Monthly Archives: January 2010

The Smoking Hearts have stormed out of rural England, unleashing a whirlwind combination of relentless punk rock and cutting rock’n’roll.

With debut album ‘Pride Of Nowhere’, the band deftly call upon their arsenal of screaming vocals, ruthless guitars and thunderous beats. The resulting effect is 13 ferocious blasts that shout out loud “be who you want to be”. ‘Pride Of Nowhere’ is a record full of anger and frustration at a world that demands conformity and mindless ritual. It tells the story of five reprobates who like to have fun, rock out, and have a good time all the time. Taking digs at the common work environment “we hope you all choke on your nine to five”, and former loves “looks like The Ritz but she’s The Bates Motel”, The Smoking Hearts also highlight their philosophies of life with lyrics like “We’ll raise a toast to the ones that hate us most”.

Recorded on a farm in Bedfordshire with Nick Mailing (Quireboys/Trashlight Vision) and Mastered by Russ Russell (Napalm Death/The Wildhearts) over the course of just 14 days (and nights), this 13 song opus clocks in at a frantic 29 minutes and 25 seconds.

“It’s about doing what you want and not taking shit for doing so” says Bassist Calvin. “So many people are happy to live their lives without ever stopping to consider whether they are doing what they really want to do, or if they are just content to become their parents and grow old gracefully. Fuck that.”

Graceful is definitely not a word to describe The Smoking Hearts. Live shows have seen guitar headstocks smashed and drum kits sprawled across stages. It is not uncommon to find half the band on the floor with the crowd and, on occasion, half the crowd on stage with the band.

In their short career as a band, The Smoking Hearts have travelled thousands of miles, opening shows for the likes of Gallows, Bring Me The Horizon, Winnebago Deal and The Supersuckers, as well as some iconic acts such as Misfits and Skid Row.

In the not too distant past… Peter-John got evicted from his Toronto apartment and landed on the couch of producer DJ Cirkut. Armed with his guitar, backpack and skateboard, it was here that the first chapter of Let’s Go To War was written.  After weeks of saying, “we should hook up and work on some tracks”, they finally collaborated and wrote a handful of songs in a matter of days, which resulted in a creative experience sweeter than a mouthful of cotton candy.  ‘Life We Live’ is the hedonistic club anthem that will bring any party to a climax.

The combination of the band’s influences and shared musical sensibilities gave birth to a unique sound not easy to classify by even the most outspoken of music bloggers. Citing Bob Dylan, Outkast, Daft Punk, Alan Parsons Project, Herbie Hancock and Jay-Z as inspiration, the band was galvanized into refusing to be pigeonholed. It is this unwillingness to compromise their music or pacify the pimps of the genre biz that finally evoked the freedom cry, “Let’s Go To War”. It is reactionary. It is your revolution invitation delivered to your door courtesy of groove freedom fighters, LGTW, who are only willing to describe their music as “digital confusion”.

LGTW are a virtual Jackson Pollock of multiculturalism. Their backgrounds are a colorful canvas of Jamaican, Irish and Welsh. To them, as in life, the boundaries that delineate genre and sound have become blurred and obscured. Hip-Hop, Electro, Reggae and Folk have all been blended into a potent hybrid that takes a little essence from each style of music and crosses and cultivates it into something new and exotic. It is on this fertile field that LGTW breathes easily and runs freely outside the confines of characterization and comparison.

With production for Britney Spears and remixes for The Music, The Whip and The Carps (to name a few) already under their belt, Let’s Go To War release their debut album in 2010 and are poised to take over minds and bodies quicker than L. Ron Hubbard (without firing a shot!). Let’s Go To War. Call it Electro, call it Punk, call it Hip Hop, call it Crunk. It don’t matter, because it ain’t callin’ you in the morning! So push your indie bangs out from your face, tie up dem dreads and DANCE!

About Last Gang: LGTW marks the first European self release of a label that has become synonymous with the most ground breaking electronic influenced North American artists who made it big in the UK: Metric, Death From Above 1979, MSTKRFT and Crystal Castles had all been licensed out to European labels, now LAST GANG are taking things into their own hands!

“Dutch masters Noisia show their production expertise with a hard hitting smash. Watch out for Noisia in 2010.” Chase&Status

“Noisia come with the precision tuned aural assault, one of the greatest production outfits of our time.” Andy C

Noisia have undoubtedly created a cult following in recent years thanks to: underground hits like ‘The Tide’, ‘Gutterpump’ and ‘Exodus’ – various high profile remixes for the likes of Moby and The Prodigy – a critically acclaimed mix compilation for Fabric – and a DJ-ing schedule that makes you feel tired just looking at it! That following is expected to multiply in 2010 as the outfit release their debut long-player ‘Split The Atom’.

Widely known and acclaimed for their drum&bass prowess, the 128 bpm track ‘Machine Gun’ may come as a surprise to some, not so much a pleasant surprise, more like a surprise that will make you jump! ‘Machine Gun’ is a veritable aural attack, guaranteed to blow you away. From the anthemic introduction to the explosive drop, ‘Machine Gun’ is 4 minutes and 8 seconds of speaker ripping, beat heavy bliss that will more than whet your appetite for their ‘Split The Atom’ long-player.