Free Blood

Saturday, February 16, 2008

It's generally accepted that after 20 weeks of being pregnant the baby can hear the music you play, and suggested by some that the kind of music you play will somehow affect your unborn when his day of liberation finally arrives. If this is indeed true, I'm not entirely sure what to tell you about my little guy, considering I've listened to virtually nothing but the new Free Blood tracks since they appeared in the atmosphere of my life a few days ago.

I first stumbled across Free Blood (once a trio, now John Pugh from !!! and clothing designer Madeline Davy) on Myspace (you'd be surprised at how much amazing music you can find there, if you're patient and REALLY want it) back in March '07, a month that many of you know I spent not leaving my house, smoking copious amounts of pot, watching "Family Feud" with my dad and refusing to be open minded about anything APART from music. The first track of their's I heard was "The Royal Family" (although at the time it was called "WDWD") and it blew my cynical hermit mind. It's not very often that I so quickly attach myself to a group, but there was something about Free Blood's sound that was interesting enough to immediately win me over. It was chaotic, catchy, driven and completely peculiar- exactly what I so badly needed.

It seems like Free Blood prefers being an entirely live phenomenon- their Myspace page seems to be their only solid connection to listeners outside of the Brooklyn area who can't attend their shows at various clubs and pitch black basement parties. The designated "homepage" brings you to a web design company's website and for months there was no place to actually buy their music. In fact, it's pretty difficult to find any information about them at all aside from reviews of their live shows written by "hipster" "bloggers." By summer I'd mostly given up hope I'd ever hear much more from them, but thankfully over the past week there's been a sudden fury of activity. There's a video out now for "the Royal Family" and vinyl for sale through roughtrade and boomkat. Keep your eye on these two, that's all I'm saying; I haven't heard anything truly NEW that appealed to me this much in a long, long time and (provided you like this sort of music in the first place) I doubt this will be the last you hear of them.


The Royal Family video

They're playing a live show with Hot Chip in Boston on April 14th, two days before my 26th birthday. I'll be 7 and a half months pregnant by then, roughly the size of a small planet. Provided I can stomach the drive, do you imagine there'll be room for a pregnant lady who can't exactly dance at a mind blowing dance party? Because seriously, how could I miss this?

Links:
Free Blood @ Myspace
Full tracks available on last.fm