NoNewWaveNoFun

Pop can be a dirty word to some people; especially those of us who've willingly jumped head-first onto the murky depths of Rock n' Roll's sordid waters. I'm not going to deny, I certainly had that attitude when I was younger and was obsessed by the lure of Punk Rock revisionism. Strangely though, perhaps due to some mellowing with age, Pop has become much more interesting to my ears - and seemingly - much more subversive. An artist that can be considered to be producing such subversive and interesting music is ya. ya is the work of Anna Akopyan, who is originally from Russia, but is now based in Spain. I first heard ya during the early days of the blog and was intrigued by the eclectic nature of her music; we featured her on our first  Submission Hold  section soon after.  Releasing her debut album ' CHANGE UR BODY' in January, ya has produced a new video for a track that is one of the highlights of the album:  'Movie' - it's a song that

              Vice Killer - Alone, In This World E.P I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced by the concept of an 'Addictive Personality'. I mean - I have one if you're going by the true definition - but I don't think that definition is as set in stone as it seems. I read ' The Psychopath Test ' by Jon Ronson several years ago and that provided me with the inspiration behind my thinking. In the book, Ronson explores the nature of how Psychologists score psychopathy on a spectrum on which we all score; perhaps raising the possibility that can change throughout life. Is it possible that addiction has the same type of spectrum? Why am I asking this? Well, I've just given up smoking. I haven't had a cigarette in over a month now, and if truth be told I don't miss it. The only time I'm tempted is if I have a drink and that's not a regular occurrence now either; perhaps my propensity towards addiction has shifted.  I'm probably

   Mondo Trasho - Pure Trash By now, it's entirely possible that we could of all re-written the lyrics to  Ian Dury's  sardonic classic  'Reasons to be Cheerful'  over and over again - and that's just since the turn of the year. Uncertainty has entered into our lives again just as it looked like the corner had been turned without the need to look back, new variants of Covid threaten to de-rail the full scale opening of UK P.L.C once again. For music of course, this continued alternative version of ' Groundhog Day'  could completely ruin the entire summer. Festivals are dropping one by one again, despite the successful pilot events in  Liverpool,  with the lack of tangible Insurance policies making it increasingly impossible for the independents to have a safety net to fall back on; indoor live venues watch on with baited breath. Thankfully, new music keeps coming out, whether or not it can be played live without social distancing.  Mondo Trasho 

  With their 'Live From Toad Hall' E.P arriving on June 4th, Ryan Doyle Elward  listens to the current single ' Bring Out Your Dead'  and give us his thoughts.   The latest single ' Bring Out Your Dead' from New Zealand based Horror in Clay is in many ways a shimmering memory of  My Bloody Valentine's ' Loveless' or  ' Souvlaki' by Slowdive . Steady, droning lyrics float on big and washy fuzz, finishing off with a broadcast bit that’s at once both sobering and yet further trance inducing. That’s all to say: they’ve forgotten nothing and then some in their recollection of the shoegaze-days atmospheric and that soundscape for a mind adrift. Horror in Clay confounds expectations with their new single, given that it is in such stark contrast to their 2019 self-titled E.P, which was resplendent in its bleakness. Full of tracks truly intoxicating in their unease, the album is jarring and composite, binding adjacent genres like the stitch work

Mutes - Dreams of Being Cornered This is the first review for the site from  Dan Tanswell .  Dan  is a non-binary North Walian writer living in Cardiff. They are mostly sustained by biscuits and white noise.  I haven’t written anything for a long time - I’m being honest, maybe too honest - not anything that anyone has read anyway.  I’m finding things I was good at as a kid therapeutic and the other thing is writing about music is a great way for the analytical area of the brain to get a good work out. I came at this release blind. The press pack describes Mutes as a ‘prog-punk trio’, but I was pleased to find this release leaned into the prog element of that really hard. The opener is a lo-fi Porcupine Tree- esque affair that feels like it was designed to ease us in before track 2 jolts us awake. ' Identifier'  switches between layered guitars and melodies and more distorted driving heavier riffs with ease and I wouldn't be surprised if this was the next single. It’s more

