Foon Yap makes music which breaks your heart or, when accompanied by The Roar, kicks your sorry ass. Here she tackles the Suitcase Orchestra Q&A.

If I were to play just one of your songs to someone who hasn’t heard your music, which would it be and why?

It would be La FOON NIKITA. I love that song. Have you ever noticed how agreeable disco is to walking? I live in the inner-city and walk everywhere, and the disco-influenced melodies came to me over several weeks of traipsing around downtown. It’s like my own personal anthem, and helps me be my own best cheerleader. I would play it to someone who hasn’t ever heard my music because it expresses a very public side of me and hopefully makes them feel as exuberant as I do when I hear it. The FOONYAP songs are too personal and naked to play randomly to a random person.

You are being sent to the moon. You’re allowed to take 1 album. What is it?

I wouldn’t need to take any albums. Everything I’ve ever heard, or need to hear, is stored in my brain, and I can turn it on and off at-will. Much more interesting than 1 album ever could be. And won’t the moon have crazy galaxy noises that I can listen to?

On the subject of being sent to the moon, what 3 things would definitely be in your suitcase?

1. My makeup bag (there would be more than 3 things in it…but I have to look fabulous on the moon!)

2. Coconuts, I fucking love coconuts. And apparently you can live off them for a good long while.

3. Wait, am I being sent as an experiment in social isolation, or for VA-CAY?

If the former is the case, my last object would be a notebook with unlined pages, which has one of those pen loops- I’d have a Sharpie in that pen loop that would never run out, and I would go anywhere, for long periods of time, in my head.

If I was being sent to the moon for vacation, my last item would be a bottomless bottle of Australian Shiraz-Cabernet, and I would get drunk and watch the galaxy all day? long. Do they have days on the moon? And I would prefer to be on the dark side of the moon if I may. In which case I would sneak a flashlight in my stockings.

What film would you be a character in?

Any film with lots of guns and big explosions in which I would also be able to do kung-fu stunts. Maybe Bad Boyz II. I would be the secret ass-kicking Kung-Fu Asian gangstress you overlooked.

Tell us an interesting fact.

The only rules in FOONYAP and The Roar are:

1. FUN FIRST and

2. NO GIRLS ALLOWED (I’m a vampire).

Tell us about a band or singer we might not have heard about who should be featured on Suitcase Orchestra.

Christian Hansen and The Autistics from my province of Alberta. I haven’t seen them live, but I’ve heard their newest album, and we’re playing a show with them in October, and I’m sooooo excited because it sounds like they’re into spandex as much as I am.

Recommend a book.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Micheal Pollan- you will never look at food the same way again.

Which literary character would play you in the book of your life?

A mishmash between Jo from Little Women, pre-professor love, and Sherlock Holmes, but slightly more well-adjusted.

What’s the worst record in your collection?

I don’t want to trash-talk anyone.

What question should I always ask in a Q & A? And answer it please.

I always ask people what’s on their mind lately, because I have so much on my mind.

What’s on my mind? How weird it is that some things are expected to come in ‘ones’. One wife, one religion, one mortgage…etc.
And how awesome Vietnamese food is.

Foon Yap’s delicate solo work can be heard here.

Foon Yap & The Roar store their ‘vampire sex metal disco’ here.

Nothing about Foon Yap is straight forward. She is a violinist yet grew up hating the instrument. She is classically trained yet focuses her energies on working on folk and when with her band The Roar, a ‘disco spandex celebration’. She is tiny in stature – I have twice seen her piggybacked around the room by Woodpigeon’s Mark Hamilton – yet clearly has the spirit of a grizzly bear.

Having found her feet with Calgary folk collective Woodpigeon, Foon is now exploring other avenues. Her Darling EP is delicate to the point of being brittle in its beauty. All three tracks begin tentatively and maintain a sense of almost tangible fragility and precision in their execution, her plucked and sweeping strings work from Woodpigeon combined with more than a nod to her Chinese heritage. It’s beautiful and stops you in your tracks; you fear to move or even breathe, afraid that any movement may cause it to shatter into a million fragments.

