Northwest Music News – 29 Oct: Ill Video Premiere

Riotous Mancunian post-punks Ill premiere new video!

Fresh from storming Gorilla in support of riot grrrl pioneers Jack off Jill, and with a summer that's included festival appearances at Sounds From The Other City as well as Supernormal Festival, and a live improvised performance at Manchester Art Gallery, the mighty Ill have released their first studio recordings in over a year. Double A side ILL Song / Slithering Lizards comes out just in time for their performance supporting Lydia Lunch at Islington Mill on Halloween. The former's video – premiering below – features band members Harri Shanahan, Fiona Ledgard and Whitney Bluzma as gin-swigging doctors and nurses chasing a patient (their guitarist Sadie Noble) around a hospital-cum-asylum, the song itself tackling issues of mental health and the destruction of the NHS. It shows a group who revel in taking away the filters from their fiercely pointed social commentary, delivered brutally although with no small amount of black humour.

If ILL Song's three minute of organ-led tilt-a-whirl ferociousness has a dark joy to it though, then it's nothing compared to the monolithic Slithering Lizards, which sees the group in full meltdown mode, pushing themselves to go further and faster with each blister-inducing bar. You can download both songs from the group's Bandcamp now.

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival returns next month

Nine days of new and experimental music courtesy of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival commence on 20 Nov, with the multi-venue festival now one of the most established gatherings of experimental composition in Europe. Highlights of a programme packed full of them include The Riot Ensemble, a group dedicated to broadening the reach of classical contemporary music, who'll be presenting work by respected Polish composer Jagoda Szmytka at Bates Mill Blending Shed. Elsewhere, we'd highly recommend Swiss pianist and composer Jürg Frey, artist-in-residence for the duration of the event and whose work often takes on ambient overtones, focusing less on melody and more on the atmosphere around it. Full programme details can be found at hcmf.co.uk.

Iglooghost signs to Brainfeeder, new EP out tomorrow

You might remember us back in April extolling the mashed-up virtues of Liverpool-based Fly High Society's Fly Thai Green EP, particularly the jumped-up, scattershot electronica of teenage producer Iglooghost. The prodigy has since gone on to sign for Flying Lotus imprint Brainfeeder and drops his debut EP for them tomorrow, with the four-track Chinese Nü Yr thankfully showing that Iglooghost has relinquished none of the mischief and impulsive twists in direction that first pinballed around our heads. With Cuushe on vocal duties, Gold Coat is a case in point, although its sprawling beats undoubtedly benefit from the Japanese artist's more soft-edged tones, as a counterbalance to the madness underneath them.

Digital Crate Digging

Denim & Leather

Denim & Leather continue to excite with another two tracks available on their Bandcamp which do much as their summer 7" did, by playing it fast and furious and daring anyone to try and keep up with them. Romance is the sort of blink-and-you'll-miss-it hardcore number that grips a listener in its claustrophobic embrace from the off, while Bleeding Hands allows a little more breathing space, the group more content to ride along peaks and troughs of the track's fizzing energy.

God Colony — Where I Was (feat. Stash Marina)

With Outfit's Andrew Hunt also busy with his own solo material this year, while David Berger continues to work as a producer with the likes of Natalie McCool, time spent living in different cities has evidently proved fruitful for the Liverpool-formed group beyond their own work. Now Thomas Gorton – now London-based – has surfaced with new project God Colony, which revolves around a sound that unsurprisingly feels much more embedded in the fabric of the capital rather than the north of England. Where I Was, below, is an after-hours, atmospheric hip-hop jam featuring the vocals of Massachusetts rapper Stash Marina. 

Elsewhere on The Skinny.co.uk

Money have announced their long-awaited follow-up to their 2013 debut LP, In The Shadow of Heaven. Suicide Songs will again come out on Bella Union on 29 Jan, listen to a track from it here.

Amy Roberts headed to Sound Control in Manchester to catch 90's influenced grunge poppers Speedy Ortiz. Read her thoughts on the show here.