The 'lamp' EP by las vedas
Review
Once again, I find myself in the happy position of writing for the first time in ‘Hot Music Live' about artists not previously mentioned.
Today it's the turn of Leamington-based las vedas (yes the lower-case culture continues to stand tall amongst the artists coming through).
The occasion is the release today of their new , and in fact debut EP ‘lamp'.
Why that title? Well it's probably beyond coincidence that the fact it was recorded at LAMP in Leamington may have played a part in naming it.
LAMP is "a specialist education provision dedicated to supporting young people with autism and high anxiety" which alone merits our respect and support but on top of that, the organisation has empowered & supported many students in creating their own individual art: especially music. We have reviewed the first of their compilations (and looking forwards to the second) and featured several LAMP based students on our ‘Hot Music Live Presents' compilations.
As it happens, the band we're talking about today come to their LAMP collaboration from their own unique angle: they credit Tim Ellis (whom you may also know from Jackdaw with Crowbar) "for his encouragement and use of LAMP's recording facilities" and the naming of the record after it is more than a cursory tip of their hat.
In fact the band have quite substantial back stories: Morton D Ballard (guitarist) with London based The History of Apple Pie, bassist Alex Vale with Wallace and Vomit whom we've featured in the magazine and drummer Ewan Durrant, has a "long history of activity in local music scene".
Produced by Louis B Scheuer (also of course of Wallace and Vomit and many other groovy projects) with engineer Joe Durrant of Nuke the Whales (both of whom are credited with "nudging" the group into the recording environment, ‘lamp' consists of a quartet of songs: "spelling bee", "taylor" (with backing vocals courtesy of Matt Cameron), "song for sleep" and "vivian".
Those are their names but describing what they sound like is another matter entirely. Yes, it's another band who don't fit into any particular single category as defined by the official media: precisely what I like but trickier to deal with if you're a reviewer. To be fair, the band in their postings have tried to help potential new audience members by having a go themselves, but ultimately as with all good original bands, what is generated tends to be a list of attributes they can discern in their own music, augmented by mine. And in due course presumably yours.
Let's just remind ourselves that this is not a complaint: if anything it's part of my recommendation & I really do urge you to listen. I imagine that they are pretty special live too (hopefully I'll be reviewing them in that capacity some time) and I gather that the four tunes selected for recording reflect crowd responses.
Their over-arching general self-identification is "a potent cocktail of noise-pop, shoegaze, surf-punk, garage and indie" which covers a fair amount of ground and gets us started. To this they add that this is further characterised "by shimmering guitars wrapped in atmospheric haze, driving rhythms, and infectious hooks that blur the lines between chaos and melody."
"spelling bee" kicks the EP off (fairly literally): they suggest it's a "garage blitz": I detect echoes of the remorseless rockabilly of The Fall too: which makes it fine to my ears.
"taylor" they feel may be "surf-inflected shoegaze" which makes sense once you hear it, though the anxious clatter tends to evoke people who may have drunk a lot of coffee or taken something else stimulating rather more than the laid back variety of surfer.
The other two songs they characterise as both being "noise-pop" which may be a euphemism for the difficulty of narrowing any description down further, but if you already have enjoyed the first half of the EP, I don't suppose you are too bothered by any more verbal commentaries: you are just into the music, and that's the main thing. That both would have slotted in on C86 is intended as high praise.
When you've enjoyed ‘lamp' you can go and see them live as they're playing at Priory Visitor Centre (LTB Showrooms) on January 30th alongside Mesch, Nuke the Whales and Huffing.