Contrast all that with Foon Yap & The Roar. Gone is the label of ‘Chinese Traditional / Folk / Classical’ which her solo MySpace site applies to her work, replaced with ‘Vampire Sex Metal Disco’. Their EP The Mes, The Mys and The Swimming Pool kicks off innocently enough with the short, electro folk of Introduction and then blows your head off with the manic I Come. There’s barely time to recover during the Talking Headsy Kiiimchee before she has you by the throat again in the synth driven La Foon Nikita. All of your perceived notions about Foon are torn down in less than the eleven minutes of maelstrom which the EP contains. Pow! Thank God for Foon Yap.

Foon Yap waits demurely here.

Foon Yap & The Roar are waiting to get you here.

J. Tillman takes a break from his Fleet Foxes duties to announce his forthcoming 7th album,  Singing Ax. The album was recorded in just three days by the somewhat legendary Steve Albini. Predominantly just Tilman and a guitar,  a few tracks include mellotron and drum machine such as the stark and haunting Three Sisters which you can listen to below. Singing Ax will be released through Western Vinyl on September 14th.

Meanwhile, J.Tillman will be playing the following US dates with Phosphorescent.

Jul 28  – Bottom of the Hill – San Francisco, CA
Jul 30 – Doug Fir Lounge – Portland, OR
Jul 31 – The Crocodile – Seattle, WA
Aug 3 – Cedar Cultural Centre – Minneapolis, MN
Aug 4 – Mad Planet – Milwaukee, WI
Aug 5 – Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL
Aug 6 – Radio Radio – Indianapolis, IN
Aug 7 – Grog Shop – Cleveland Heights, OH
Aug 9 – Black Cat – Washington DC
Aug 10 – Sonar – Baltimore, MD
Aug 14 – Club Hell – Providence, RI
Aug 15 – Middle East Downstairs – Cambridge, MA

Click to listen to Three Sisters by J. Tillman

Jim Noir returns to planet Earth with a new four-track EP, which he will be giving away free on his website and news of a new six-track EP, Zooper Dooper.

Rather than release all ten tracks as an album, he has decided to split them into two distinct EPs, as he explains. “The 4 track is the remnants of an album that got dropped on the floor and couldn’t be worked on anymore. As I started writing more new stuff it seemed to not really sound like what I was doing last year.”

Noir has been missing presumed in bed for a while now, though that hiatus in turns out was not by choice. “Most of the work I did for my 3rd album became lost in the great hard drive disaster of 2009 and all I have left of it is a few mp3s I sent to friends,” he says. “I now have to download my own music from myself to hear what it could have been.”

Packed with customary catchy hooks and playfulness, the EP serves as a timely reminder of Noir’s ear for a timeless melody, a Wisonesque harmony and some frankly absurd observations about life.

The EP is available for free download from jimnoir.com

Ahead of the debut album, and following the release of the Haunting Through E.P. we get under the covers with Neil Insh of The Douglas Firs.

If I were to play just one of your songs to someone who hasn’t heard your music, which would it be and why?

I would love to play the new material, but that’s not going to be ready for a while… of the material that is available, I would play “soporific”. Granted, I would say it is not the most popular song (of the handful I have made available) but for me it encompasses the central theme of the album, and it was recorded was over a great period in my life. The first section was recorded, literally, under covers, appropriate because it is a song about sleep/ennui/lethargy. But it was also so my flatmates wouldn’t hear me sing.
The second section was recorded in three separate churches who let me use their space for free. One of these had a horrible, oppressive atmosphere, and I hope it comes across on the recording.
You are being sent to the moon. You’re allowed to take 1 album. What is it?

“Murmur” by REM is probably my favourite album. However, I’m absolutely terrified of the idea of space, so I’d probably deliberately upset myself by taking the 2001 space odyssey soundtrack.
On the subject of being sent to the moon, what 3 things would definitely be in your suitcase?

