Hopi Allard's photographs from the mesmerising Cass McCombs show at St Mary's Old Church in Stoke Newington last month.
Cass McCombs - County Line
Gilded Sound Reflection is the musical collective of Jake McGowan (Feeding Time), Tai Thittichai and David Lane. GSR present a weekly show on NTS live that explores the plethora of recognised and unrecognised genres in a sometimes disconnected but meaningful way - all simply because of a mutual love and respect for music of all kinds.The radio show is live on Saturdays from 2pm-4pm
We have a new website dedicated to all thing GSR, all the previous shows will be archived here so you can peruse at your leisure. Make sure you go to NTS to check out all the other amazing independent sounds on the host of brilliant shows this station produces. A truly wonderful place.
We have two intimate shows coming up in conjunction with our friends at Vice to celebrate the release of Cass McCombs new album 'Wits End' which is out now through Domino. Cass is our favourite modern day songwriter and this is a total Feeding Time highlight to have him perform.
FT: So your records are my favorite late night drift off accompaniment… In a good way of course, I’m not saying it bores me to sleep or anything, more of a post-coital enhancer. What are your current favorite late night records?
SA: Great dude, Its all about straight lamping, with some weed and a record, that’s my favorite time to listen to music, midnight on your couch, my current late night records and ultimate is an African cassette tape by Mahmoud Guinia I think he is from Morroco and he plays an instrument that is like a banjo/guitar but it has these really amazing bass notes. It’s just trance music and all the percussion is hand claps and castanets and its these four tracks that are about fifteen minutes long each, and endless cyclical rhythms that make you feel like your breast stroking in to the universe, the gentlest music but the depth of field in it is so massive it takes your brain in to deep focus.
Mahmoud Guinia - Track 2 : Side 2
SALEM / Milo Cordell / Matthew Stone / Offshore & Precious Trace DJ - Russian Club Studios. All photos by Bella Howard.
No reasons and no tracklist just a ball breaking mix/dj set from our man Callum AKA D.R.U.G.S.
D/R/U/G/S - Feeding Time - Mix 0002
The Verlaines - Angela (1982)
At the age of perhaps ten or eleven, a friend and I snuck into my parents’ garage with a box of Ship Household matches, a plastic bin and some duplicate Panini stickers. Hidden in the back behind the partly assembled M.G. my dad had never got around to fully restoring, we began setting fire to the footballers’ heads and watched their faces distort into nothingness. We first placed them in the bin, but when that started to melt, we burned them between our fingers, dropping them to the floor only when they became too hot to hold. We did this secretly and for no reason other than to explore the limits of what we already knew. I can’t help but think of Flying Nun in the same way.
I don’t know if the internet makes the world smaller or bigger, or both, but secrets don’t last long anymore. Secrets almost don’t exist. In the 80s, things were different. In Matthew Bannister’s book about indiepop music, he speaks of his experiences fronting Flying Nun band Sneaky Feelings, noting the wait involved in getting hold of new music not from New Zealand. Copies of the NME took months to reach Auckland; Joy Division and Stooges albums took longer. The consequence is that music could exist in isolation and independent of whatever else was going on in the world. More excitingly still, these remote scenes also belied a common psychic network that transcended borders. How did people miles apart and with no knowledge of the other come up with the same idea simultaneously? There was something in the cosmic ether.
Based in Dunedin and a central component of Flying Nun, The Verlaines channelled the same wound-up tight power pop The Feelies were forging about the same time in New Jersey. Did they even know about each other? Maybe. Maybe not. Whereas the latter were seemingly gripped by the same Cold War concerns as fellow countrymen Devo and Talking head, The Verlaines looked inside. Hyper-literate, they name checked Edvard Munch paintings, Rimbaud and, of course, the fin de siècle poet from whom they took their name. There are perhaps more well known songs in The Verlaines ouevre, not least “Death and The Maiden”, recently covered by antipodean fetishist, Steve Malkmus. “Angela” though, taken from the watershed Dunedin Double EP, is idea ossifying, something on its way to becoming something else. They hadn’t quite found their feet with “Angela”, but those tentative first steps left big imprints.
While Flying Nun has received more recognition in recent years, it’s still likely the case that more people claim to like The Chills, The Clean and The Bats than actually listen to them. The Verlaines perhaps fair even worse. As such, “Angela” still sounds like lighting matches in a garage.
