Their latest single, ‘Black Noise’, is more of the freakbeat-remix sensibility that BTWS pioneered on their 2008 album, Ark 1, along with a string of EPs; Birth, Spring, George and West.

Erol and Norris have gone back to the record box again, sampling The Byrds ‘Eight Miles High’ on top of the finest vocal and drum loops of the psych-garage vintage.

The release date for BTWS’ new 12” vinyl is set for May 28 on The Third Mynd Recordings. Tracklisting has been announced as:

A. Black Noise
B. Door To Tomorrow

Keep your eyes peeled on Substance.tv for more details.

In the meantime, you can listen to a preview for ‘Black Noise’ here:

A response to Rosamund Urwin, the Evening Standard hack whose article tested my rage-o-meter by cosying up to indie-pop vermin King Charles 

Dear Rosamund Urwin,

Writers whose work inspires strong feelings – whether it be love, compassion or rage – should be praised. So it is credit to you that I could only steady myself to respond to your article about King Charles in the Evening Standard after spending the month since publication shooting heroin into my eyeballs. Now that I’m feeling relaxed enough to type, let me congratulate you on writing an article that filled me with more rage than if your newspaper had hired a team of zoo keepers to hold me down while their prize rhinoceros emptied its bowels into my mouth.

There are only two possible explanations I can come up with as to why an apparently well-educated, experienced, eminent young journalist such as yourself would write such bilge:

1. Someone connected to King Charles’s father in the banking industry, i.e. one of the Standard’s editors, put a gun to your head and made you do it.

Maybe that’s the only reason I can think… wait, no, here it is:

2. The above is obviously a hyperbolic and simplified account of the multitude of factors which contribute to the shittiness of your article and my gagging response to it. The truth, as always, is more complex. But the idea that you prostituted yourself, or were simply following orders (depending on how you want to spin the old concentration-camp-guard scenario) is essentially true. So if we’re going to break your article down into its precise components of awfulness and why it enraged everyone I know who has read it, here we go:

* Your evaluations of King Charles, based mostly on the praise other people have attributed to him, shows you are unqualified to be writing about music. And it also proves, if proof were needed, that a paper’s financial desk should be kept well away from the arts pages, with cattle prods if necessary. Your evaluations are based on the artist’s current market value, rather than the quality of his art. You mention “devoted fans”; “gig venues getting bigger”; “2012 looks set to be King Charles’s year,” as though he’s a stock to be traded, not an artist to be (in this case) sneered at. And let me tell you, even if he were a stock to be traded, he’d be subprime – the kind of crap that will sink the music industry.

Your biography on the Standard website says that along with working on its City desk, you have a “fashion obsession,” which explains the totally unnecessary cataloguing of your subject’s clothes in paragraph 5: “He’s wearing skinny jeans, a cream jacket and a pale blue shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist when we meet. The shoes are vintage Fendi, left open to reveal red socks.” I nearly overdosed when I read this. Do you profile the head of the Royal Bank of Scotland by saying he’s wearing a single-breasted pinstripe suit with a starched white shirt, 100% silk blue and burgundy tie (Windsor knotted), and the finest Italian loafers a multi-millionaire can buy? No. You admire the plumage, but ignore the stench of the bird.

On the spare occasions you mention the subject’s music, it’s as though you consulted Musical Genres For Dummys: “His songs draw on many different genres: he calls his style “glam folk” but there’s Afro-beat, hip-hop and country influences, too.”

* King Charles himself is, of course, reliant of the kind of puff pieces you wrote to parachute him into the consciousness of people who don’t really like music, but sustain the industry by buying whatever gets enough plays on the radio – uncritical, mouth-breathing drones. Nobody who really likes music would give him the time of day, so he’s relying on pieces such as yours to get him into the mainstream. (And the puffery of your piece is no better highlighted than by the fact that the restaurant in which you conducted the interview is not only mentioned in the body of the text, but a link to its website is included in the photo caption.)

If anyone with a knowledge of music wrote about King Charles, he’d be like a fish in a barrel waiting to be speared. But you have swallowed every piece of spin thrown at you about his talent and uniqueness, when you should have flagged it up as bullshit. King Charles appropriates a number of genres and purées them into baby food. He mushes them up into something so polite and gooey that it becomes an insult to the musicians who operate within the genres you have associated him with. Fans of afrobeat and country music aren’t appreciative of the publicity they receive when they’re sung out by a M.O.R. guffball like King Charles, who incorporates them as a cynical P.R. manoeuvre to appear to have ‘eclectic influences’. He’s a fifth-rate industry cheeseball masquerading as a Devendra Banhart-style dandy who should be selling crystals and bath salts for a living.

* I appreciate that a business orientated paper such as the Evening Standard shouldn’t be saddled with too many expectations when it comes to music journalism or arts criticism of any sort. But as a regional newspaper which claims to ‘serve’ London, you would do well to look beyond the industry’s marquee names when informing your readers of the city’s cultural landscape. In London, there are at least five folk clubs, each with twenty singer-songwriters a hundred times more talented, passionate and deserving of your coverage. Try this guy, or this girl, or this band just for starters. You could do them and your readers a service by covering them instead of a guy whose record company can already afford billboards to advertise him. London has one of the ripest music scenes of any city in the world, so it gripes me and my peers to see my city’s only newspaper signposting its readers towards the most embarrassing people playing music in London, as though this is the best it has to offer.

* Music writing used to be a vehicle for softball approbation of big-name stars. That was in the 1950s, when music reviews looked like TV listings – informative and uncritical. If you were writing in the 1950s, your article would have served its purpose. But readers nowadays demand more from music writing. The fact that the majority of your readers probably don’t care that much about music or its criticism doesn’t matter. A writer or critic is supposed to be more knowledgeable and discerning than her readers, and has the platform to inform and educate as well as entertain. It’s an insult to people who take music seriously to read the kind of dross you contributed.

Yours Faithfully

Substance

With ‘Niggas in Paris’ of course.

There’s nothing wrong with politicians using hip soundtracks for their campaigns. Obama took the 2008 election flanked by The Boss, Beyonce, Will.I.AM, Janelle Monae and – his ace in the deck – Celine Dion.

In Britain our politicians get by using music they haven’t asked permission for. In 2010 Cameron’s Tories showed how in touch they were by using a Keane song at their manifesto launch. The band then vowed not to vote for them. I’m not sure which bit is more embarrassing, and for who.

Musicians’ endorsements have become a cringey fact of life on the 21^st-century campaign trail.

But when that campaign takes you into the French banlieue (suburbs/outskirts), the infamous inner-city neighbourhoods populated by disaffected, often angry black and Middle Eastern immigrant communities, you need to be a bit more careful with song choices. Does Hollande’s team really think bragging about his “niggas” is a wise election move?

We’ll have to wait and see if Hollande can push Sarkozy out but beware. He’s definitely not in his zone just yet.

When Saints Go Machine are more exposed but still a bit of a secret although from the look of last week’s sold out Hoxton Bar and Kitchen that will change when they release new material later this year and their next album early in 2013.

On Friday they also won an award at the Danish version of the Brits/Grammys. A sort of best newcomer/one to watch award. They therefore got to play a big TV show and you can see that performance here.

Here are links and downloads for all three bands. Listening is highly recommended.

MONEY – SO LONG

MONEY WHO’S GOING TO LOVE YOU NOW

WHEN SAINTS GO MACHINE – BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY (DOWNLOAD VIA SOUNDCLOUD)

GREAT WAVES -ARE CALLING