01 Blinded
02 Life In Short
03 Should Have Known
04 Not Telling You
05 Clarity
06 Let me Out
07 Bottle This Love
08 Time To Forget
09 Idols
10 Last Life
11 State Of Mind
12 Puzzle
13 Spiral
14 Alibi
Sons are a post-punk duo made up of Brighton-based brothers Lee and Nick Meldrum. They've been together - musically, at least - for about four years, but have already started to gain a healthy following in and around Sussex. Although there's only two of them, in a similar vein to Royal Blood, their sound is loud and raw, mixing together a ferocious cocktail of punk, grunge and indie rock drenched in venomous energy. They've been posting songs on Soundcloud for four years, although there's been nothing new for more than a year, and so as there is enough music to put together their first album, now is the perfect time to do it.
Red Telephone formed in Cardiff in late 2017, and their chosen style of music is a richly layered dark psych, combining shimmering and angular guitars with an infectious melancholic melodiousness, and all topped by the idiosyncratic vocals of Declan Andrews. I was first alerted to them by the superb 'Victoria Park', and quickly sought out more from the band on Soundcloud, and I also found that they were posting on Bandcamp at the same time. Over the next few years they released seven singles, as well as posting other songs online, and there is now enough material available for a ten-track compilation of all of their music. Drawing on hypnagogic pop and industrial rock influences, the band’s experimental ethos has caught the attention of DJs such as Steve Lamacq and Huw Stephens, and I have to say that they are one of the best modern psychedelic rock bands that I've heard for a while, with an acid-tinged guitar sound that is missing from a lot of current contenders. Red Telephone are actually still going strong, unlike many of the bands in this series, so do support them on Bandcamp.
RedHook hail from Sydney, Australia, and have been around since 2017, consisting of guitarist Craig Wilkinson, bassist Maverick Burnett, drummer Alex Powys and vocalist Emmy Mack. They released their first single 'Minute On Fire' in 2018 to positive reviews across Australia's top national and community radio stations. Their second single 'Turn Up The Stereotype' introduced new drummer Dan McFeeters, and following that single they seemed to shift from one genre of music to the next, going from goth to glam, emo, pop punk to indie among others. Third single 'Paralysed' heralded yet another change in drummer, with Alex Powys joining their ranks, and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 'Guerrilla Radio' by Rage Against The Machine, they covered the song and released a music video for it. In 2019 they released 'Fake' as their latest single, and it was this which alerted me to the band, as it's mix of rap/rock/electro stood out among the generic indie that I was listening to at the time. Two more singles have followed since then, and if we collect them all together we have a perfectly acceptable mini-album which should bring the band to a wider audience while we wait for a proper record from them.
❄