Warmest Chord

The Great Escape

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:14:38 -0400

Getting excited about being beside the seaside for the musical onslaught that is The Great Escape festival that kicks off tomorrow.

We will certainly be hot footing it over to see the oddball psychedelic art pop mastery of Django Django.

Think a youtube comment to this video sums this song up great… “swings like a braless boob”. We couldn’t agree more.

The Outsider

Mon, 07 May 2012 20:21:30 -0400

We are obviously big lovers of music but sometimes there is no substitute for losing yourself in the pages of a great book. This man, Mr Colin Wilson has been keeping us in good company this evening…

The Outsider created quite a stir when published in 1956. Written at the age of 24, Wilson offers up ideas on human alienation and the idea of the ‘Outsider’. A purposefully disjointed read, he plunders the works of a number of seminal authors including Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Hemingway, Hesse and Wells and references their characters to illustrate his ideas.

Written in the Reading Room at the British Museum and during a time when Wilson was often forced to sleep rough on Hampstead Heath, he was promptly herded up with the likes of Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing and Kingsley Amis, a new generation of writers daubed ‘Angry Young Men’.

For a truly unique voice speaking across sociology, psychology, spirituality and being lost in modern society, we have a lot to learn from Wilson’s The Outsider. Some wonderfully left field ideas lie in it’s pages… he suggests creating your own religion and reinventing your spirituality to fend off the malaise and discontent in existence. We are working on it!

Now going to go and put on something really really noisy and precocious. Yeh!

Peel Acres

Sun, 06 May 2012 18:28:09 -0400

Oh how we’ve missed the familiar tone of John Peel emanating from the radio and educating us in the ways of the musical universe.

But for all those curious Peelites out there, the ultimate in virtual voyeurism has arrived. The BBC and Arts Council have launched a joint digital cultural archival space which includes replicating Peel’s immense and fastidiously filed record collection. It’s being released in segments, the first 100 of each letter at a time.

Surely the best music reference library you could possibly want… thank you John Peel x

http://thespace.org/content/s000004u/albums/

Another Reason To Be Cheerful (pt 3)..

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:55:00 -0400

A great new label and a great new band have joined forces and are spawning a first release for both band and label this coming Monday.

We highly recommend that you keep your eyes and ears peeled for this double A-side vinyl from I Ching. Released on new ‘more-enthusiastic-than-a-14-year-old-with-a-sunny-d-habit’ label Best Fit Recordings.

Ooo and a lovely little live session with them here- http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2012/04/watch-i-ching-its-me-best-fit-session/

Recorded at the institution that is Rowan’s Bowling Alley in Finsbury Park no less.

A Brave New World

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:24:15 -0400

The Vinyl Williams Ultimate World screen print and digital EP is hatched!

Journey to the outer edges with him in his psychotropic video for Chroma Heart.

Lie back and enjoy xxx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Th6HGIodY

Pure X and Spacemen 3 Copulate

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:04:20 -0400

Vinyl Williams wants to space you out…

http://www.dummymag.com/mixes/2012/03/29/dummy-mix-115-vinyl-williams/

Song Of The Day...whoop whoop!

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:19:36 -0400

http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2012/03/vinyl-williams-teal-palm-song-of-the-day-420-best-fit-premiere/

The Effulgent Aura Of Guardian Love

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:03:18 -0400

The folks over at the Guardian officially warn that you may feel a little ‘intoxicated’ by Vinyl Williams…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/mar/21/new-band-vinyl-williams

Vinyl Williams Pick 'n' Mixtape

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:41:00 -0400

Vinyl Williams has kindly crafted an hour-long mixtape with all manner of old, new and unusual tracks for your ears. The playlist is for everyone who purchases the Ultimate World EP screen print release (released on April 9th but available to pre-order).

Here’s a little taster of one of the tracks to grace it…

Enjoy xxx

[WC3] VINYL WILLIAMS Ultimate World

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 03:05:00 -0400

&amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://warmestchord.bandcamp.com/album/ultimate-world” data-mce-href=”http://warmestchord.bandcamp.com/album/ultimate-world”&amp;amp;gt;Ultimate World by Vinyl Williams&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

Contains four exclusive new tracks + two bonus tracks.

Packaged with a striking 4-colour CMYK screenprint depicting a refracted world where chaos is ordered, mysticism runs free and fathers and sons sit atop hills smoking in the fresh air.

Vinyl Williams is a 21 year old musician & artist based in LA.

Ultimate World
1. Teal Palm
2. Chroma Heart
3. Magic Jungle
4. Real Life (exclusive track with screen print purchase)
5. Higher Worlds (bonus track with screen print purchase)
6. Stellarscope (bonus track with screen print purchase)

BUY ITEM

The new limited edition release from Warmest Chord includes a striking 4-colour CMYK print on Heritage paper courtesy of artist & musician Vinyl Williams. Featuring a cacophany of colour, life and energy, the stamped and numbered screen prints are limited to just 100.

Included in the limited edition release Ultimate World is an immediate download of a 6-track EP from newcomer Vinyl Williams in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.

Three tracks from the EP (Teal Palm, Chroma Heart & Magic Jungle) are available to download separately but the fourth and two bonus tracks (Real Life, Higher Worlds & Stellarscope) are only available with purchases of the screen print.

Each purchase of the limited edition Ultimate World release also includes an exclusive mixtape lovingly cherry-picked by Vinyl Williams.

