Landfill’s second single, ‘Solid Gold’, is poetic atonement and an earnest salute to their good friend and now manager – subject of less than complimentary number ‘Mister Fragile’ from former incarnation Underground Heroes in 2012 – cloaked in an exhilarating, high-speed indie rock tour de force.
Shifting up a couple gears from debut single ‘Mutiny’, the tune bears it’s teeth with screeching, angular guitar and a sincere outpouring of admiration to a pal.
If you missed it before, be sure to check out our interview with Landfill from Monday, complete with a bunch of dates where you can catch the band live.
‘Solid Gold’ is out TODAY, Friday 11th March, RIGHT NOW, on all the usual online outlets, so buy it or give it a stream.
By rights ‘Black Tar’s hi-velocity drum beat and pulsating bass should be backing some sweaty hardcore punk track, but Pit Pony have taken that blueprint and flipped it over by casting in a wailing guitar riff and frontwoman Jackie Purver’s vocals that drift from impassive to passionate-as-fuck over the space of mere seconds, creating a bristly, industrial fuzz-rock tribute to debilitating but vincible anxiety in the process.
Newcastle-Upon-Tyne’s Pit Pony release ‘Black Tar’, their first new music since 2020, as their debut single on Leeds label Clue Records. The group have played a load of support shows over the past six months with IDLES and LIFE and head back out on a UK tour in April.
You can check out the video for ‘Black Tar’ below:
“Don’t watch the news, stay off your phone and come to a Landfill gig!”
August 2021 saw the release of Landfill’s debut single ‘Mutiny’, a sparky indie-punk anthem for the COVID age, and this Friday the Medway gents are venturing out again with follow-up banger ‘Solid Gold’. Given the opportunity to find a bit more out about the band, Edge of Arcady fired over some interview questions to frontman Aaron Dollimore and he was good enough to bash back some answers. Enjoy!
Hello Landfill, how do we find you today and who exactly are we speaking to? Hi Edge of Arcady, it’s Aaron from the band. I’m well thank you. It’s 5.30 on a Saturday morning and I’m making the most of my early start.
Your debut single Mutiny was a take down of Brexit and the current government. What do you make of them at the moment? Mutiny was more a tongue in cheek poke at our current government and its leader, written in the first lockdown two years ago. It wasn’t really a take down of Brexit, just an observation of the absolute shit show they put on for us with the handling of the whole COVID situation. Every time I think the song loses relevance, Boris and Co step up and bring new meaning to the song.
On the topic of current affairs, have you got any views on the current state of the world – Russia, Putin etc etc? The situation in Ukraine is horrific and unimaginable. Putin is a tyrant, evil personified. What else is there to say? It’s heartbreaking.
What can you tell us about the other tracks on the Mutiny single – Where You Belong and Memory Lane? Where You Belong is the second song I wrote for Landfill and (like some other landfill songs) is a follow up to a song I wrote as a teenager. Memory Lane is loosely about an old friend who I hadn’t seen for a while. It didn’t take long to write and I didn’t think it was that good when I finished it.
Your new single, Solid Gold, is a total belter and due for release next Friday, 11th March. Can you tell us a bit more about it? Solid Gold is another “sequel”. I wrote a not so complimentary song about our band manager and friend, Dean Fragile, when I was 19. Fast forward a few years and Dean is now managing us again. It was only right that we record a follow up. An apology if you like.
Landfill are largely comprised of ex-members of 00s Medway legends Underground Heroes, I believe. What happened with Underground Heroes and how did Landfill form? Underground Heroes had a great run and accomplished more than we ever set out to, but ran its course. We didn’t want to keep flogging a dead horse and decided to call it a day. Landfill came about after I played an acoustic gig at the Albion Rooms. I met Jev (bass player) there and his attitude and energy was brilliant. Joe (drummer), George (guitar) and I have played together since UH and regularly meet up and play music. I text Jev to see if he fancied coming along to a Jam and here we are now…. Landfill.
It’s still early days but what are the band’s top moments so far? We’ve done a few recording sessions at the Albion Rooms in Margate which was great. Such a cool vibe down there and the studio is fucking awesome. As was the food and hospitality. Great place. Top moment really though was playing our first gig. We’d rehearsed the songs for over a year, but obviously with COVID, was unable to get out and play. We finally played our first gig in Oct last year and was so much better than we imagined. A lively crowd, awesome venue and even had some people singing the words back. That was definitely a highlight.
