Scenesters, Sneakers, Hipsters, Blogs

(image credit: karina shah)

Blood Red Shoes released their debut album on monday. I'm about ten blog years behind with this, but it's well good. I was reading in the enemy and the reviewer was saying how the guitars were full of 'raw sexual energy' or something - I'm not too sure if the guitars are all that 'sexual', but there's some really good tracks and what I really like about it is the way it's got a whole range of emotions, including all the more negative ones, they are properly shouting and it's got loud aggressive guitars - but it's still about a thousand miles from the border to emo territory. Playing the whole album, some of the songs are a little bit same-y but I think you can forgive that when the songs are as good as they are, and on their own each track can stand up as a decent bit of rock and roll. There aren't any cringingly awful tracks, unlike say 'Good Time' or 'Numbers', on Crystal Castles and These New Puritans' debut albums.



And now onto SebastiAn, king of whoosh noises and glitchy violin masterpieces. Four new tracks have surfaced all at roughly the same time, on the Motor EP are Motor, Momy and Army; all quite nice and relatively standard Ed Banger industro-techno that we've come to expect from SebastiAn. And soon to be released on Ed Banger Records 3 is Dog, the most insane change in direction since Marilyn Manson recorded that folk-pop album in 2004. It's got unintelligible Metallica-style vocals and heavy metal guitars. It probably was put together electronically, and still sort of fits the style of a HGHLY BLGGBL BNGR, but if you close your eyes you can almost see Jimi Hendrix's corpse jamming it out. Judging by the 'minimix medley' put out by Feadz, Ed Rec 3 is gonna be pretty amazing. Some of the stuff on Ed Rec 2 got boring very quickly, such as Limousine by Vicarious Bliss (which, if I ever hear again, will probably lead me to kill someone). And 'Robot Oeuf' by Uffie may be the best thing she has ever done.



Oh and be jealous - look who rolled up to Rough Trade and bought the t-shirt. Oh yes, I did. The fact I am semi-terrified of wearing it out for fear of ruining it I am counting as irrelevant. Seriously though, So-Me is possibly the best graphic artist of the 21st century. I'm not saying he has superhuman photo-realistic drawing skills, and I'm sure most of his work is photo-traced, but he has brilliant taste. And he's better than Kate Moross anyway.



This year's Underage Festival: The line-up is not that impressive if I'm honest. It will still be fun but I'm not buying the souvenir t-shirt this year. zShare time!

Blood Red Shoes - This Is Not For You zShare
SebastiAn - Dog zShare

Blood Red Shoes @ Underage

OK, so the story goes that Ginger Rogers, 30s tap-dance icon, had to re-do a scene so many times that the camera man asked why she'd changed out of her white shoes into some red ones. She hadn't, it turned out she'd danced so hard they were covered in blood.
Ironic, it seems, that during the set of Blood Red Shoes, who got their name from the above anecdote, somebody TROD ON MY TOE and IT REALLY HURT, and then later on i took my shoes off and there was A LITTLE BIT OF BLOOD!

Photo Credit: hoombo choomba

Blood Red Shoes are a two-piece post-punk disco rock band from Brighton. The set-up is unlike anything I've seen before, like a double-backwards White Stripes in reverse. It consists of Laura-Mary Carter on guitar and Steven Ansell on drums, with both contributing to vocals. Their songs combine noisy, aggressive guitar, almost superhuman drumming and subtle, gently layered vocals that still sound good when the crowd are spitting them back.
The best track had to be the finale 'It's Getting Boring By The Sea', which I promise is an absolute killer I defy anyone not to love. The tune is immensely catchy, yet surprisingly tricky to remember; for me this is a song to play again and again.

DOWNLOAD: Blood Red Shoes - It's Getting Boring By The Sea (Via The Blue Walrus)
ALSO: Buy a wicked cool Blood Red Shoes shirt or one their records @ www.bloodredshoes.co.uk/
AND: Download the Blue Walrus Coming Back Mix, it's my official soundtrack to what remains of the summer.