Northwest Music News: I Hate My Records, Liverpool Music Week + more

New Music from I Hate My Records

One of those delicious instances of an act totally new to us who completed bolted us out of our browse-and-play semi-stupour, Manchester-based three-piece Werk feel like they're playing pinball with our heads on a pulsating debut EP Wk. 1, out on tiny DIY label I Hate My Records, of which two of them run. There's not been too much like this within the city for quite some time; you could perhaps link them to the dissonant, industrial experimentation of artists and labels coming out of Islington Mill, such as Tesla Tapes, Sam Weaver and Swaggerjack, but there's a much more direct punk sensibility to what they're doing, the group picking you up by the lapels and slamming you repeatedly against a wall in the manner of Nine Inch Nails at their most visceral, or Health at their most atonal. It's thrilling, in short.

Listen to the full EP here.

Liverpool Festival News

With sets from the likes of Mogwai, Wild Beasts, Caribou and Evian Christ last year, Liverpool Music Week set itself some benchmark to surpass. However, they've got off to a mightily impressive start for 2015, by announcing Canadian behemoths Godspeed You! Black Emperor as this year's headliners. The prophetic rock visionaries will play Camp and Furnace on Tues 27 Oct, their first ever show in Liverpool. 

Something coming up much sooner is the final FestEVOL at The Kazimier, the traditional showcase of local music by regional promoter EVOL. Taking place across two dates on consecutive weekends, Sat 1 Aug sees Dave McCabe & The Rammifications top a bill including Veyu, Sundowners and Silent Sleep. We're more interested in the second weekend though if we're honest, with the psych pop of Strange Collective and the Talk Talk-influenced Gulf playing alongside headliners All We Are.  

Capac reveal new video

They were featured in last month's 20 tracks you might have missed column, and now Capac have released a new video for their eerie, amorphous string-laden interlude Lark Lane. The group — formed in Liverpool but now split all over the place, as well as now featuring Nedry's Matt Parker — have put out the video in celebration of the vinyl release of their new record Sea Breeze, an atmospheric listen of film score grandeur offset by more nuaned electronic experimentation.

Digital Crate Digging

Duds — Ambassador's Delight

Remember Mistoa Poltsa? They were ace and we featured them in late 2013, before they lapsed into silence. As it turns out, though, two of them, front man Mark Javin and Robin Edwards, have been working on something new, something that shares the tilt-a-whirl acid-tinged delirium of that other group, but distills it into a collection of searing two-minute garage rock ragers that tap into the protopunk spirit of The Stooges and The Cramps.

Akasa — 77 Hours of Confusions

Techno producer Akasa has uploaded the first track on her Soundcloud in about eight months and it's a bubbling, barely contained piece of energy, constantly opening up frissions as it continues to build and coalesce over seven high-tempo minutes.

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James Booth — Flora (100% Silk)

Picked up by 100% Silk a couple of years ago, Manchester-based producer James Booth had a quiet 2014, following the release of hypnagogic house tape Reunion. However there's been a flurry of activity this year, including this track, which popped up recently on 'Silk collection Sunset Silk. Although still possessed with a sense of late night wooziness, there's a harder line to Flora and a more minimalist, beat-driven approach that takes on more of a mainland European techno bent.