1. A rucksack
2. A mouse
3. A bowling ball
What film would you be a character in?

Eraserhead.
Tell us an interesting fact.

I once found “jump” by Kriss Kross in a box in my loft. I took it down to my brother to play it to him, as a bit of a memory trip, over 10 years on. At the same second the song started on the stereo, the video came on the television on MTV. Eerie.
Tell us about a band or singer we might not have heard about who should be featured on Suitcase Orchestra.

I’d recommend Green Gerry, a songwriter who records using the internal mic on his laptop, really ethereal and hypnotic.

Recommend a book.

Henry Miller changed my life, and ‘tropic of cancer’ is a good starting point.

Which literary character would play you in the book of your life?

Humbert Humbert.
What’s the worst record in your collection?

I went through a pretty terrible Kiss phase. I bought loads of their stuff on vinyl, then regretted it.
What question should I always ask in a Q & A? And answer it please.

“At sea, what kind of ship would thou sail?”

Everyone wants to be a galleon. But I’m going to go for a sloop – I’d beat you with speed.

Haunting Through, the debut E.P. from The Douglas Firs is available now. Click here for more information.

During the Eighties Felt made ten LPs and ten singles. Bubblegum Perfume was a compilation of songs from their time on Creation Records. Spanning most of the latter half of their existence, Bubblegum Perfume was the first time I’d really encountered the band and by then they were, of course, defunct.

Existing at the time almost exclusively on a diet of jangly, Sixties-influenced indie pop with songs of unrequited love written by fey, floppy haired, shy boys (much like myself) Felt immediately stood apart. Sure, this was essentially jangly, indie-pop and you can’t get much more Sixties-influenced than Martin Duffy’s organ which is smothered all over the album, but the lyrics and the feel of the songs were a million miles from fey love songs.

Lawrence, he’d ditched his surname on realising it was shared with a member of the Moody Blues, wrote songs which sounded literate and knowing. The Sixties characters who inhabited his lyrics were more likely to be Sheena McKay’s Eugene Schlumberger than Bill Naughton’s  Alfie. Each song, and I’ll disregard the instrumental tracks in this instance, on Bubblegum Perfume sounded like a short story, as if they neatly sound tracked an entire Alain Delon film in just two or three minutes. Felt were cool. Felt were an eagle-eyed attention to detail. Felt knew.

Thus began a love affair, though as they were no-longer together, the affair was with the music and the record sleeves; both of which throw up plenty of questions. Foxtrot Echo Lima Tango answers few of these but, you see, that’s a good thing. Felt were nothing if not enigmatic and this book (officially it’s described as a fanzine, but it’s so much more than that) tells their story without solving their mystery.

Pieced together from the memories of band members, fans and previously unpublished interviews, everything is subjective. In places, the story of the band is incredibly one-sided and the lack of chronology means that gaps in the story are left. What emerges however is the confirmation that this band, cruelly overlooked at the time and still lacking even a fraction of the recognition they deserve today, were and are something to treasure, and if ever a book about a band perfectly captured the essence of that band it is Foxtrot Echo Lima Tango – a thing of beauty.

The book is already close to selling out, but remaining copies can still be purchased from here.

As a rule, it’s best to avoid anyone who happily applies the tag ‘singer-songwriter’ to themselves – the phrase is too redolent of MOR radio balladry, shopping centre busking and clunking protest songs. These days, there’s usually an issue of ego at play there too. For a long time now, the only way for a solo artist to distance themselves from this is to adopt a ‘band name’. Newcastle based Trev Gibb neatly sidesteps this issue by writing introverted and melancholic songs. There’s not a hint of ‘look at me everybody’ about his music at all. Which is just how it should be.

Ahead of the release of his excellent mini-album Summer Tears, on Rainboot,  Trev Gibb releases two free acoustic  e.p.s the first, Postcard is available now, the second, Dancing follows on June 28^th.

