London electro band Rubicks seem to have been the next big thing for the last six years and, despite critical acclaim for their debut album ‘In Miniature’ they’ve, somewhat surprisingly, not yet hit the big time while young, and less talented, upstarts like The Ting Tings have had the cash registers ringing.
With a sound akin to Ladytron with a Blondie chaser, or maybe the Primitives with the electro dial set to maximum, they have every box ticked. Stunningly attractive lead singer blessed with magnetic star quality, tick. Debut album showered with critical acclaim by the blogosphere and the inkies, tick. The perfect modern blend of electronics and guitar, tick. Appeared with the indie glitterati from the Klaxons to The Duke Spirit to Gary Numan (??), tick. Check out the video for the bands excellent track ‘Midas’ which should be the new UK national anthem!
Radio Over Moscow- Battletech
7/10
This album doesn’t sound like any of the bands mentioned in the press release, well Gary Numan perhaps but definitely not Nirvana, The Beatles, Primal Scream or The Smashing Pumpkins. Radio Over Moscow is the solo assignment of Aucklander Dan Satherley (KittyHawk, Vetox, Luna Spark) and Battletech is his first solo release. Bringing ’90s pop-punk into the twenty-first century, Battletech covers common ground with just a subtle pinch of unfamiliarity; synthesisers and drum machines. Imagine if Blink 182 went electro or Placebo ditched the dark make-up, Radio Over Moscow brings the two together in a mechanical blender, adding slices of metallic sounding synths and sci-fi rhythms. Sprouting multiple seeds of futuristic punk, alien grunge, contorted new-wave and geographically nondescript Brit-pop, Battletech provides a moderately eclectic genre fix and is well structured, allowing the songs to merge together without sounding disjointed. Opener ‘The Purpose Of Man’ is an electro sherbet hit echoing The Faint and flows directly into ‘Anti-human Nous’ which utilises similar synth techniques but puts a vocoder effect on the vocals.
Katie Sutherland of Pearl and the Puppets. Photos Stephen McLeod
For those of you not familiar with the movie which inspired this festival in the Scottish borders (apparently it’s not the borders according to the locals, but to a Glaswegian, it’s definitely at the border), the gist is this:
Police inspector goes to visit disappearance in strange community, ends up being burned in a giant wicker man as part of some strange pagan ritual.
Photos from a recent FOE gig - a friend of our friends Hold Your Horse Is - she’s gonna be big!!! Read the gig review after the jump.
Shots of North Carolina’s folk-rocking Avett Brothers’ stop in Glasgow - 22.08.11
Read the review of the gig here.
Take a look at the acts and art on offer at this year’s Latitude Festival in Suffolk. Included are the likes of Fight Like Apes, Lykke Li, Sea of Bees and Seasick Steve. Photos from our own...
Good time with Bad Guys. Photos from the May 29th gig at the Old Blue Last. Read the review by the Bad Guy himself, Stuart London after the jump.
Artrocker.com exclusive: for fans of White Lies and Crocodiles we’ve got some fresh pictures from their UK show at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire earlier this month, courtesy of Alessandro...
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