Alice Gold SEVEN RAINBOWS. Fiction

Although Alice Gold launched her career in London, she began writing songs as an eight-year-old in nearby Camberley. Gold later moved to America, where she spent six months touring the country in a Winnebago while working on her music, which funneled her ‘60s influences - Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, and the like - into a contemporary pop/rock sound. Returning home, she relocated to London and began working with Dan Carey, a highly successful British producer.

“We just clicked,” Alice says. “I basically hounded Dan for six months to make room in his diary and told him he had to pay for it all too ‘cos I was broke. But he did it. I played the stripped down tracks to Dan in his studio and explained the mad band in my head. He came up with these killer bass lines and the sound I was looking for began.”  Working on a shoestring budget, the two completed Gold’s debut album, Seven Rainbows. Gold then signed with Fiction Records and released her first single, “Orbitter,” in late 2010. Alice’s debut album, ‘Seven Rainbows’,  was completed in just 22 days with no money from any record label. Even so, the quality in the songs was and is obvious, so much so that labels were queuing up for the rights to release it. A deal with Fiction Records allowed Alice to put together the live band she had always dreamed of.

The album opens with the most distinctive, powerful and melodic pop song on the album, ‘Seasons Change’. It’s an epic song that builds from a brief unnacompanied opening (which quickly shows the quality of her young voice) to multi-layered vocals with a band to finally a full-on orchestral explosion. This surely must be the first single from the album as Radio 1 should lap it up…maybe… Next track ‘Runaway Love’ is more ordinary fare but as good as anything in the singles chart right now. ‘And You’ll Be There’ is a darker, more soulful affair and highlights the musical diversity of this album. ‘Cry Cry Cry’ is in fact the first single from the album and whilst it boats strong choruses is onwe of the weakest songs here. ‘How Long Can These Streets Be Empty?’ is my second major highlight of the album with its blues and jazzy undercurrant driven by a strong melody and vocal. Other favourotes are the dark and dense ‘Conversations Of Love’ and piano vibe of ‘Sadness Is Coming’. The album closes with another potential charting single in ‘The End Of The World’.

As debuts go this one pretty good and provides a diverse showcase of this lady’s singing and songwriting talents. I’d like to see Gold perform live so I guess it’s ‘job done’.

3.5/5

Japanese Voyeurs YOLK. Fiction

London based 5-piece Japanese Voyeurs have taken the sum core ingredient of Grunge and maximized it with their love of rock and raucous guitars, turning it up to number #11, with their own, new ferocious slant. Resulting in a sound that is sure to make most other bands’ balls shrivel in comparison. Band members are Romily Alice (vocals and guitar), Thomas Lamb (guitar), Johnny Seymour (bass), Steve Wilson and Rich Walden (keys and piano). ”When we started out there weren’t that many new groups making heavy music, the kind of music we liked to listen to when we were growing up,“ says Romily, the band’s frontperson. To date her group have put their name to two releases 2009’s Sicking & Creaming EP, as well as 2010’s double-a side of That Love Sound and Blush. ”We wanted to recapture that spirit and that brutality,“  she says. ”We make music that is heavy, but it’s not heavy for its own sake,“ explains Romily. ”We have a sense of melody as well. It’s how we bring these things together that I hope makes us interesting and worth listening to.“

”The concept of the album is about birth and growth,“ explains Romily, who also writes the group’s lyrics. ”And it’s about the darker connotations that go with those ideas. I write about the more primal and animalistic side of being a human, the shadow side of the pysche, and how you have to control that while living in a society where you have to go to work and form relationships and try to be a good person. I suppose I’m quite interested in that idea because it’s something I myself find quite difficult to do.” ”I hope that the lyrics help people connect to the music on a more visceral level,“ she continues. ”I hope that people connect to what we’re doing in a way that is deeper than if they were just listening to a load of generic pop lyrics.“

Over the next 12 months Japanese Voyeurs will be busy taking their music to the more discerning music fans of the world. And how will the band recognise success if and when it comes? Well, they already know what it is because they’ve already found it.

”Success to us is being able to make the music we want to make, the way we want to make it,“ says Johnny. ”Anything that happens after that we’ll take as it comes. But the most important thing to us is the music. If we lose sight of that then we’re doing something wrong.“

Well, it’s not often that new bands actually deliver on their declared aims and objectives, but Japanese Voyeurs certainly do - big-time! Check out the album’s incendiery opener ‘You’re So Cool’ with its crashing rhythmic foundation, tangible melody with vocal and instrumental performances that leave nothing to the imagination. It’s the kind of rock music the UK industry seems to have sidelined to keep the likes of Radio 1 happy. Brilliant! ‘Dumb’ opens with a threatening guitar riff before Alice spits out her angry vocal and the band arrives at full force. Magical! ‘Cry Baby’ offers some marginally softer respite while maintaining those killer choruses. ‘Smother Me’ takes a goth route with some stunning contemplative vocal and instrumental passages and is a stunner. Look, I could go on praising this album but if you feel (rightly) starved of rock of the heavy kind, you need this album. A superb debut and a potential rock album of the year.

4/5