Available on the jukebox now

Admittedly this is my first taste of Sheffield natives Dark Sparks. New single “We Are Just Flies” has a claustraphobic, darkly 80′s feel to it. Think along the lines of Depeche Mode and The Cure. In fact lyrically the song reminds me of The Cure’s “Lullaby” all spider webs and nightmareish visions albeit with heavy stop start guitar riff driving the song. Recently (according to their myspace) the band have added keyboard and a extra guitar to bolster their sound. It works, the band sound tight and dynamic, the song is well produced and singer Leigh Greenwood delivers a strong vocal performance.

With “Dark Pop” seemingly gathering a following in the last few years with Interpol, Editors and more recently White Lies garnering both critical and mainstream acclaim there is no reason Dark Sparks cant go on to find their own audience. The band have already racked up an impressive list of support slots and i hope to check them out live as soon as possible.

Dark Sparks on myspace

Geoff Rogers

Katsen | Let’s build a city

Plinky, plonky electro-pop still seems the genre of choice amongst the cool kids and I’m sure Katsen’s latest offering will slot right in. ‘Let’s Build A City’, taken from the forthcoming album ‘It Hertz!’, kicks in with what sounds like a mixture of the loading music from a Commodore 64 game and a 70’s science programme. With appearances on compilations such as “Bot POP” (Happy Robots) this is probably what they take their influences from but once the dual male/female vocals begin it just becomes linear and slightly monotonous.

The duo’s vocals do work well together and the music is well layered and constructed but personally I would have liked to have seen some more interesting twists and turns and more use of dynamics to whole sound (as illustrated on other tracks on the album) Don’t get me wrong, as a 3 minute pop song it does work to some degree and is quite in-offensive, its just a bit…obvious

I’m not the biggest fan of the electronic indie pop but I feel that this just doesn’t offer anything we haven’t heard before or does anything to push the genre.

Give me Clor or early Hot Chip any day.

Katsen on myspace

Adam Nicholson

Smokers Die Younger | I spy dry fear

Available on the jukebox now

Smokers Die Younger are the newest newest cool band in town to like. They are the kind of band that your cool step sister you have feelings for rocks out to before she hits the town cruising for like-minded flannel wearing dude called Curtis. They are a hard band to define, swaying from art-rock to hardcore to grunge with a spattering of dub.

“I spy dry fear” is one of the standout tracks from their debut album “X wants the meat” it’s not particularly revolutionary music, but all the band are ridiculously young, and I can’t tell if they are being ironic or not… it’s another take your brain out triumph, an obnoxious aggressive spaz-out that sounds even more outrageous after the third or fourth listen.

Sheffield’s art-rockers Smokers Die Younger are gearing up to release their follow up to their 2006 debut “X want’s the meat” with their new self titled effort this September.

I got beat up and hospitalised after their gig in Sheffield, July 2009.

Smokers Die Younger on myspace

Bobby Techno

Skeletons – Folks at home
That Fucking Tank – Awesome magnet
the beaus – class that drives the way (doyà remix)
Goodbye Good – Success
The Thieves – the Carnival
Mount Fabric – Drop Dead Girl
Guy Honeymoon – Worse things happen at sea
Smokers Die Younger – Spy Dry Fear
Dark Sparks – We are just flies
The Unfortunate Incident – Surrounded

Wowza… check it out!
Hit the link in the right hand menu to take a listen !

Many of the bands that have donated tracks for review and inclusion on the jukebox have been kind enough to allow us to let their material be downloaded FREE.

Terms and conditions of this download are available HERE

August 2009

Click the zip icon to download a bundle of tracks kindly donated for your enjoyment… See below for featured bands

GU Medicine | Bring it to heel
Copycat Vigilante | Kill my ambition
Three Torches | Cold hard cash
Airburst | Indie kid
Skullbone | I aint never
John Fell | DC Soap (live)
Ben OFM | The nick of the time (live)
J*R | Here’s hoping
James Foy | Never had it so good>

Saucer – 5:58

Available on the _DbR_ Jukebox

“I remember every word…
every minute…
every day…”

_DbR_ welcomes old friends Saucer… With seering highs and devastating lows their songs tore clean through the be-quiffed, gold larme arrogance of the early-00s era. In their short lifetime they wrote enormous songs that carried more weight in substance than many of their out-spoken peers. Verse-Chorus-Verse-Repeat-to-fade they were not.

This song constantly sounds on edge. Like walking on broken glass, you never quite relax through the whole crushing five minutes and fifty eight seconds…

Jack Straker’s vocal, backed with, what i can only assume, is the voice of his lost love, echoes a sorry tale of a deep, maybe unrequited love. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking the song is sad though, it’s not depressing. Far from it – Like looking back through a photo album of happier times it has a resonance and romance that is, so often, uplifting.

You would need to have rhino hide for this song not to touch you in some way, on some level. The delicate, clumsy guitar is naked in the mix and sounds like ice cracking under foot – the drums and bass receive no ‘treatment’ either, leaving them exposed as if you could reach out and touch them.

A beautiful song that manages to capture girly-teenage feelings I didn’t know I still had.

Rob Che

Available on the _DbR_ Jukebox

For what feels like the umpteenth time, Doncaster mainstays Geoff Rogers and Mark West, both formerly of feedback merchants Bright Paper Werewolves and the blink-and-you-missed-it Self Destruct Sequence, have reunited.

This time Bri Waller (ex Uninvited and Former Child Star, another of West’s projects) is along for the festivities, bringing his trademark off-kilter drumming and subtle bleepy laptop effects to compliment the discordant racket that permanently eminates from Rogers and West’s amps. The noticeable – but thankfully subtle – electronic additions give Copycat Vigilante an accessible pop edge and breathe life into the traditional three-piece hardcore setup that could have otherwise sounded a tad dated. If Rogers can give his vocals the same aggressive edge as his razor-sharp guitar work, Copycat Vigilante will grow into a formidable outfit that any discerning rock fan would be a blithering idiot to miss.

Rob Malton