Papa La Bas - Eternal Return EP

As a precursor to debut LP ‘Anechoic’ – due later this year – ‘Eternal Return’ catches Papa La Bas in an ambitious mood and offers an exciting glimpse into the dirty electro you can expect from their upcoming album. The dub and trip-hop influences evident from their earliest releases are now more refined, and the moody surrealism of tracks like ‘You Had It’ has them toe a thin line between UNKLE-esque breaks and the soulful melancholy of Morcheeba. The wistful reverb-laden lyricism of Suzi Ruthless – a less-husky Beth Gibbons – clings to keyboardist Dwyzak’s synth lines like a slipstream, while Duke01’s gruff rhymes (specifically in highlight ‘Jibba Jabba’) add another dimension to the already impressive, if brief, collection of tracks. Twenty-five minutes isn’t a long time to impress, but in just five tracks Papa La Bas have thrown down the gauntlet for a genre that ran out of steam a long time since.

MP3: Jibba Jabba

Out now.

www.myspace.com/papalabasuk

Yonokiero - Blue Apples

Lo-fi needn't be the dirty word people would have you believe; the gritty folk and warm bedroom atmosphere offered on Yonokiero's LP is as rich and percussive as any polished studio effort, and Chris Baldwin and Tom Coogan's wistful harmonies, exemplified to textured effect on the overdriven Joey Santiago-esque guitar of 'Rare Bit', are a case in point on an album where the subtleties far outweigh the obvious highlights.

'Blue Apples' has Messrs Baldwin and Coogan, for the most part, ditch the sparse post-rock of previous incarnations ('Rewound', for one, has them regress into the sparse feedback of their Hirameka Hi-Fi days); it is at its most complete in the mellow, understated moments when the band unplug and rely solely on the battered acoustics they so clearly know their way around.
The title track's melancholic patter and the dreamy closing pair of 'Cuddly Dominion' and 'The Test Dream' are like a stripped back Mario's Cafe-period Saint Etienne or a slightly less glum Red House Painters, and are doubtless some of the most well-crafted of what proves to be a pretty definitive journey.

MP3: Invitation to Malmo
MP3: The Test Dream

Out now.

www.myspace.com/yonoquiero

13th Hour - Thirteen

Post-hardcore may have had its day come the turn of the new Millennium, yet myriad bands still to this day see fit to shamelessly raid the graves of Reuben and Million Dead for their own unoriginal gain; take two parts Yourcodenameis:Milo and one part Quicksand, and you can, unfortunately, pretty much track the course of the last five years of Kerrang-lite indie. It's to their credit then, that 13th Hour have so effortlessly put together a debut's worth of spellbindingly authentic rock; opener 'Hear the Sirens' and sprawling slow-burn closer 'Mirrors' book-end a half-hour that flits from Funeral for a Friend-esque stadium pop - 'Miracle Tonight' - to hook-heavy anthemics, in 'Lights Go Out'.

Perhaps 'Thirteen's best moments are those where the band let their collective foot off the pedal on which it so often relies and let their quieter moments rise to the surface; 'Now and Forever' could easily remain in the lighter-in-the-air 'Nothing Else Matters' vein it recalls, yet all too soon goes for the jugular and lets itself down as a result, while 'Colours of the Sun' has a similar effect. Otherwise, 13th Hour's first LP is a strong, almost worryingly able album and signals through tracks like 'Best of Me' - which so effortlessly channels the bass-heavy distortion of Muse's 'Hysteria' - a potential of almost arena proportions.

MP3: Lights Go Out
MP3: Best Of Me

Out now.

www.myspace.com/13thhourband

Paul Walker - Dragon Song EP

Gravel-throated Petty-alike Paul Walker seems to have a knack for the understated, and the brevity of Dragon Song's stripped-down folk belies a wealth of similar acoustic bluesmen. 'Window Shopping's unassuming protest recalls the most typical Dylanesque commentary, while 'Hollywood' channels an imagined Malkmus/Van Morrison collaboration, circa 'Astral Weeks'. For such an introspective approach, Walker's topics are universal and the mid-life distrust of closing track 'No Kinda Life' - "not 21 anymore; I got the young men pushing past me through the door" - echoes the sighing sentiments of Elbow's 'Starlings', while 'Eyes by Michelangelo' tackles Weller's 'You Do Something to Me' armed only with a battered six-string. Walker's tantalising, if frustratingly brief, effort's an exciting precursor to future releases, and should he expand the horizons of his already appealing lo-fi sound, it'll likely signal one veteran with a flair vastly superior to the young pretenders on his tail.

Out now.

www.myspace.com/paulwalkersolo

The Hellset Orchestra - The Carrousel Awaits...

The Goth Pogues. Gorgol Bordello under a full moon. Queen at Goose Fair. With fireworks. Hellset could easily spearhead a goth-glam revival should, god forbid, it ever happens; thank heavens then, that they're so inimitably unique. Veering from November Rain cum Bohemian Rhapsody anthemics ('Bakare's Secret Space Station') through the Arcade Fire horror of the sprawling title track and back again ('Ferocious Ass'), The Carrousel Awaits is almost A Night at the Opera for the 21st Century; an ambitious, wide-eyed project and three quarters of an hour of gritty scuzz rock, Romany harmonics, operatic explosions and string cacophonics, consummate in its outrageousness.

