The Sunday Reeds [Aus]

The Sunday Reeds are a female-fronted noise pop/rock band named after 1930/40s Melbourne patron of the arts Sunday Reed. The love-child of some kind of rock 'n' roll orgy between The Jesus and Mary Chain, Joy Division, The Ramones and The Velvet Underground. Driving bass lines, plenty of guitar feedback, primitive rock beats and low, velvety female vocals. If Nico had joined The Ramones, strapped on a bass, and a whole lot more noise was added, this is how it might've sounded.

Debut album Drowning In History from Australia's finest purveyors of black clad, feedback and fuzz drenched pop/rock. Like the love child of some kind of rock n' roll orgy between The Jesus And Mary Chain, Joy Division and The Velvet Underground. If Nico had joined The Ramones, strapped on a bass guitar and a whole lot more noise was added, this is how it might have sounded.

http://www.myspace.com/thesundayreeds

Leisur Hive [UK]

LEISUR HIVE were formed by Daniel Knowler and Maria Vellanz after a chance meeting 13 years after they first met as children.

With Maria's punk-spirited enthusiasm and Dan's background in Suicide-esque rock band Proton Wedding, they began Leisur Hive as an attempt to fuse angular, percussive forms with intense, emotional and visceral songwriting.

The line-up was solidified with the addition of longtime friend and collaborator Mark Bishop and drummer Robert Allen (of Australian noise duo Halo )

Their close-to-the-bone, emotional performances, echoing distorted soundscapes and throbbing, thunderous basslines have ensured that Leisur Hive remain solely focused on their own wayward path.

LEISUR HIVE's new album "THE SOFT COLUMN" was described as "Stirring, stately and throbbing with a warm grey heart, this new full length album brings to fruition the off-kilter sound of LH's live performances. ""like a hybrid between Swans and Nick Cave".

http://www.leisur-hive.co.uk/

http://www.myspace.com/leisurhive

SafeAsHome [UK]

SafeAsHome - Not What Happens 2008

Not What Happens is SafeAsHome's first full-length album. Composed of 11 tracks, it plays like a flow of disconnected memories, a random series of photo slides projected through the distortionary lens of long-lost childhoods or uncertain futures. From raging guitar epics to delicate, fleeting moments of introspective electronics, it is an album of fertile contradictions.

Pop-song structure persistently competes with gritty texture. Soaring melodies are overwhelmed and lost in phases of intense sonic density. Suspended synth and vocal lines are set against grinding riffs and noise, in bittersweet moments of dream versus reality.

Not What Happens is the difficulty in expressing anything more than the Unimportant. It is sudden starts and abrupt endings. It is haunted by the uneasy comfort of nostalgia, and by the frustration with what remains unresolved. It is the derelict spaces of disappointment through expectancy, of loss via pursuit.

The album itself is graced with the stunning, sprawling artwork of Roberto Calbucci, the depth and substance of which mirrors the sound's myriad of layers. Both seem to be questioning the extent to which detail is not what is concealed, but is what draws away from the greater picture, itself hiding in plain sight.

http://www.myspace.com/safeashome

Autodrone [US]

Autodrone - Strike A Match CD
@Clairecords 2008

Autodrone, formed in 2002, is based on a mutual love of dream pop and early '90s Brit rock.

Seamlessly melding the sonic dynamics of noise and pop with throbbing bass lines, jagged angular synths, searing dark atmospheric guitars and urgent banshee vocals, Autodrone has quickly developed the attention of the UK and American Press garnering universally favorable reviews. Strike A Match is Autdrone's latest studio effort. Their debut album is darker, denser and more experimental, yet catchy and hook-laden than any of their previous work. The album has received a deluge of critical acclaim and has made it onto multiple "best of 2007" lists, thought it was unreleased at the time. Autrodrone have toured both the east and west coast, and have played festivals such as Pop Noise, ATJ, NEMO and CMJ.

http://www.myspace.com/autodrone

Have A Nice Life [US]

Have A Nice Life - Deathconsciousness - 2008

HAVE A NICE LIFE is a shoegaze/industrial/new-wave hybrid band from Connecticut.

It is the brain-child of TIM MACUGA, black-metal experimentalist and songwriter for the classic Western Massachusetts hardcore band The Danger Strangers, and DAN BARRETT, singer of the ghost-music project Giles Corey and the now-defunct In Pieces.

The music recalls the droning melodies of My Bloody Valentine, crossed with the crushing abstraction of SUNN0)), but is ultimately unclassifiable; beautiful, yet simultaneously droning and heavy.

HANL released their first full-length record in January of 2008, a double-album entitled DEATHCONSCIOUSNESS.

The two discs (entitled The Plow That Broke The Plains and The Future, respectively) feature music spanning over five years of collaboration between the two artists, and are accompanied by a 75-page booklet on medieval Italian heretics in lieu of liner notes. The album was entirely self-released, right down to the hand-painted discs, and put out via the ENEMIES LIST HOME RECORDINGS label.

http://www.last.fm/music/Have+A+Nice+Life/+wiki

http://www.sputnikmusic.com/album.php?reviewid=15024 (new album review)

Death By Kite [Dnk]

Death by kite
© 2007 quartermain

Emerging from the Copenhagen underground scene, hyped by a reputation of loud and manically introverted concerts and a sound that is a mesmerizing mix of popish, cathchy melodies soaked in a cocktail of noiserock and newwave, in April 2007 Death by Kite released their self tiitled debut-album. The trio, which, after a change in the beat section, now consists og Bjørn, Sidsel and Mikkel, has since then played numerous concerts, and has established themselves as a popular live act, and one of the best noisepop bands coming out of Scandinavia for years.

http://www.myspace.com/deathbykite