#179 – Anchorsong Told Me To

If you’ve visited the site recently you may have heard us – specifically our newest contributor Max – raving about Anchorsong. Max saw Anchorsong supporting Belleruche last month and was blow away. Some people apparently describe the show “like watching a painter drawing on a white canvas”; Max said he’s pretty sure the guy uses some kind of black magic to make his live show work. Whatever it is, you’ve got the chance to see him touring his awesome debut Chapters, starting in London’s Cargo on March 22nd.

In support of this Masaaki (that’s what his mum calls him. Well, she almost certainly doesn’t call him Anchorsong!) was good enough to contribute to this regular feature, picking a few of his favourite songs and explaining why. It’s enlightening and his choices are thoroughly enjoyable (I’m a particular fan of the Pumpkins song he’s chosen). If you want to hear a little more of his music, then read Max’s previous post. And if you want to buy tickets for the 22nd March, then you can get them here. I’ll be there at the front and hopefully some of you will join me. If you’re quick you can get your tickets for a fiver too…

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Fiona Apple – The First Taste [Buy]

#178 – Chromatics Album Maybe Coming Out Sometime Soon. Maybe

Okay, it’s a little more specific than the title suggests, but not by much. Producer/band member Johnny Jewel has done an interview with Self-Titled Magazine, which suggests that we can expect the long, long awaited album at the end of this month. As a teaser, they’ve released their fourth single from the upcoming LP, Kill For Love, called ‘Candy’. That’s the video you can see above.

#177 – Introducing To Play Mr Scruff

It’s pretty back-to-front, playing live an album that was created from samples. But somehow Introducing did it – and they did it well – with one of the defining albums of the 1990’s. DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing was a true labour of love, crafted from hand picked samples that he created, one by one. Nowadays it doesn’t sound that impressive, but when you think of the technology we’ve got that Shadow didn’t, it becomes a much, much bigger achievement.

#176 – Escort

This the band Escort, originally a production duo that has grown into a seventeen piece live band, who make some awesome ‘nu-disco’. Except it’s all done live, by such a large group that their tour bus is probably a double-decker bendy bus. And I can imagine that booking them isn’t all that easy, as it means finding a backstage area enough to hold them all as well as putting them all on stage at the same time.

However, if we stop concentrating on the minutiae, you’ll see/hear that they are really bloody good. I stumbled across them on my iTunes library, while listening to some Errors and spotting the song ‘Cocaine Blues’, which I got about two years ago from RCRD LBL. One listen and I was kicking myself for having missed it first time ’round. This song is a cover of Dillinger’s 1976 song ‘Cocaine In My Brain’, only instead of being a chilled reggae song it’s been turned into a funky slice of disco that sounds like it’s from the 70’s itself.

Escort – Cocaine Blues [Buy]