Glam might have become a dirty word since Mika picked up Bolan's mantle, but The Hellset Orchestra are dangerously close to bringing it back and making it credible - tracks like '1970s Projection of the Future' are power-pop Modest Mouse, while 'Welcome to the Sorcery Clan' is Nick Cave with organs, only a little more morbid. It's this approach, ignoring boundaries lesser bands would fall at and creating music on their own terms, that sees Hellset so effortlessly carve out their own sound. Contrasts are what they do best; at times they're pushing the prim-ometer, pianos and violins lacedly intertwined, whilst their most extreme shoegaze moments see vocalist Michael's bloodied fists tearing right through your speakers. In short, hellishly brilliant.

The Hellset Orchestra, with support from Swimming, launch The Carrousel Awaits at The Rescue Rooms this Saturday (29th). Tickets are still onsale here and, for a credit crunch busting fiver, you get the album thrown in for free.

For the rest of you, it's in the shops from the 1st

www.myspace.com/hellsetorchestra

The Listeners - EP

From the first rustling of duelling acoustic and electric guitars, the Listeners' EP is an aural assault - at times subtle yet beguiling, at others fiercely aggressive. The band seem to operate on two separate levels entirely - the muted introversion of early Modest Mouse and The Shins, and the sonic ferocity of Sons and Daughters and Howling Bells - yet it's when these paths cross that this EP's best moments are found; opener 'Love, It Stays the Same' sets the tone, building from a galloping Western introduction and ending as a pounding paean to liberty, while sprawling centerpiece 'Deadbeat' is gut-wrenching hate mail from a PJ Harvey fronted Archie Bronson Outfit.

Vocalist Emma's intense yet insightful musings are the glue of the EP - guitarist Robert's searing accompaniments would, without the soaring poetics they so thrillingly compliment, be little more than redundant and so the EP's throughout threatened by its understated nature - tracks like 'Beyond Forgiveness' build almost to the point of no return, only to be cut short by a pretty cruel ban of the grandiose climaxes they so clearly warrant. For now we'll make do, but the sooner we get the fist-in-the-air moments we know they're capable of, the better.

The Listeners EP is out now and is available on iTunes.

www.myspace.com/thelisteners

This City exclusive - Frontiers' new EP

Thank fuck for Frontiers. God knows we don't need any more bands droning on about their last night out, or forcing on us their two-bit philosophising of the class system. Twenty years of identikit indie, and what have we got to show for it? The Fratellis, that's who. It's exactly the derivative wares Frontiers were peddling this time last year as Republic, and the difference is evident - whereas the band's previous incarnation relied unashamedly on tales of unrequited love over indie-by-numbers melodies, their new moniker sees them proudly carve out a sound of their own; gone are the brutish drums and the inherently overblown guitars in favour of a soaring, yet subtle, widescreen pop on a par with Elbow or Sigur Ros.

Book-ended by its two noticeable highlights, Send the Night Away and the title track, you'd expect the EP to flag somewhat in the middle, yet the opposite's the case; live favourite If You Think You Know Me is a more mature take on their early demos, while the On the Mend's bruised honesty highlights lyricist Alex's growth into a developed songwriter. While the band's tendency to veer toward a big chorus is at times evident, it's not to the detriment of their sound and with the closing strains of In Pursuit reaching a stunning crescendo, it's clearly a winning formula.

Frontiers are on Dean Jackson's The Beat on Radio Nottingham (103.8fm) from 9pm tonight for the first play of the EP.

Available for download from next week; CD out next month

www.myspace.com/frontiersofficial

Swound! - Hello Future, our name is Swound!

Sharks, robots, throwing children down wells - it’s all in a day’s work for local punk-funk four-piece Swound!. While their lyrics may not tackle the weighty topics of the day like, say, Keane, sometimes poverty, homelessness and the credit crunch have to take second place to a sweaty house party and it’s just this that the four Staszkiewicz brothers do best. At times mind-numbingly obvious, the nursery rhyme faux-horror of tracks like ‘Living in a Box’ can seem like noise for noise’s sake but it’s easy to forget that this is a band whose artwork is based on a Futurama episode and who, if rumours are to be believed, grew up next-door to Norman Wisdom. Straddling the fine line between credibility and nonsense has never been this exciting.

Clocking in at just over 20 minutes, ‘Hello Future...’ is a masterclass in brevity and perfectly surmises the energy of the band’s live performances, exemplified in the unrelenting highlights of ‘Creeping on the Ceiling and ‘Here Come the Robots’. It won’t win any prizes for originality, or catapult them to meteoric stardom, but somewhere, sometime, there’ll be a cramped house heaving with drunken teenagers, and this’ll be on the stereo.

Out Monday 20th October

www.myspace.com/swound