Haydyn Britland is a long-established instigator of eclectic and exciting independent music gigs in Sheffield and Leeds. As Brainwash Promotions, through Children No More Records he is now offering a diverse compilation of tracks from the best kinds of people to have played at those events. Some of the names are well-established niche artists with their own strong profiles, some are strong contenders, just coming into their stride. The tracks include unreleased curiosities, alternative versions of existing releases and one or two tracks available elsewhere.
To listen through the whole thing in one go you do need to know the context. It's both a document of significant gigs from the recent past and a series of trailers for gigs and recordings in the future. As a sit down and listen, as a soundtrack for a party, a background while cooking or working or as a substitute for broadcast radio it doesn't really work. The wide variation and the resulting difficulties of sequencing put a lot of pressure on each track to announce and develop in its own short span. Diversity at gigs is splendid. A break and a full half hour gives an artist chance to shift an audience round to their own way of thinking. Three minutes close-packed within a parade of differences is much harder.
A listener, then, has to make a bit more effort to keep readjusting. Fairly detailed documentation might exist and would certainly help. But I haven't seen it and suspect it might not exist.
One song that does leap right out from the mix on first playback is the elegantly dumbass "Why Do They Never Play Les Savy Fav On The Radio" by JETPLANE LANDING. It's a riotous classic, stuffed with rock gobbets of many kinds. "Fleets Of Black Hovercraft Anchored In Space" by THESE MONSTERS is also a contender, but their usual ten to eleven minutes of instrumental meteorology (assisted on this track by 7 Herz) does disrupt proceedings more than is really fair. YOUTHMOVIES "Shh! You'll Wake It" does what it warns against, and, like the JETPLANE LANDING song cuts through the deeper thundering of their fellow-compiled.
PAUL MARSHALL has let slip a rather lovely song "The Horsewoman Came Home" that has not emerged by other means, and for that we should be grateful. And his quiet delivery does allow the collection to sneak PRINTED CIRCUIT in among the guitar brutalists, with her impeccably dressed electropop tune "Crosests".
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DINOSAUR PILE UP, by their name, would be giant, grinding, slow motion beasts of the plains, but they turn in a surprisingly indiepop harmony duet with nicely hesitant guitar bass and drums and a strangely pronounced "I Get My Direction" (they sing it as Dee-rection in a maddeningly catchy way). The real stoner torture actually comes from HUMANFLY on the final track that grunges on for over 17 minutes with ROSE KEMP intoning some rather twee Fantasy Fiction prose that is probably best heard for its emotional drift than it's literary merit. The track "Heavy Black Snow" will be deeply loved by many. But it doesn't do much more than parade the standard ingredients of your meat and potatoes heavy rock - all the intensity with none of the invention that would endear it to listeners beyond the "shores of oblivion" (as they intone).
The number of fervent compilations of artists you ought to know about seems to be growing so rapidly than the resulting discoveries cannot be given their due attention. This one is valuable because of its testimony to some formidable gigs and an impressive crew of devoted artists. Among them RED STARS PARADE, PULLED APART BY HORSES, VESSELS, WINTERMUTE, YEAR OF THE MAN and WE VS DEATH also appear, and each of their tracks are strong examples of their own approaches. Buying the compilation would cement your admiration for gigs and artists you were already committed to. Or it would give you a crystallised memento of a rather happy afternoon plucking favourites at random from last.fm or Myspace, on the heavy side of things more often than not
www.myspace.com/childrennomorerecords
www.myspace.com/brainwashpromotions
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