around you differently. Whilst each new song tells its own story, they are all unified in a melancholic lament for the sounds that have been lost in the constant noise."

3 Short Poetry Films

As a radio show, visual art is rather overlooked on Headstand. In this guest post Cambridge-based film maker Simon Mullen presents three of his short films featuring his poems.

These short films are at the end of two threads. One is an exploration of the highly textured and awesomely imperfect medium of Super 8. The other is an epic quest for audience engagement. The films exist because I love Super 8, and their narration exists because I need the films to engage the audience. If you don't make films to engage an audience, why make them at all. The films originally had no narration, although they did have a sound track. I found that the general reaction to them was flat. When I attached a narration to the films, everything changes, people liked them! I present here three one-minute films I made in just the last few months. There are more to come, check my website for updates.

 The first film is FIRE 150: This film is about an empty house on the Buckden roundabout of the A1. Its a hugely busy roundabout and Ive driven past this boarded up property many times. And from the first moment I saw it, I knew it must be haunted! Because if any house should be haunted, it's this one. The roundabout is a modern crossroad and crossroads are rich in mythological tradition across the world. I found this really nice Radiolab podcast, where the reporter goes looking for the devil at a crossroad as part of an investigation of American blues singer and musician Robert Leroy Johnson. So who knows what the denizens of an empty boarded up house on the crossroad would be like? I know . . .
FIRE 150 from Simon Mullen on Vimeo.

Credits

Film by Simon Mullen Sound Effects: all sound effects hosted by freesound "very noisy traffic heavy", "motorbike around 1", "passing truck 9" by Robinhood76 "ufo pass", "jetbike flypast" by tigersound "swosh" by man "passingcar01", "passingcar02" , "passingcar03" by Pingel "woosh5" by damco "woosh 02" by Glaneur de sons

The second film is WATER: Life is complicated. Sometimes its a battle just to locate your towel!


WATER from Simon Mullen on Vimeo.

Credits

Film by Simon Mullen Camera Operator Lucy Evens Sound Effects Waves at New York Point by Rob House Hosted by The Internet Archive Length: 1:00 Produced: 2012


And the third and final film is My Friends Are Always In The Woods: Everyone has one or two special friends. Unusual people with unusual habits and habitats. But the strange thing with me is, all my friends are that special. And I don't remember when that happened.
My Friends Are Always In The Woods from Simon Mullen on Vimeo.

Credits

Film by Simon Mullen Sound Effects Wind Storm in Los Ranchos by dhattman Hosted by The Internet Archive Length: 1:00 Produced: 2012