What are Landfill inspired by? Artists, bands, or anything else? Anything really. The everyday, real life and current affairs inspire our music I guess. We want to bring back some energy to guitar music again. The world is lacking some new, ballsy guitar bands – can I say ballsy? Maybe gritty. Music wise, we listen to a broad spectrum of artists; Deftones, Jimmy Eat World, The Clash, The Specials, Dave, JME, The Jam, Arctic Monkeys, QOTSA.
What is happening on the Medway music scene at the moment? Are there any new artists from Medway that we should be getting into? There’s a young blues band called the Zach Schulze Gangthat play in Medway a lot. I saw them a few weeks ago and they were incredible. Really talented lads
What plans and goals are in the near and slightly more distant future for the band? Play more gigs, release more music. That’s about it really.
And finally, have you got an uplifting and motivating message for the world, or at least the Edge of Arcady readership, in these uncertain times? Don’t watch the news, stay off your phone and come to a Landfill gig!
Landfill’s new single ‘Solid Gold’ is out on Friday 11th March 2022 and we’ll have a review for you ready and raring to go on release day.
If you’re eager to take Aaron’s advice and get yourself down to see the lads at a gig, they’re back playing live. You can see them at the following:
Cardiff’s most extravagant six-piece have graced us with their second proper single ‘Death of a King’. Although the pomp and hubris of debut single ‘Near The Knuckle’ is fully intact, their newest dispatch is, in Pigeon Wigsworld anyway, a slightly more restrained affair. Wrapped around a spirited piano line and some brash saxophone blasts, at one point a full sax solo, the song proves that, although big glam statements are what Pigeon Wigs are all about, they can tone it down a notch if it suits the occasion, just like when Queen go all hushed in bits of Bohemian Rhapsody.
Pigeon Wigs debut EP ‘Rock by Numbers’ of which this is the first puzzle piece, will be released on 10th June.
The video for ‘Death of a King’ is another masterwork, based on the French Revolution and featuring a food fight between King Louis XVI and a couple peasants, as well as Mary Antoinette buried under and eating loads of cakes. It’s here to watch below:
If ‘Love Kills The Demons’, then this song will have a fair crack at taking out the oppressive blighters as well. South Londoners Krush Puppies have turned the vibrato-fuzz up and peppered their latest track with flutes and an empowering message to fool the ghouls out of the netherworld with an ethereal three chord ditty before sending them straight back from whence they came. Like Warpaint with a covert sense of humour and an overt sense of hope and effects pedals.
1. Throw Me On The Fire 2. Love Kills The Demons 3. Why 4. Everybody Wants To Be A Cowboy
The video was filmed on a £30 budget and is based on the symbolic concept of love conquering demons via adult baptism, replete with a creepy zombie Christian rock band at the end. We’ve included it below for you to take a look:
Like us, you may have been bracing yourself for a highly sexed, 70s prog-rock inspired, throwback debut LP from Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, but the little wonder of an album they’ve pulled out the bag is a far different thing.
Using glam and psychedelic rock tricks from T-Rex to Slade, the Cardiff boys have coupled up traditional corduroy and denim upbeat boogie stylings with political and cultural zeitgeist capturing lyrics. Now don’t get us wrong, charisma and confidence are still in plentiful supply, there are plenty of sassy, bolshy choruses, hip shaking verses, and so much confidence, in fact, that they have casually tossed aside some of their biggest scorers to date – past releases ‘Hollywood Actors’ and ‘John Lennon Is My Jesus Christ’ for starters, but in doing so they have put out into the world a cohesive and consistent contribution to the Welsh musical canon.
Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard are (L-R) Zac White – guitar, Ethan Hurst – drums, Ed Rees – bass, Tom Rees – vocals and guitar.
Much of ‘Backhand Deals’ takes a wry look at current popular and consumer culture. The new aeon is witheringly dissected in ‘New Age Millennial Magic’, placing themselves in the shoes of a Western individual couched in luxury and convenience while the wider world festers. ‘Good Day’ takes a look under the cover of toxic positivity and the odds forever stacked in favour of the richest kids, and so the topics go, keeping firmly on the side of the disadvantaged majority trying to make their way in a world of privilege, gleefully suggesting on buoyant rouser ‘Break Right In’ that the beaten and downtrodden “go for a good old smash and grab” in the “nearest hardware store or Ikea shop floor” but keeping it considerate and only rioting after closing time.