To get your hands on them, visit http://www.rainboot.co.uk/download/ and click on ‘free stuff’ to access the downloads.

Brooklyn again. This time it’s Quiet Lights who are set to create a stir, though they seem determined to go about it in an understated manner. The ‘About’ page of their website reveals that they are ‘Quiet Lights from Brooklyn, NY.’ Their Facebook page reveals that they are made up of Chris Curtis, Robin Fowler, Nikhil Kamineni, Yseult Tyler and Marcus Smith. Marcus has revealed that he is formerly of Gods & Queens and Argentine. And that’s your lot; beyond that all you have is the music. Which is a good thing.

Blending the sonic wall-of-sound of early 90s shoegaze with the current lurching haziness of dream pop, their sound is ethereal and translucent yet pressing and powerful. We Live In Balloons in particular hits the nail they seem to be aiming at squarely on the head.

While they busy themselves with applying the finishing touches to their debut album, they have released a free sample e.p. Go get it here, because it’s glorious and take five to watch their video for Twice Today.

Twice Today from Quiet Lights on Vimeo.

Luke Temple’s mind, it would appear, is somewhere worth getting inside if the soundtracks to his life (and the answers for our Q&A) it produces are anything to go by. Barely a year since his first using the Here We Go Magic banner, Pigeons, a bright psychedelic assemblage of ideas, marks a crystallising of their style.

The album is a set of neatly positioned contradictions. It is by turns intense and overwhelming yet distant and aloof; jittery and manic yet super-chilled. In its feel however, it is always tethered to the telling lyric from Casual; ‘It’s four in the morning’. Whatever reason you may have for being awake at four in the morning and whatever your emotional state might be, Pigeons has it covered.

Admittedly lacking anything so spectacularly awe-inspiring as the dizzyingly hypnotic Fangela which marked the stand out moment of last year’s eponymous debut (and the stand-out song of the whole year) Pigeons is nevertheless an album to immerse yourself in. Opening with, by their standards, two furiously fast tracks, the pace returns to a customary Here We Go Magic rate for the shimmering dream pop of Casual, a vibe which is reprised on F.F.A.P. and Land Of Feeling which feels like the  Cocteau Twins trying their hands at Philly Soul. Sandwiched neatly between this dream pop soundscape is Old World United, a punk anthem recorded inside a 1980’s Pac Man machine.

Temple’s mind throws up two further gems to close the album. Vegetable Or Native is a tribal chant from beyond the Solar System and I love You Herbie, Now I Know could easily have been lifted from a Sun Ra album.

Pigeons is available from June 7^th on Secretly Canadian and Western Vinyl

Luke Temple’s feverishly off-beam brain has also been chewing over the Suitcase Orchestra Q&A.

If I were to play just one of your songs to someone who hasn’t heard your music, which would it be and why?

Sam Kinison, in the pergatory waiting room, to help him figure out which way to go. It would depend on what his last sin was.

You are being sent to the moon. You’re allowed to take 1 album. What is it?

The Big Biscuit-  Last Stand, Hurrah For Hope!

On the subject of being sent to the moon, what 3 things would definitely be in your suitcase?

Power converter, lonely planet guide, two cases of thin skin.

What film would you be a character in?

The Weasel and Jesus Go On A Date

Tell us an interesting fact.

There’s bees that kill hornets by raising their temperature around the creature to exactly 106 degrees, one degree above where the hornet can survive, the exact degree the bees can survive.

Recommend a book.

Wet Mop Goes Fishing

Which literary character would play you in the book of your life?

Fluffer

What’s the worst record in your collection?

Sick of Tweezer, Give Me Sponge- by T.Cups

What question should I always ask in a Q & A? And answer it please.

Q: What’s your name, ceiling?

A: Geronimo!

Visit the Here We Go Magic MySpace here.

