Sounds on the Ground #21: Race Horses
By: Dan Monsell
What’s the deal?: Welsh psych-pop brilliance here from this youthful, oddball quartet from Aberystwyth. A great deal of fun and a pack of big tracks at their disposal they most certainly have - new single ‘Cake’ is out now on Fantastic Plastic records and sees them take the tried and tested formula of The Beatles, The Kinks or Barrett-era Pink Floyd, hit it up with a Super Furries / Gorky’s stoned haze of experimental pop, and then boils it down to a dose of modern indie-fuzz fun a la The Libertines. Somehow despite dragging their music thrown a well-drawn mill like that, it still feels all fresh and ready to storm the 2010s.
Formerly Radio Luxembourg, a recent name change for the band has accompanied a nice slew of praise from many corners - resulting in a round of some much-deserved attention. We most enjoy when they go off on their mad as Nick Griffin’s-views-on-repatriation solos and codas at the end of the end of the bandstand-pop hits.
For now we look forward to hearing more from them and especially anticipating what they could do in an album’s worth of music, due to their penchant for backwards drugged-out guitar effects and found sounds thrown in here and there.
What can I hear?: Debut single ‘Cake’ is out on Fantastic Plastic now, and is available from them direct as well as on iTunes and generally digitally. The b-side is an ace Welsh number called ‘Cacen Mamgu’. Otherwise check ‘em online at www.myspace.com/racehorsesmusic for four blasts of good ‘uns.
When can I see them? Getting all around the country this lot – take your pick, Great Britain.
30 Oct - The Windmill w/ Tap Tap Brixton, London
31 Oct - BAR 342, BANGOR Bangor, Wales
26 Nov - Wales Millenium Centre Cardiff
2 Dec - Purr @ Chapel Arts Centre w/ Piney Gir Bath
11 Dec - Akoustik Anarchy @ The Deaf Institute Manchester
12 Dec - HED @ Mad Ferret (Free entry) Preston
We all know music peaked in 1994, so give me a sound-bite about how we could compare them to some kind of obscure band from the Britpop era: Not strictly a Britpop band, but let’s take Gomez, haul ‘em out and down to the West of Wales, lose the dude with really low voice, speed ‘em up, cut out some of the jazzy rock bits, focus them a bit so they don’t always jam, and then let them cut loose and make some tooooooons. Silly section this, innit.
Artists in this article: Race Horses