Vinyl Williams

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:20:00 -0400

With spring on our doorstep, Warmest Chord have the pleasure to release Ultimate World, a six-track EP and limited screen print release from the wonderful Vinyl Williams. A craftsmen of both image and sound, he is otherwise known as LA-based, 21-year old Lionel Williams.

The music of Vinyl Williams is not easy unassuming music to ponder your lot to. It is not music to be played ‘in the background’. His songs do not have their feet firmly on the ground. Instead they spill and soar, with layer upon layer of cascading kraut jams, walls of noise and atmospheres that thicken with delicious melody and oracular vocals.

He writes with an energy that emanates from the dawn of the very first sound that you hear. It courses through space rock jams that give way to waterfalls of blissed out tremelo and infinite prisms of sonic intensity. This isn’t song writing, this is deep sea diving, space exploration, astral projection. There are no guidebooks issued here.

It seems that Vinyl Williams’ intention is just that. To transport. For this he embeds himself into long hours of solitude and saddles up his imagination. He invites and welcomes the listener in, his intention to elevate the spirit and to envelop. Tellingly he chooses not to over think the structure and composition beforehand, instead he prefers to follow his own musical intuition like a hungry animal onto the smell of a fresh kill. This is explorative song writing; brave, bold and expansive.

Play the Ultimate World EP as it was meant to be heard, as one free-flowing composition that reinforces the feeling that you are embarking on a journey, travelling. You start somewhere and end up somewhere very very different. There’ll be bracken at your feet, leaves caught in your hair and you swear you can hear a parakeet somewhere off in the distance.

Just as his music has a very vivid aestheticism, he creates similarly expressionistic worlds in his collage and video work. The Ultimate World screen print is a cacophony of colour, life and energy. He layers, builds and creates an epic fantasy realm strewn with mysticism and religious iconography. An almost sacred place where there is only optimism and the open arms of possibility.

The Vinyl Williams Ultimate World release is a welcome departure from the norm. Six free radical songs that sing of adventure, and a piece of collectible screen printed art. Both born from a fertile and psychedelic other world where intuition finally out-runs rationality.

We care not that we sound like tripping hippies coming up, come visit the land of Vinyl Williams…

Valerie

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:10:32 -0500

I marvelled at the album artwork before I heard the music, listened to the wondrous music before I watched the film and now finally I’ve watched Valerie and Her Week Of Wonders.

Made in 1970 by Czech director Jaromil Jire the film was based on a novel with the same name written in 1935 by Vitezslav Nezval.

Aesthetically beautiful and alarming in equal measures, it’s a wonderfully weird blend of erotic horror-fantasy that tells of a young woman’s coming of age amongst rampant priests and preying vampires. Fairytales and horror stories are twisted into a surreal tale where fear, love, sex and religion fight with bare fists (and breasts for that matter!)

The soundtrack is partially scored by the brilliant Lubos Fisher. The equally brilliant and ever-mining for gold label Finders Keepers released it in 2006. Heavily referenced by bands including the great Broadcast, it is utterly beautiful and spellbinding.

Savages

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:02:25 -0500

Fuck reverb-soaked female vocals lost in meadows of dreamy soundscapes (just for a minute if you please). Smell the pits of Savages instead…

With no tracks online as yet, this footage is taken from one of their first shows, back in January at The Shacklewell in London.

With a frontwoman like Jehnny Beth, here is visceral goth pop you can believe in.

Octopus

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:27:00 -0500

Regular visitors (oh how we neglect thee!) may be aware that we love, love, love, Micah Lidberg. Not solely for the fact his fauna-filled mind is responsible for our deep blue Treehouse Politics print, but mainly because in the land of the 2 handed illustrator Micah Lidberg is an octopus.

Here’s a sneak peak into his world…

Hugo & Marie Presents: An Interview With Micah Lidberg from hugoandmarie on Vimeo.

Antidote To Christmas

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 13:18:13 -0500

If you’re already sick of the Christmas cheer and Mariah sing-alongs then we suggest this as the perfect Christmas enema.

White Hills; exquisitely designed to sodomise your senses.

http://www.thrilljockey.com/artists/?id=12183

Dance Macabre

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:46:36 -0500

A new discovery…

Michael Garrick

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:11:15 -0500

RIP the wonderful Michael Garrick

Stay Curious

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:03:03 -0400

We’ve been meaning to post about this beautiful feast for the senses that goes by the name of Kuriosas for some time now. Penned by an old friend (who I hold responsible for many of the best introductions that I’ve had in life), this is one highly recommended companion for anyone who deems themselves curious.

Run by a London/ Berlin collective of artists and designers, Kuriosas reads like a mindmap of thoughts and finds lovingly hunted and gathered from near and far. There are all manner of visual and aural delights to explore, from vintage illustration and book covers, Eastern European ephemera, kitsch 20th century design, photography and more, all foraged from their adventures, whether that be a chance encounter at a Polski service station or a cold fleamarket in Berlin.

No art and culture snobbery here, this is a show and tell of the most open-armed exuberance…expect the likes of jumping gnomes, felt tip artworks, and Soviet Union children’s books, it all makes for great fertiliser of the imagination.

We especially love this lady snapped by Ali Winstanley of the collective, when chanced upon at a service station in Katowice, Poland on-route to the Off Festival. What a wonderful geometrically adorned woman!

I Ching

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:37:27 -0400

We don’t know what we like the most… the video montage of monochrome women with flashing red lips or the sophisticated pop sounds of Drive.

With an emphasis on sound and texture and with guitar hooks as lyrically heavy as the words, London-based band I Ching excite us.

http://iching.bandcamp.com/

Never Fall In Love With A Musician

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:46:07 -0400