‘Backhand Deals’ is no throwback, retro-obsessed record. It does take solid cues from rock music committed to vinyl several decades ago, but Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard polish those sounds up and breathe new life into them, infusing them with the libido, turmoil and social conscience of the twenty-first century. Brand spanking good as new.
After her magickal second album ‘Ceremonials’ and the monumental ‘How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful’,Florence + The Machine’s fourth album ‘High As Hope’ hit a little lower against a personal, fragile line. ‘King’, then, is Florence Welch back up at her full-throated, anthemic greatest.
The song has all the burning heart emotion of a coming of age teen movie centrepiece but battles a very adult theme – a woman’s stark sacrifice of self, and potentially her art, to take on the identity of mother and wife. Amongst ritualistic drums, clashes of cymbals, quivering harp and violins whipping up into a frenzy, Florence finally declares “I need my golden crown of sorrow, my bloody sword to swing, I need my empty halls to echo with grand self-mythology – cos I am no mother, I am no bride, I am King”.
Welch’s album number 5 is yet to be officiallytitled and no release date has been announced, but it seems like it could be another solid classic. ‘King’ was written by Florence Welch with Jack Antonoff of Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, Lorde and Bleachers fame but is probably the least Jack Antonoff sounding song he has been a part of yet. You can find the single’s Autumn de Wilde directed video below:
Lurching from out of the shadows into yet more darkness, Dead Freights come fresh from supporting The Libertines on tour, headlong into the launch of their first official single on Gary Powell’s 25 Hour Convenience Store label – ‘Hey Hatred’.
Seething with blood-curdling tension, the record’s gothic, bass-heavy rumble and dark lyrical imagery tap into a dangerously moody, sexual vein with a collection of twisted stream of consciousness lines like the slinky allusions: “I was mocked, fleeced, drugged like a beast, I have jealousy tainting my memories and pricking my needles” and “I smile like Hitler in hell, like Jesus in jail” that go on to make way for a savage, animalistic breakdown before the careening guitars cut short for a curt and unapologetic ending.
Dead Freights have proven themselves to be a nefariously mesmerising live act and Hey Hatred is the full realisation of their brooding performance on record. As if to reiterate the group’s live dexterity, the b-side is the previously mailing list-only studio performance of ‘Bat Man’, reviewed by us previously
Both tracks are available to stream everywhere now.
‘Early in the Morning’ wakes up slowly. As gentle keyboards softly ease us in, vocalist Rhys Underdown coos our eyes open as he describes his lover rousing to consciousness after slumber. Delicate chiming guitar builds stronger and more echoey, taking the song up to a cathartic crescendo as the singer’s croon grows more emphatic, eventually totally ecstatic as he declares to the now completely conscious sweetheart “I saw you in a dream” and the song kicks into a full rhapsody. Then, boom, it’s over. The keyboards are gentle again, and we’re drifting back to sleep.
If you want a more succinct summarisation, think The Velvet Underground’s ‘Sunday Morning’, but energised and celebratory instead of stoned.
And no-one’s staying asleep for long, because b-side ‘Mynedfeydd’ is a sub-two minute, fully charged welsh language adrenalized wavy rocker that you’re gonna need to be well strapped in for.
There’s a lush little video for ‘Early in the Morning’ filmed in Roath Park in Cardiff and you can watch it below. Bandicoot’s long awaited album ‘Black After Dark’ is coming out on 4th March and we can’t wait to hear it. You can pre-order it on vinyl by tapping here.
The ‘Drink Too Much’ picture starts serenely with a short section of lulling strings, but very quickly mayhem ensues. Drums and gritty guitar tumble in as Natasha Sparkes realises all is not well in theAlphabetamines camp and she’s pushed to the point of screaming ferociously at frontman Adam Edwards about his out of control imbibation.
The Alphabetamines second single is a snapshot of Adam’s journey to sobriety and looks back over the devastating effect alcoholism can have on a young fledging rocker’s potential. The singer’s gravelly growl veers between regaling dizzying highs and bitter self loathing as his fiancée begs on the side lines for him to snap out of it. Thankfully we know the story ends well but The Alphabetamines expert rockabilly punk craftsmanship puts you back in the midst of Edwards’ most haywire years all the same.
‘Drink Too Much’ was released on January 21st 2022. The video sees the group grappling with sanity in the middle of a grand, dilapidated mansion house and you can watch it by tapping below:
Edge of Arcady 