Lick Online - Demo Reviews

>> Random acts of intimacy
>> Captains of Industry

Those with a bit more than basic conversational Spanish may stop and furrow their brow when picking up this album. Apparently, Sucioperro is dago for ‘dirty bitch’. The things you learn! But what do we know of this Ayrshire quartet already? We know that they are from Ayrshire and are made up of four individuals (without going too far out on a limb you’ll notice). And that “Random Acts of Intimacy” is their debut album. What else is there to know? That eleven very excellent songs can indeed be crammed into a mere 36 minutes? That 36 minutes is a frustratingly short amount of time for an excellent album? That an album such as “Random Acts” is the reason that Hi-fi manufacturers created the ‘repeat all’ function on CD players? These are all valid points.

Put simply, it’s a fucking brilliant offering from Sucioperro, especially the singles ‘Dialogue On The 2’ and ‘The Drop’. Many listeners may draw hasty comparisons with fellow Ayrshire noisemakers Biffy Clyro, and it would be impossible to dispute this comparison; much of sucioperro’s sound is similar to that of the Biff (see tracks such as ‘Wolf Carnival’ and ‘Tem V Com’). But thrown in are sweet mixtures of melodies and harmonies akin to Jimmy Eat World; riffs with huge bollocks taken straight from the Rage against the machine school of testicular fortitude; even some shades of Silverchair and Idlewild influence creep in here and there. Sucioperro wear their influences on their collective sleeves whilst retaining a unique sound, combined with skillful songwriting which sees flawless shifts of musical gears, from the urgent and thumping explosion-in-your-face opening of ‘I Don’t Hate It, I Accept It’, to sweet and soulful acoustic nice-fest of ‘Apathy = Inaction’.

I don’t see any good reason for anyone not owning this album. Sucioperro have made themselves one of the most impressive yet understated jewels in the much-admired Scottish music crown.

>> A.J Hazely

www.sucioperro.com
www.myspace.com/sucioperro

>> EP

This is proper music. Not proper indie music, or pop music, or rock music; it’s pure and perfectly formed MUSIC: something you don’t often get the chance to listen to these days!

Bricolage has kept things short and sharp on this two-track ep. Opener ‘Footsteps’ - now in the running for my single of the year – is a sharp and perplexingly angular little blighter, it bursts out of the speakers with a sophisticated jollity. The guitars are tripping over themselves with ideas; the lyrics are rye and the rhythm trips along at a merry old rate. Likened to Orange Juice (and in my opinion sharing the sensibilities of Gang of Four and Talking Heads), Bricolage has melody and ingenuity in abundance.

Second track ‘Flowers of Deceit’ maintains the incredibly high standard set by ‘Footsteps’ and there’s no need to say any more than that. When this band inevitably takes the festival scene by storm over the summer it’s the riff from ‘…Deceit’ the punters will be whistling on the way back to the tent.

When this record is released in late June it should be labelled ‘Double A-side’ rather than ‘EP’; it is THAT GOOD.

Bricolage EP is released on June 26th 2006.

>> Russell Moore

www.myspace.com/bricolagetheband

>> Luss
>> Tromolo Records

June sees the release duo Quinn's second studio album. Released on their own Tromolo Records( if any of you are familiar with kooky club night Tromolo, Quinn are the brains behind it!), Luss is a beautiful escape into the imagination, with elements of pop, blues, jazz and electronica all fusing together to create something unique and refreshing.

Singer Louise's voice is enchanting and captivating and draws you into a place where you can forget about the world around you. Produced by French DJ supremo Kid Loco, and co-produced by Quinn themselves, Luss is a mighty follow-up to first album In-between Worlds, which featured the likes of Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos on guitar.

Quinn produce a style that oozes longevity and class. They are one of these bands that will appear, and have appeared on indie film scores and are so effortlessly cool that legends like Bill Wells want to work with them.

First track Astronauts, the current single, is a powerful opening to the CD and is build around blissful vocal harmonies and programmed drum loops whilst Slow-motion Smile is an uplifting acoustic ballad. A beautiful arrangement of flutes, violins and guitar makes it a perfect anthem for the summer.

What The Thunder Said… is packed with jangling tambourines and echoing vocals, complimenting funky guitar riffs and the occasional burst of sax and trombone thrown on for good measure.

The whole album has a breezy, summery feel to it and has a feel-good factor that would lift your mood on the harshest of days.

A timeless classic, you could listen to this for years to come and never grow tired of it. Definitely one of the best, if not the best releases I have heard this year.

>> Alana Cooper

Interview:

Lick: Hello! Very good to meet you. Can you tell me a bit more about you’re new album? Out very soon I believe?
Louise Quinn: Yeah very soon.
Bal Cooke: Yeah, the 5th of June it’s out although it was pushed back a little bit. Originally it was supposed to be out in May but it was actually recorded about 2 years ago. It was maybe going to be released through a few other Scottish indie labels but things kinda fell through and that knocked things back a little. Also the mixing was done in France and that took longer than anticipated so it almost feels quite old to us now.

Lick: Worth the wait though?
BC: Oh yeah definitely. We’re really pleased it’s finally coming out. In the mean time we’ve recorded another record which we’ll probably release next year sometime.

Lick: And are going to tour on this album?
BC: Yeah we’ll probably just do Scotland and London – I don’t really know if we’ll be able to fit in the kinda in-between places.
LQ: Notting Hill Arts centre and Cargo and places like that as well and we might do some in-store stuff too.

