Featured for the first time here on IRC is the exciting DIY surf punk duo The Bundy Bunch from Kopervik, Norway.
With a brand new debut album, Belushi Speedball, the rock duo of Markus Matland and Ole Marius Saltvik is gaining visibility ever so slightly thanks to tracks like the album’s title song.
The track is a lo-fi ripper with a booming percussive vibe, catchy melodies, and jangling guitars.
As some may have imagined, the album’s title is a reference to the 1982 drug overdose of original SNL cast member, musician, and comedian John Belushi.
“Yes, the track is inspired by The Blues Brothers legend,” the duo explains, “and is a tribute of the brilliant man who was John Belushi.”
While it’s not entirely clear how much of a tribute it is to someone’s life to highlight the sad way they died (‘speedball’), the duo adds: “We were fascinated by how much of a jolly person, and spreader of positivity he was, yet how much he really was struggling under the surface.”
‘Speedball’ refers to the combination of heroin and cocaine that Belushi was later confirmed to have had in his bloodstream when he passed away.
The duo has been friends since childhood. Therefore, it was not a giant leap that, together with their love for the same music, that the pair would eventually form a band.
The Bundy Bunch’s musical influences include Sam Cooke, Surf Curse, Fidlar, Mike Krol, Ty Segall, and Dick Dale. That’s quite a range on the spectrum of music.
For a number of years we’ve been following the Brisbane ‘slacker-rock’ indie band, Cedarsmoke, thanks to the band’s ear-peeking, honest lyrics, and a gritty, yet catchy sound.
The band’s latest single, “Pure Heroin,” is proof-perfect.
“Pure Heroin is a song about Rom-Coms and punk rock,” says vocalist and multi-instrumentalist frontman John Cloumassis. “Specifically, it focuses on the life and death of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen,” he says, adding, “musically, we tried to offset their tragic story with a catchy chorus and bright synth sounds, but it’s still a fairly dark song.”
The band often makes picayune observations of down and out of luck characters wrapped inside of metaphor-heavy lyrics and the band’s own brand of Down Under indie rock music.
Last year the band wowed us with their debut E.P., False Start to the Rat Race, featuring singles like “Easy” and “Contraband.”
Ia addition to Cloumassis, the band members are Tom Picton (keyboards, glockenspiel); Yarnell Fischer (lead guitar); Rhys Carroll (bass) and Lewis Heffernan (drums).
Back in 2015, these five young mates from Brisbane decided that since they were already hanging out all of the time, they might as well do something they all loved to do – make music.
And there the seeds for the formation of the band were sowed.
The band, according to Cloumassis, wrote and rehearsed more than 50 songs, many of which spanned various genres from rock to folk, from which the songs for their debut EP, False Start to the Rat Race.
Perhaps the strongest track on the album is the sweet number “Easy,” which Cloumassis says “started when our guitarist Yarnie [Fischer] was playing some chords during a jam about a week before we were booked to start recording the album. It was written and rehearsed pretty quickly after that.”
Soon after the debut, Cedarsmoke began playing local gigs and attracting praise from the city’s picky music audiences who have seen a lot of talent come and go over the years.
The band has opened for artists such as Mermaid Avenue, Grace Turner, Leichardt, Lachlan X. Morris, and Jordan Merrick. They are most influenced by Wilco, Arcade Fire, Band of Horses, The National, Bright Eyes, The War on Drugs, and Bob Dylan.
MP3: “Easy“ – Cedarsmoke from Traffic On Solitude Road
Bonus Track: “Contraband“ – Cedarsmoke from Traffic On Solitude Road
Brooklyn indie quartet Marble House began as a bedroom recording project of songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist Gabe Friedman.
In time, it blossomed beyond his bedroom walls into a bigger and better outfit marked by genre-bending rock that is influenced by bands like The Strokes?
indie band that takes musical cues from a range of influences.
This is evident on the band’s chugging, pumping new single, “Heartbeat.” The track blazes with a heartbeat rhythm, superb guitar playing, confident vocals and a strut and swagger that makes this track impossible to forget and one that you want to play again and again. We’ve probably played it half a dozen times on the cafe speakers and people LOVE it.
“Heartbeat” is an amazing rock song – one of the best DIY rock tracks we’ve heard this year. We don’t say that lightly.
Marble House isn’t just putting out the standard fare rock track; rather, they are pushing the envelope; upping the ante; raising their game.
This is true right from the get-go. Previously the band released a series of other singles off of their impressive 2018 debut E.P, Demons.
