Pennan Brae 'Lit' - literally the best album this year so far...

 
The press for Pennan Brae’s 8^th studio album says that it is “influenced by rock & roll of the 1970s & 80s”. And certainly, the opening of lead song ‘Won’t You Come My Way’ has a very Rolling Stones guitar riff, a theme that repeats throughout the record. Following hard on this start is the album’s best song ‘El Camino’ which adds Raspberries style pop to the mix.

You might think that in 2021 the possibilities of the guitar bass drums format had been played out. In fact, there is something highly refreshing about it. In an age where even the simplest album is pro tooled to death, Brae’s clear unadorned guitar sound is the more powerful for simply being simple. There is as much 60s garage in this music as later influence, most of the songs on Lit would have fitted in just fine on ‘Nuggets’. 70s style Power Pop is another good reference point. Ten years ago, Brae would have been snapped up by Bruce Brodeen’s Not Lame label for sure.

Other album highlights are the mid-tempo ‘Sashay’, the only place where Alison Jenkins’ backing vocals have much impact, and singles ‘Passing Fad’ and ‘Tearing my Heart in 2’. And there’s the clue. The best songs are the singles, the album is ten tracks long and under 40 minutes long. In other words, a good old-fashioned album. You know where to buy it by now.

Pennan Brae is also a screenwriter and film maker. His ‘The Astronot’ is on Amazon Prime now, and well worth a watch.

There are changes coming to 160gigblog. More content and different content.  Watch out over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here’s Pennan Brae’s latest video while you wait. 

 

 

I Witness - "The Word" A soundtrack for the new normal

One of the best things about writing a blog is that every so often you get to talk about music that the rest of the world hasn't heard yet. I Witness are Electronic artist Martin Byrne and poet Jason N Smith. The album was written and recorded over the last two years but sounds tailor made for the current unpleasantness.

The single "I am England" is scarily current.

While "I Am England" is the headline piece there are so many songs that force us to look at ourselves and our world and how we interact with each other and our environment.

Unstoppable

I am the paradise lost and paradise found

amongst bookshelves and  life’s cordite clouds.

When She Stopped Running

When she learnt to stop running

and turned to face an intricate part of herself

with wide open welcoming arms and embraced

big letter words written within her spirit saying come

Martin Byrne's music draws on his work as The Big Boss as well as reflecting his time in 90s industrial/electronica band Thule. Martin says that the motivation for getting back into creating music was hearing Vitalic at a festival, and that French vibe from Vitalic, Fakear or Miss Kittin is all over "The Word".  Elsewhere flavours of On U Sound, early Kraftwerk, and even Tackhead add a sense of menace to some of the harder messages. 

Those of us who supporrted the IndieGogo that funded "The Word" got demos of three bonus tracks included with our download. One of these "Stop and Research" is quite the most astonishing thing you will hear this year. I believe it has now been mixed for release. Hard to believe this was written and recorded months ago. "I'm going to make my speech here at the weekend, it's going to go up like a rocket, and stay up", hopefully I've transcribed that right, but it could be a mantra for this album. It is indeed going to go up like a rocket, and stay up.

If you only buy one download album this year make it this one.

Jason N Smith  - I Witness The Word on Amazon 

BUY & STREAM - I Witness  - The Word 

Hear Jason and Martin being interviewed by Kirk Pickstone HERE