Lick: I understand that it’s just the two of you in the ‘band’ as such, but there are loads of people playing on the record! How did you meet so many folk?!
BC: When we made this record it was just the two of us and we hadn’t played live in quite a long time so when we were making the record and playing live we just kind of pulled people in as we needed then you know and sort of built up the album from the basics. Since then, we’ve got a full band now of 4 sometimes 5 people. We also started doing our own club night called club Tromolo and that’s how we met a lot of people.

Lick: Where was the club night held?
BC: It used to be the Buff Club but it’s now in the Oran Mor.

Lick: That’s a great venue to have a regular night!
BC: Yeah it’s great venue.
LQ: The sound’s amazing and it’s really good for club Tromolo because we have quite a theatrical element to it. Cabaret and performers and stuff.

Lick: It doesn’t sound like your average club night!
BC: No not at all is very different from that.
LQ: Yeah it’s very surreal.
BC: Because we were doing that and we had a band with us, we were kind of making music for drunken people to dance too so the next record will definitely have a more up-tempo feel to it.

Lick: I’m really looking forward to hearing the stuff done live. Especially if you can get all these instruments!
BC: Well yeah we have had to adapt a lot of the songs for playing them live but it’s been really interesting and quite a challenge to do that. Our guitarist had to pull out of some London shows because he was getting married and had a few other things going on so we had to strip the stuff down even further.
LQ: Our guitarist met a Serbian girl last year when we were touring Serbia after we had a surprise top 10 hit there

Lick: Excuse me?!!!
LQ: Yeah it was just totally mad because the Serbian charts are compiled from Airplay rather than sales and this Dj had downloaded the World Is Upside Down and started playing it and we got this email in October 2004 saying that we’d reached number 18! At first we were like ‘Ok – which one of friends is taking the piss here’ but it turned out to be genuine and it eventually got to number 8. Then they asked us to tour over there and that’s how Charlie [the guitarist] met Sandra. They’re actually getting married today.

Lick: Today? That’s fantastic. A Lick exclusive then! What was the tour like over in Serbia then?
LQ: Totally Crazy. I mean Belgrade is really sophisticated capital city you know…
BC: Yeah it was a great gig.
LQ: There were people coming from Poland and stuff.
BC: News crews and film crews – it was really weird! Because the Refract festival is like an Arts festival that’s just getting off the ground over there and in a way it’s like small Edinburgh festival.
LQ: They had people like John Spencer Blues Explosion playing and Mathew Herbert as well, but for some reason I think it caught the people imagination that this track had been downloaded and we even got interviewed by the Serbian Carol Smiley! But when got down to the south of the country that was really wild – absolutely beautiful but it was strange because no band had played there for like 7 years and no band from outside of Serbia had played there ever. About 400 people turned up but the guy said that it should have been more but nobody believed him that a Scottish band was coming over. They love Scottish music as well too like Camera Obscura and Aberfeldy and all these other Scottish bands.

Lick: What was the reason that no bands had played there if they are totally in to Scottish music?
BC: It’s basically just very, very remote and quite close to Kosovo and stuff which has been pretty much a no-go zone for a while and maybe a lot of bands still have that image of a kind of war zone. They were dead keen to have us though and couldn’t afford to pay us or anything but put us up in a wooden almost Alpine chalet which was amazing and they really looked after us.

Lick: You’ve worked with some other folk as well; Alex Kapranos is one who featured on the first album. Was that a one-off or do you still keep in touch?
BC: Well it’s funny because we hadn’t actually seen him for like 3 years and then there was an article in the paper saying stuff like...
LQ: Yeah it was a bit of a stitch up – saying stuff like ‘You kicked Alex out for you band’ and stuff because he played with us for 2 years but it just didn’t happen like that at all we got a text message from him saying that he saw the article and loved it and thought we came across really well and he even came out on the guitarists stag do last Saturday which was really good of him.
BC: It was a nice up-shot of that after seeing this tabloid article and then coming out for a drink. He’s still really good friends with Charlie and hadn’t seen him in ages. I think he’s only had like 2 weeks off in the last 3 years so it was good to se him again. He’s exactly the same person but its funny seeing how other people react to him now because he wasn’t famous when we last saw him.

Lick: So what are the plans for the next few months then with the album out?
BC: Hopefully we’ll get some more dates over the summer but we’re going to do T on the Fringe and Wickerman and stuff. The stage we’re playing at Wickerman is really cool because there’s loads of Scottish bands playing so it’s definitely they place to hang out.

Lick: Thanks for you’re time and here’s you’re LickMag.com quick-fire questions:

Scotland or England?
LQ: Scotland
Kylie or Danni?
Kylie
Big or Small?
Big
Acoustic or Electric?
Acoustic
Ghostbusters 1 or Ghostbusters 2?
Ghostbusters 1
T in the Park or Glastonbury?
Glastonbury
Cats or Dogs?
Cats
Smoke or Drink?
Drink
Simpsons or Family Guy?
Family Guy
7 inch or 12 inch?
7 inch
Vinyl or mp3?
Mp3
Beard or moustache?
Beard
Watching a Ben Affleck film or killing yourself?
Ha! Killing yourself!
The Office or Phoenix Nights?
LQ: Phoenix Nights I would say, although you [BC] would pick the office wouldn’t you?
BC: Well no these are you’re questions! Just put me down for the other option every time!