Marble House’s origins date back to 2017 when Friedman met guitarist Nicole Pettigrew online, and after hitting it off through a series of collaborations, they brought on Pettigrew’s friend Danny Irizarry to play drums and Javier Vela to take on the bass and keyboards.
Driven to create a new sonic world all their own, the four band members meld spectacular guitar work with well-honed percussions and sweeping synths with a benchmark ratio that is guitar-driven rock.
The band rehearsed and worked on the songs for their E.P. for a year before they felt they were ready to take on the demanding and competitive Brooklyn live music circuit and have gained respect and followers in the local scene.
We’re reviving our indie bands to watch series now for 2019, and into 2020 (such a sci-fi number), by popular demand and because we have many to share that you’ll probably hear nowhere else.
For a few months now, we’ve been listening to the compelling DIY indie rock of Ukranian five-piece band Blake Maloka.
The band hails from the capital city of Киев (Kyiv or formerly Kiev), established in Ukraine in 462 A.D. It is the most populous city in Ukraine.
The song that initially got us listening to the band is the unconventional slow pop-rock number, “The Party’s Over.”
It features suave melodies and the nasal vocals of founding member, and astrophysicist, Serge Kuskov (vocals, guitars, synths). He co-founded the band in 2013 with visual artist and bassist Artem Kaffelman.
The track is marked by uptempo bass lines, mood-changing piano parts, experimental guitar solos and a beat that is hard to resist. You can’t help but sense the astrophysical influences (aka, sci-fi or space rock) running through the song.
Another song, “Dazzle In The Dark,” is mysteriously, and paradoxically, comforting and strangely unsettling at the same time. And that’s always intriguing.
There’s a Beatlesque, circa 1967, effect to the song. The band succeeds nicely with an otherwise complex arrangement featuring angling guitars and bumping basslines. Both tracks are from the 2017 album, Blaker Than Black.
The other band members are Nina Antonyuk (bass); Yura Ivanov (backing vocals, guitars); Sergey Morev (drums) and Valery Paliarush (piano, synths).
More recently, Blake Maloka dropped a tiny three-song E.P., this time shifting gears again with a trio of chameleon-like songs starting with “Nikita”.
The track starts out as a lo-fi, sparse acoustic piece before transforming into a full-blown experimental indie track. It blooms with currents of reverb-heavy vocals; swirling guitars; wavy vocals, and a glimmering synth hook.
Next is the minimalistic, experimental and quirky new wave/pop track, “Moi et Mes Amis.” It may remind some of the old Dr. Demento radio show from years ago.
There are bits of sci-fi space rock on here as well. The short E.P. wraps up with the dark rock of “Naked,” that stews in a soup of sonic dystopia, and reminds some of Arctic Monkeys’ style.
The band’s sound leans heavily on guitars riffs of 60’s garage rock and late-20th century/early 21st-century indie rock, not to mention their socially critical lyrics that are rich with irony and sarcasm.
Their musical influences include The Strokes, Eels, Stereophonics, Temples, Beck, and Radiohead. These influences are represented in Blake Maloka’s sound – much more like nice recipes with bits of each to produce an original sound.
The astute listener may also detect elements of the Velvet Underground and the Cure on one of the band’s first singles: the semi-industrial grungey demo-like, “Propaganda,” which despite its stripped-down nature, is transfixing.
Then there’s the surprising experimental number, “Just A Wind,” in which the lyrics are much clearer and the instrumentation – along with Kuskov’s vocals – creates a breezy, almost jazzy summer afternoon vibe.
The more that one listens to the band’s songs, the more it becomes evident that the band does not have one sound or genre.
For some, that’s not an issue, while others – like some reviewers – may struggle with a need to pigeonhole the band.
It’s one of the things we, and others, love about indie rock: an artist is permitted, actually encouraged, to mix whatever sounds, genres, instruments, and so on as they please to come up with something fresh and original.
Amazing music that is free from commercial confines is so much better (for real) than the vast majority of the cookie-cutter, formatted, mass-marketed shit that comes out of Hollywood’s music factories and pollutes the airwaves every year.
There are places for bands like Blake Maloka to get plays and love for indie listeners – such as this blog.
The band also seeks to “build bridges between people of various nationalities and cultural backgrounds,” their official bio reads, continuing: “The band believes that borders are artificial constructs drawn by politicians. The injustice they create is one of the things they sing about.”
We like that they come across as unpretentious and sincere, which are just some of the traits that draw people to certain bands, in addition to the music itself.