CHIHUAHUA - Violent Architecture E.P It's been a long old week here at NNWNF headquarters. I awoke on Wednesday morning feeling like I'd been run over by a truck - and not in the ultimate expression of love ' There is a light that never goes out' type way. I was drenched in sweat and had, what I can only describe, as a honking cough. It made me sound like a defensive Sealion fearing for the safety of it's young. Inevitably, I had to get myself a test to ensure I wasn't struck down by ..you know what. Thankfully, after getting my result a day later, I was negative of..you know what. The relief was tangible, but I still felt like a sack of spuds. Unfortunately, this has meant this review has taken a bit of a back burner until I felt vaguely human. The aches and pains have eased somewhat, but I'm still indiscriminately coughing up fragments of my thigh bone. Anyway, enough of my woes, let's get NOISY.  The power of noise can never be underestimated. I'm

  Frail Jonny, AKA Jonathan Wright   hails from Ashville, North Carolina and creates rich, expressive alternative pop   with multiple themes.   We got our new writer Ryan Doyle Elward to take a listen to his new E.P.   Afterlives Vol. 1 , NC artist Frail Johnny’s first major release under the moniker, begins with ‘The End of It’, by youthful vocal tones adjoined to reverb-heavy piano, where it seems to parallel for a time some of the same soft sounds and thoughtful stories found in Death Cab for Cutie’s more boyish ballads. Track one matures quickly though, taking on layers of strings mid-way and addressing ideas of impermanence. In fact, the full effect of certain elements in the first song are only felt after listening to the album in its entirety, giving the bloom of voices at the word honey - a haunting presence that comes from ruminating on painful memories. ‘ Our Secrets ’ continues that exploration of his past, highly specific and personal at first, then expanding into a

                                           COW - Notemakers There's an optimism in the air. A sense that life as we once knew it is beginning to return to some sense of normalcy. In the UK, Covid restrictions are tentatively being eased and the instruction to stay indoors to protect the NHS has been lifted. Shops are once again open and it's even possible to now go and have a beer, albeit outside a venue in limited groups. For me, it's meant the day job has now begun again and the majority of my time is no longer my own, by hey - nothing lasts forever. Live music in a venue with other people may be a little bit further down the line, but anticipation for such events is certainly starting to grow. I last went to a gig early March 2020, just as things were beginning to get that much weirder; it's almost felt like we were destined to watch live music on screens forever more since then. There's so many bands that I've developed a rapport with in the last year, that

  Kissing Party (Photo by Eric David Lough) I'm not going to go on too much about how much I've struggled to motivate myself in recent weeks - that much should be obvious by the lack of consistent content. Writer's block is a bit of a cliche, but as everyone and a Golden Salamander knows (niche Netflix Morman forgery documentary reference) - the cliches are all true. They exist for a reason and that reason is to give someone like me something to cling to or avoid like the plague; delete where applicable. What do we want? Procrastination. When do we want it? Some time next week. Something was needed to buck that trend and thankfully it was found in the most unlikely of places; well, unless you live there. Denver, Colorado is not an area of the U.S you would instantly think of as hotbed of musical creativity. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it has a plethora of talented songwriters of different genres producing great material - but it certainly doesn't get the fanfar

    Campfire Social (Photo by Holly Mason) It's the third month of Lockdown here in the UK and the seemingly never-ending nature of it all has had effects of all of us. I'm sick to the back teeth of talking about it, but here goes:  Personally, I've found this one tougher than I expected. Being stuck in without much interaction at the height of winter is not what we're wired to do as Human Beings; I could feel my mental health grasping at straws. In February, I got approached by a well known Music review site to join their ranks, before realising it's model charged bands and artists to get reviewed and paid it's reviewers for little more than a few lines of good copy - In effect, payola. The fact I considered it, if only for a couple of days, did not help.  It got to the point a couple of weeks ago where I found myself on the brink of pulling the plug on this blog entirely. Something I started as a means to sharing music I love had become yet another

Is it that time of month already? Apparently so! It sneaks up so quickly on us all, I swear time gets shorter the older you get - not that I have much concept of time these days. I don't know about you, but the only reason I know it's still February is that Valentine's Day was recent and my Birthday is round the corner (*Note* It's early March for fans of buying vinyl records as presents for people they don't know..). It's not a particularly important Birthday this year in terms of it being a nice round number or a signifier of life beginning, as the last one was. Showing my age they eh? Own it Stephen.. OWN IT! Anyway, enough of the kind of middle-aged rambling usually reserved for a  LCD Soundsystem single - let's get on with the good stuff. Submissions Hold is our monthly section highlighting four of the best submissions received by the blog or that we stumbled upon during our adventures in sound. Last month we had a wonderfully mixed bag fr