For many a year now we have been told of the next big thing, only to be disappointed with what follows.  This can be for a plethora of reasons, from the lyrics being as woeful as the vocabulary emanating from a chav on any given high street at 1am on a Saturday, to the music being slightly less original or challenging than an ITV sitcom theme; bands in question you know who you are, (Hard-Fi).  Leamington Spa’s Sharks are different though.  They are four lads who know the importance of good lyrics, a riff or hook that not only gets your head bobbing/foot tapping but the volume dial turned up; and it’s loud that Sharks sound best.

Their music is indie based with a punk edge and it’s easy to see how they’ve arrived at this destination given their stated influences are such heavyweights as Joy Division, The Clash, Black Flag, The Smiths, Oasis et al. Some of which naturally drips out like blood through a handkerchief; in particular songs like ‘Love In Fear’ with it’s Oasis tinted guitars, or the rather tongue-in-cheek titled track ‘Glove In Hand’ from the forthcoming ‘Show Of Hands’ EP.

Touring on a seemingly non-stop rota which has seen them support the likes of The King Blues, Lostprophets, and Gallows they have honed their style to one which expresses the immediacy and vibrancy of the subject matter in their songs and also conveys the disposable nature of the 21^st century youth, especially one spent in a nowhere town.  One person who certainly has been caught by Sharks’ vociferous live performances and the quality songwriting is The Wedding Present’s very own David Gedge.  He has even asked them to support The Wedding Present at their Brighton show on 28 August; obviously they accepted.  This is no small part due to their excellent cover of ‘Brassneck’, originally a hit for The Wedding Present in 1990.  But it’s not only Mr Gedge who has spotted their qualities, indeed they have received significant support from the likes of Zane Lowe, Steve Lamacq and Mike Davis at Radio 1.

So far the band have released one EP, (in addition to the split 7” with Northern Towns and their own ‘Common Grounds’ single) 2009’s ‘Shallow Waters’, a 10-inch vinyl pressing of which was recently commissioned and has already seen heavy demand.  The record starts with ‘Yours To Fear’, a track that opens with all four members singing in harmony before vocalist James Mattock unleashes a voice of real definition and character that makes him stand out in a very flat world, and lead guitarist Andy Bayliss delivers a riff that’s so hooky Robson Green could use it for extreme fishing.  The following track, ‘Fallen On Deaf Ears’ sees drummer Samuel Lister pound the band along and your heart out of its’ cage, Cris O’Reilly (bass) unites all four members to ensure that cohesiveness is achieved comfortably. The record does sound slightly rough however. This is due in part to their inexperience of recording as this was their first visit proper into a recording studio, and also their then yet undiscovered confidence.  But it could be argued that it’s roughness gives it a certain warmth.

Every word that is spat out of Mattock’s mouth is full of urgency and weight, here is a lyricist who realises that poetry is as much a vital element of good songwriting as delivery and performance.  This can be clearly seen on ‘Riding Trains In November’, where at the end of the song his breathing can be heard having just blasted out his thoughts so important is it to him that he tell someone.   Also on ‘Bury Your Youth’, a song about the fears and trials of growing up and the anxiety inherent within that period, he confesses “off all the thoughts that came back crawling, somewhere along the line I must have missed the joke”.   This alienation, or feeling of being ostracised by life and your surroundings is well trodden territory for many a lyricist, in particular a spectacled Mancunian whose name rhymes with Worrissey, but Mattock expresses his particular vexation with real grit and a honesty, whilst still maintaining his fear and vulnerability.

Sharks are the living embodiment of D.I.Y. rock ‘n’roll and have grown up in a time when British music was some of the most vibrant and relative to young Brits it has ever been.  Their appreciation for the age of Britpop and before is evident in their songwriting, and it is clear to see that with their electric live performances alongside some of the industries big names, and at their more intimate shows (they recently played in a barber shop), added to their unique style in an age of personality-less indie bands, and TV talent claptrap, Sharks appear to be one of the very few bands from the UK with purpose, and a direction all of their own.

Visit Sharks’ MySpace here.

Written by Jonnie Bloor.