To hell with it!

Let’s change everything!

I’m sure I had good reasons, but right now I can’t for the life of me remember why, when I started this Blog, I decided to limit myself to UK bands, and not cover music from outside these isles. Seems particularly pointless the more I think of it, especially as these days, more than ever, the whole concept of “local” is even harder to define than it ever was. Are Bristol bands more local to me than American ones who come over here and play? Is a Canadian band with multiple downloads free on their site and albums on sale at Emusic, somehow less local than a Gloucester band whose singer lives in the street next to me? Not really.

So, I’m taking Partly Porpoise off on its travels. We’re packing our bags, slapping on the sun cream and anxiously flinging clothes from our bags looking for those passports I know I put in the side pocket…

And first stop is Italy. Well, Australia, sort of.

Ultraviolet Makes Me Sick

I’ve been hanging around the site of Australian label Camera Obscura recently, with some very rewarding finds, the first of which I’ll share here.

Ultraviolet Makes Me Sick are a largely instrumental three piece from Italy, who have been playing largely experimental music together for a good few years. I’ve never been especially into post-rock instrumental groups – I’m thinking of Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros – they just don’t really do it for me. And UVMMS (theirs not mine) do at times sound a bit like these bands, but on some tracks they sound really interesting, almost dub-y, with lots of echo and reverb.

Although, I’m not sure that’s a sound they’d especially want to be associated with – their site makes some rather grand statements about being

“completely able to express ourselves in music and give music the right deepness, capturing harmonies in film-like tunes, inspired by images and sensations, soundtracks of inner feelings”.

That’s right. What he said.

Whatever, I really like the track Camera Obscura are giving away on their site, “Bad Ideas Trapped in Empty Bottles”. There’s another available on their site too, but there are also three tracks you can snag from the UVMMS site itself, one of which I’m offering here too.

Bad Ideas Trapped in Empty Bottles

Milk

You can get both of the band’s existing albums on Emusic, and from Camera Obscura direct.