February 20, 2009

Today's Hotness: Postulat, The Answering Machine (Again)

Postulat
>> We've received a lot of emails lately about two of our favorite '90s acts, Kam Fong (really, two emails recently) and Small Factory. As we quipped to one of our correspondents, we are ready for the Small Factory reunion. Just sitting here waiting for it. Ready. Waiting. Pretending it's sunny, even... Anyway, while a reunion of the Providence, RI-spawned trio seems unlikely, we were excited to see action at SF bassist and singer Alex Kemp's MySpace dojo. Mr. Kemp, now the creative director of a music production company and based in Los Angeles, reports in a bulletin that he has formed a new project that goes by the name Postulat with Norwegian singer/songwriter Kristin Øhrn Dyrud. The band name sounds kinda European techno or darkwave hip-hop or math-rocky, right? It turns out Postulat is none of these things. Instead, the duo offers densely arranged, somewhat reserved rockers and uptempo pop ("Magic World," "Say You Will"). The production is pretty glossy, sometimes clever. Kemp's vocals are evenly weighted with Ms. Dyrud's, and otherwise largely stick in the background, although he gets a verse in the bouncy "Say You Will." The pick of the six songs posted at Postulat's MySpace lean-to may be the quiet, bleep ballad "Gift," which we recommend you go stream straightaway.

>> If you couldn't tell from all our recent posting and Twittering about Manchester, England-based indie pop phenoms The Answering Machine that we are excited about their debut record, well, you just haven't been paying attention. We were bantering with a fellow from their label today, who was cool enough to extend to us permission to post the title track of the quartet's forthcoming full-length Another City, Another Sorry. You'll recall we pointed here to RockSellout's post with that very MP3 in it early this month; if you didn't heed our exhortation to go download the track then, we insist you do it now below. Another City, Another Sorry will be released by Heist Or Hit Records in the U.K. in May. As we reiterated Wednesday, the album is preceded by the exceedingly excellent single "Cliffer" Feb. 9, which can already be purchased in the U.S. at Rhapsody.com.

The Answering Machine -- "Another City, Another Sorry" -- Another City, Another Sorry
[right click and save as]
[watch the Heist Or Hit site for pre-order information]

>> While it seems patently obvious to those of you paying attention to such things, we thought we'd point out this week had the first new release day of the year we were very excited about. We've been too busy to get out and buy records, but when we do we'll definitely be picking up Morrissey's Years Of Refusal and Psapp's The Camel's Back. Psapp's next single will be for the album track "I Want That," and the duo is currently working on a video to promote the tune. The single will be released in the UK on March 30. You can get The Camel's Back at EMusic right now.

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